Category: Network

Jun 23

Fears Grow Over Iran’s Nuclear Program as Tehran Digs a New Tunnel Network

The deal, which President Donald J. Trump abandoned in 2018, limited Tehran’s ability to install new centrifuges and forced it to ship 97 percent of its nuclear fuel out of the country. Mr. Biden’s refusal of Iran’s demand to remove the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps from the list of terrorist organizations, along with a flow of new revenue to Tehran resulting from today’s soaring oil prices, have contributed to the stalemate in the talks.

Now, the Iranians are looking for new pressure points, including the excavation of the mountain plant near Natanz. And over the past week, Iranian authorities have switched off 27 cameras that gave inspectors a view into Iran’s production of fuel.

The decision to cut off the cameras, which were installed as part of the nuclear deal, was particularly worrisome to Rafael Grossi, the director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, the United Nations agency responsible for nuclear inspections. If the cameras remain off for weeks, and it is impossible to track the whereabouts of nuclear materials, “I think this would be a fatal blow” to hopes of reviving the accord, Mr. Grossi said last week.

But this is far more than an inspection dispute. In the eyes of experts, Tehran is getting to the point of becoming what Robert Litwak, who has written extensively on the Iranian program at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington, called a “nuclear threshold state whose uranium enrichment program creates an inherent option — a hedge — to produce nuclear weapons,” without actually taking the last step.

“Iran’s move at Natanz,” he said of the plant now under construction, “amps up pressure on the United States to reach a new deal by highlighting the risk of a nuclear breakout should diplomacy fail.”

For decades, a barren piece of land near Natanz has been the centerpiece of Iran’s nuclear effort. The country has always maintained that its underground “pilot plant” there is working only to produce nuclear fuel for peaceful purposes — the production of nuclear energy. The evidence, some of it stolen by Israel from a warehouse in Tehran, suggests otherwise: that Iran has had plans in place for two decades to construct a bomb, if it concludes that it was in its interest.

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Jun 23

Ukrtelecom restores operation of landline phone network in over 1,200 settlements

Ukrtelecom has successfully restored operations of its landline phone network in more than 1,200 settlements and resumed communication services to more than 350,000 households, having ensured coverage across 87% of the national network.

Yuriy Kurmaz, CEO of Ukrtelecom JSC, spoke of this in an interview with Ukrinform.

According to Kurmaz, Ukrtelecom’s critical infrastructure is now stable.

“A new network structure with largely duplicated key trunk lines and network core equipment has been built to support emergency communications services. This type of structure is not typical for a civilian operator in peacetime, but now we have to maintain it to ensure stable communication, “Kurmaz said.

Read also: Kherson major: No Ukrainian signalno jobs in occupied city

He added that in critical situations at the onset of Russian invasion, Ukrtelecom was forced to limit access speeds for private subscribers in order to maintain continuity of services to the Armed Forces of Ukraine and other special customers.

“It was necessary while we were rebuilding our network from a peaceful topology to a wartime topology, restoring channels and communications lost due to shelling or those captured by enemy forces. Now our key trunk lines have significant reserves, the volume of external channels is triple the number we had before full-scale aggression. So, now the services are being provided in full,” Kurmaz said.

Currently, due to the destruction of network elements and attempts by invaders to interfere in the operation of the company’s telecom infrastructure, services are not available in only two regions: Luhansk and Kherson.

Read also: TV screens installed all over Mariupol to spread Russian propaganda

According to Ukrtelecom CEO, in Donetsk and Zaporizhia regions, the network is being maintained at 55% and 20% of pre-war coverage, respectively.

Kurmaz says every week, the company connects almost 1,600 new customers to the optical network, with Chernihiv region being in the lead in this regard.

As reported, more than 3,000 mobile operators’ base stations in Ukraine have been completely or partially shut down, while more than 20% of the telecom infrastructure has been damaged or destroyed as a result of Russia’s armed aggression against Ukraine.

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Jun 23

NFL Network predicts outcome of every game in 2022

Not too long ago, we attempted to predict how the Cincinnati Bengals’ season would unfold by projecting wins and losses over the entire season’s schedule.

Others are doing the same, with NFL Network’s Adam Rank going all-in by predicting schedule outcomes for each of the 32 teams in the league.

In the past, Rank has come under fire by Bengals fans for these projections, so it should be pretty interesting to see how he feels about the team after their trip to the Super Bowl.

Here’s a week-by-week look at how Rank projected the season to go for the Bengals, the final record and more.

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Jun 23

Rekindling the thrill of programming

We humans are a funny lot. How quickly we go from being humbled by the improbable feat of human flight to being irritated by how long it takes at the airport. We are routinely antagonized by traffic, but only occasionally amazed by the existence of a thing called an automobile.

