I travelled on a (non-nuclear) icebreaker out from Murmansk back in 2012. On the way out to the open ocean we passed several moored nuclear powered icebreakers and other vessels in various states of decay[0]. It was both fascinating and disturbing to see - many of these had not yet been decommissioned and it seemed to me that they were huge disasters waiting to happen.
In Murmansk itself there is a nuclear icebreaker (The Lenin) that has been decommissioned and converted into a museum where you can tour the vessel and see everything including the engine rooms and nuclear reactors. Despite it being decommissioned, I discovered some systems were clearly still functioning when I accidentally leaned on a random control panel and a bunch of lights lit up!
Photos from the trip are here[1], with the first seven photos being taken of or onboard the Lenin.
Note that one of the most powerful nuclear icebreakers in the world, The 50 Years of Victory, is available for tourists to travel to the North Pole[2]
As many have noted, these are excellent photographs. I have limited knowledge and experience with photography. Do you worry about your work being stolen and sold?
I used to, but not so much these days. I'm not really interested in commercialising my photography (it's a LOT of work and its hard to make a decent living from) and I generally don't mind people sharing them non-commercially. Commercial use is a different matter and I do keep a bit of an eye on it (https://pixsy.com/ is great for this), but in my experience it is rare for them to get used inappropriately without being asked permission first. I also don't put them online at high enough a resolution to be useful for printing which cuts down any offline abuse.
The story you linked is an interesting one, especially given how heavy handed Getty are when it comes to misuse of any of their images in the reverse situation. Personally I think what Getty have done here is completely unethical but given the public domain nature of the images in question they might be in the clear here.
I'm an amateur photographer and, unfortunately, you see this come up a lot in photography communities online, but you don't hear about most cases in the media. You'd be surprised how many businesses will just openly steal images from any website or social media platform and use them without notice, credit, or payment. Unfortunately watermarks are either easily cropped out or they ruin the picture (like by spanning the whole image with transparent text). There are some resources for the little guy like Pixsy[0] but reports of their efficacy are mixed.
The usual advice if you find your image being used without permission is to ask the offender nicely, send them an invoice, or get a lawyer involved, depending on how far you want to take it.
I recognize those yellow jackets! I travelled with the same company (Quark Expeditions) on an expedition to Antarctica that same year. Incredible memories :-)
"These are great pictures, you must have a great camera!"
Caveat: You can take great pictures with a camera-phone but you can't take every type of shot.
I think any DSLR with a good choice of glass (lenses) would be able to reproduce most of these shots. More expensive camera bodies are only slightly better in the optical sense but are MUCH better constructed.
Framing, aperture selection and patience plays a bigger part. Most photographers take a prolific amount of pictures, expect to only keep about 1-10% of the shots you take.
Most photographers take a prolific amount of pictures
Digital cameras are a wonderful thing!
A good mirrorless could take most of these shots as well, though I suspect by the time you installed a lens long enough for the wildlife shots[1], it wouldn't be much lighter than the DSLR.
1 - I didn't check the EXIF data, but assume he was using at least 200mm, probably longer, for those shots.
>A good mirrorless could take most of these shots as well, though I suspect by the time you installed a lens long enough for the wildlife shots[1], it wouldn't be much lighter than the DSLR.
That's one of the big advantages of Micro Four-Thirds - if you're willing to sacrifice a bit of sensor area, you get very bright and lightweight telephoto lenses.
Why stop there? With a Pentax Q, your standard 135mm telephoto becomes a 756mm-equivalent super-tele! Your 200mm becomes an 1120mm-equivalent! With just a 400mm you can take photos of the moon that will fill the whole frame[0]!
On the other hand - with a smaller sensor you get worse low-light performance, increased noise, poorer resolution, a greater difficulty with diffraction limit degrading your resolution[1], and decreased ability to isolate a subject. In technical terms, bigger sensors are where it's at.
It's certainly true that smaller sensors let you get more reach out of a piece of glass - but it's always funny that M4/3 is raised as the "ideal" format for doing this somehow, as if APS-C is not already smaller than full frame, or that there do not exist even smaller sensors which can give you even more reach.
Mirrorless bodies like the NEX system that let you cram big sensors into a small body size are definitely one of the more interesting developments recently. Especially the Fuji/Hasselblad collaboration that puts a digital medium-format sensor into a MILC body. The Fuji X-series are very interesting and well-designed cameras and I can't wait to see what they come up with next.
When I go on vacation I take an Olympus XA and a Fuji GS 645 folding camera for a nice combination of fields-of-view in a compact size. But at this point I'm really ogling the Fuji X-series...
It's a question of balancing the tradeoffs of sensor size. For most photographers, the sweet spot is somewhere between APS-C and full frame. M4/3 isn't the ideal format, but it's a useful format.
The Olympus E-M1 MkII is fairly competitive with APS-C sensors, but you get significantly more reach. For most photographers, that extra reach is neither here nor there. The extra depth of field of a smaller sensor is more hindrance than help in a lot of cases. If you're a wildlife photographer who normally shoots with very long lenses, it's a compelling advantage.
While the lens would be lighter than a DSLR equivalent, I still can't bring myself to buy one for my Olympus set-up.
The reason I sold my Canon gear and went MFT was the size - it's almost pocketable and easily fits in a small backpack when travelling. Adding even a moderate telephoto ruins it for me.
The focal ranges are more intended for APS-C, but do check out the Sigma 19/2.8 and 30/2.8 lenses. They are not quite a pancake lens, but they are pretty close.
Are you OK with manual glass? If so, check out the Samyang 135mm f/2. If that's still too big, the Pentax 135mm f/2.5 or Nikkor 105/2.5 are both quite compact (roughly the size of a can of soda) and will provide you with a little more reach. None of those is a native M4/3 lens, so you will need to buy them in a Nikon or Pentax mount and use an adapter.
The biggest question to my mind, when it comes to camera shootouts, is how close could you get to this kind of quality with a superzoom?
Take a Canon SX60, having a lens that's 21-1365mm (sic) 35 mm equivalent. Admittedly the sensor is much worse, etc., but this covers most of that 6 lens range (apart from wide apertures at high tele).
Somewhat anecdotal evidence, but I was on safari with a guy who had a superzoom camera (can't remember which sorry but it went to 1200mm or so). He was mocking the size of my full frame DSLR + 800mm Canon prime, saying he had far more reach with his almost pocketable camera - which was of course true. I was curious to see what the difference was in practice so we both took photos of a waterbuck in the distance (him at both 800mm and 1200mm). Comparing them later on a laptop PC the difference was truly night and day, MUCH more significant than I was expecting. Every single hair was razor sharp in my photo while his just showed a mottled "mush" with very little detail at all due to poor optical resolution combined with overly strong noise reduction (the latter of which could at least be partly addressed by shooting RAW).
I have a superzoom myself, and I'm not surprised at this. I guess you saw not just the difference in optical resolution, but particularly in hazy conditions, that the much larger front aperture on your 800mm prime means is "averaging out" blur from haze and air motion to a much greater extent, giving in total a much higher clarity.
In the middle of a hot summer day, the 800mm end on my superzoom is near-useless, but at or after sunset it's much better. Still very noticeable difference from your 800mm prime, I guess, but less so than at midday.
Pixel peepers will find differences. But, for sharing photos on the web, a good superzoom will do well enough for most people.
The biggest differences are going to be low light conditions and controlling depth of field (portraits, etc). Also, motion (sports, wildlife), where the ability to easily focus manually ahead of time can make a huge difference.
