美國政府暗中介入好萊塢的劇本,影響大眾對戰爭的看法

透過 Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) 取得的資料顯示美國政府 (包括了五角大廈、CIA、NSA) 如何介入好萊塢,影響大眾對於戰爭的看法:「EXCLUSIVE: Documents expose how Hollywood promotes war on behalf of the Pentagon, CIA and NSA」。

灰標「US military intelligence agencies have influenced over 1,800 movies and TV shows」可以看出影響的層面。

The documents reveal for the first time the vast scale of US government control in Hollywood, including the ability to manipulate scripts or even prevent films too critical of the Pentagon from being made — not to mention influencing some of the most popular film franchises in recent years.

從很意想不到的地方介入... 引用其中一個說明:

Jon Voight in Transformers — in this scene, just after American troops have been attacked by a Decepticon robot, Pentagon Hollywood liaison Phil Strub inserted the line ‘Bring em home’, granting the military a protective, paternalistic quality, when in reality the DOD does quite the opposite.

AWS 美東第二區開放

如同之前 AWS 的規劃,宣佈啟用美東第二區了 (us-east-2,在俄亥俄州):「Now Open – AWS US East (Ohio) Region」。看了一下 EC2 的價錢,與 us-east-1 是同一個級別的,其他的服務應該是都差不多...

另外因為跨州了 (而且跟 us-east-1 很近),所以官方也推薦拿來做異地服務:

With just 12 ms of round-trip latency between US East (Ohio) and US East (Northern Virginia), you can make good use of unique AWS features such as S3 Cross-Region Replication, Cross-Region Read Replicas for Amazon Aurora, Cross-Region Read Replicas for MySQL, and Cross-Region Read Replicas for PostgreSQL.

其中有個特別的地方在於 us-east-{1,2} 之間傳輸的費用會以 Inter-AZ 計費,而非以跨 region 計費。大概是希望讓大家有動力多放些東西過去,畢竟 us-east-1 實在太大,穩定性超有名的關係 XDDD:

Data transfer between the two Regions is priced at the Inter-AZ price ($0.01 per GB), making your cross-region use cases even more economical.

關於 Sully (薩利機長:哈德遜奇蹟) 的資料

薩利機長:哈德遜奇蹟》講的是「全美航空1549號班機事故」,有不少資料可以先看過再去看電影。(這部片要整個劇透透光後,去電影院刷個兩次會特別有感覺)

特別推薦看 IMAX 版,螢幕大感覺就是不一樣... 另外結尾的彩蛋有兩則,請不要看完第一則就跑掉了。(話說回來,上上星期五去長春國賓看的時候居然沒看到第二則就被工作人員告知已經結束,不知道是怎麼一回事...)

首先是維基百科的資料 (當作入口點):

中文版會容易看一些,不過英文版的資料比較豐富。

另外維基百科上面也有人從 FAA 所公開的資料中截出 New York TRACON 的錄音抓出對應的部份,並且將對話過程抄寫出來:「File:Flight 1549 FAA New York TRACON audio extract.ogg」,電影的確照實將這些對話演出來:

在「Flight 1549 3D Reconstruction, Hudson River Ditching Jan 15, 2009」這邊依照公開的錄音 (從在機場起飛開始) 以及所有公開的對話記錄 (黑盒子的記錄),配上模擬機上的畫面,也可以看一看:

包括機長對著哈德遜河樹旗的「uh what a view of the Hudson today」... 然後是另外一個角度,混入 LGA 的錄音記錄以及雷達記錄:

再來是在電影裡面提到的 35 秒延遲實驗,這可以在 NTSB 的官方報告裡面看到對應的說明 (取自「Loss of Thrust in Both Engines After Encountering a Flock of Birds and Subsequent Ditching on the Hudson River - US Airways Flight 1549 - Airbus A320‐214, N106US - Weehawken, New Jersey - January 15, 2009」這份 PDF):

Regarding the second flight scenario, 20 runs were performed in the engineering simulator from a preprogrammed point shortly before the loss of engine thrust in which pilots attempted to return to either runway 13 or 22 at LGA or runway 19 at TEB. Five of the 20 runs were discarded because of poor data or simulator malfunctions. Of the 15 remaining runs, in 6, the pilot attempted to land on runway 22 at LGA; in 7, the pilot attempted to land on runway 13 at LGA; and in 2, the pilot attempted to land on runway 19 at TEB. In eight of the 15 runs (53 percent), the pilot successfully landed after making an immediate turn to an airport after the loss of engine thrust. Specifically, two of the six runs to land on runway 22 at LGA, five of the seven runs to land on runway 13 at LGA, and one of the two runs to land on runway 19 at TEB immediately after the loss of engine thrust were successful. One run was made to return to an airport (runway 13 at LGA) after a 35-second delay, and the landing was not successful.

