Category: Technology

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Dec. 18, 2016: HughesNet’s EchoStar 19 satellite aboard an Atlas 5 rocket, Cape Canaveral, Florida

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HughesNet Generation 5 satellite Internet service ★★★★★

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After eight years of living in a crippled and slow Internet hell, for the past six months the abbey’s Internet has been the fastest I’ve ever used. I owe it all to rockets and satellites.

This place is half a mile off the pavement, deep in the woods of the Blue Ridge foothills. If I weren’t a nerd, getting connected to the Internet these past eight years might even have been impossible. It required a directional antenna in the attic, connected to a Verizon “air card.” It was finicky and unreliable. Constant fiddling was required to keep it working, drawing on my experience both as a ham radio operator and lots of network savvy from my years as a newspaper systems person. All the Verizon components were lightweight consumer junk, because junk is all that is available for use with cellular. All cellular is consumer junk, but that’s a rant for another day.

As a nerd, it wasn’t enough just to understand the new dish in the yard and the new satellite transceiver and WIFI router down in the hallway closet. I also wanted to know what I was connected to up in the sky.

On Dec. 18, 2016, HughesNet launched a new satellite called EchoStar 19. It’s an SSL 1300 satellite, built by Space Systems Loral in Palo Alto, California — my old stomping grounds just south of San Francisco. It was carried to geosynchronous orbit by an Atlas 5 rocket launched from Cape Canaveral, Florida. The new satellite went into service in March 2016. I signed up in April.

Previously I had avoided satellite. The word-of-mouth reputation of HughesNet’s previous generations of satellite Internet service was not good. Though the EchoStar 19 satellite was new and un-reviewed, the specifications (true broadband by the FCC’s definition, 25Mbps minimum) and the deal that HughesNet was offering were irresistible. I called and signed up. The very next day, a technician installed the dish. It has worked flawlessly from the beginning and has never let me down.

HughesNet promises typical speeds greater than 25 Mbps. I found that speeds of 45 Mbps were typical (and still are typical even as HughesNet adds customers). At times I’ve measured 53 Mbps. Upload speeds are relatively slow — 3 to 5 Mbps.

If you live near civilization and have the option of cable Internet, or, better yet, fiber Internet, you don’t need to consider satellite. A land-based service will be cheaper and fast enough. Only those who live in the boonies should consider satellite service. The three drawbacks of satellite Internet service are:

1. It will be more expensive

2. Your data allowance will be capped each month

3. The distance to the satellite (23,000 miles) forces a delay, or “latency,” of about half a second when you’re waiting for a response, simply because of the speed of light and the 46,000-mile round trip to the satellite.

I chose HughesNet’s 30GB per month plan. I also signed up for telephone service (which is a problem; more in a second) and for the higher-priority service plan if I needed a technician on site. For this I pay $131 a month. I don’t begrudge a penny of it.

The deal from HughesNet is remarkably generous. In addition to the 30GB per month, you also get 50GB per month of off-hours data between 2 a.m. and 8 a.m. If you exhaust the 30GB (more in a second), they don’t cut you off. Instead, they throttle the download speed to 1.5Mbps or so for the rest of the month. Your Internet service actually is unlimited. But your fast Internet service is limited according to the data plan you choose. You can buy more fast data by paying for a “token” ($15 will get you 15 more fast gigabytes), but otherwise you are throttled and in “FAP” mode, in which FAP stands for “fair access policy.” This makes sense. A satellite’s bandwidth is not unlimited, and HughesNet must be able to provide fast data as promised to other users who have not exceeded their limits. Data hogs mustn’t be allowed to mess things up for everyone else.

Normally during the past six months, I’ve used less than 1GB a day, and at the end of the month I have unused data. But, this month, two teen-age great-nephews were among my Thanksgiving guests. In one evening, they exhausted my remaining gigabytes and threw me into throttled FAP mode with five days to go before my data reset. This was the first time I’d ever seriously been in FAP mode. The five days gave me plenty of time to see what throttled satellite service feels like.

It didn’t really feel any different! Not only do web pages load (subjectively) just as fast, I found that I could still stream HBO, Netflix, Hulu, PBS, etc., as though nothing had ever happened. This feels like a miracle to me and makes me want to buy some HughesNet stock. If I were, say, downloading a Mac OS update of 5GB, then that download would take 20 times longer when throttled. But for ordinary web browsing and movie streaming, throttling doesn’t much matter. At your throttled speed of 1.5Mbps, the system is loafing, and the download speed is very steady. So streaming services such as Netflix adjust to the available bandwidth, and the video never stalls. (Note: My streaming tests at 1080 px, high definition, are limited. I usually stream at 740 px, which looks perfectly fine on my 37-inch television.)