Most of my photo-hobbyist friends (myself included) have moved away from DSLR to one of the mirrorless systems. I use MFT, and quite a few use Fuji X.
Thank you. For this trip I was using a Canon 5D Mark III as my main camera, some were probably taken with my backup at the time (a Canon 40D). I had about 6 lens ranging from ultra wide angle to long telephotos. The photos should all have EXIF data intact if you want to see more details on a particular shot.
[edit]: while I generally agree with the sibling posts that it's not always the camera that matters, having a high end DSLR makes all the difference in the world for certain types of shots and situations. Others have pointed out many of the benefits but one of the biggest for me is the handling. Having dedicated (and programmable) buttons and viewfinder displays for all the key features mean that it's extremely quick to change camera settings (ISO/aperture/focal points/exposure compensation etc) to suit the moment, without having to hunt through menus or look at the screen. It takes a lot of practice before this becomes second nature though. I've seen a lot of people buy a high end camera thinking it will magically produce better results than a point and shoot. These people often end up disappointed because their results actually end up far worse because they haven't taken the time to learn how to use their equipment properly.
This is an incredible comment. What keyboard did you use to write it?
(Camera choice doesn't matter beyond certain ergonomics and certain capabilities (low noise, more room for cropping, shallow DOF, etc, a lot of which depend on the lens as well). Any $300+ DSLR can give you the exact same results, as can a lot of mirrorless with a speedy lens. And for most of the pictures shown, any modern compact or even smartphone will do just as well).
The role of the camera is generally overrated, however there are certain characteristics that you only get with expensive full frame cameras such as the Canon EOS 5D Mark III he appears to be using:
* very low noise
* very shallow DOF
* long bursts of rapid images
* weather proofing (including cold)
* improved dynamic range
* high resolution (lets you crop the part you are interested in and retain good quality)
There are also other improvements such as better autofocus.
Which means, no a $300 camera will not be good enough for some of these shots.
PS: I use a MFT camera myself and it's good enough for my needs.
>The role of the camera is generally overrated, however there are certain characteristics that you only get with expensive full frame cameras such as the Canon EOS 5D Mark III he appears to be using
The "shallow DOF" can be achieved with a longer lens on a crop-factor camera. And most landscape pictures (such as those) use the hyperfocal distance anyway.
A "expensive full frame" camera will have better "low noise" but marginally so compared to a APS C or even 4/3rds camera with the latest (4-5 years) generation of sensors. We're simply above the point of having new cameras really give anything beyond marginal returns in ISO utility (not because they don't get better ISO, but because so much sensitivity is useless for most kinds of photography, including most of landscape work (plus, it affects color rendition). In any case, in all the history of film photography, all known celebrated photographs seldom straiyed outside something like 800-1600 ISO. Not sure why we need 6400+ today, except for pissing contents and/or stalking).
Now, while most of the points are real, they are all marginal returns, and depend so much upon the conditions at the shoot and the skill of the photographer that they might as well not matter at all.
I'd go as far as to say that a $300 APS-C used well will be able to take just as good photos as any $5K full frame (yeah, it might lose a couple of stops of DOF, just use a faster lens on it), and even an expensive lens on the latter wont make that much of a different at any normal print size (at least up to A3).
Not sure why we need 6400+ today, except for pissing contents and/or stalking).
I agree with your overall point - and I've pretty much abandoned my APS-C camera, using my M43 camera almost exclusively.
However, there is a good reason for better high-ISO performance. It allows for tradeoffs in other areas. It means we can hand-hold in darker lighting or at higher focal lengths or smaller lighting than anyone could before. The ability to take a sharp photo while out on a hike when I didn't want to lug a tripod is valuable.
As someone who went to college for digital imaging technology I would say that's not strictly true, crop on a sensor actually has some advantages, for example if you have a 50 1.2 and you can't afford the 85 1.2 you can put the 50 on an APS-C, and in many instances that is cheaper than the second lens, none of the other points you made apply specifically to full frame cameras either. These are all shot on a MkII but they could just a well have been shot on a 300D: https://500px.com/john
A 50mm 1.2 lens on a Canon APS-C body has a full frame equivalent focal length of 80mm and a full frame equivalent aperture of f/1.9 — giving it the characteristics of a comparatively inexpensive lens.
In other words, your $1300 lens on a crop body will have comparable performance of a $350 lens on the full frame body.
>A 50mm 1.2 lens on a Canon APS-C body has a full frame equivalent focal length of 80mm and a full frame equivalent aperture of f/1.9 — giving it the characteristics of a comparatively inexpensive lens.
Only as it pertains to DOF. On the other hand, it will still be a 1.2 lens as far as light gathering is concerned.
And you can get a 35mm 1.2 for your 50mm equivalent on APS-C.
The loss of DOF we know, but you still so much DOF latitude on APS-C that you can do pretty much anything. Besides, that 50mm will become a quite handy portrait lens on APS-C.
> you can get a 35mm 1.2 for your 50mm equivalent on APS-C
According to DxOMark[1][2], the $1400 Canon 35mm f/1.4 on an APS-C body is comparable to a Canon 50mm f/1.8 STM on full frame and stopped down to f/2.4.
Go put a 50 1.2 L on a 300D and tell me it looks like the 85 1.4 on a 5D. In fact, I'm so confident you're incorrect I'd happily drive up to B&H and snap some raws to prove it.
It seems you're mixing your arguments. From your education you are aware that the 'equivalence' between APS-C and full-frame extends beyond focal length and into aperture and ISO performance I presume?
That's the point the parent you're replying to is making.
It is physically impossible to achieve the kind of equivalence you mentioned in your first post because the 'crop factor' is also applied to aperture and the crop-factor squared is applied to the ISO.
That's a point that's not well known and often dismissed, so I'll repeat it: The crop factor is applied to aperture and the square of the crop factor is applied to the ISO.
If you are not aware of this/don't believe it, see here:
Manufacturers like to gloss over that and constantly talk about 'equivalent' focal length whilst skirting the other equivalents, because they would clearly show the physical (as in physics) limitations of the smaller sensor.
It may well be that a 50mm f1.2 on a 300D would look 'nicer' than a cheaper 85mm f1.4, but that could be due to lens construction/coatings etc and it literally cannot be due to achieving the same focal length/aperture/ISO performance. You cannot physically achieve the same depth of field (let alone focal length) for instance with a 50mm f1.2 on APS-C as an 85mm f1.4 lens on a full frame.
That's the technicality you are being picked up on (albeit in a slightly imprecise manner), so save that trip to B&H because it'll be impossible to achieve what you are saying.
Source: Former pro photographer (and less important but I've used the lenses you mention).
The difference in DOF is more of a minor technicality than a "Your 1500 dollar lens performs like a 350 dollar one!" though. OP is correct that you are exaggerating, though OP was definitely wrong to ignore the difference.
Here we go. The $350 on full-frame in all likelihood outperforms the $1500 lens that is heavily cropped by an APS-C body. According to DxOMark, the Canon 85mm f/1.8 has substantially higher overall sharpness than the middle 40% of a Canon 50mm f/1.2 lens.[1][2]
It is true that the cheaper lens has slightly greater pincushion distortion and vignetting, however both flaws are trivially (and automatically) corrected in post processing. What can't be fixed in post is overall sharpness and depth-of-field.
It all depends on what kind of photography you're doing, and your personal style.
