Is the Internet Growing Dark?

The Darkening Web is a new book by Alexander Klimburg about the under-reported fight over the control and power of the internet and cyberspace.  Below are some remarks and reviews available on Amazon.com.

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"A chilling but well-informed and readable tour of cyber interdependence. Anyone interested in our growing global vulnerabilities should read this book.”
—Joseph S. Nye, Jr., author of The Future of Power

No single invention of the last half century has changed the way we live now as much as the Internet. Alexander Klimburg was a member of the generation for whom it was a utopian ideal turned reality: a place where ideas, information, and knowledge could be shared and new freedoms found and enjoyed. Two decades later, the future isn’t so bright any more: increasingly, the Internet is used as a weapon and a means of domination by states eager to exploit or curtail global connectivity in order to further their national interests.

Klimburg is a leading voice in the conversation on the implications of this dangerous shift, and in The Darkening Web, he explains why we underestimate the consequences of states’ ambitions to project power in cyberspace at our peril: Not only have hacking and cyber operations fundamentally changed the nature of political conflict—ensnaring states in a struggle to maintain a precarious peace that could rapidly collapse into all-out war—but the rise of covert influencing and information warfare has enabled these same global powers to create and disseminate their own distorted versions of reality in which anything is possible. At stake are not only our personal data or the electrical grid, but the Internet as we know it today—and with it the very existence of open and democratic societies.

Blending anecdote with argument, Klimburg brings us face-to-face with the range of threats the struggle for cyberspace presents, from an apocalyptic scenario of debilitated civilian infrastructure to a 1984-like erosion of privacy and freedom of expression. Focusing on different approaches to cyber-conflict in the US, Russia and China, he reveals the extent to which the battle for control of the Internet is as complex and perilous as the one surrounding nuclear weapons during the Cold War—and quite possibly as dangerous for humanity as a whole.

Authoritative, thought-provoking, and compellingly argued, The Darkening Web makes clear that the debate about the different aspirations for cyberspace is nothing short of a war over our global values.

Editorial Reviews

“The Darkening Web provides a sweeping yet nuanced overview of how we got to where we are online, with ample backstory… A thoughtful framework for assessing developments in this fast-moving area…Ultimately, Klimburg concludes, the battle for a free Internet ‘is nothing less than the struggle for the heart of modern democratic society.’”—Nature 

“Exhaustively researched. . . . A complex, fascinating book. . . . Indispensable reading for anyone keen to understand what lies ahead as cyberspace displaces conventional battlefields as the preferred venue for resolving conflict.”—The Toronto Star

“A dark but riveting account of how competition between nations threatens the future of the Internet. Klimburg provides a broad overview of the technical and political underpinnings of the Internet and reveals how many of them are being eroded by short-sightedness and national pride. A must-read.”—Jeff Moss, founder of Black Hat and DEF CON conferences

“A compelling and authoritative book that will shape the conversation about the intersection of the Internet and foreign policy.”—Bruce Schneier, author of Data and Goliath

“At a time of rising focus on threats to the internet, Alexander Klimburg introduces much needed clarity and precision into such concepts as cyber war and information security. This book is indispensable—not only for national security officials formulating policies on cyber conflict, cyber crime and cyber governance, but for any reader seeking a strong grounding in this critically important material and what it means for our global future.”—Michael Chertoff, former U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security

“Alexander Klimburg provides a chilling but well-informed and readable tour of cyber interdependence. Anyone interested in our growing global vulnerabilities should read this book.”—Joseph S. Nye, Jr., University Distinguished Service Professor at Harvard University and author of The Future of Power

“Klimburg is exceedingly qualified to write about cyberspace as a new field of war. . . . The dark side of cyberspace is a daunting subject, but Klimburg’s narrative is very accessible, and frankly, this is all far too important to ignore.”—Booklist 

“A very frightening book. . . . Reading it is well worth the effort. Recommended for anyone interested in international affairs.”—Library Journal

“An excellent primer on cyberwarfare. . . . A chilling portrait of the emergence of cyberspace as a domain for political conflict.”—Publishers Weekly

“Klimburg delivers an urgent warning that civil libertarians and cybernauts alike will want to heed.” – Kirkus Reviews