If you’re throttled in FAP mode, then at 2 a.m., when your off-hours 50GB bonus applies, the speed goes back up to the maximum. At 8 a.m., you’re throttled again. I have never used all the 50GB of off-hours data or even come close. This all strikes me as a very generous and rational pricing plan on HughesNet’s part. Why not let customers have extra data at night when demand is low? And why not let customers go on streaming at throttled speeds as long as the satellite can meet its promises to other customers? Would Verizon ever be that nice and that rational? Hell no. Us hates Verizon.

Telephone service

Telephone service has been a problem right from the start — dropped audio, dropped calls, and lots of aggravation. HughesNet acknowledged the problems and made some fixes. Nevertheless, though the telephone service has improved some as they’ve worked on the system, I still would rate the telephone-over-satellite service as just short of acceptable. You’d want this only if you have no other options. Increasingly I am resolved to just stop using the telephone, because in these days of cell phones the horrible audio is just too much to bear. Emailing and texting suit me much better. I almost never answer the telephone anymore. But that’s a rant for another time.

Tech support

There are two ways to get tech support. You can make a phone call, talk with someone in India, and have an aggravating and utterly unproductive experience. (I had to do this a couple of times because of telephone problems). But HughesNet also has an on-line support forum. A very nice moderator named Liz will open tickets for you and actually get things done. Longtime, highly technical HughesNet users in the forum also can be very helpful.

The router, etc.

The HT2000 satellite transceiver and router provided by HughesNet has worked flawlessly for six months. It will enable two WIFI networks, one at 5Ghz and one at 2Ghz. The 5Ghz network is faster but has less range and less ability to penetrate walls. This is a nice way to set things up. The WIFI networks are highly configurable, through your web browser. You also can test your satellite connection and get lots of diagnostics, should you need it (I never have needed it, but I watch things just out of nerdly curiosity). This stuff is built more to commercial, as opposed to consumer, standards. Cellular stuff is junk. Satellite stuff is cool.

The installation

The installation of the dish and router went smoothly, and, six months later, the satellite signal strength as reported by the HT2000 router actually has become stronger. I’d suggest tipping the installer generously before the work begins. They are independent contractors.

Bad weather

If there is a thunderstorm between your dish and the satellite in the southern sky, then your signal strength will weaken, and you may lose service altogether until the storm passes if the storm is a severe one. This is unavoidable with satellite. I’ve learned that, if the Internet stops working because there’s a thunderstorm to the south, I can expect heavy rain within the next 10 minutes.

Overall

I’d have to say that this is an excellent service, rationally priced. And the technology is beautiful.

An SSL 1300 satellite like HughesNet’s EchoStar 19

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Normally, Apple product rollouts don’t phase me. I take note of Apple’s new stuff and carry on without the slightest trace of lust to buy. My old iPad works just fine, my iPhone 5 works great, my 27-inch iMac will last for many years, the Apple TV is old but still useful, and I have not perceived any need for a watch that tracks my heart rate or that nags me about my calendar.

But Apple’s new watch, announced today, actually does something new and useful. It’s a cell phone and texting device, and it uses the same phone number as your iPhone. That’s progress. Dick Tracy’s dream of a two-way wrist radio — a dream that is almost 70 years old, seems to be a reality now.

Not since my working days have I regularly worn a watch. But I do like watches, as long as they’re absolutely accurate. I have an “atomic” watch that I wear sometimes if I’m traveling or otherwise have to keep to a schedule. The “atomic” feature, which sets the time using a radio signal from WWV, is always accurate to the second.

When Ken’s not here, I’m here alone. Though I’ve by no means reached the age at which I’m afraid of falling and not being able to get up, accidents can happen. When I’m mowing, for example, I always keep my cell phone in my pocket. Many older people pay for a device that they can carry, or wear around the neck, that’s always with them and that can summon help.

Plus, my iPhone 5 is a pocketfull. I’ve never lost it, but I’ve been known to leave it places. Then I have to run back and get it when I realize it’s missing. Just a couple of weeks ago, I left my iPhone on the counter at Whole Foods and had to dash back in from the parking lot to retrieve it.

So you see the justification for the new Apple watch that is taking shape in my mind — always there, not cumbersome, hard to lose, and available in emergencies.

Unfortunately, I’d have to upgrade my iPhone to use the new Apple watch, because my iPhone is a year or so too old to work with the cellular feature of the new Apple watch.

I’m not going to rush into this. But I’m very tempted. And I’d have to say that I’ve never regretted buying stuff from Apple.

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Library of Congress

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I have never used Twitter. I never will.

If I take off my snark cap and put on my nice cap, and if I try to come up with a reason to justify Twitter’s existence, then this is the best I can do: Twitter is like texting, but it’s a broadcast rather than one-to-one. The 140-character limit isn’t so weird if you assume that most twitting — I mean tweeting — is done from phones. In fact, I think that when Twitter first came into existence, it used SMS text messages and had to work within a 160-character limit. You can use Twitter to “follow” someone that you’re interested in, or you can use hashtags (#babblebabble) to tune in to particular subjects.