For me, getting that shallow DOF is a nice-to-have, but it's not what I'm typically going for. More likely, I'm using a 7-14mm lens (on my m43 camera, if it you care), which for most reasonable compositions has infinite DOF if you just use hyperfocal distance.
I ignored it because when you get into practical image making the difference in image related to depth is negligible compared to the image quality to cost ratio. My point was that a small sensor can have a use, telephoto compression as a by-product of a crop is pretty handy when you have very expensive primes you want to make longer, hence i only used L series lenses in my example. I forgot there is tie between mastery, artistry and pedanticism. Source: The studio I co-founded won three Emmys for image production (Game of Honor, StillMotion was the production company) and had great margins.
In terms of equivalence, you're just mathematically wrong.
To demonstrate why you're also wrong with overall quality, consider the Canon 5Ds/5DsR. An incredible 50-something megapixels; famous for being able to reveal flaws in (or at least exceed the limits of) some of the most expensive glass. This is because its pixel pitch of 4.14µm is so incredibly fine.
The latest APS-C bodies, the 80D for example, have a pixel pitch of 3.7µm, which is even finer still. Using full frame glass on an APS-C body is like putting it on a hypothetical 5Ds Mark II and cropping into the middle 40% in post. It's just not going to be sharp.
This is because when you put that expensive full frame lens onto an APS-C body, you're only using half of the actual physical glass you paid for. The rest of it is going to waste. You're just using the middle bit... then magnifying it to accentuate the flaws.
And just so it's abundantly clear, I am not saying that APS-C is inferior because it absolutely isn't. Nothing is stopping lens manufacturers from making similarly good lenses for a smaller image circle.
The issue entirely boils down to using lenses optimised for one sensor size (in this case full frame) on a camera that has a significantly smaller sensor (in this case APS-C).
Also, I went through 4 or 5 85 1.4s to find a sharp one because the built quality was so bad, and even after a couple of weeks traveling it had gone soft, never found this with my 50 1.2 (although I ended up ditching all the crop gear and going to FF when I bought the 85 1.2) - However, it was a really good substitute till I could afford it (as I mentioned above) :)
The focal length equivalency factor is partly why I stick with APS-C DSLRs. Plus, my Nikon D500 and its 20 FPS, 200 shot RAW buffer is something you can't find in any full frame camera (yet).
In any situation where I feel like I would benefit from a larger sensor I shoot film instead (either 35mm or 120 and get better colors and tones than any DSLR, in my opinion).
I do not know about that comment, but this comment is being written with a Coolermaster mechanical keyboard with true Cherry MX brown switches. Each key has its own spring, and multicolored LED backlight that is individually programmable to show/blink in any lighting pattern. It has its own ARM processor and you can play Snake on the keyboard itself without any additional computer using the backlight LEDs as display.
Just because someone asked what camera was used doesn't mean that person is implying that the photographer isn't talented. Maybe the poster is a kid who doesn't know much (or anything) about photography and wants to learn about these things; who knows. No need to be rude by assuming the worst about them.
That was a huge bird colony nesting on the face of a place called Rubini Rock. We were fortunate to have ideal conditions and as a result the ship's captain was able to position the ship within a meter or so of the cliff face, allowing us a very up close view of the colony.
Yes these sort of trips aren't cheap, but I still consider them good value for money to see corners of the world that are stunning and completely inaccessible otherwise. Note that it is possible to get significant discounts when there are sales (eg Black Friday) or last minute when they have spare cabins to fill. I've done a few other similar trips and I've never paid full price, including one to Antarctica where I managed to get nearly 70% off.
Each participant pays up to US $25,000 for a cruise lasting three weeks. The Fiftieth Anniversary of Victory contains an accommodation deck customised for tourists.
I do have to complement the authors of this article. It presents the facts and leaves out political rhetoric and noise. I'm pleased with the title too; if the article were featured on a mainstream news site in the USA, it would have declared it as a definitive event and give a list of what products to buy from their advertisers.
The author, Tyler Rogoway, is a revered aviation journalist. He used to write for FoxtrotAlpha. I've followed him for a couple of years and now and he always presents a very balanced stance on issues.
I miss him from when I used to read Jalopnik more regularly, I didn't follow him to his new site so thanks for pointing out that this was him. He really is a good, balanced, and knowledgeable source of military analysis.
What are the evidence this comes from the Arctic? High levels are only being detected in Poland. A much more likely explanation is that this originates from Ukraine, Krim, or Belarus. That is some 2000km from the Arctic.
I feel this vilification of the media is far overblown.
Specifically: I cannot imagine that a quality news site (say the NY Times, Atlantic, or WSJ) would not mention such uncertainty.
More easily provable: I challenge you to find a single article of about a disaster that includes unwarranted product recommendations (i. e. not "authorities are asking citizen to stock water and other necessities in preparation for the hurricane...")
I'd also like to point out that the "mainstream media" is doing an excellent job regarding these reports: not reporting on them. By now, they have certainly seen these reports. The excitement that grips HN and your comment speak to the fact that it would make for excellent clickbait. But there's nothing anywhere.
On the other end of the spectrum, there's alarmist clickbait with "nuclear incident" in quotes that make it appear as a euphemism for a meltdown (otherwise it'd just be a nuclear incident), posted in a series called "The War Zone".
Here are some other issues I find with the article. It's splitting hairs in a way, but I wish people had a bit of an appreciation for the work of professional journalists and editors:
- The article is tagged "nukes" and "atmospheric testing" when it's almost certainly not a nuclear test. Because that would be stupid. And it would have been picked up by seismographs.
- "Because of the low levels of concentration, there is no health risk to the public or the environment, at least on a wide scale." This leaves open the possibility of smaller-scale health hazards, falsely sensationalising the available data. OTOH, "Levels of concentration" is a phrase capable of inflicting some serious health effects among english language teachers.
- "The highly unique aircraft are specifically designed to respond to nuclear incidents—especially those that include the detonation of nuclear warheads." There is so much wrong with this sentence:
- There's only one WC-135, so the plural is wrong.
- Everything that's "designed to..." is "specifically designed to..."
- Which "nuclear incident that involves the detonation of nuclear warheads" is not described more succinctly as "the detonation of (a) nuclear warhead(s)"?
- The latter half of the sentence seems designed to fuel speculation
- "What are WC-135s doing up there?" There's still only one of these in existence (the plural form is used another 4 or 5 times).
- "There has been some talk about even the US restarting its nuclear testing under President Trump..." If this is speculation mixed with hyperbole, do not bring it up! Any mention, no matter how dismissive, just serves to legitimise such speculation. In this case the best argument against it isn't even mentioned: you don't set up a nuclear test in 3 weeks.
- " The Russian submarine K-27 [...] is said to be literally a ticking time bomb." If the evil media conspiracy saves me from such uses of the word "literally", I think I'm ok with their control of my thoughts.
I completely agree. It is one thing to give reasonable criticism of a specific incidence of news media misconduct. It is another thing to blanket condemn every news organization based on inaccurate hypotheticals and personal opinions with no proof. Democracy is in trouble when people lose faith in the media and independent journalism is suppressed. By all means, be a skeptical and informed consumer of the news, but don't contribute to the discrediting of the fourth estate without good reason.
Edit:
I made this comment before the parent added a bunch of, mostly grammatical, complaints about the article. I agree with other posters that those are mostly superficial.
Democracy is in trouble when people lose faith in the media and independent journalism is suppressed.
Democracy is in trouble. Many people have lost faith in the media. Independent journalism is suppressed. (Though not completely in all the above counts.)
