PoachedSausage
Joined 9 years ago
Karma
493
Submissions
282
Member since
Aug 11
Recent submissions
Comment · 4 years ago
It is also a good signal to use for frequency calibrations as the carrier is derived from a Caesium reference.
Comment · 4 years ago
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
Comment · 5 years ago
We could go for ecological and climate collapse instead.
I hope there is a middle way.
Comment · 5 years ago
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.
Comment · 5 years ago
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.
Comment · 5 years ago
There is also the excellent "The Jet Engine" book by Rolls-Royce:
https://hermessuspendeme.com/DOCS/GrevaEdgar/greva%202B/2B/S...
Comment · 5 years ago
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.
Comment · 5 years ago
A good start:
Comment · 5 years ago
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...
Comment · 5 years ago
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.
Comment · 5 years ago
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.
Comment · 5 years ago
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...
Comment · 5 years ago
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?
Comment · 5 years ago
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.
Comment · 5 years ago
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.