Whatever. It’s still useless. A text message that says “I’ll be there at 6” or “I fed the cat” makes perfectly good sense to me. But nobody in the world — including Donald Trump — has anything to say in 140-character broadcasts than I am in any way interested in.

The situation has become much worse, because “Tweets” now find their way into news stories. If I still worked in a newspaper newsroom, I’d argue until I was hoarse that “Tweets” should be treated like any other quotation — inside the paragraph with quotation marks around it, appropriately attributed. But no, the print media seem to have taken up the horrifying, visually jarring convention of putting each litle Tweet into a paragraph of its own, with lots of white space above and below it, some of it in italics, including a bunch of stray characters that are no more useful than 75-year-old Western Union routing codes for Telegrams: “LA063 OD137 0 SFR200.”

And still worse, to stay within the 140-character limit, all sorts of ad hoc abbreviations, elisions and omissions are required, unless of course the Tweet is split into multiple particles, each helpfully numbered (5), (4), (3), (2), (1) in reverse order.

During the days of Western Union, bandwidth was extremely expensive. Depending on how far a Telegram was going, each character cost a lot of money. So there was a good reason for keeping your message short.

Now bandwidth is incredibly cheap, so cheap that we can stream high-definition movies, a different movie to each room of the house. Peter Thiel is famous for saying, “We wanted flying cars, instead we got 140 characters.”

My first job was as a newspaper copy boy in the 1960s. One of my responsibilities was looking after a room full Teletype machines. There was even a Western Union Telex printer in the room, because newspapers got a lot of Telegrams.

In many ways, I loved the days when bandwidth was expensive. When bandwidth was expensive, information that came in from far away was valuable, with an aura of exotic magic about it. If it weren’t valuable, it would not have been sent. Remember long distance? It was very expensive, and it was thrilling to hear a loved one’s voice from far, far away. These days the chatter is almost all worthless. That’s why I don’t use Twitter. Increasingly, I don’t use the telephone, either. But that’s a rant for another day.

A 1960s Telex printer, Wikipedia

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Back in April, the U.S. Postal Service rolled out a new feature called “Informed Delivery.” If you sign up for it, then each morning you’ll receive an email from the postal service with a scanned grayscale image of each piece of mail that is to be delivered to you that day.

I wasn’t aware of this until I picked up a promotional leaflet about it while I was at the post office today. My first reaction had to do with privacy. Obviously they’re taking pictures of every single piece of mail that passes through the post office.

After a little Googling, I learned that the post office has been taking pictures of all the mail since the 1990s. It’s part of the address-scanning and automatic sorting process. But just think what they can do with that. Not only do they have pictures of all the mail, but they also can cross-reference all the addresses and feed a database that documents who knows whom, and who does business with whom. In other words, there is no private way of communicating with anyone anymore — not by telephone, not through email, and not through the post office. You can be sure that it’s all in a database somewhere, indexed, cross-referenced and retained.

Privacy questions aside, what might Informed Delivery be good for? I live about a quarter of a mile from my mailbox. It actually would be nice to know in advance what, if anything, is in the mailbox before I go out to retrieve the mail. I don’t necessarily go to the mailbox every day. But yeah, I signed up for it.

In its promotional material on Informed Delivery, the postal service says that they hope it will make the postal service seem more relevant to millenials, since millenials’ lives apparently revolve around their smartphones. And apparently, for those who have signed up for the service, it’s popular. The postal service says that almost 80 percent of the people who receive the daily emails look at them. (You do know, don’t you, how businesses can tell whether you opened a piece of mail?)

It seems the postal service will also try to use it for marketing. Companies that send mail will be able to pay the postal service for little ads that will be displayed in the daily emails, when something the company has mailed is scheduled to be delivered that day. Direct marketers are trying hard to figure out how to leverage that.

In any case, now we know that someone has pictures of all the mail we’ve received since sometime in the 1990s. We can assume that the mail can be searched by name and address, and we can assume that they can build lists of everybody we’ve ever sent mail to or received mail from. We also should assume that the mail can be cross-referenced to telephone calls and emails. Keep in mind that, as you drive each day, particularly in urban and suburban areas, your license plate is frequently scanned by roadway cameras, and thus your car can be tracked. Your cell phone is a tracking device. And of course they have, or at least have access to, a database of credit card transactions. What you do with your computer is tracked.

It is better to be aware of these things than not to be aware. And I think it’s better to monitor the ways we’re monitored than not to. Normally all that stuff is stored, and ignored, in vast databases. But when they want to build a dossier on someone, just think how much they’d know.

