Cold War Ukranian Monster

This cold-war gadget who had as a purpose the detection in early stages of ballistic missiles (and from thousands of miles away) and it worked by detecting alterations in ionosphere propagation of the missiles exhaust plume.
A very curious thing about this strcuture is that it has a very close relationship with a world know human tragedy: Chernobyl nuclear power plant. ( see map to look how close to the nuclear power plant it is).
Out of Chernobil ( located in the city of Prypiat) the enormous radar from the Soviet era which can be seen from very distant places.
This secret radar called Duga-3 worked in the 10 hz ( cycles per second) and was so powerful that it interfered with hobbists radios from nearby countries ( who didnt know where this noise came from. The sound that produced in the interfered radios was a tapping noise ( to which the hobbists described as a Woodpecker noise). By the time it was operation NATO already knew of its existance and gave the monster a code codename : Steel Yard ( by Nato).

As you already know radars require electric power to work and this one wasn´t an exception. This 900 meters wide structure needed an incredibly large power: 4 thousand MW ( New York consumed 11 thousand MW in 2003). To such requirement only one thing could handle such a load: a nuclear power plant. And which power plant? Nothing less that the 5 reactors of Chernobyl ( at the time of the disaster only 4 were functional).

Suicide in the VPS

I´ve been a customer of Vaserv since the 28th of October of 2008. My overall experience has been very good ( I´ve only had some issues in which I had to request IP tables modifications and so on).

I took Web hosting as an important matter and did a deep research before deciding which company I should get. My only usage of this VPS ( a low end account with 128 mb of ram VPS and with an excellent connectivity) is using it as a VPN for me and my co-workers to provide a good level of privacy while working in a secure way using Open VPN.

As a control panel I´ve been using LxLab´s LxAdmin and I´ve been quite happy but I saw a wall when I tried to park more than 40 domains using another VPS that I have with Whirlhost a company owned by some Aussie guys but with server in San Jose, Cal).

After seeking further control and having additional features I had the idea ( 4 days ago) to migrate to Webmin control panel which is free and I had a bad feeling as my buddie told me that If I wanted to have more than 40 domains I should pay LxLabs a fee ( which I dislike as there is no reason to do such a thing). Another thing I´ve been told ( of course I cant confirm) is that LxLabs has access to clients control panel in order to check if the company that hosts him has paid the royalty of half a buck per VPS node.

My idea was to pay a new RPS ( a Real Private Server which is a dedicated server without its own hard drive) and connected to a iSCSI SAN) and migrate all my current data to those RPS to try a new experience. The company that offers it, is the French based OVH and the products are a budget line solutions made to play ( as said by them) more than to work (which has made me doubt if I should hire them). Another decisive thing is that clients can only be from a reduced number of countries and I should have asked a friend of mine to pay for it for me.

The weird thing of this whole story is that 3 days ago my VPN would not connect to the server ( located in vaservs servers). I tried to access to my account via the control panel and after failing to access the LxAdmin I start grabbing my head questioning why this can be taking place. I recall that Vaserv has not sent me the past 3 bills ( even though I requested them to send them in 3 different ocassions). I proceed to open a thread at WHT/Webhostingtalk.com ( forum in which I am member and really enjoy this guys who really know what they are doing).

After I finish posting my thread I realise that someone commented something about FSCK (one of many companies belonging to Vaserv). To my surprise all of the VPS accounts on Vaserv servers had been hacked and compromised. As a result Rus Foster (owner of Vaserv) decided to pull off the server while he and his team could establish the problems. The problem seemed to be a guy that apparently was a Vaserv customer and hacked into the main servers using a vulnerability in Lxlabs´s Lx admin.

As a consequence of this hack LxLabs lost its credibility as a realiable control panel. The owner of the Indian company was a 32 year old guy named KT Ligesh who decided to eliminate himself due to having personal previous problems ( his sister commited suicide) and his products contracts were not renewed as a product of this hack. This was a sad news to all the hosting industry.

Internet submarine cables

We all love having a speedy internet connection ( some like me are desiring the appropriate "technology" to knock my countries door. Have you ever asked yourself how data is transmitted from two distant points like New York and London? In case you don´t know the answer is pretty simple and yet curious : submarine cables containing optical fiber. Due to the high tensile strength ( imagine waves hitting the cables in all its length : 5586km) special materials that had been and are used by Nasa are used to assure communications in both continents. The cable that is in charge of transmiting data ( Internet and telephone ) have a diameter of around 70mm. You´ve heard about of optical fiber and use it indirectly but you dont know what it is, here I will try to provide an approach with this quote :strands of optically pure glass as thin as a human hair that carry digital information over long distances.


Some countries who rely on a purely multi homed optical fiber grid, usually have their connections knocked down due to several reasons including : fishermen that cut cables with their gear, earthquakes and pirates. Pirates cut cables in order to earn some money as optical fiber, PET film, copper and other materials that are contained in the cable can be quite pricey!

Regarding the distribution scheme of the undersea cables, most of it has a similar pattern to what it used to be the telegraph undersea system.

Where does the US deposit most of its bullion?

As you might know countries use gold as a store of value ( as this allows them to deposit and retrieve when necessary). In order to store this valuable mineral a highly secured physical place must constructed and used.
The U.S. is known as the richest country of the world and to store its goods ( mainly gold) president Roosevelt´s ordered the creation of Fort Knox as a resource to hold a big portion of the US´s gold ( which circulated as gold coins at the moment). The idea of getting hold of gold was to take it virtually out of circulation after the great depression in the 1930’s.
Located in the state of Kentucky and built in 1936 this bullion depositary remained for several years the chosen place for the construction.

The fortification has several lines of protection including cameras, concrete walls reinforced by steel, motion detectors, seismic detectors and so on. Even though it can´t be confirmed it is said to have peripheral land mines. It even has its own police ( United States Mint Police) and army is ready to provide extra security if needed. Security personnel in charge of protecting Fort Knox is estimated to reach the 20k (mostly live in the city, which has the same name of the building).

Conspiracy theories surrounded the fortification during Lyndon Johnson´s administration. Some of them said that the government emptied the reserves , that they sold its gold or that they moved its content to London or Jerusalem.

As a side note ( and a as a result of the magnificence of the construction) no one has ever tried to rob this colossal fortification.

At the time being, most of US bullion is store in the Federal Reserve Banks vault in Manhattan