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stories filed under: "spy planes"
Wireless

Wireless

by Mike Masnick


Filed Under:
broadband, drones, spy planes, stratelite, unmanned planes



Would You Want Broadband-By-Soviet-Spy-Plane?

from the sign-me-up dept

For many years, we've been hearing all sorts of bizarre and crazy ideas for different methods of offering broadband. A popular one tends to be with flying devices of some sort. For a while we heard all sorts of stories about hideous-looking floating blimps called stratellites that would get press every six months or so, but which never actually launched anywhere. That's been going on for about five years. Another company tried something similar, but called its offering aerostats. Then there was the company that tried to use an acronym instead, referring to "HAPs" or "high altitude platforms." No matter what you call them, though, they haven't actually done much. However, that won't stop some people from trying. The latest such case isn't even a blimp. The idea is to take Russian unmanned spyplanes and turn them into flying broadband providers. Perhaps they'll double as spyplanes as well, though that's not clear. What is clear is that the economics of such an offering, combined with the likelihood of it being reliable (i.e., almost no chance), means that this is another plan not destined to be competing with your DSL connection any time soon.

9 Comments | Leave a Comment..

 
Bleeding Edge

Bleeding Edge

by Mike Masnick


Filed Under:
energy, spy planes



City Sends Spy Planes Out To Determine If Your Home Is Wasting Energy

from the only-trying-to-help dept

It's no secret that not everyone realizes how wasteful they are of energy resources. However, apparently one city in the UK went to rather extreme measures to make that point clear to residents in the city. It hired a spy plane to fly over the city and take heat loss photos across the entire city. The photos were then matched to a city map, displaying which houses were leaking the most heat at the time the spy plane passed over. Eventually, the entire map was put online so everyone could see which buildings were wasting the most energy. What's unclear is whether or not these heat maps convinced anyone to actually do anything (or if it just freaked people out).

65 Comments | Leave a Comment..

 
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