You may be right, but if so, that is quite a self-defeating and unproductive stance to take. If I accidentally start a fire on my stove, I don't say "screw it" and let my whole house burn down. I pull out a fire extinguisher and try to put it out.
You say "media" as if it's a singular entity. It is not. It encompasses Fox News (which I don't watch but I gather is a cesspool), The London Review of Books, Vogue, Infowars, YouTube, etc. A set of _competing_ companies. Not all of them support or supported (the Iraq) war. Like so many others that refer to "the media" in the same way, I have to ask:
Are you sure you're not falling into the trap of "I didn't see it, so it doesn't exist"?
The "media" has a major problem. Its main driver is its entertainment value. News is more entertaining when sensationalised and heavily biased. I don't think there is a conspiracy or negligence causing this. Just simple economic drivers. It's the same thing we see with fast food. Yeah it's bad, but it's exactly what the market demands.
The issue (in the US) is how many people read those Pulitzer winning stories vs. watched Fox News and other sources that are driven by the Murdoch/Ailes/Koch agenda.
Sadly, a lot of people in the US watch Fox News and think it is the only truth. (Check out mediamatters.org for some agenda monitoring).
There are comfy media bubbles on both sides of the ideological spectrum and it is a serious problem. It is easy to criticize the other bubble while sitting comfortably in your own (please note I don't mean you personally, just a general person). One important step to popping those bubbles is to keep the stream of good journalism flowing. This means protecting the fourth estate from unwarranted attacks and trying to restore people's faith in the media and a basic shared reality.
However that is not the only issue causing these bubbles. People are segregating themselves, both socially and geographically along ideological lines. Print media is increasingly losing subscribers to generally less informative mediums such as tv. Technological advances, many brought about by my own field of software engineering, make it easier and easier for people to wall themselves off from ideas that make them uncomfortable. These are much more difficult problems to solve, and I certainly have no definitive answers for them.
So I start where I can, trying to encourage strangers on the internet (and in real life) to step out of their bubble and read the truly important journalism that still exists in our world. In the meantime, I hope someone much smarter than me can fix the divide in the US that causes these ideological bubbles. Because right now we are sitting on a powder keg, and the media isn't the cause... it's an effect.
I would they lost some for their support but also others for later portrayal that was inaccurate in both directions. The media in the last decade has clearly taken a political side and they don't seem to understand that. There were even stories this week of the media reporting on the media! When the press becomes the story it has failed.
Your question is a red herring. Of course the owners of news organizations have biases, as do the reporters, editors, readers, and everyone else in society. Sometimes the bias is political. Sometimes it is sensationalism. Sometimes the writer doesn't like the color blue.
Every reputable news organization follows the journalistic code of ethics that puts institutional barriers in the way to counteract bias. Reputable outlets require multiple sources to corroborate stories before they go to print. They require printed or verbal disclaimers on any story that could pose a conflict of interest for the outlet or author. They require prompt retractions to be printed if an initial story is found to be factually inaccurate in any way.
It's not a perfect system. No system is. Bad articles can still slip through. Some organizations can adhere to it more than others. But it is way better than anything else humans have come up with to keep the news honest. Most journalists take their roles as arbiters of information very seriously and try to keep their biases out of it, even if they are not always completely successful. That is all anyone could reasonably ask.
Instead of labelling all news media as generically biased and therefore not to be trusted, try to understand that all information will have a bias and learn to identify specific incidents of it. Then learn to work around it by reading other sources with different biases, thereby getting the whole picture of a story. It is the news media's job to TRY to be as unbiased as possible. It is the news reader's job to TRY and be as informed as possible by reading varied news from different sources. Neither side will be perfect, as both are full of imperfect human elements, but overall it leads to a reasonably informed and educated populace, which of course is the goal of journalism.
And if you do not agree with what I have said here, I have a follow up question for you... if the current news organizations are so terrible and inherently biased, what alternative would you propose? What is your idea of a perfect, unbiased media landscape? And would your alternative truly lead to a less biased media or just a media with biases you happen to agree with?
> Every reputable news organization follows the journalistic code of ethics that puts institutional barriers in the way to counteract bias.
What about editorial policy: who decides what item is taking the front page and what is published on page 11? Apparently that also has some importance. Has every journalist the opportunity to embark onto several months of research without editorial oversight? I am not sure about that.
> Instead of labelling all news media as generically biased and therefore not to be trusted,
Red herring, labeling: I haven't labeled anything, why is my question received in such a hostile way?
> It is the news media's job to TRY to be as unbiased as possible. It is the news reader's job to TRY and be as informed as possible by reading varied news from different sources.
I can agree with that. Can we agree that journalistic output cannot be trusted blindly?
> And if you do not agree with what I have said here, I have a follow up question for you... if the current news organizations are so terrible and inherently biased, what alternative would you propose
I think that journalism is currently searching for ways to adjust to the realities of the net: on the one hand established journalists don't quite like the loss of authority and fact checking that does occur, on the other hand established journalists have some codes of conduct that are lacking in the online world. I hope the net result will be more transparency and a higher quality of writing, and a more informed public: the current state of the art is far from an ideal state. However i think that nobody should be exempt from critical questions.
I feel like people have all of a sudden rushed to defend the media now that Trump is attacking it. But I feel like we've lost sight of who is probably chiefly responsible for Trump to begin with: A media framework which rewards views, leading to focus on the most outrageous and entertaining "news" over important information.
The media is VERY important, I agree. But I feel we've recently decided to forget how awful the media actually generally is. The article I noticed this last week that was particularly hilarious: "Trump made me order meatloaf, Christie says". That was CBS. That's what we've sunk to, and in many cases, that feels like the high point of where a lot of our media outlets have been.
There are definitely journalists out there doing a great job. The Intercept, The Guardian, The Information (though I can't afford to read the last one). But a lot of our news has been all hype and no substance, and I don't feel we should be giving them a pass right now, just because Trump's against them.
Many people, myself included, have supported the media long before Trump became president. It is easy to forget now, but Obama was also known at times for having an adversarial relationship with the media. Of course there are click bait articles and examples of bad journalism to look at. Just as there are examples of good and bad work in every profession. But pointing out singular incidents of questionable journalism to prove that the news media is "all hype and no substance," meanwhile ignoring the important, significant, and often times dangerous work that journalists do to keep the public informed is, at best, ill advised.
Go and read the Pulitzer prize winning journalism that has come out in the last two years. I would be shocked if you could walk away saying it is hype. Or even look at another story from the last few weeks, Michael Flynn's pre-election sanction discussions with the Russian Ambassador and subsequent firing. People might have different opinions on the issue or different feelings on the way the information was leaked, but it can't be argued that it was a serious story of national importance. Meat loaf isn't the only thing out there.
Your criticisms of some media practices are valid and have been made many times before. They will and should be made again. But finding a bad article and saying "see the media is terrible don't trust them" is not the answer. If you see an article that seems silly, look at other sources to find one that's not. If you see an article that seems biased, read about the story from several other sources to get the full picture. Or even better, do that even if you don't think the initial source seems biased. Become a savvy news consumer who stays outside of ideological bubbles by purposely popping them.
And I will also say this... when something important is under attack, it is possible to try and save it even if you have concerns about certain aspects of how it functions. It's hard to prune weeds from a garden that has been burned to the ground.
As I said, I've definitely seen some good journalists persisting to this day. Though it's hard to support and defend what Trump's followers refer to as the "mainstream media" when the outlets I've found producing that great work, like The Guardian or The Intercept, aren't really mainstream.
