"inhabitants of the Western world need to realize that the tallest structures they can see in the landscape are the face of what may be a new kind of God: finance."
Oh come on, so much drama for a slick lean tower in sparsely populated land, barely visible to anyone but local fishermen.
The Problem is that some of these people live there becausw they like the view of the nature. Uninterupted by some modern skyscrapers.
I prefer to live in a more rural area. I accept wind turbines, because they are a nesessery if you don't won't depend on coal and nuclear energy.
Now these people get some building that doesn't benefit them and isn't strictly nesessery.
With the Duga Radar you could argue it's some country defenses mechanisms, which the microwave link clearly isn't.
You could also argue that losing out economically has significant impact on a nation and its people. While national financial institutions are rethinking the focus on finance as a focus of the economy, it's not by happenstance London, New York, Frankfurt, Tokyo, HK, etc. pursued being financial hubs.
They were keystones in their respective economies and thus just as integral to national physical defense.
Most of the world's trading is now going through three physical unremarkable buildings: Equinix datacenters NY4, LD4 and TY3 in NYC, London and Tokyo respectively.
Inside, there is a mess of server racks installed by major banks and financial companies and everybody else (it's not that expensive, by corporate standards, to rent a rack place there), all interconnected by a web of optical fiber. Chaos reigns.
These are the places where billions per second change hands.
Hermes outspends everyone else on war and invades countries on false pretenses, murdering millions of people in the process. There is no dichotomy here.
Google has Project Loon which sounds vaguely similar. In theory you could have a faster transatlantic signal path by putting microwave relays on blimps at the right altitude.
They have to maintain steady position (impossible for planes).
Also, the weather over the Channel can be quite unforgiving.
Drones are not the end of the line, though. A quick Google search for "hft neutrino" shows how creative these guys could be in their insatiable quests for shaving off microseconds.
Even if they only move at the speed of light, they can travel in a straight line directly through the earth instead of along the curved surface, saving time. The problem is that if neutrinos can pass through the entire earth unimpeded, most of them will pass through your detector on the other side too.
'The mast will be erected in the western part of the Richborough Power Station, a place referred to as “The Banana Land” (I suppose the name comes from the pseudo-tropical climate created by the station?).'
And up until that point in the article I was thinking we were talking about the Blue Banana [1]. Because the Frankfurt-to-London route is in the middle of it.
But apparently it is only referring to that former power plant location.
Better theory yet: look at the shape of land surrounded by train tracks and River Stour on Google maps [2].
The prices will be worse until the higher speed link problem is resolved. That speed advantage allows the HFT firms to have less risk, that less risk gets translated into lower spreads (ie better prices) on the exchange.
Conversely, the slower links cause the firms to take on more risk, for which they need to make more money, that happens in the form of increased spreads.
ten years ago, i'd say not a whole lot -- there were still competitors providing liquidity who weren't speedcentric. today, however, i think market liquidity would disappear. that's not to say all hell would break loose, but there would probably be wild price swings for an afternoon or two.
Market liquidity would not "disappear". Liquidity providers do not rely on their microwave lines quite that much (yet). In the case of a microwave failure (more common than you'd think), all one does is failover to physical and keep on pricing.
Worst case is widening your quotes while you reassess your view of the world (the book), but never withdrawing completely from the market.
This. Radio networks are not reliable even in normal conditions due to weather conditions or environmental events. You can fail over to another network seamlessly and keep chugging. If your competitor's faster system is still up you may lose money and widen out or turn off a particular product complex. Not a huge deal.
Anyone deliberately interfering with licensed radio transmissions would probably get a knock from some guys in black suits pretty quickly anyway.
The point is that only UK citizens simplify that to "Europe" instead of saying "Continental Europe". Also, it is strange that they only exclude themselves, not Scandinavia or Iceland.
This is really a political issue. Here in Germany nobody would ever think of excluding UK when talking about "Europe". The same goes for France, Belgium, and so on. And nobody would ever have to explicitly say "European Union" just to make clear that they also mean UK. Of course UK is part of Europe! We have deep historical, cultural and political connections, let alone the massive economic interrelations - as depicted in the article.
Their strange view is a pity, and we can only hope that the UK politicians will change their view - either by understanding, or by being replaced with more sane politicians in the next elections.
I think many people in the UK admire the Swiss and Norwegian models of participating in the "European project". The country retains sovereignty and only implements laws that suit its citizens.
I have to say I am surprised by your comment, as it assumes that politicians are responsible for their country's perspective on Europe? Surely it is the other way round, and the politicians have an obligation to represent their citizens' viewpoints fairly and transparently - regardless of whether it is seen as palatable by the bureaucrats. It does seem that some EU politicians (read: Merkel) are only discovering this right now.
