Ged Carroll

Month: July 2015

  • Seabasing

    In a tale of fact imitating fiction the US Navy is looking at ways to support the military in future conflicts by creating bases which allow ships to act as a combined space, which they call sea basing (or seabasing). The reason for this is in battles with the likes of China they may not have the luxury of a nearby land base like they have had in the Middle East, so they need to provide a flexible platform that will perform a similar function including floating docks and logistics.

    Being out at sea and operating in this way helps put the force out of range of enemy weapons as well, or what the US Marines describe as exploit the sea’s maneuver space.

    This includes ramps and sensors that would allow service men and equipment to exchanged from ship-to-ship with as much ease as moving around a base on land. Presumably this would have some sort of affect in terms of increasing the data network connections between ships to help them function better and more cohesively.
    140211-D-NI589-094
    The idea of seabasing echoes the carrier and lashed together boats of Neal Stephenson’s Snow Crash. Snow Crash is a classic work of cyberpunk fiction written in 1994. In the book refugees play a key part in the plot. The refugees have attached themselves to a privatised aircraft carrier owned by a media company that is heading to the US. More design related content here.

    More information
    The future of sea basing | Armed Forces Journal
    Sea Basing: concepts, issues and recommendations by Sam J. Tangredi (PDF)
    Pacific seabasing exercise will highlight new ships | Marine Corps Times
    Globalsecurity.org – Seabasing
    Figuring Out the Future of War in the Pacific — Or, What the Hell is Seabasing? | Vice News
    What is Seabasing | United States Marine Corps
    Seabasing Annual Report | United States Marine Corps

  • Index funds + more things

    Index funds may be conspiring against the very same investors who fund them | Quartz – interesting analysis on index funds, surely this would also be the issue with ‘shareholder value’ in general?

    Oracle’s cloud sales – Business Insider – short term numbers for long term losses

    Shanghai Street View: Wealth Explosion – high street wealth management products, explains a lot. This could all go wrong and explains China’s regulations against shadow banking. The problem is a lack of supply for Chinese consumers to invest in. Savings accounts give poor returns, the stare market is way oversubscribed

    Exclusive: Amazon planning drive-up grocery stores with first coming to Sunnyvale — sources – Silicon Valley Business Journal – it feels like a retrogressive move to me. I think of drive-thrus as being representative of 20th century America. The drive-in cinema, the drive-thru/drive-in fast food restaurant a la McDonalds or American Graffiti

    What Really Killed Homejoy? It Couldn’t Hold On To Its Customers | Forbes – which sounds very dot com in its nature

    Apple Watch to Be Sold at Best Buy – Digits – WSJ – interesting how this doesn’t fit with their initial luxury positioning

    Nike, Apple agree to $2.4M settlement in suit over false FuelBand claims, Apple to pay nothing – I guess tis scuppers Nike’s wearable ambitions and possibly Fuel being part of a wearable eco-system. More related posts here.

    If what you say is useful, people will pass it on | SiliconAngle – if they see it at the right time…

    Official Google Webmaster Central Blog: Update on the Autocomplete API | Google Webmaster Central Blog – basically it was a drain on resources that didn’t provide Google with useful data

    Firefox is getting audio indicators to show noisy tabs, and will let you mute them | VentureBeat | Dev | by Emil Protalinski – brilliant for them auto playing videos in my RSS feeds

  • Hacknet + more things

    Hacknet

    Some Australian developers have made an immersive game about hacking that will be distributed on Steam when released. It’s called Hacknet and here’s the trailer.