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PoachedSausage

493 karma · joined August 11, 2017

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PoachedSausage··on Wide-Band WebSDR
It is also a good signal to use for frequency calibrations as the carrier is derived from a Caesium reference.
PoachedSausage··on John Cage Organ Project in Halberstadt
Only 639 years?

It would take approximately 1.3m years to ring every permutation of the 16 bells in the tower of the church of St Martin in the Bull Ring, Birmingham, UK.[0] I'm not sure the bells, tower or ringers would last that long though, get there early to avoid disappointment.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St_Martin_in_the_Bull_Ring

PoachedSausage··on Crews are abandoned on ships in record numbers without pay, food or a way home
We could go for ecological and climate collapse instead.

I hope there is a middle way.

PoachedSausage··on The Endless Acid Banger: algorithmic self-composing acid techno music
Reminds me of the hardcore raver Tyres from the sitcom Spaced (genius British comedy):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sfSndZPynQk

Saying that I have had a similar thing with tracks that have police sirens in them when listening in the car, it takes a moment to realise it isn't an actual emergency vehicle.

PoachedSausage··on Ask HN: What was the biggest leadership challenge of your career?
It is the annual creative writing exercise known as appraisal time at many organsiations, including mine. Why not get some inspiration from HN?

Actually this year has never been easier for appraisals, all successes have been despite the great covid challenges, all failures and delays are due to the terrible covid disruptions.

PoachedSausage··on YouTuber Builds Working 3D-Printed Turbojet Engine and Tests It in His Attic
There is also the excellent "The Jet Engine" book by Rolls-Royce:

https://hermessuspendeme.com/DOCS/GrevaEdgar/greva%202B/2B/S...

PoachedSausage··on Meat consumption and risk of 25 conditions: outcome-wide analyses of 475K people
Did people really believe that dietary fat was stored by the body without any kind of biological processing?

If you examine it from a thermodynamic perspective (I know that is simplistic for human biology), weight for weight fat has double the energy density of sugar, 38 MJ/kg vs 17 MJ/kg according to [0]. For reference, gasoline and diesel fuel are around 45 - 48 MJ/kg.

Also, according to [1], dietary fats are broken down to generate acetyl-CoA which is the precursor for lipogenesis (fat storage), therefore eating fat does not necessarily make you fat but consuming a lot of it and not metabolising it to do work will make it easier for you body to store fat.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lipid#Energy_storage

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lipid#Degradation

PoachedSausage··on Meat consumption and risk of 25 conditions: outcome-wide analyses of 475K people
A good start:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lipid#Biosynthesis

PoachedSausage··on Lobster shell patterns make concrete stronger
Maybe not. The Dutch police appear to be using wicker riot shields in 2021. Good for the environment.

https://www.bostonglobe.com/2021/01/25/nation/weekend-riotin...

PoachedSausage··on Have we already been visited by aliens?
Maybe there has been some sort of accident of scale, like the intergalactic fleet in Hitch Hiker Guide to the Galaxy that arrives to destroy Earth but is eaten by a dog.

There could be a banging ET party going at the Planck scale and we would never know, they might as well be on the other side of the universe.

PoachedSausage··on High Frequency Trading over Shortwave Radio
He mentions a site near Slough, west of London but doesn't give an exact location. The photo looks like magnetic loop antennas.

Slough has a large number of data centres, would that be the location of the servers for London Stock Exchange?

Also, don't forget the recent post about a HFT intrusion into the 20m amateur band.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25733406

PoachedSausage··on Intruder at the top of the 20 meter amateur band?
I'm curious as to UK end of the link now. I would guess somewhere on the hills around London to get line of sight for a microwave link down to the city.

Having just checked the Ofcom Spectrum Information System [0], it does not appear that they could have a transmitter for the opposite direction due to the frequency allocation to MoD and Amateur. Maybe they have a contract with the shortwave broadcasters to embed trading data into their broadcasts.

[0] https://www.ofcom.org.uk/spectrum/information/spectrum-infor...

PoachedSausage··on TV Tuner History
I found it sometime last year, looking for data on a Philips video IF processing chip, I thought about posting it. Great site from an interesting guy, a rather sad history of the decline of electronics manufacturing in western europe though, death by bean counters.

What was the IC you were looking for, PLL synthesizer or Demodulator?

