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A new sunshade, or visor, designed to reduce the brightness of SpaceX’s Starlink broadband Internet satellites will debut on the company’s next launch, a measure intended to alleviate astronomers’ concerns about impacts on observations through ground-based telescopes, SpaceX founder Elon Musk said.

Beginning with the next launch of Starlink satellites — scheduled for 18 May from Cape Canaveral — SpaceX will try out a new light-blocking panel to make the spacecraft less visible to skywatchers and astronomers.

“We have a radio-transparent foam that will deploy nearly upon the satellite being released (from the rocket),” Musk said on 27 April at a virtual meeting of the National Academies’ Decadal Survey on Astronomy and Astrophysics 2020 panel, a committee charged with setting the top priorities for US astronomy for the next decade.

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Ladies Monday with Brittany Pettibone.

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SpaceX has announced that it will mount a sun visor on each of its Starlink satellites and have them perform controlled maneuvers, to make them less visible to members of the astronomy community making detailed observations of the night sky. SpaceX has already launched over 400 satellites to bolster a constellation that could one day provide global broadband internet access.

The proliferation of satellite technology and the increasing affordability of reaching low-Earth orbit (LEO) has led many – particularly those in the science community – to raise concerns about the impact that space traffic may have on the night sky. This issue has only grown more contentious with the advent of the megaconstellation, which is the term used to describe vast swarms of satellites working as a network as they fly choreographed orbits through LEO space.

SpaceX’s Starlink megaconstellation is well underway to becoming a reality, and could one day provide high-speed, low latency satellite-based broadband on a global scale.

The region is accustomed to lockdowns, but New Delhi’s ban on high-speed internet is undermining the medical community’s ability to fight the pandemic.

‘Only one VPN is working over the airtel. However, it is punishingly slow,’ says a social activist.

Jammu and Kashmir (J&K) administration has completely blocked the Virtual Private Network (VPNs), which were used by the local civilians to access banned social media sites including WhatsApp, Facebook, and Instagram.

According to a Kashmir-based social activist, the administration has banned VPN applications that were widely used in the Valley to access black-listed social media sites. “Only one VPN is working over the airtel. However, it is punishingly slow,” he said.

Indian authorities have said a recent uptick in “terrorist violence” is behind the move. But rights groups have warned that civil liberties are at risk.

Patent describes system that rewards users with digital currency every time they view an advertisement or use a certain internet service.

In collaboration with the Autonomous Disinformation Research Network – @DisinfoResearch

On Wednesday, November 6, 2019, leaked data from the defunct neo-Nazi forum, Iron March, emerged online, exposing the personal information of more than 1,200 members, including the locations of their IP addresses and, in some cases, their real names. Already, activists sifting through the database have uncovered several fascists around the country, including some in uniform. A thoroughly transnational network, Iron March stemmed from a site called International Third Position Forum, was launched by a Russian, produced a terror group in the U.S., and facilitated coordination among terror groupings in the U.K. and elsewhere, all through the power of the internet.

Perhaps most intriguingly, Iron March involved members whose goals of recruiting through the U.S. military underlied their fantasies of ultimately destroying liberal democracy through a fascist paramilitary insurgency. It went on to develop a small but lethal “accelerationist” terrorist group called Atomwaffen Division (Nuclear Weapons Division), responsible for murders, an assassination attempt, and failed bomb plots. It also recently became famous for adding journalists from a Quillette article to a hit-list called “Sunset the Media.” Though what they mostly seem to do is put up stickers in what they laughably call “the stickening.”

Elon Musk says SpaceX’s ambitious Starlink satellite internet setup has made great steps toward providing good internet to previously low-priority locations. Musk’s Starlink plan accounts for an eventual 40,000 satellites in orbit to blanket the globe in internet coverage, far surpassing any existing satellite internet service.