Yet more randomness
Search
Previous Blogs
-
Recent Posts
Recent comments
- Fred Stiening said The outage for the past couple days was partly related to this issue, but not completely The blog is back restored as it...
- Fred Stiening said I was notified this morning that they resolved the problem and the current extract appears to be correct. It will proba...
- Fred Stiening said I surrender. I looked through all the reasonable ways to connect radio stations with their licensee. I have now change...
- Fred Stiening said No response. No Surprise.
- RebelSansClue said I hope to God that it’s the staff of the prison doing the listening. Didn’t think prisoners had access to i...
- Fred Stiening said I poked around in the SEC filings, and their claim is they are one of the two largest “scaled” radio broadc...
Popular Posts
The 15 most visited posts in last 60 days:- Audacy files for Chapter 11 bankruptcy
- Garbage In, Garbage Out
- Who streams from here?
- GDPR Notice
- The future of Salem media
- The End Game for AM radio
- Where are they now?
- Alex Jones is baaaack!
- The Decline of the Dickey Empire
- What is the SIPC?
- John Boehner on SOPA
- 16 tons of student debt
- Silent Station List
- IMG_0954
- Meet Cathy Hughes
Archives
Login
The story of the day seems to be that FEMA is (was) through payjng motel bills for Puerto Ricans to stay in motels in Florida and elsewhere, and paying their airplane fair back “home”
Good deal for Puerto Ricans. Remember, they pay no federal income taxes and never have – it is the ultimate welfare plantation.
The biggest problem I see with Puerto Ricans is that all they know is Socialism since 1948, even their pro-statehood party is called “New Progressive Party.” When Puerto Ricans left their island for the mainland after Hurricane Maria, they move en masse to FL 100,000+ and to TX 50,000+ and to NY 75,000. Unfortunately they carried that disease known as Socialism and will infect they new homes with an epidemic that destroyed their former homes. These people would vote as a block 95% Democrats. Add that to our porous borders and we have a problem.
Actually I am in favor of FEMA to continue paying for their one-way trip home. Heck I would contribute to that.
I know Puerto Ricans quite well, both my mom and dad were military. I was born at Ramey AFB in PR and grew among them for 12 years! Puerto Ricans are takers and not givers. They will milk our resources and not even bat an eye. Two of the most egregious Communists in our House are Gutierrez D-IL and Velazquez D-NY and now that new darling of the left, Alexandria. These people are hoping for PR independence so they can become El/La Presidente(a). I hope they succeed. Throwing the American Taxpayer’s money in that hellhole is a total waste of money.
I know a woman living in Puerto Rico whose daughter married a Muslim man from Bangladesh. He comes from a rich family and they plan to move to Miami where he can help other Muslim immigrants to follow. Since Puerto Ricans are US Citizens, marrying one gives the immigrant permanent resident status if they convince INS it is not a sham marriage. They met online playing some multiplayer game a few years ago. No mention of the dowry involved.
The bigger problem is that the new leader of Mexico openly admires Hugo Chavez and what he did to Venezuela.
I understand why the incumbent party lost – Mexico has a higher murder rate than Iraq and has for years.
Unfortunately, I expect Mexico to go from bad to worse… much worse.
The problem also exists of Muslim immigration to Mexico. I know that in Venezuela, Iran has a base, more than just military. The Vice-President of Venezuela is Tareck Zaidan El Aissami Maddah (Hmmm that doesn’t sound like Ramirez or Rodriguez) and he is not only the main man when it comes to drugs being brought in to the US, but he is the leader in importing Islam to Spanish-speaking countries, primarily Mexico because of close proximity to us infidels. They actually train Muslims to sound Hispanic and speak Spanish with a local Mexican accent. Islam is the fastest growing religion in Mexico and mosques are growing by leaps and bounds. Islam has infiltrated our military during the Obama Regime. I read a report today that 10% American military support ISIS. That I find scary. The Army has already made 160 arrests, all Muslims. We are in grave danger and with Mexico moving further left the future is dark. I suspect that eventually we will have to station troops at the border in a heightened state of constant alert.
Parrott is back from dodging the watermelon trucks on 485 & 77 in the greater Charlotte/Mecklenburg co last tuesday. I’m the ‘Transporter’ for Mrs Parrott when she has to travel to a conference. This time it was Charleston SC.
Great food, and visited USS Yorktown , and Pounce cafe.
https://www.pouncecatcafe.com/cafe/
That was a blast !
Interestingly I did hear on WBT, they have a morning show with former NC Gov.
Pat McCrory is co-host. Fred: have you heard his show ?
I heard his analysis of who President Trump needs to pick. He’s pretty good. ( while I was sitting in the parking lots I-77, then 21, then finally 115 north on the way home Friday. Chaos.