PoachedSausage··on Victory at the High Court against the government’s use of 'general warrants’
I agree that it ought to be that way, however those with power tend to want to hang on to it. How do you solve it? The US has a term limit for the President, but you can stay in Congress/Senate/Parliament for life if re-elected.
PoachedSausage··on Victory at the High Court against the government’s use of 'general warrants’
That might have been true in Jefferson's day, lifespans were shorter. Now most western democracies are effectively gerontocracies, the young are bound to the wishes of the old. See Brexit.
PoachedSausage··on Victory at the High Court against the government’s use of 'general warrants’
No, not a specific political difference, more of a differnce of socio-economic/age/class/possibly even race. As we saw at the last election Corbyn wasn't that popular with some traditional Labour voters.

Perhaps we will see some changes now that we are getting stories of Hard Working Families (TM) having to spend large sums of money to buy Cannabis based medications for their children.

PoachedSausage··on Victory at the High Court against the government’s use of 'general warrants’
The kind of civil liberties they like are the rather limited kind, or only for the right kind of people (their voters). During the debate on the November lockdown, the word 'arbitrary' was used a lot, yet they are quiet on the arbitrary nature of the classification of Cannabis, no civil liberties for users of Cannabis (wrong kind of people).
PoachedSausage··on Texas Instruments sent a DMCA takedown to a site archiving data sheets
>The hardware companies are still stuck way in the past.

If only. In the past it was common to provide schematics of your hardware in order that people could repair it. This was common for consumer products, industrial, instrumentation, test gear, almost everything. For example, the manual for the Amiga 500 had the schematics in it.

PoachedSausage··on Texas Instruments sent a DMCA takedown to a site archiving data sheets
I had noticed that the UK distributors that I use on a regular basis, RS and Farnell, have stopped hosting TI's datasheets on their sites. It makes it quite annoying to make a quick check to see if the part does what I want.

Whats up at TI? They used to be great for datasheets and Appnotes.

PoachedSausage··on MakAir: Covid-19 ventilator with a Raspberry Pi
Why use the Rpi at all (Nothing against them, I have a few)? If the Pi is just writing graphics to a screen, why not handle that directly with the STM32? Running an RTOS, it should be able to manage a low priority GUI task along with the real-time ventilator tasks.
PoachedSausage··on 5G Advocates Renew Attempts to Poach Wi-Fi’s 6GHz Spectrum
What do Ofcom do to enforce it?

They used to have a number of spectrum monitoring stations, however they were decommissioned, I know someone that bought bits of it at auction.

PoachedSausage··on 5G Advocates Renew Attempts to Poach Wi-Fi’s 6GHz Spectrum
Your spectrum monitoring sounds interesting. Do you have any details/write up?
PoachedSausage··on Ask HN: Any less known but cool places you want to visit one day?
You could island hop across the Atlantic. Bermuda -> Azores -> Canaries. Work your way up the Irish sea from the Scilly Isles -> Lundy -> Skomer -> Bardsey -> Angelsey. On up to Faroes (Bonus points for a stop off on Rockall) -> Iceland -> Svalbard.

That would make an nice amateur radio Islands On the Air (IOTA) expedition.

PoachedSausage··on 81k UK-owned .eu domains suspended as Brexit transition ends
That is how it appeared to me. Like Vultures fighting over bare bones. It would have been better if they had a agreed a 10 year moratorium on fishing in EU and UK water to let fish stocks recover.
PoachedSausage··on Danes Get 20-Year 0% Mortgages
It might be better in the short term, but after a while an angry mob starts banging on your doors.
PoachedSausage··on Danes Get 20-Year 0% Mortgages
So, house price, Z = [Re] + [Im]

Where Real part is down payment and Imaginary part is land price?

Seriously though, this has been the situation in the UK for a long time. Today the down payment is equivalent to price of the house in the 1970's.

PoachedSausage··on Brexit stops Brooks England sales of ‘Made in Britain’ saddles to UK shoppers
I've never found padded cycle shorts very comfortable and find it quite annoying that finding good quality cycling shorts without padding is getting difficult. Without padding they can also be used for other forms of exercise/sports.
PoachedSausage··on AMD Patent Reveals Hybrid CPU-FPGA Design That Could Be Enabled by Xilinx Tech
I had a feeling yosys might do it somehow. Thanks.
PoachedSausage··on AMD Patent Reveals Hybrid CPU-FPGA Design That Could Be Enabled by Xilinx Tech
Thanks. Very useful.
PoachedSausage··on The Nashville bombing and threats to critical infrastructure
It was suspected that the IRA Docklands bombing[0] was possibly targeting the telecomms infrastructure. I think there were also some attempts at bombing the National Grid which failed.

You are correct that a lot of CNI is vulnerable due to its nature (remote locations etc). Thankfully, like with most terrorism, the people capable of doing the most damage are not usually interested in carrying out such acts.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1996_Docklands_bombing

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