About the Author

Alexander Klimburg is a program director at The Hague Centre for Strategic Studies, a nonresident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council, and an associate and former fellow at the Belfer Center of the Harvard Kennedy School. He has acted as an advisor to a number of governments and international organizations on cybersecurity strategy and internet governance, and has participated in various national, international, NATO and EU policy groups. He splits his time between Boston, Vienna and The Hague.

https://www.amazon.com/Darkening-Web-War-Cyberspace/dp/159420666X/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1502762418&sr=1-1&keywords=The+Darkening+Web

A Summary on Populism

Populism is a mode of political communication that is centred around contrasts between the "common man" or "the people" and a real or imagined group of "privileged elites", traditionally scapegoating or making a folk devil of the latter. Populists can fall anywhere on the traditional left–right political spectrum of politics, and can often be characterised as centrist where populists portray both bourgeois capitalists and socialist organizers as unfairly dominating the political sphere.

Political parties and politicians often use the terms populist and populism as pejoratives against their opponents. Such a view sees populism as demagogy, merely appearing to empathize with the public through rhetoric or unrealistic proposals in order to increase appeal across the political spectrum.

Populism is most common in democratic nations. Political scientist Cas Mudde wrote that "Many observers have noted that populism is inherent to representative democracy; after all, do populists not juxtapose 'the pure people' against 'the corrupt elite'?"

Authoritarianism and Populism

Scholars have argued that populist elements have sometimes appeared in authoritarian movements. Conspiracist scapegoating employed by various populist movements can create "a seedbed for fascism."

National Socialist populism interacted with and facilitated fascism in interwar Germany. In this case, distressed middle–class populists mobilized their anger against the government and big business during the pre-Nazi Weimar period. The Nazis "parasitized the forms and themes of the populists and moved their constituencies far to the right through ideological appeals involving demagoguery, scapegoating, and conspiracism."

According to Fritzsche:

The Nazis expressed the populist yearnings of middle–class constituents and at the same time advocated a strong and resolutely anti-Marxist mobilization...Against "unnaturally" divisive parties and querulous organized interest groups, National Socialists cast themselves as representatives of the commonwealth, of an allegedly betrayed and neglected German public...Breaking social barriers of status and caste, and celebrating at least rhetorically the populist ideal of the people's community...

At the turn of the 21st century, the pink tide spreading over Latin America was "prone to populism and authoritarianism". Steven Levitsky and James Loxton, as well as Raúl Madrid, stated that Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez and his regional allies used populism to achieve their dominance and later established authoritarian regimes when they were empowered. Such actions, Weyland argues, proves that "Populism, understood as a strategy for winning and exerting state power, inherently stands in tension with democracy and the value that it places upon pluralism, open debate, and fair competition".

In a The New York Times piece following the 2017 Venezuelan constitutional crisis, it was stated that:

Populism is a path that, at its outset, can look and feel democratic. But, followed to its logical conclusion, it can lead to democratic backsliding or even outright authoritarianism.

Populism in the U.S.

There have been several versions of a populist movement in the United States. The terminology was inspired by the Populist Party of the 1890s. This was the party of the early 1890s which Midwestern and Southern farmers and some labor unions denounced a system whereby "the fruits of the toil of millions are boldly stolen to build up colossal fortunes for a few." The term "populist" re-emerged in the 1950s when historian Richard Hofstadter and sociologist Daniel Bell compared the anti-elitism of the 1890s Populists with that of Joseph McCarthy. Although not all academics accepted the comparison between the left-wing, anti-big business Populists and the right-wing, anti-communist McCarthyites, the term "populist" nonetheless came to be applied to both left-wing and right-wing groups that blamed elites for the problems facing the country.

Other early populist political parties in the United States included the Greenback Party, the Progressive Party of 1912 led by Theodore Roosevelt, the Progressive Party of 1924 led by Robert M. La Follette, Sr., and the Share Our Wealth movement of Huey Long in 1933–1935.

Lynn Frazier, three-term Governor of North Dakota, led the Nonpartisan League in a right-wing populist movement that gained control of North Dakota's lower house and won 79% of the popular vote in North Dakota's gubernatorial election of 1916. Campaigning as Republicans against Democrats who were supported by intellectuals and liberal reformers espousing collectivist and corporate farming, the NPL gained a large share of the rural and agrarian vote. There have also been left-wing leaders of populist movements such as Free Silver advocate William Jennings Bryan and consumer protection advocate Ralph Nader. They campaigned against the power of large corporations such as national banks and auto companies, as presidential candidates for the Democratic Party and Green Party, respectively.