You're right, the Guardian and the Intercept have done some very good investigative journalism in the last few years, particularly around Snowden and the US surveillance state. However they are certainly not the only ones producing impactful journalism.
Here is a good list of some great journalism from the last year. Some of the media outlets are "mainstream" (note I really dislike that term as it is usually used by people being adversarial towards the media for their own gain). Some are small local papers. Some have what is perceived to be a left leaning ideological bent, and some have a right.
I find that many people laud the journalism and outlets that support their viewpoint. However, they avoid or actively denigrate good journalism and outlets that oppose their viewpoint. From your reading choices, I'm guessing that you probably don't read the Wall Street Journal or other sources with a perceived conservative bent. If not, you should try. And try some sources such as the Associated Press and Reuters which focus on producing content for many media outlets with different viewpoints and biases. Good journalism is being done across the spectrum. It should be supported, regardless of your political leanings, as the basis of a shared reality in which we as humans can make good decisions.
On the contrary, I'm significantly more conservative than most of my friends (heck, I shared a post from National Review yesterday), and don't prescribe to either party. I have a hit and miss chance of reading WSJ because of their paywall.
Fair enough and I apologize for adding that assumption. It was unnecessary for making my point and disrespectful to you. I will leave it in for context but please disregard it.
"But I feel like we've lost sight of who is probably chiefly responsible for Trump to begin with: A media framework which rewards views, leading to focus on the most outrageous and entertaining "news" over important information."
I agree with you on this point, but I'd like to add that this argument can be spun further: the media framework is as rigged for views as it is due to poor prioritization of the media consumers.
Of course, next step in the chain is that it's the media companies that failed to find business models that adapted to digital and retained sufficient journalistic integrity. But I think that's a bit unfair. None of us have figured that out. I highly doubt that journalists are celebrating the new age of clickbait. I'd rather suspect they cry themselves to sleep over it, so it's not for lack of trying.
Sigh. I think I'm going to buy a Guardian subscription now.
Characters like Trump and Farage largely owe their success to 24 hour news channels and their insatiable appetite for soundbites and headlines - those guys are non-stop controversy generators and are, as such the ideal match for rolling news.
"There's only one WC-135, so the plural is wrong."
Wikipedia claims this: "10 original WC-135B, plus 1 converted former EC-135C. Two aircraft currently in active service."
So... is there one WC-135, or two or 10 or 11?
>> the "mainstream media" is doing an excellent job regarding these reports: not reporting on them.
I just checked up on CNN and I can read about "Kung fu granny", "Comic con in Saudi Arabia" and nothing about the above radiation incident. Media doing an excellent job? Maybe.
> "There's only one WC-135, so the plural is wrong."
> Wikipedia claims this: "10 original WC-135B, plus 1 converted former EC-135C. Two aircraft currently in active service."
You are right – I misunderstood the introductory paragraph of the Wikipedia article when I checked.
In this case, however, I'd like to add to my nitpicking by complaining about the phrase "highly unique".
I also don't get why anybody would use cnn.com, or any other TV station's website, for news. Journalism happens at Newspapers, at magazines, and in books. That's the result of economics: These formats are very constrained. They don't allow for many distinguishing features except the content itself. Whereas CNN has dozens of variables it can jiggle before even thinking about investing into investigative journalism, and ultimately it's bound to be the better business decision to spend money on a charming anchorman than a dozen people working an idea that may just go nowhere.
The mission is split into aircraft operators and mission/equipment people. The aircraft operator of this model is a very small part of the overall mission, which has about a thousand people and all kinds of very fascinating gear aside from those two specific planes, I'm sure.
I don't know how you could go from a virus on a laptop to "Russia is hacking into our power grid" unless you are being intentionally dishonest or have such an agenda that you jump at any scrap to make a story.
I don't know how you could go from a virus on a laptop to "Russia is hacking into our power grid" unless you are being intentionally dishonest or have such an agenda that you jump at any scrap to make a story.
That was terrible.
Good thing WaPo withdrew it and posted this:
Editor’s Note: An earlier version of this story incorrectly said that Russian hackers had penetrated the U.S. electric grid. Authorities say there is no indication of that so far. The computer at Burlington Electric that was hacked was not attached to the grid.[1]
I dunno. I've occasionally got things wrong before.
The real problem is when they double-down on an incorrect position in the face of evidence to the contrary.
I think the behavior of today's media is perfectly understandable if you substitute some terms. For example-
Instead of "stories" think of "memes"
Instead of "reporters" think of "salespeople"
Instead of "readers" think of "customers"
Instead of "publishers" think of "businesses"
With that map in mind, it's not hard to understand why many, not all, but clearly many do the shoddy reporting that they do. Like so many things in today's world, it's no longer about pride in your craft, but instead it's about making money. The result is it's increasingly difficult for the average person to tell the real news from the fake because the traditional sources of real news have abandoned this in favor of sensationalism. But on the upside, the Internet may yet save us by providing smaller outlets a chance to provide better reporting. I was very much intrigued by the WH using Skype to pull in reporters from smaller cities and areas that don't normally get a chance to participate.
<rant>
During the recent Trump news conference, another aspect of what's going on jumped out at me. At one point in the news conference, the camera pulled back to show the room of reporters. What I found jarring was the age of the reporters; to my eye they looked like they were high schoolers. I was hoping to hear well thought out questions but instead most of them asked the same robotic questions on Russia. I don't think the media organizations are doing the American people (and the world) a great service when they send the least experienced staff members to events like this.
</rant>
Most people who read the original article will never see the retraction. So they get all the page views and ad impressions from running a sensational story that goes viral, most of those people will continue to believe it, and even if some do find out it's false there's this idea that they shouldn't even look down on WaPo for this because they eventually retracted it. It's win-win-win for them!
If you just read the title, you'll still conclude that the article describes a real event
"Russian operation hacked a Vermont utility, showing risk to U.S. electrical grid security, officials say"
Even if we now know it's a lie.
I'm trying to figure out what would be the proper way to modify the title to show it's wrong and to still provide the readers the insight that the paper claimed something that was debunked?
It's good they at least put a notice at the top but that doesn't excuse them. This is the kind of stuff Gawker does and was heavily criticized for, running a story without checking the facts because you want to be first or it fits your "narrative".
I'm not sure what else it could be without it being much worse reason.
> If you have a way to prevent things like this prior to their happening, I'm sure these newspapers (and many other industries) would love to hear it.
Don't run with a story until you can verify it? I know that would have stopped them from running 90% of their anti trump stories because there isn't a lot of evidence for them but if they actually did that as a whole, I don't think trump would be president.
People still underestimate how well trump is able to play the game of calling out the media for crying wolf.
> Until then, things like this will happen. Assuming all media is bad because of these incidents is silly.
I'm really not dismissing all media, I'm just applying different standards to different outlets based on their biases. If i see a story on WaPo about something bad trump did, it better be well sourced and founded otherwise it goes in the trash.
Same with breitbart or any other right wing outlet, If they are making a claim that fits their narrative then you should look purely at the underlying facts and cut out the speculation.
There's also a big fat note at the top of that article now, and there were probably more articles about the retraction than there were about the original article.
For me, the trustworthiness of news sites comes down to whether they issue corrections when they run questionable stories. It's the easiest binary test I know of. Mistakes and ignorance happen, it's only stubborn refusal to ever admit to being wrong that is unacceptable.