77 use to be such a nice road. They should have had six lanes in the 1990’s from Statesville to North Charlotte.
I didn’t get back on 77 until the Troutman exit. Then it was fine.
Parrott
Countess listens every day to McCrory – me, not so much. He was mayor for 14 years and I’m pretty sure he did a “Friday with the mayor” show. He is very comfortable talking about most anything. His name was floated briefly for VP in 2016, but nothing came if it. He isn’t ruthless enough.
I-77 was in limbo for a long time because of indecision about when and where the tunnels in West Virginia would be built. So when I was in High school there was a section open between Harmony (North of Statesville) to Mooresville, but the I77/85 interchange wasn’t built yet. Eventually the part from Harmony to I-81 was built, and the area through Charlotte was finished. At that time, I-85 was still “temporary” with traffic signals and business entrances between Concord and China Grove.
The toll road construction on I-77 is a disaster and may have been the reason McCrory lost. There is recent talk about buying out the contract and reverting to a free road instead of tolled express lanes.
dear parrott: glad you and mrs. parrott got home safe and sound after running the traffic gauntlet here in charlotte.
as fred mentioned, i do listen to pat mccrory regularly. he is smart and funny and quite engaging. (fred went to college with him so i get to hear periodic anecdotes from their salad days at catawba college.) fred says pat could have climbed farther up the food chain in politics but he just doesn’t have the killer instinct needed. i agree. he seems to have an actual moral compass.
he also has a real talent for local radio. moves things along well (with the help of the co-host, a veteran local radio guy) and the show doesn’t take calls. pat is always very well-prepared and hits the ground running right after 9 a.m. absolutely no self-indulgent nonsense. also keeps the sports stuff to a minimum, which i appreciate.
but i should add for the benefit of all of you who are looking for new talk radio hosts to listen to (aren’t we all ?) that the show is very charlotte-centric. pat opines on some national and international news but after 14 years as mayor of charlotte and one stint as north carolina governor, his heart is here.
Hey there! Nice to see you again.
Did you happen to bump into our friend Haiti? I wonder if he moved out of the country and can’t access the web site any more.
Pat is very good at what he does, but taking calls would be pointless. The acrimony of people who hate him has drained any possibility of civil conversation.
I have been out of the country, but am back in Detroit. I was fortunate enough to visit the Philippines, Macau, and Hong Kong. Was at a restaurant in Manila that was proudly serving Freedom Fries, and had a poster on the wall extolling the virtues of the U.S. Military. It reminded me of one of the Navy ROTC Midshipmen that was in my unit at the Illinois Institute of Technology in 1984. http://articles.latimes.com/1992-02-27/local/me-3911_1_filipino-sailors
Well, that is an interesting aspect of the US Military I was not aware of. I wonder if the real reason is the immigration position of the Trump administration.
Glad to see you are alive and kicking. You always bring interesting insights to our discussiins.
Countess and I were taking a virtual tour of Detroit a few days ago when Ford had the media spash about its unexpected purchase of the Michigan Central train station. So far, none of the accounts have pointed out that Ford was the force behind the Renaissance Center which they abandoned – which makes their talk about their “commitment” to the City of Detroit a bit hollow, and suggests tax credits is the actual motivation.
There seems to be a corporate inferiority complex that the kinds of young employees they want need to work in an edgy urban environment. That is one reason Ford is doing this. Other examples:
ADM moving main office from Decatur IL to Chicago.
McDonalds moving from suburbs to downtown Chicago.
Dow Chemical creating an urban looking campus complete with weird baseball stadium in Midland.
Quicken Loans with its jobs in downtown Detroit and Cleveland.
Interesting discussion. I don’t know the particular’s of the ADM, McDonald’s, Dow Chemical and Quicken Loans move to larger cities but suspect that they involve cronyism where the government gave them some tax money that they are not only “not giving” but actually taking from their competitors and others already doing business in those cities.
Back before Immelt took over GE, it was quite successful in its strategy of locating its businesses in smaller cities so that its professional employees could not get a similar job unless they moved with their families to a different city – it prevented turnover and the competition that would require industry sized salary increases.
We had a story locally a few days ago that a company in Monroe, NC that makes nondescript frozen foods has announced they are closing and filing the paperwork when you took money to “create jobs” then fail. The company was recently acquired by McCain foods of Idaho, probably intending to shut the NC factory. Long distance management is hard to do, and increasing wages probably undermined whatever notion of profitability they had.
Unemployment among people identifying themselves as Hispanic is at an all time low.
Is there a story behind the watermelon truck? Did you get a free one through the windshield?
I looked and it didn’t say anything about the driver. They did have cool pics. https://www.charlotteobserver.com/news/local/article213853624.html
I was happy to make it through unscathed. Friday coming back home someone else decided to have a love tap on 77 north, and sent me cross country up 115. If I had any sense, I would have taken 16 north to Denver NC and cut back over to 77.