也就是做了 20 次的模擬,而有效的模擬有 15 次,其中 8 次成功降落回機場 (成功次數分別是 LGA 22 跑道 2/6、LGA 13 跑道 5/7,以及 TEB 19 跑道 1/2),這些都是鳥擊後馬上選擇回機場迫降。

而加上 35 秒的反應時間後的 LGA 13 跑道則做了一次,那次降落則是不成功。

在 NTSB 報告上,加上 35 秒後的測試只有一次有點怪,但電影裡機長 Sully 臨時要求把「人性」加進去的劇情剛好符合這個解釋。所以有可能就如同電影所演出的,是現場追加的測試?

最後,有幾部記錄片則是透過不同的角度來看這次事故,都很值得看:

  • TLC,特別節目,Brace For Impact。
  • 空中浩劫,第十季第五集,Hudson River Runway。
  • 國家地理頻道,特別節目,Miracle Landing On The Hudson。

這些在網路上找一下都有,這邊就不提供連結了。

2012 與 2016 美國總統選舉的變化

The Economist 這邊看到圖表,比較 2012 與 2016 年投票的變化:「Who voters supported in the last American election compared with this one」。2016 美國總統選舉將在 11 月初舉辦,這邊是目前的情況。

這張圖表頗清楚的,雖然有些比例不太對... 可以看到兩大黨以外的票比 2012 增加了不少。

Google Cloud Platform 美西機房

Google Cloud 在七月的時候開放了美西機房:「Introducing Cloud Natural Language API, Speech API open beta and our West Coast region expansion」,而且東京機房也快開了:

And as we announced in March, Tokyo will be coming online later this year and we will announce more than 10 additional regions in 2017.

看到「Why we moved from Amazon Web Services to Google Cloud Platform?」的時候去找資料才發現的。這篇讓我重新算了一次成本,如果不計算 Bandwidth Cost 的話,GCE 整體的 f1-micro 記憶體 + 20GB 比 DigitalOcean 多 (不過 DO 給的是 SSD 就是了),而且還比較便宜啊...

不過如果把頻寬成本算進去,Internet Egress (i.e. Outbound bandwidth) 一定要走 Google Network,這點就比較傷了... 有美西機房後,看起來可以開始考慮用看看就是了 :o

Google Cloud Platform 宣佈加開美西與日本

Google Cloud Platform 宣佈加開美西與日本:「Google Cloud Platform adds two new regions, 10 more to come」。

所以 Google 在這塊的經濟規模夠撐了?還是先投資?純粹猜測還蠻有可能是後者,因為新宣佈的這兩個機房的位置都比以前機房好:美西對於矽谷的幫助看起來會不少 (之前離矽谷最近的機房在美國中部),而日本則對於整個亞洲區還是極重要,因為一般 ISP 都是在日本、香港與新加坡交換,台灣一般來說需要調 routing 才能配合。

這看起來比較有得跟 AWS 打了?

Google 也放話到 2017 年會加更多機房:

These are the first two of more than 10 additional GCP regions we'll be adding to our network through 2017.

美國政府應該已經取得大量原始程式碼,而且 CEO 不知情

Bruce Schneier 這邊看到的:「Companies Handing Source Code Over to Governments」。

直接對員工下法院命令,並且不得告知任何其他人有這個命令 (包括 CEO):

These orders are so highly classified that simply acknowledging an order's existence is illegal, even a company's chief executive or members of the board may not be told. Only those who are necessary to execute the order would know, and would be subject to the same secrecy provisions.

跟中國企業的情況類似。

英國法院認為 GCHQ 偷黑別人機器是合法的

出自「Tribunal rules computer hacking by GCHQ is not illegal」這篇報導。在 Edward Snowden 爆料美國與英國政府都在幹黑的後,Privacy International 就提出訴訟控告 GCHQ,但前幾天法院認定這樣是合法的:

Campaigners Privacy International have lost a legal challenge claiming the spying post's hacking operations are too intrusive and break European law.

The case was launched after revelations by US whistleblower Edward Snowden about the extent of US and UK spying.

接下來的戰場會變成在 Investigatory Powers Bill 上面?還是會繼續有上訴?

美國與古巴的復航

美國與古巴的航權競標將在星期二開始:「U.S. to restore commercial flights to Cuba」。

In just a matter of days, U.S. airlines will begin a fierce bidding war to win routes and airport slots to a destination that's been off-limits to them for more than 50 years: Cuba.

不過這次還是沒有開放古巴的飛機:

CNN is told there are no plans in the near future for Cuban-owned planes to land in the U.S. under this agreement.

18F 丟出 CSS 的代碼風格指南

好幾個禮拜前的東西,這幾天才上 Hacker News:「Introducing the CSS coding style guide」。

18F 是美國政府的官方單位,取名自辦公室所在的地址:(取自 Wikipedia 的「18F」說明)

Its name refers to its office location in northwest Washington, D.C., on 18th and F Streets.

不只是定義了 CSS Coding Style Guide,還給了 SCSS Lint 工具使用:

The styleguide provides a method of linting Sass (SCSS) code to ensure it conforms to the rules in the styleguide.