I don't see something like this as a simple mistake, to me it's closer to gross negligence. How do you write an entire article like that without anyone asking "hey so, how is this a risk?".
They wrote an entire article about the all the danger that this event shows us except the most basic questions about the hack would have quickly lead you to a realisation that there was absolutely nothing here.
They even pin it on Lazy Bear the "Elite Russian hacking group". How the hell did they did they get that conclusion from malware? Unless they were shooting entire clips from the hip.
> How do you write an entire article like that without anyone asking "hey so, how is this a risk?".
We don't know what they did in the course of writing the article or how the article ended up as it is. Maybe they did ask that, and the person they asked views the situation differently than you do; maybe they got conflicting answers and chose what was most convincing. Maybe they wrote about it and the editor cut it.
(For argument sake, I'm accepting your conclusion about the article's shortcomings; I don't know about that myself.)
Well I think the answers to that can be found by looking at the background of the people. It's hard for me to go around telling people who they are since it can be subjective but let's just say I don't really have a lot of faith in my generation at the moment (20-30 year olds).
It's not hyperbole to say that's an impossible leap of speculation: You know what someone's actions were in a particular situation based solely on their age?
I think it's due to the short attention span of the general population. Most people forget the worst stories about people on the left (think Benghazi, HRC emails...) were broken by "leftist sites" like NYTimes.
I agree with many of your points and feel that this topic does seem a bit sensationalized here. But my conclusions had nothing to do with the grammatical peeves you're also pointing out, which feel a bit unnecessary amidst the actual facts being discussed.
I added them because I believe that, in aggregate, they demonstrate another dimension of the 'quality' being discussed: journalism has an appreciation of language. Without writers that care, and paid copy editors, that quality may be lost without people ever realising what we had.
Think about any craft you know something about: You might find yourself explaining the details of a really well-crafted specimen to a lay person. Most or all of it may be new to to that person, but they could have maybe recognised and appreciated the overall quality. By teaching people about the many small details that went into the product, you're making it easier for them to seek out quality, and harder on producers to cut corners.
But my examples were probably too superficial and/or even wrong. Only this once I'll use my status as a non-native speaker of English as an excuse :). I'd add a note to the post itself, but the time to edit has unfortunately passed.
Two in active service and a total of eleven converted from the base C-135, per Wikipedia.
Quibbles over details aside, I do take your point about the absence of reportage in the mainstream media on something that's not well enough understood to speak to the cause, and likely to generate a lot of unnecessary concern absent such understanding.
On the other hand, I'm not sure how I feel about there being someone - anyone - in a position to decide what the public does and does not need to know. In this case, we might agree that that power, to the extent it still exists in the age of the Internet, is being used for good. Is it always?
> Specifically: I cannot imagine that a quality news site (say the NY Times, Atlantic, or WSJ) would not mention such uncertainty.
Not sure about the others but NY Times has lost much credibility over the years, getting worse during the election.
Before the Iraq war, it deliberately spread misinformation from the government during the WMD episode to drum up support for the war. It basically acted as the propaganda arm of the U.S. government. For this election, they backed the wrong horse and missed out.
You think that the media is doing an "excellent job" because they're suppressing news about a possible nuclear incident?
And the rest of the post is nitpicks about the grammar of the article? And falsely claiming that there was only one WC-135 built (there were 10 according to wikipedia.)
I hope your post was a joke. If so, it was in pretty poor taste.
>I feel this vilification of the media is far overblown.
Trump's strategy of making everyone hyper-skeptical of the media is working then. When you think all news is fake you'll tend to stick you the sources that "you" think are truthful (and that match your preconceptions).
What I wish sometimes is that Chomsky would echo Trump's belief that the media is the enemy, because he's been saying it for decades. He won't, of course.
He doesn't "echo" those exact words because he doesn't peddle things like something being "the" enemy. What he has been saying for decades is how the media are being used, not the media having some sort of agenda. He's just not on that childish a level where the interests behind the curtain get ignored, is all. So what's there to "echo"? He's been criticizing the media for decades, often together with other authors -- but how does that and someone else offering nothing even remotely close to that thorough a criticism, but just saying "something negative", even play in the same ball park? That's like saying building a cathedral and putting a shoe on a rag are the same thing, because it's all just "using objects to change the physical space" or something.
Absolutely not. Chomsky talks about the agendas that motivate the media.
That is a huge difference from demagoguery about "enemies of the people".
The best way we can fight lies in the media is by educating Americans about how to detect bias in their media sources, encouraging them to read and watch multiple news sources (not just Fox News) and letting them form their own opinions.
> I do have to complement the authors of this article.
Why? for blatantly lying and misrepresenting facts such as Trump was president when these "tests" took place?
> It presents the facts and leaves out political rhetoric and noise.
It does the exact opposite: it portends to lay out facts, but instead it lies about which president under which these "tests" occurred, so everything else they state is suspect.
Did i miss something? The only mention i can see to Trump in the piece is:
> There has been some talk about even the US restarting its nuclear testing under President Trump, but this is largely speculation mixed with hyperbole.
I guess; Trump is thrown out in the context of speculating about where this isotope is coming from, as if the US might be conducting surreptitious tests on behalf of a nuclear war mongering Trump. Timing is way off though; the first reports appeared before he had any authority. It's a gratuitous mention and overlooks the fact that Trump probably ordered the 135 to Europe to investigate, something for which the US deserves credit. But hey, indulging Trump Derangement Syndrome makes for better copy.
Anyhow, the most likely source of lofted iodine-131 is a damaged power reactor. The proximity of the detections to Russia -- a nation with a long history of failing to report their nuclear incidents -- means it's not far fetched to suspect they've melted something down. Russia has an incredible legacy of nuclear facilities, most badly engineered and badly neglected and all very old. Sites like Kola (first gen VVER) and Bilibino (unique EGP-6 reactors) go for years without scrutiny by the outside world. Then there is the Russian nuclear navy and other nuclear assets, such as nuclear ice breakers, some of which have had the barnacles knocked off and been redeployed on behalf of Putin's desire to rattle rusty old Soviet sabers.
Who knows. Unless it gets worse and somebody fesses up we may never know. The world didn't know about Kyshtym for three decades.
I mean, the mention of Trump was in the context of speculations that Russia had tested a nuclear bomb, as an example that commitment to the nuclear test ban has weakened. The article rejects this idea, and it certainly never suggests that the U.S. had tested a bomb.
It's interesting the author mentioned the nuclear generators and whatnot used in lighthouses and for small portable power generation. Those use strontium-90 and other byproducts of nastier energetic fissions which if my amateur nuclear physics brain is functioning correctly don't produce iodine-131. Iodine-131 is a byproduct of uranium-235/238 decay & fission. Since practical fusion doesn't yet exist, iodine-131 can only come from more energetic reactions like U235/238 fission. It's hard to imagine Russia left fissionable uranium abandoned, even in the Arctic.
Not the poster, but I've personally found that old books from the 1950s and 60s about nuclear energy are very approachable. (Plus they have hilariously optimistic assessments of the future. It's cute, in a depressing way.)
"Principles of nuclear reactor engineering" by Samuel Glasstone is a commonly recommended text. If you do a little Googling you can find PDFs of it online, although out of respect for the authors I won't link them directly.
I have a 1955-ish print edition myself, and it's quite wonderful. The first third or so of the book requires no math and is the best overview of nuclear engineering that I've ever read, and then it starts to gradually ramp up the theory. At some point, unless you are coming directly from an undergrad physics program or a related discipline, you may find the math a bit daunting and decide to stop, but you'll still have a better understanding of the subject than probably anyone but a small percentage of humans.
