The Weather Machine: A Journey Inside the Forecast

The weather is both local and global. Each location has different weather. However, the global forces impact everyone. The "skill" in a weather forecast is a measure of how well the forecast is better than guessing from climatological norms. This skill has been gradually increasing over time, with more skillful forecasts being made up to around a week in advance. Making these forecasts requires enormous amounts of data and computational power. In the early days, weather forecasting was done by looking at the current conditions and assuming future weather would be similar to how it was after similar conditions. Alas, there are so many variables in place that it can be difficult to have such a library. Eventually the scientists looked at the physics of the situation and gradually developed the discipline of meteorology. 

The advances in technology came along with the evolution of weather prediction. The telegraph enabled knowledge to outpace weather systems. With most systems moving west to east, telegraph communications could provide advance notice of upcoming storms. Weather stations helped provide many different data points. Supercomputers have the power to crunch the data. Satellites provided even more observations on a global basis.  The weather does not know geographical boundaries. However, many of the tools used for weather prediction are also useful for national security. This creates interesting conflicts in governments. However, weather continues to be one area of international cooperation. With widespread data availability it may become nearly impossible to manipulate weather information for an individual country's gain. There are now many personal weather stations as well as cell phones that can record weather data. These mobile devices also demand up to the minute weather information. Gone are the days when a single weather forecast can be made. Now the weather simulations most be constantly rerun to get the most up to date forecast. We have come a long way in the field of weather prediction, yet forecasts are still far from perfect.

Tubes: A Journey to the Center of the Internet

The title "tubes" comes from a quote from the late Senator Ted Stevens who described the internet as "a bunch of tubes." In this book Andrew Blum travels the world to see the physical structures that make up our modern internet.

He starts with the story of his local internet going down because of a squirrel chewing on cables. He then goes on to describe the structure of the internet. He sees the massive switching centers, undersea cables and even data centers. The "last mile" connections from the fiber to the individual cable-modem was harder to come by, but he was able to end with some basic details of how the network finally reached his house.

The concept of peering was interesting. The internet is made up of a number of different networks. These networks all operate on their own. They must be joined somewhere to the outside world. Often this linkage will be in a big city, so you might have all traffic between two networks in Minnesota routed through Chicago. This networks may later decide to link themselves, allowing traffic to pass directly between them.

The internet is also highly redundant and decentralized. There are multiple paths to reach most destinations. This paths are typically not contained in a central location, but instead contained in individual routers. The global backbones help provide fiber-optic cable to the world.

The book was an eye-opener in the physical world of the internet. The one open question that I had was "who gets paid and who does the paying?"