@sundogplanets Why does this remind me of the "Solar Satellites" from #OGame and a certain #JamesBond #movie?

Also I sincerely doubt these #reflectors in #space are able to #ROI the #energy wasted to launch them into space, much less ROI the launch cost which I'm shure is way more than a #cubesat (tho certainly below the > €25.000/kg for GSO...

** actually, probably still not legal to ride this particular bicycle at night in California.

Namely: no built in rear red reflector

No white or yellow reflector on each pedal (no reflectors on these pedals)

(however, these are reflectorized tires -- Marathon -- so meets some requirements. But don't ask me, I am not an attorney and not qualified to make sense of legal mumbo jumbo ;-)

https://codes.findlaw.com/ca/vehicle-code/veh-sect-21201/

CVC §21201 #BikeTooter #reflectors

@ascentale @ai6yr #BikeNite A4

Chiming in about lights. We recommend going beyond what's legally required in California; that is, we use a rear light on bicycle, not just a rear reflector. BTW, our bike law summary—in #Spanish and English— is handy to share with people unaware of California's legal requirements about lights and reflectors: https://bikemonterey.org/wp-content/uploads/Bike-law-summary-Spanish-and-English-1.pdf

Our "Night Ride Home" piece tells of our sans-headlight experience in 2009 https://bikemonterey.org/night-ride-home-and-were-all-heroes-on-public-radio.html, and also musician Sarah Factor's sans-lights experience in 2013 https://bikemonterey.org/musician-sarah-factor-has-a-bike-story-to-tell-listen-up.html.

#BikeTooter #lights #reflectors #bicycles #bikes #cycling #bicicletas #ciclismo #bici

These things that were being upgraded are called #Route #Reflectors and they are things that are SUPER CRITICAL to a big network, but also SUPER SIMPLE to have redundancy on - you just add another and tell it to talk to the other one(s). Zero complexity.

They listen to all the OTHER routers that say 'I can get to 1.1.1.1 via x.y.z then a.b.c' or 'I can get to 1.1.1.1 via 8 different paths', and consolidate them all together, and tell every OTHER router the single best path to (in this example) 1.1.1.1

They ALSO take all the internal network routes and squash them together into something that is presented to the outside world via #bgp

Basically, if you have a MASSIVE network, you need a couple of these, and they need to be reliable, and they need to be redundant, but because they're *technically simple*, it's usually not that much of a big deal to upgrade them, as long as you do them one at a time, and *AND THIS IS THE IMPORTANT BIT THAT I THINK THEY MISSED*, make sure that the one you have just upgraded IS ACTUALLY WORKING.

So, at 4am, they all failed. This is a pretty serious failure, because if they're ALL DOWN, you have no network at all. You have to use your #OOB (Out of Band) network to access the routers, and fix them.

But what if your OOB network is using Optus? Well that's an issue if Optus is down, as you can't use the Optus network to fix the Optus network!

So then you need to get someone to physically attach themselves to the OOB network. But here's the NEXT problem - all Optus networking is offshore. There's almost no-one in Australia who can physically fix it.

So what do you do when your offshore outsourced network guys break your core network infrastructure, and you've retrenched everyone who can fix it locally?

You have a 7 hour outage, that's what you do.

Feel free to ask questions or tell me I'm wrong!