Populism remains a force in modern US politics. The media have identified numerous populist candidates in recent years. The third-party presidential campaigns of billionaire Ross Perot in 1992 and 1996 have been perceived as populist. The 1996, 2000, 2004, and the 2008 presidential campaigns of Ralph Nader had a strong populist cast. The 2004 and 2008 Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards has been described by many (and by himself) as a "one economic community, one commonwealth" populist.

From its beginnings in early 2009, the Tea Party movement has used populist rhetoric, particularly in areas and states where Democrats are in power. Boyer et al. states:

The Tea Party's name, large outdoor rallies, populist rhetoric, and use of patriotic symbols (notably, the "Don't Tread On Me" Gadsen Flag, which emerged as the movement's standard) tapped into the historical legacy of the Antifederalist movement of the 1780s.

In a recent example of populist movements, participants in the Occupy movement chose the slogan "We are the 99%". The Occupy leadership used the phrase "the 1%" to refer to the 1% of Americans who are most wealthy. The Occupy movement believed that the 1% was creating economic instability and undermining the social safety nets implemented during the New Deal. Political science professors Joe Lowndes and Dorian Warren were among those to pose the question, "Is Occupy Wall Street a Populist Movement?" They both concluded that it was the "first major populist movement on the U.S left since the 1930s."

The 2016 presidential election saw a wave of populist sentiment in the campaigns of Bernie Sanders (as a self-described "democratic socialist") and Donald Trump, with both candidates running on anti-establishment platforms in the Democratic and Republican parties, respectively. Both campaigns appealed to criticize free trade deals such as the North American Free Trade Agreement and the Trans-Pacific Partnership. Their movements coincided with a similar trend of populism in Europe. Ultimately, Trump was elected President of the United States, defeating the Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Populism

Violent Rally in Charlottesville

The Unite the Right rally was a militant gathering of alt-right, neo-Nazi, white nationalist, and far-right groups in Charlottesville, Virginia, on August 11 and 12, 2017. The participants protested the removal of Confederate monuments and memorials from public spaces, specifically the Robert Edward Lee Sculpture in Emancipation Park.

Speakers scheduled to appear included Tim Treadstone, David Duke, Richard Spencer, Mike Enoch, and League of the South founder Michael Hill. Speakers claimed that Jews are ruining the West, and hailed Donald Trump and Adolf Hitler. During the rally, David Duke stated that the rally intended to fulfill the "promises of Donald Trump." During the rally, a car plowed into a crowd of counter-protesters, killing a woman and injuring 19 others, five critically. At least 19 people were injured in "street brawls" and other violence at the rally. A police helicopter monitoring the response to the rally violence crashed, killing the two troopers on board.

Witnesses described the violence as having originated from white nationalists.

Background

On May 15, 2017, a similar protest occurred against the city's plans to remove a statue of Confederate General Robert E. Lee from a downtown park, which was led by Richard Spencer. The event involved protesters holding torches near the statue. That same night, a candlelight counter-protest took place which included Black Lives Matter supporters.

The rally occurred when the University of Virginia was between its summer and fall semesters. On August 4, University of Virginia President Teresa Sullivan sent an e-mail to students and faculty, which said, "I urge students and all UVA community members to avoid the August 12 rally and avoid physical confrontation generally. There is a credible risk of violence at this event, and your safety is my foremost concern."

Following the Rally

In an address later in the day following the rally, Virginia Governor Terry McAuliffe, flanked by Charlottesville mayor Michael Signer, and Charlottesville's police chief, directly addressed the "white supremacists and Nazis who came into Charlottesville today," stating: "Our message is plain and simple: Go home. You are not wanted in this great commonwealth. Shame on you. You pretend that you are patriots, but you are anything but patriots. ...We are stronger than you... You will not succeed. There is no place for you here."

Signer said he was disgusted that white supremacists came to his town and faulted President Donald Trump for inflaming racial tensions during his 2016 campaign, stating: "I'm not going to make any bones about it. I place the blame for a lot of what you're seeing in America today right at the doorstep of the White House and the people around the president."

Following the rally, UVA president Teresa A. Sullivan condemned the "senseless violence" at the rally and asked university community members to help protect "The safety and well-being of all members of our community... by staying off the streets tonight as our public safety officials work to maintain order and offer assistance to those who are in need."