One of the most prominent examples of recent human achievement is what we call a programming languages. Reviewing the Olympic mental feats that punctuate the history of its creation will help you rediscover the near-fantastical nature of programming.

The programmer, like the poet

Frederick P. Brooks, Jr., in his influential Mythical Man Month collection writes, “The programmer, like the poet, works only slightly removed from pure thought-stuff.” That is a statement worthy of reflection. For the working programmer and anyone involved in helping them be successful, it may serve to awaken dormant inspiration.

We could say that programming is an activity that moves between the mental and the physical. We could even say it is a way to interact with the logical nature of reality. The programmer blithely skips across the mind-body divide that has so confounded thinkers.

“This admitted, we may propose to execute, by means of machinery, the mechanical branch of these labours, reserving for pure intellect that which depends on the reasoning faculties.” So said Charles Babbage, originator of the concept of a digital programmable computer.

Babbage was conceiving of computing in the 1800s. Babbage and his collaborator Lovelace were conceiving not of a new work, but a new medium entirely. They wrangled out of the ether a physical ground for our ideas, a way to put them to concrete test and make them available in that form to other people for consideration and elaboration.

In my own life of studying philosophy, I discovered the discontent of thought form whose rubber never meets the road. In this vein, Mr. Brooks completes his thought above when he writes, “Yet the program construct, unlike the poet’s words, is real in the sense that it moves and works, producing visible outputs separate from the construct itself.”

A kind of slow-motion dance between mental and mechanical development was enacted over the centuries to arrive at what we can now call up in the browser with a casual flick of the F12 key.

Consider this programmable loom from the 18th century, and the role it plays in the tale. It’s interesting to look at a Baroque machine for algorithmic weaving and see punch cards that are precise analogs and forebears of the punch cards of early computers. The interplay of condensing thought and rarifying machines finally meet at the modern programming language.

Awed wonder

For a grittier, nuts-and-bolts look at programming’s development, see Ron Pressler’s ambitious history, Finite of Sense and Infinite of Thought. From the hesitate baby steps of antiquity to breathtaking leaps like Babbage and Turing, there is the sense of moving towards something not fully understood, but intuitively felt. We are in an age of realizing the broad promise

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Jun 23

‘Iron Chef’: Alton Brown on Why He Departed Food Network for Netflix

Just like “Iron Chef,” Alton Brown is synonymous with Food Network. But now, both the beloved show and the celebrity chef have moved to Netflix for a new version of the competition series that will be co-hosted by Brown.

With Netflix’s “Iron Chef: Quest for an Iron Legend,” which premiered this week, Brown has officially departed from his long tenure at Food Network, where he was a staple for 21 years.

Brown first joined Food Network in the late ’90s, and was the host and creator of “Good Eats,” as well as the host of “Iron Chef America,” “Cutthroat Kitchen” and a slew of other series at Food Network and the Cooking Channel.

Though his exit was never formally announced, Brown’s last deal with Food Network took him through 2020, and since, he has quietly left their airwaves. In 2021, new episodes of his shows have aired — “Good Eats: The Return,” which debuted on Discovery+ in early 2021, and a special version of “Chopped” in the summer of that same year — but those were all filmed before he opted to head to Netflix for the new “Iron Chef.”

Brown tells Variety that he caught wind of Netflix rebooting “Iron Chef” a few years ago, and was immediately interested in joining the series.

“That took a little bit of convincing on a lot of different people’s parts. But I knew that the show was going to be happening, and I was sick with jealousy over the idea that I was at the wrong network at the wrong time,” Brown tells Variety. “One day, my agent finally called me up after I had nagged him almost daily, and that was it. It was done. There was never a second thought for me. It meant removing myself from one network, but that was not a hard decision. Timing just worked out that I was able to extricate myself from that.”

Brown, who co-hosts the new “Iron Chef” with Kristen Kish, the TV chef known for winning the 10th season of “Top Chef,” is not the only familiar face who has reurned to Kitchen Stadium. Mark Dacascos is also back as the chairman, who introduces the secret ingredient at the top of each episode. The cast of Iron Chefs includes Curtis Stone, Marcus Samuelsson, Dominique Crenn, Gabriela Camara and Ming Tsai.

The competition series moved to Netflix after it wasn’t renewed at Food Network, where it had aired for 13 seasons. “Iron Chef” debuted on Food Network in 2005, after becoming a major phenomenon on Japanese television where the series originated with Fuji Television.

“Iron Chef” executive producer and director, Eytan Keller, shares how the show landed at Netflix, telling Variety he began his association with the series when it first launched on Food Network, which is when he met Brown, now one of his close friends.

“I actually acquired the international rights to ‘Iron Chef,’ so I was involved beyond just being on Scripps, at that time, and I

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