The book does not, however, contain any information on nuclear weapons, such as you might find in a more modern text; at the time of its printing I suppose its inclusion would have gotten the book classified, since I don't think there was much available in the unclassified literature. So if that is an interest it may not be a good source. But this, too, adds a bit to the brave-new-world Atomic Era optimistic charm. I'd love to live in the world that Glassstone thought we'd be living in today from the vantage point of 1955.
I suspect he was being sarcastic. The fact that a 90 amu atom doesn't yield 131 amu atoms when it decays doesn't require you to know about anything beyond conservation of mass.
There are plenty of people whose nuclear physics isn't even up to that, so i think it was a reasonable question, even if the answer is "i paid attention in physics at high school and remembered it"!
The US Navy has multiple study guides to help prepare future nukes for school. You won't find any classified material or functionalities of the US Fleet, but it does cover the introductory work.
The discussion of waste and derelict reactors should probably be ignored given the earlier statement that the presence of I-131 means fission took place in the last few days.
As the article states, nuclear explosions are unlikely as we would be hearing about seismic measurements too like in the case of N. Korean detonations.
My bet is on a small accident on a nuclear vessel or another small reactor around Europe (e.g. university research reactors).
You could get I-131 from a warhead fizzling. I don't know exactly how weak a fizzle it would need to be in order to escape seismic detection and whether that would be large enough to produce the measured amount of I-131 though.
If a warhead fizzled, it would have destroyed the submarine carrying it, which would have detonated hundreds of tons of rocket fuel and the rest of the explosives on board. We would have known about the explosion the same way we did the Kursk.
Whoops launched the nuclear torpedo instead of the training torpedo good thing the self destruct routine is an intentional near zero yield fizzle. My guess is the board and court martial would so classified we wouldn't hear about it for a century.
That would be a very strange design choice, to have the warhead self-destruct in that way. I don't know how much is really around in the open literature on ex-Soviet / Russian nuclear torpedoes, but certainly there's nothing around to suggest that US nuclear weapons do that, for a variety of good reasons, and I don't think there's any reason to suspect that the Russians designed theirs much differently. Off the top of my head: first, most nuclear weapons don't have a self-destruct or recall capability once launched, because that's a vulnerability during actual use; two, if it were launched unarmed, then the expected result would be a failure of the actual detonation system, leaving an intact weapon somewhere at the bottom of the ocean; third, a fizzle of a nuclear weapon underwater would probably cause a substantial amount of contamination from the fissile materials; it would basically be a (very) "dirty bomb", and difficult to hide. We'd see significant long-lived fissile contamination in the water either already or very shortly.
The much more likely explanation is that a reactor, either onboard a ship or submarine or on shore, had some sort of (probably minor, in the sense of "not catastrophic") mishap and vented steam from a primary cooling loop. You would expect to see short-lived byproducts including Iodine-131 in this case. There have been a number of similar accidents over time, and a release of steam wouldn't necessarily have any other signs and it might be tempting to cover up if it occurred at sea.
My thoughts too. And in this case, phrasing it as a question is more honest than saying "there may have been a nuclear incident in the Arctic", since the statement would still likely cause some panic.
That's because it's mostly wing. It dates from the Dash-80 era of slim, pure jets and low-bypass engines. Today's high-bypass engines are big shrouded fans with a jet engine at the center to spin them. Fuel economy is much better, but the engines look bloated.
It's just a function of when the aircraft was designed. The WC-135 aircraft are modified C-135s produced in the 60's. The C-135 was designed in the mid-50's. At the time, high-bypass engines simply didn't exist yet.
The epitome of Jet Age style. I don't much care for John Travolta as an actor or a celebrity, but I have no other choice than to admit the man has a refined taste in aircraft.
(I'd probably go for one of the larger Gulfstreams, myself, in a world line where choosing which jet aircraft to buy myself were a problem I had - I have just enough hands-on flying experience to really, really want to know how something that size, with that powerplant, would handle. But if I expected a need to carry more than a half dozen or so passengers, I'd go for a 707, too.)
Only in general shape. Dimensions, internal systems and even the type and gauge of aluminium were different between the C-135 and 707; Boeing had to go back to the drawing board when Douglas started cutting metal on the DC-8, and the redesign process for the 707 led to a cascade of changes.
About 20% of systems and components were common ( such as the cockpit windows ).
Really shows the size and capability of U.S.A.F. when they have a plane and team they can casually deploy to what appears to be a highly specific situation. The article says the aircraft is specifically designed to use atmospheric data to determine cause and nature of nuclear incidents. Imagining the manpower and testing and everything that goes into designing and implementing a system like this, and then multiplying it by all of the other teams and special aircraft and systems at their disposal, it really is impressive. All done over a period of 70 years.
Could be a satellite reentry. It's not unprecedented.
In 1978, Soviet satellite Kosmos 954 crashed into the atmosphere and spread 50kg's of Uranium across western Canada. They only recovered 1% of the fuel. One of the pieces recovered was radioactive enough to kill a person in a few hours.
Comment made in other threads is that this particular isotope of iodine is very short-lived (8 days) and a known product of uranium and plutonium fission. So, its source is assumed to be recent fission event, or medical radiotherapy generation. Any unrecovered material from defunct satellites probably no longer undergoing active fission.
Came here just to say if you're interested in this type of material, highly recommend following Tyler Rogoway. He was the heart and soul of Foxtrot Alpha before Thiel torpedoed Gawker.
The US version of what can happen is documented in the movie Command and control. When a service engineer accidentally drops a wrench that rips up a fuel rift in a missile.
http://www.commandandcontrolfilm.com/
We should cooperate in trade and peace as that is a better strategy for all according to game theory.
Many European countries share radiological monitoring data with each other, and this is made available to the public through the Joint Research Council: https://remon.jrc.ec.europa.eu/
I'm not sure if it's possible to get historical data, but if so it could be interesting to have a look at data from January.
There are also communities of hobbyists that track radioactivity with custom or home-brew stations. While less sophisticated in what they measure they can be an another point of reference. One of the oldest around is http://radioactiveathome.org/map/ another is http://www.uradmonitor.com/
I-131 can be only a consequence of recent nuclear reaction taking place. Sudden criticality and explosion of an old submaride won't produce enough of that - while will release whole lot of other isotopes, so no one would mention iodine. It can be little but a reactor meltdown or a nuclear explosion (while that must have seismic signature hard to not mention)
The quoted levels are unimaginably small! Almost invisible. I wonder how they manage to detect them. Just calculated that if whole of the Earth's atmosphere was filled with I-131 with maximum reported concentration (0.5E-6bq/m3), it would be an amount of iodine that is produced with a nuclear explosion of 0.00024kt, i.e. 240kg TNT equivalent. That is so small that it hardly qualifies as a nuclear explosion - more like 'critical assembly accident'.
And YES, this could be explained by a disposed nuclear reactor of an old submarine suddenly going prompt critical and blowing up! In the split second when it explodes it could release that and even much larger amount of iodine. I just couldn't imagine that levels so low are detectable.
It could be also an explosion on non-disposed, fresh nuclear reactor. That can explain lack of other detectable isotopes. And that is an event too small to produce a detectable seismic signature.
This could also be leakage from peaceful isotopic production operations, which are and will be a persistent source of false positives for the global iodine detection system.