Trump responded by saying: "We all must be united & condemn all that hate stands for. There is no place for this kind of violence in America. Let's come together as one!" He added that he condemned "in the strongest possible terms" what he called an "egregious display of hatred, bigotry and violence on many sides. On many sides." Trump added that "What is vital now is a swift restoration of law and order."

Trump did not specifically denounce white nationalists or white supremacists, and his "many sides" comment was criticized as insufficient by both Democratic and Republican members of Congress. The Congressional Black Caucus stated that that Trump's "false equivalency, dog whistles are sad. White supremacy is to blame." Republican Senators Ted Cruz, Cory Gardner, Chuck Grassley, Orrin Hatch, John McCain, Rob Portman, and Marco Rubio all called upon Trump to specifically condemn white supremacists and neo-Nazis; Gardner stated: "Mr. President – we must call evil by its name. These were white supremacists and this was domestic terrorism." Virginia Attorney General Mark Herring stated: "The violence, chaos, and apparent loss of life in Charlottesville is not the fault of 'many sides.' It is racists and white supremacists."

Former Ku Klux Klan Klan leader David Duke wrote in response that Trump should "take a good look in the mirror & remember it was White Americans who put you in the presidency, not radical leftists." The website Daily Stormer, which promoted the rally, praised Trump's response, writing "He didn't attack us. He just said the nation should come together. Nothing specific against us.”

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2017_Unite_the_Right_rally

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Most Boring Movie Ever?

Baa Baa Land is a 2017 slow cinema film produced by Calm that features no human actors, dialogue or narrative. Written and produced by Peter Freedman, and shot and edited by Garth Thomas, the American-financed, British-made film will premiere at the Prince Charles Cinema in London's West End during September 2017.

                                                                       movie poster

 

Technique

The film is an example of "slow cinema", an art cinema technique that focuses on long takes, minimalism, and often very little to no narrative or dialogue. The film has no plot and is described as the "dullest movie ever made" by producer Peter Freedman. It features "hundreds" of sheep simply standing in fields with very little additional action; each shot lasts between 30 minutes to over 60 minutes.

Baa Baa Land's length of eight hours has led some to call it the nineteenth longest film of all time, the same length as Andy Warhol's 1967 film The Imitation of Christ and five minutes shorter than Empire. Executive producer Michael Acton Smith does not expect Baa Baa Land to "break box-office records", though expects that there may be a significant niche audience for the title. It is intended and expected to put people to sleep, and has been described as "the ultimate insomnia cure.”

Production

Baa Baa Land was produced by the founders of Calm, an app designed to facilitate meditation and relaxation. It was filmed at the Layer Marney lamb and sheep farm near Tiptree in Essex, United Kingdom. The idea for a film where the only actors are sheep was conceived by producer Peter Freedman, and the film was directed, shot and edited by art film director Garth Thomas on a "modest budget".

                              https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baa_Baa_Land

Models of Galactic Wind

Galactic Winds Push Researchers to
Probe Galaxies at Unprecedented Scale
Supercomputers Required for such Massive Models
By Jonathan Hines, August 8, 2017

Oak Ridge National Laboratory -- When astronomers peer into the universe, what they see often exceeds the limits of human understanding. Such is the case with low-mass galaxies—galaxies a fraction of the size of our own Milky Way.

These small, faint systems made up of millions or billions of stars, dust, and gas constitute the most common type of galaxy observed in the universe. But according to astrophysicists’ most advanced models, low-mass galaxies should contain many more stars than they appear to contain.

A leading theory for this discrepancy hinges on the fountain-like outflows of gas observed exiting some galaxies. These outflows are driven by the life and death of stars, specifically stellar winds and supernova explosions, which collectively give rise to a phenomenon known as “galactic wind.” As star activity expels gas into intergalactic space, galaxies lose precious raw material to make new stars. The physics and forces at play during this process, however, remain something of a mystery.

To better understand how galactic wind affects star formation in galaxies, a two-person team led by the University of California, Santa Cruz, turned to high-performance computing at the Oak Ridge Leadership Computing Facility (OLCF), a US Department of Energy (DOE) Office of Science User Facility located at DOE’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL). Specifically, UC Santa Cruz astrophysicist Brant Robertson and University of Arizona graduate student Evan Schneider (now a Hubble Fellow at Princeton University), scaled up their Cholla hydrodynamics code on the OLCF’s Cray XK7 Titan supercomputer to create highly detailed simulations of galactic wind.