> I think many people in the UK admire the Swiss and Norwegian models of participating in the "European project". The country retains sovereignty and only implements laws that suit its citizens.
Since they participate in the EEA, they don't really have a choice to say no to the EEA legislation. They are required to implement similar legislation within a certain time period, otherwise the EEA will sue the government for not fulfilling their contract. About the only way to really say "no" to something is to rescind their EEA membership.
Case in point: data retention was forced through in Iceland through the EEA agreement. This unpopular legislation went through because "it's an EEA requirement, you don't want to leave the single market do you?". After it was implemented, the directive was struck down by the EU court, so it's no longer required for EEA area countries to implement. But Iceland is still stuck with the data retention laws, and they're unlikely to go anywhere as revoking laws is much, much harder than passing them.
> Case in point: data retention was forced through in Iceland through the EEA agreement
That's only half of the story.
Many other European countries were in the same situation as Iceland, but didn't hurry to implement their data retention. Instead they decided to wait for the EU court ruling.
Also, that lawsuit came to no surprise. I bet the activists would have loved to start the lawsuit even earlier, but you can't start a lawsuit against something that doesn't exist yet.
> I have to say I am surprised by your comment, as it assumes that politicians are responsible for their country's perspective on Europe?
They are responsible for the country's actions towards other countries. To make it more clear: I deeply hope that they are not really backed by the population, and that they will either notice that on their own, or that the next elections which show a shift towards "working together" instead of "against each other" in Europe.
We can't solve all issues in Europe if every country optimized only for themselves, ignoring their neighbours.
> the politicians have an obligation to represent their citizens' viewpoints fairly and transparently
Note that there are also European politicians (the European parliament), which are elected as well and serve their citizens' viewpoints as well. Interestingly, those manage to find better solutions, thinking about all Europeans despite representing just a subset of them. Unfortunately, the European parliament has not much power in the overall EU process, which is another real pity.
> It does seem that some EU politicians (read: Merkel) are only discovering this right now.
Our German politicians have (and always had) a disproportionally large influence in Europe. So there was never a need for Germany to distance from Europe. However, this also led to suboptimal solutions in the past, to say the least. But to me, this is not a sign that the "European project" doesn't work. For me, it shows that we aren't consequent enough. The member governments (read: European commission) have too much influence and the European parliament (which is the only instance that equally represents all European citizens) doesn't have enough influence.
In the line of the anarchist saying "if voting changed anything, it would be made illegal", maybe the only reason why the EP has a good number of such broad-minded people is because the institution doesn't have much power.
England has been a land apart for nearly a thousand years - ruled by the same monarchy, no part of it successfully invaded by violence, nor really (in the minds of most English) united with other kingdoms on equal terms. So there is a much stronger national identity than in Germany (where many were Prussian or Bavarian or Silesian until the late 19th century), and a political policy of "splendid isolation" was followed until relatively recently. We have strong ties to Europe, but arguably stronger ties to the US ("51st state" is a joke, but with an element of truth to it) and Commonwealth.
I think any businessperson in the UK understands the economic value that the EU brings to us all. But most voters aren't businesspeople. When ordinary people hear about the EU it's about regulations, subsidies, or funding for things that seem relatively frivolous, none of which really make a great case for it.
> England has been a land apart for nearly a thousand years - ruled by the same monarchy, no part of it successfully invaded by violence
I'm no scholar of English history but the Glorious Revolution was at least as big a breach in political continuity as the American Revolution and resulted in a foreigner (Dutch) on the English throne. And the Hannoverians are another separate royal line that had continental European holdings.
> the Glorious Revolution was at least as big a breach in political continuity as the American Revolution
Not really, not post-Civil War. It was a reaffirmation of the same principle - that Parliament governed the country and could determine who sat on the throne. William of Orange came at the invitation of Parliament (and although he was declared King that was more a matter of being married to Mary than of being King in his own right or by force of arms). The Hannoverians were placed on the throne by the Act of Settlement. We don't see either as an invasion or revolution.
I think there is a disctinction to be drawn between cultural links between parts of Europe, and an entity like the EU that wants to turn a free-trade area into a United States of Europe.
Also culturally, I'd say the UK has more in common with the other Anglophone nations than it does with most of Europe.
Oh come on, so much drama for a slick lean tower in sparsely populated land, barely visible to anyone but local fishermen.
Compare it to, say, this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duga_radar
This is a very prominent military installation that spoiled shortwave communications for years, and nobody dared to say a word against it.
If the choice is between Ares and Hermes, I am choosing Hermes.
(Disclaimer: I am a trading software engineer).