Here’s a thought experiment. If you wanted to communicate with someone at a distance in a way that could not be monitored and that would not leave a record, would you be able to do that? If so, how?

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Update:

I got my first Informed Delivery email this morning. Here’s what it looks like — a DVD from Netflix’s DVD division, and what appears to be an invitation to an elementary school reunion. It’s kind of cool, actually, because now I know that I need to go up to the mailbox today and retrieve the DVD.

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This is a nerd post!

The Washington Post has an interesting story today about how flights in and out of Phoenix have been canceled this week because of the heat: It’s so hot in Phoenix that airplanes can’t fly

The story is misleading in that it suggests that particular models of aircraft have maximum operating temperatures. But it’s more complicated than that. Though no doubt there is a maximum operating temperature, there also is a maximum takeoff and landing temperature, which might be much lower.

The efficiency of an airplane, and thus its ability to take off or land on a given runway, actually is a formula with a number of factors. The factors include the weight of the plane, the air temperature, the altitude of the airport, and even the humidity.

Hot air is thinner than cold air. Air at high altitudes is thinner than air at low altitudes. Thinner air affects not only the airplane’s airfoil (its wings); thin air also affects the efficiency of the airplane’s engines. So, to determine whether an airplane can fly in a given situation, a flight computer must make a calculation on all these factors — plus, of course, the runway length and the altitude of any high terrain around the airport that must be cleared.

As a student pilot many years ago, it was easy to feel, just from the controls of an airplane, that airplanes are perky and responsive on cold days, but also that they’re sluggish and much more disobedient on warm, humid days, or at mountain airports.

But the thing that really brought this point home to me was flying on a packed-to-the-gills Air India flight from Bangkok to Delhi some years ago. Those heavily loaded flights into and out of New Delhi, I learned, usually land and take off in the middle of the night. Why is that? Because it’s too hot for the planes to fly during the daytime. And in my limited experience, Air India planes are packed to the max, so air temperature becomes a critical factor.

I wouldn’t worry, though. Today’s airplanes are incredibly sophisicated, and their behavior is easily modeled. If your flight to Phoenix is canceled, it’s because the airlines know their business and their airplanes. Still, unless it’s hotter than the airplane’s maximum operating temperature (which I doubt), the plane would be able to fly with a lighter load, even in the heat. But these days, airplanes tend to be packed, and apparently it makes more business sense to cancel a packed flight than to drag enough people and their luggage off the plane to lighten the plane enough to satisfy the OK-to-fly computation.

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Inside the new Mac Pro

In the land of nerds — Apple nerds, anyway — Apple’s obsession in recent years with iPhones, iPads, and the iOS operating system for small devices has been disturbing. Sure, nerds have iPhones and iPads and love them. But real computers are for getting work done. Apple was accused — rightly — of neglecting its iMac desktop line of computers and squandering the work of its engineers on consumer doodads designed for distraction and entertainment rather than for getting work done.

Even worse, for a while Apple was saying that it wanted to make its operating system for desktops — Mac OS — more like iOS. That was horrifying. iOS is creepy, really. Its “apps” have no standard user interface, which guarantees that most apps are quirky, gawky, silly-looking, unusable, and aimed at adolescent needs and tastes. Much worse, iOS devices take control away from the device’s owner in the interest of security. For security, that makes sense. But nerds don’t like being locked out of their own computer.

Last year, Apple’s CEO, Tim Cook, tried to reassure the nerds that Apple wasn’t turning its back on serious computers. The reaction from nerds was skeptical: Harumph. So you say. Prove it.

Apple just proved it. The specifications of the new iMac Pro are breathtaking, way beyond what even the most optimistic desktop nerd might have hoped for. The iMac Pro is to be available in December. Prices start at $4,999. That may seem like a lot of money, but for people who use their computers to make money and who need all the desktop power they can get — for video work, for example — the iMac Pro actually is surprisingly cheap and easy to cost-justify.

Will I buy one? Absolutely not. I don’t need that much computing power on my desktop. But I do need a real computer on my desktop. It’s a certainty that the technical advances inside the iMac Pro will trickle down to the iMacs in the $2,000 range.

Best of all, the release of such a high-end workstation means that Apple can’t neglect its workstation operating system — Mac OS. I’m guessing that the new version of Mac OS that Apple will release in the fall will make up for some lost time. Sure, nerds want their iMacs to talk to their iPads. But we most definitely don’t want a desktop OS that is dumbed down and cartoonized and childproofed the way iOS is.

I’ve been using Macintoshes since 1986, more than thirty years. The drama of Apple’s evolution has been fascinating to watch. Apple just proved (I hope) that the company is not going to devolve into a company that only makes cool, expensive toys. They’re going to continue to make real computers and do superb engineering.

Now make us some cars, Apple! I won’t be able to afford one, but I can’t wait to see what kind of car you make.