“The process of generating galactic winds is something that requires exquisite resolution over a large volume to understand—much better resolution than other cosmological simulations that model populations of galaxies,” Robertson said. “This is something you really need a machine like Titan to do.”

After earning an allocation on Titan through DOE’s INCITE program, Robertson and Schneider started small, simulating a hot, supernova-driven wind colliding with a cool cloud of gas across 300 light years of space. (A light year equals the distance light travels in 1 year.) The results allowed the team to rule out a potential mechanism for galactic wind.

Now the team is setting its sights higher, aiming to generate nearly a trillion-cell simulation of an entire galaxy, which would be the largest simulation of a galaxy ever. Beyond breaking records, Robertson and Schneider are striving to uncover new details about galactic wind and the forces that regulate galaxies, insights that could improve our understanding of low-mass galaxies, dark matter, and the evolution of the universe.

A density projection derived from a preliminary full-galaxy simulation of galactic winds being driven by a hot outflow in a starburst galaxy. The top panel looks “down-the-barrel” of the outflow, while the bottom panel shows the disk galaxy at the edge.
Credit: Evan Schneider, Princeton University

Simulating cold clouds

About 12 million light years from Earth resides one of the Milky Way’s closest neighbors, a disk galaxy called Messier 82 (M82). Smaller than the Milky Way, M82’s cigar shape underscores a volatile personality. The galaxy produces new stars about five times faster than our own galaxy’s rate of star production. This star-making frenzy gives rise to galactic wind that pushes out more gas than the system keeps in, leading astronomers to estimate that M82 will run out of fuel in just 8 million years.

Analyzing images from NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope, scientists can observe this slow-developing exodus of gas and dust. Data gathered from such observations can help Robertson and Schneider gauge if they are on the right track when simulating galactic wind.

“With galaxies like M82, you see a lot of cold material at large radius that’s flowing out very fast. We wanted to see, if you took a realistic cloud of cold gas and hit it with a hot, fast-flowing, supernova-driven outflow, if you could accelerate that cold material to velocities like what are observed,” Robertson said.

Answering this question in high resolution required an efficient code that could solve the problem based on well-known physics, such as the motion of liquids. Robertson and Schneider developed Cholla to carry out hydrodynamics calculations entirely on GPUs, highly parallelized accelerators that excel at simple number crunching, thus achieving high-resolution results.

In Titan, a 27-petaflop system containing more than 18,000 GPUs, Cholla found its match. After testing the code on a GPU cluster at the University of Arizona, Robertson and Schneider benchmarked Cholla under two small OLCF Director’s Discretionary awards before letting the code loose under INCITE. In test runs, the code has maintained scaling across more than 16,000 GPUs.

“We can use all of Titan,” Robertson said, “which is kind of amazing because the vast majority of the power of that system is in GPUs.”

The pairing of code and computer gave Robertson and Schneider the tools needed to produce high-fidelity simulations of gas clouds measuring more than 15 light years in diameter. Furthermore, the team can zoom in on parts of the simulation to study phases and properties of galactic wind in isolation. This capability helped the team to rule out a theory that posited cold clouds close to the galaxy’s center could be pushed out by fast-moving, hot wind from supernovas.

“The answer is it isn’t possible,” Robertson said. “The hot wind actually shreds the clouds and the clouds become sheared and very narrow. They’re like little ribbons that are very difficult to push on.”

Galactic goals

Having proven Cholla’s computing chops, Robertson and Schneider are now planning a full-galaxy simulation about 10 to 20 times larger than their previous effort. Expanding the size of the simulation will allow the team to test an alternate theory for the emergence of galactic wind in disk galaxies like M82. The theory suggests that clouds of cold gas condense out of the hot outflow as they expand and cool.

“That’s something that’s been posited in analytical models but not tested in simulation,” Robertson said. “You have to model the whole galaxy to capture this process because the dynamics of the outflows are such that you need a global simulation of the disk.”

The full-galaxy simulation will likely be composed of hundreds of billions of cells representing more than 30,000 light years of space. To cover this expanse, the team must sacrifice resolution. It can rely on its detailed gas cloud simulations, however, to bridge scales and inform unresolved physics within the larger simulation.

