Cheaper and easier to build. Apple's SDK offers a lot of options and doesn't require a lot of credit card details, unlike some of Google's APIs.
Plus, web apps are gimped on iOS (no notification support without going through a cumbersome PWA installation flow and data getting wiped every 14 days if you're just letting it run in the background).
Yes, they are on the BIS Commerce Control List. It doesn't need to be particularly advanced to be export controlled.
5A001.g Passive Coherent Location (PCL) systems or equipment, “specially designed” for detecting and tracking moving objects by measuring reflections of ambient radio frequency emissions, supplied by non-radar transmitters. Technical Note: For the purposes of
5A001.g, non-radar transmitters may include commercial radio, television or cellular telecommunications base stations.
this sounds over-broad. if i make a tape measure yagi with some PVC pipe that is tuned for ~100mhz, and i tune to an FM station that is "over the radio horizon"^ and aim it at a patch of sky where planes travel, if i receive the remote FM radio station at my location that means it's reflecting off something.
This is the most banal passive radar you can make. There's also one that doesn't require "over the horizon", but does require two receivers, you need two directional antennas at the same wavelength (two identical yagis will do, or if you're clever, two 9wl:0.25wl off-center fed dipoles), one aimed toward a radio source, and the other aimed at your desired "radar area", you can correlate signals on the radio-side to the radar-side.
So because i typed this, does that mean black helicopters later for me?
^"over the radio horizon" for VHF/UHF is a function of transmitting antenna height, relative to your location, and is usually "line of sight, plus 10%", assuming no tropospheric ducting. VHF/UHF are not like lower frequencies that are reflected by the ionosphere (sometimes) and the "ground" (sometimes), their range is drastically limited.
so in essence, if you know of a station in a nearby county or whatever, but you have never received it at your location, even with sensitive radios and good isolation (>=15dBd), and there's no physical barriers between those two points, and you aim a sensitive antenna and receiver at that transmitter, if you do receive "snippets" of signal - something is reflecting it.
this stuff is on various websites, archive.org, probably wikipedia.
If you have a VHF receiver of any sort, that allows external antennas, you can measure out nine wavelengths of wire, as straight as possible, aimed slightly (a degree or two, depending) off center from your target area; and 1/4th wavelength of wire in line with the other, and attach the short one to "ground" and the long one to "antenna", you now have a ridiculously cheap antenna. It's easier to make and set up than a beverage antenna, as well.
note: mods, delete this if i violated any rules, i don't see how, but i'm no law-thing
SpaceX isn’t providing a discount to student groups. The program, Cubesat Launch Initiative, is funded by NASA and covers the cost of launch and integration into the deployer.
GP is repeating the PE as corporate raiders story, but leaving out that these are often struggling, mismanaged companies, and that those loans have a sophisticated counterparty. The lenders might eat the losses, but after a few rounds, they'll demand higher interest rates once they see PE's turnaround track record. This is actually an example of where markets work; it's just ugly to see a beloved band go out like this.
I'm aware that some private equity actually does plan to make money by applying good management to a fundamentally sound company which is currently struggling (or "cheap") because of fixable mismanagement. Warren Buffet got rich by doing this repeatedly.
But that's not what happened to Toys'R'Us.
"Raider" PE doesn't care about the high interest rates because they don't intend to pay them for long enough to matter, and - as mentioned in other replies - usually the sophisticated counterparty to the loans has identified a less-sophisticated other counterparty to sell the loans to and sees this as a risk-free deal that nets them origination fees. Suckers exist. Banks make it their job to find them.
> Warren Buffet got rich by doing this repeatedly.
Warren Buffet would insist that he's not in private equity because Berkshire's stock is publicly traded and there's no lockup. He has publicly stated that he thinks being a PE LP is financial malpractice.
Warren Buffet is interested only in solid businesses, not in buying distressed assets in a fire-sale. One of his maxims: "is better to buy a wonderful business at a fair price, then to buy a fair business at a wonderful price"
Commonly, the bank that undewrites the loans will essentially do the same thing - they collect a commission but sell the underlying debt to someone else as (high-yield, because they are high-risk) bonds.
If you've heard of "Junk Bonds", this is (one source) of where they come from.
It's like a financial game of "hot potato" - you can make money as long as you're not the last person to hold the debt. So the answer to "who lends the money?" is "anyone who thinks they can sell the debt to someone else before it explodes".
In the end, a lot of it goes to "unsophisticated" individual investors, who will buy it based on "Sears (or whoever) is a great company, why wouldn't I buy their bonds" without realizing the full extend of what's happening.