Are you sure about that? When I profile it in chrome, about 50% of the time is spent in the garbage collector and "(program)". Randomly pausing the debugger most hits the ad code, which I think is what is causing the problem. It seems to be constantly loading and displaying the same ad over and over again, or something dumb along those lines.
The irony is that there are only two small, mostly static adverts on the entire friggin page.
Anyway, debugging this webpage was much more interesting than the article itself :)
program is native function calls, often poorly performing animations look like this, the connection is not immediately apparent because the calling function looks like it takes a disproportionately and innocently small amount of CPU time.
Admittedly I did not check further so maybe i'm wrong, but that function is at the top of the list for the JavaScript code, if it's GC the connection is easier to establish because you can look at the objects on the heap and see if they are created by that function... if it's native canvas or webGL on the other hand I find I usually have to change the code to find the relationship... maybe there are more advanced ways, I know there is way more to chromiums dev tools that what I use.
I too pissed to dig deeper... why couldn't the site authors be bothered to properly debug some animation code that is clearly runaway.
Typinganimationframe wasnt on the list for me. Just lots of calls using small amounts of time. Its the animation thats causing the gc and program time.
Lawyers don't decline to give legal advice for free just because they want paying, although they do, and fair enough. Law is a highly complex and recondite field, and a solid answer on any but the most trivial question requires nontrivial research to identify with confidence.
Lawyers also have a professional guild to which to answer, and if they say something offhand which turns out to be erroneous in a way that brings someone to grief, their guild will not be pleased with them.
In fairness, I probably wouldn't take the time here either; on the one hand, I block ads anyway and so don't have such problems, and on the other, I tend only to do that when it's to my own direct benefit that the issue be fixed, and broken ads on a site I'll visit once ever don't meet that test - when Postmates screws up their UI and I have to stub out some analytics functions to place an order, they get an email; here, I'd just add the site to my JS blacklist, reload, read, and go on about my day.
'A highly complex and recondite field, and a solid answer on any but the most trivial question requires nontrivial research to identify with confidence.'
So very much like the problem identified here then?
Woa you only ever give paid "expert" advice? Do you also not talk to colleagues in other companies on conferences because you think a lawyer would not have that urge either? Or more generally, if you see a bike light forgotten and left on, do you not helpfully turn it off just because you wouldn't be paid when doing so?
Where is the line to be drawn? Should the line remain there for everyone even if people vary in endowment in natural ability, opportunity for experience, and access to education?
The line is drawn when you make a site, test it, notice that it runs like a pig, and then think to yourself "You know what, this is fine". There's an obvious difference between an honest mistake and just plain incompetence with a dash of lazy.
I'm all for equal opportunities and whatever, but when the bar gets set too low then we all suffer.
My point is that what qualifies as incompetence is extremely subjective. Saying "this person's work is incompetent", I think, usually amounts to nothing more than "this person made mistakes in their work that turn out to be obvious to me because of the particulars of my circumstances."
Take me for example. I work as a software developer at a company that hires devs who studied computer science or math mostly from lower-ranked ivies and big state schools. I have an idea of what constitutes good code, and most of my coworkers, owing to our common background, either share this idea or soon find their views being molded by our code review process.
When I look at what my more talented classmates are doing who work at Google or an elite startup, I am humbled and a little embarrassed to show them my code. They would consider some of the code that is written in my workplace to be the product of incompetence. When I look at what my liberal arts friends who were hired as web developers are doing at their non-tech companies with only a few months of programming training, I remind myself that I have much more experience than they do and that my response should be to help them as I am able instead of to shame them and adjust the laurels that I rest on.
And there are people better than my talented classmates at Google and Airbnb who would call their code incompetent. And still others more talented than them. Etc. And there are people who write code that is even more poor than my liberal arts friends'. And still others, ... etc.
Not only is the label of incompetence highly subjective, it is also useless at best and injurious to everyone involved at worst. The less-skilled dev learns nothing by being called a name. Giving harsh criticism from an assumed position of superiority can be gratifying in the moment. I know, I am often tempted into it myself. But it is also a missed opportunity for cultivating empathy for your fellow-human, and a missed opportunity to help someone.
> Not only is the label of incompetence highly subjective, it is also useless at best
This just isn't the case. The label of incompetence can give you correct, meaningful answers to questions like
- This person wants me to work with them. Am I likely to get anything out of this?
- If I devote my time to trying to educate/train/help this person, will I see any results from that? Will they end up with any additional knowledge/skills/gain?
- Should I copy this person's work?
- Is there any value in listening to this person's advice or recommendations?
- Can I trust this person to complete an important task for me?
I'm not sure what here gives you cause for such a cri de coeur.
It would certainly dismay me to see these attitudes taken by an educator. For a working professional with deadlines to meet, they are entirely reasonable, albeit perhaps a bit harsh. But the world can be a bit harsh, too.
If you don't understand how to write acceptable Javascript, don't use Javascript for your website. It's really not necessary for a website hosting news articles, blog posts, or other static content.
Opened the site while running NoScript in default deny mode. The text rendered, I read the article, and closed the tab, and it never maxed out my CPU at all.
Working in a cloud company all of us are pretty conscious of the cycles we consume in our architecture and the resources we consume on our client's machines. If we accidentally ran our debug code fleet-wide I'm sure we'd single-handedly bring more than a few coal peaker-plants online to handle the surge.
But our motivation is our customer's happiness and our pocketbook. For an advertiser you aren't the customer, you're the cattle.
So your adblocker is actually saving the world. One drop of oil at a time.
That's why I'm wondering if that isn't the case. There's a lot of missing reactors out there, a scary number in fact. The Kursk reactor was recovered but there's bound to be a half dozen in that area that general area that are unaccounted for.
To be honest, I didn't detect any slant at all. There is basically no suggestion anywhere that the US might be involved in this, with all probabilities pointing to Russian involvement; that line about Trump seems added more to dismiss any US involvement than to point fingers.
> Even the US left its own portion of nuclear waste in the northern latitudes, such as the once secret reactor at Camp Century, in Greenland, although this is minuscule compared to what the Soviets left behind.
The pro-US bias in this article is strong. It appears to be more of the same wardrum-beating, anti-Russian propaganda that took hold of the mainstream media towards the end of the US election.
On one hand, Russia does appear to have adopted a more aggressive military stance, especially with regards to Crimea and The Ukraine.
On the other hand, the present military stance of the US looks not unlike the full-tilt, batshit-crazy world domination plans of Germany during World War II.
It appears obvious to me that our current US military leaders are not above conducting false-flag operations for the purpose of gaining public support for foreign aggression, and it would not surprise me if they were responsible for this release of Iodine-131.
Go back and read Tyler Rogoway's earlier articles. He has never beat the drum for war with Russia. Do you have specific evidence that anything he wrote is wrong?
In Murmansk itself there is a nuclear icebreaker (The Lenin) that has been decommissioned and converted into a museum where you can tour the vessel and see everything including the engine rooms and nuclear reactors. Despite it being decommissioned, I discovered some systems were clearly still functioning when I accidentally leaned on a random control panel and a bunch of lights lit up!
Photos from the trip are here[1], with the first seven photos being taken of or onboard the Lenin.
Note that one of the most powerful nuclear icebreakers in the world, The 50 Years of Victory, is available for tourists to travel to the North Pole[2]
[0] http://www.redyeti.net/FranzJosefLand/content/bin/images/lar...
[1] http://www.redyeti.net/FranzJosefLand/index.html
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/50_Let_Pobedy