“That’s what’s interesting about doing these simulations at widely different scales,” Robertson said. “We can calibrate after the fact to inform ourselves in how we might be getting the story wrong with the coarser, larger simulation.”

Related Publication:  Evan E. Schneider and Brant E. Robertson, “Hydrodynamical Coupling of Mass and Momentum in Multiphase Galactic Winds.” The Astrophysical Journal 834, no. 2 (2017): 144, http://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.3847/1538-4357/834/2/144/meta.

https://www.olcf.ornl.gov/2017/08/08/galactic-winds-push-researchers-to-probe-galaxies-at-unprecedented-scale/

Diesel-gasoline efficient car

Mazda is combining gasoline engine technology with diesel compression methods to create a diesel engine that runs on gasoline instead of diesel fuel.  This could produce a very efficient engine that uses little fuel and produces very few emissions.  There are plans to make this powerplant available in a 2019 Mazda production vehicle,  Details are available at http://www.thedetroitbureau.com/2017/08/mazda-to-launch-breakthrough-homogeneous-compression-engine/

Basics of the Crane

A crane is a type of machine, generally equipped with a hoist rope, wire ropes or chains, and sheaves, that can be used both to lift and lower materials and to move them horizontally. It is mainly used for lifting heavy things and transporting them to other places. The device uses one or more simple machines to create mechanical advantage and thus move loads beyond the normal capability of a human. Cranes are commonly employed in the transport industry for the loading and unloading of freight, in the construction industry for the movement of materials, and in the manufacturing industry for the assembling of heavy equipment.

                                                          Mobile crane with outriggers

The first known construction cranes were invented by the Ancient Greeks and were powered by men or beasts of burden, such as donkeys. These cranes were used for the construction of tall buildings. Larger cranes were later developed, employing the use of human treadwheels, permitting the lifting of heavier weights. In the High Middle Ages, harbour cranes were introduced to load and unload ships and assist with their construction – some were built into stone towers for extra strength and stability. The earliest cranes were constructed from wood, but cast iron, iron and steel took over with the coming of the Industrial Revolution.

For many centuries, power was supplied by the physical exertion of men or animals, although hoists in watermills and windmills could be driven by the harnessed natural power. The first 'mechanical' power was provided by steam engines, the earliest steam crane being introduced in the 18th or 19th century, with many remaining in use well into the late 20th century. Modern cranes usually use internal combustion engines or electric motors and hydraulic systems to provide a much greater lifting capability than was previously possible, although manual cranes are still utilized where the provision of power would be uneconomic.

Cranes exist in an enormous variety of forms – each tailored to a specific use. Sizes range from the smallest jib cranes, used inside workshops, to the tallest tower cranes, used for constructing high buildings. Mini-cranes are also used for constructing high buildings, in order to facilitate constructions by reaching tight spaces. Finally, we can find larger floating cranes, generally used to build oil rigs and salvage sunken ships.

Some lifting machines do not strictly fit the above definition of a crane, but are generally known as cranes, such as stacker cranes and loader cranes.

Tower Crane (a type of modern fixed crane)

Tower cranes are a modern form of balance crane that consist of the same basic parts. Fixed to the ground on a concrete slab (and sometimes attached to the sides of structures), tower cranes often give the best combination of height and lifting capacity and are used in the construction of tall buildings. The base is then attached to the mast which gives the crane its height. Further, the mast is attached to the slewing unit (gear and motor) that allows the crane to rotate. On top of the slewing unit there are three main parts which are: the long horizontal jib (working arm), shorter counter-jib, and the operator's cab.

The long horizontal jib is the part of the crane that carries the load. The counter-jib carries a counterweight, usually of concrete blocks, while the jib suspends the load to and from the center of the crane. The crane operator either sits in a cab at the top of the tower or controls the crane by radio remote control from the ground. In the first case the operator's cab is most usually located at the top of the tower attached to the turntable, but can be mounted on the jib, or partway down the tower. The lifting hook is operated by the crane operator using electric motors to manipulate wire rope cables through a system of sheaves. The hook is located on the long horizontal arm to lift the load which also contains its motor.

In order to hook and unhook the loads, the operator usually works in conjunction with a signaller (known as a 'dogger', 'rigger' or 'swamper'). They are most often in radio contact, and always use hand signals. The rigger or dogger directs the schedule of lifts for the crane, and is responsible for the safety of the rigging and loads.

                     https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crane_(machine)#Tower_crane.