> In the end, a lot of it goes to "unsophisticated" individual investors, who will buy it based on "Sears (or whoever) is a great company, why wouldn't I buy their bonds" without realizing the full extend of what's happening.
Unfortunately, a lot of these and similar financial schemes end with the phrase "...eventually retail investors end up holding the bag and taking the losses." LBOs, collateralized mortgages, crypto, every equity that gets pumped and dumped. When every layer in the banking industry has skimmed its profit and did their own renaming/reselling/repackaging of these "products" finally there's some individual investor chump who takes the loss, making the numbers add up.
Banks want to keep working with PE because banks have a lot of M&A business, and PE firms are the high-dealflow clients of their M&A arm. If Elliot (to pick a vulture at random) hires you to do mergers they're going to expect you to also help with the financing.
The banks don't end up being the bag-holders in any case, because they securitize the loans.
PE firms mostly make money on the management fees they charge the company, and by stripping assets, so they're often OK if they lose money on the ownership stake. In any case, the PE principals make money from their LPs with fat fees on assets under management so even if the entire investment goes south, it's the LPs who ultimately take the hit (5-10 years later) and not the principals.
TLDR: you know how people will by crypto that has absolutely no backing of anything? Well these bonds at least back to the company. There's always another sucker there to unload your debt to after you make a profit in fees and interest.
Ultimately it falls on the taxpayer. The existence of the FDIC not only incentivizes but almost forces banks to be risky with their investments. It doesn’t matter if their lending fails because the government has to come in and clean it all up and those expenses are passed on to the public.
Banks aren't defaulting because they held bad PE loans. The recent memorable case was SVB, but it held quality paper, just with a duration risk. Banks aren't investing depositor funds in loans to Toys R Us.
Fractional reserve banking means the bank only has a small percentage of the money its customers deposit on hand (currently 0% since 2020). What do they do with the rest of that money? They invest it. They take on risky investments because it will either pay off or they will be bailed out by the taxpayer through FDIC. There is zero risk on the banks part.
Once you get as far as FDIC insurance being involved, the bank generally ceases to exist (ideally via a fire sale to another, more stable bank) and the shareholders generally get (all but) wiped out, at best.
Competent risk management so that doesn't (generally) happen is a core competency for a bank, and if regulators think you're doing it wrong they will come down on the bank's leadership like a ton of bricks.
If anybody reading this comment would like to learn more from people who understand the area far better than I do, I would recommend patio11's 'Bits About Money' and Matt Levine's 'Money Stuff.'
FDIC has as much to do with what you're talking about as the gravity that holds you down. Yes its technically correct that they're covered by both, but you're miles away from any kind of rational point.
Are you staying under the 12-pound ICAO-limit for a payload (which must be split into two packages)? If so, how much power is continuously available to the payload and how long can each balloon stay aloft?
That info would strangely enough dox me/be a trade secret but there are companies doing both exempt and non exempt, and both have GSD better than any commercial satellite
Thanks for the reply. Are you able to comment a bit more on the costs. I’m particularly curious about your statement about balloons being orders of magnitude less expensive than satellites. Does that mean 1/1000 the cost or 1/100 the cost? I ask because LEO satellites with usable power (50W) no longer cost millions, or even a single million to put on orbit. And they have operational lifespans of 5 years.
I'm talking all up costs (cost to first pixels), so the cost to acquire a bus and payload then launch it vs buy a balloon with an imager payload and release it. Any comparable satellite right now is likely closer to hundreds of millions just due to necessary aperture size. A balloon launch for an imagery collect will run you under 30k all in, and you can reuse most of the system after you recover it.
LEO is cheap but you need a massive aperture, measured in meters, to get equivalent GSD to even the crappiest balloon imager, so the price tag suddenly jumps. These aren't cubesats, they're suddenly the size of a bus, see Worldview Legion for a recent comparison, and it has a much worse nadir GSD than balloons.
VLEO is still extremely expensive because you need a very robust propulsion system and there are other design considerations like atomic oxygen corrosion. The optics to match a balloon also put you into the mini-fridge to refrigerator sized optics assembly class which means while you can rideshare, it's not cheap to build or launch, see Albedo space:
Also the regulatory issues are still massive, you need to get a NOAA license for imagery and once you go under a certain GSD limit they become very difficult to obtain.
Which part of it do you think is not true? The written application is not extensive at all. It takes maybe 1-hour of focused time. That’s all I had ever spent on the written part of the application and I’ve been interviewed three times as a solo founder. And the interview really is just ten minutes long, though sometimes they go a little over the limit.
Alternatively, the aperture of the antenna on the satellite can be increased. So high-gain from space, but low gain on Earth, which is the approach of AST SpaceMobile.