I know next time.
Thats interesting about 77 and that it will be toll. I guess they will remove the NC gas tax then ? Its higher than Virginia.
best
parrott
PRI, the political party that ruled Mexico for decades got only 16% of the vote in national elections
Since the implementation of the zero tolerance policy, arrests are way down
https://www.usnews.com/news/politics/articles/2018-07-01/apnewsbreak-border-patrol-arrests-drop-sharply-in-june
A theory – Border Patrol knows if they arrest adults with children in tow, they end up with a responsibility they probably do not want, so they just let the families cross the border and look the other way and focus on unaccompanied males
Looks like an unnamed source is bullshitting the bulllshitter over at Bloomberg.
I guess not all colleges require basic science? or are the laws of physics different over in Joisey? LMAO
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-07-03/this-heat-wave-s-so-bad-it-s-even-slowing-down-u-s-stock-trades
It took many microseconds when trades were being done by humans
Who knew that warming the air slows down the speed of light?
As any football fan knows, cold air is denser and kickers can not kick as far.
Of course, light travels faster in a vacuum than through matter.
…but I am someone that didn’t think Obama would stop the oceans from rising when he said he would…. or that I could keep my doctor…
There was no actual source. Nasdaqtrader.com, which is the official source for that type of news release has nothing. There is however, a story about some high frequency trader building a laser link between the two data centers, since microwave links suffer signal loss in high humidity situations. Digital communication links are optimized to assume that the transport layer will not get errors that are uncorrectable using the check bits. That would slow down speeds a tiny bit. It is plausible given human behavior that when a small slowdown occurred, the link was flooded with “tests” that further slowed the link.
My initial thought was that heat might have caused a circuit board to start overheating and it slowed down the clock speed to reduce head dissipation which slowed down the link.
The same reporter contributed to another story about mysterious towers in Chicago speculating that they think someone is going to be using shortwave radio to link Chicago and Europe by bouncing a signal off the ionosphere.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-06-18/hft-traders-dust-off-19th-century-tool-in-search-of-market-edge
I’m going to start a “Go Fund Me” page and email it to the said “reporter”.
The project will be to speed up the link between Europe and Chicago by eliminating the delay that the curvature of the earth causes on shortwave transmissions.
Our secret sauce will be “neutrinos” that are not affected by the curvature… and our bank will be in Nigeria. 😉
Perhaps they intend to use ground wave propagation through the Earth’s crust.
Warmer air holds more water vapor, so the index of refraction increases. As Fred stated, it’s most likely causing a slight increase in bit errors. Also, conductor resistance increases with temperature. i.e. some of it may be electrical/electronic. Back in the ancient days of dial-up, I recall my connection speeds being somewhat ‘slower’ on hot days.
It is actually a very interesting subject to me both from the science perspective and from the unnamed journalist’s source perspective.
Water also attenuates the microwaves and causes some signal loss that could also result in a few dropped bits. I would expect that to be much worse on a foggy day, rainy day or snowy day than on a warm sunny day and would expect an antenna/transmitter/receiver design that minimized any bit loss, and error correction that would fix it.
Another thought I had was that as modern CPUs heat up, they are designed to slow down to protect themselves from overheating. I would expect the CPUs to be indoors and airconditioned properly but it is possible they are not.
Bottom line, while I do respect Bloomberg News as one of the better news sources, and recognize that this was intended as a fun holiday piece, it was vague, unsourced and quite frankly I believe it was “fake news”. I am willing to be proven wrong, and enjoy all the fun speculation but where is the actual data? What was measured? by whom? and how? and when? (the basic journalist’s “who, what, where, when, how, why? “) 😉
Full disclosure- I enjoy deciding whether to have a soft drink and especially what size, particularly on days when it feels like light is slowing down. ; )
One way for a Democrat controlled leglislature and govenor can lock out competition is to use tax payer funds for “state-funded media”.
“Companies led by White men own nearly all of our media.”
http://dailycaller.com/2018/07/02/new-jersey-state-funded-media/
So does this mean there is a state where white non-hispanics are not the majority owners of the state?
I logged into Wikipedia using my 2009 editor account (to fix KIOK-FM), and test the waters to see if anyone cares.
I am watching the PBS July 4th special as they are playing the Patriotic 1812 Overture, celebrating the burning of the White House by the British. Maybe they hope history repeats itself.
If HRC had won, they would be showing Triumph of the Will.
She strikes me as being more like Evita Peron.
…. but more tone deaf than Marie Antoinette.
Former gun rights supporting liberal talk show host “Big Eddie” Shultz has died of natural causes.
https://www.wday.com/news/4468792-ed-schultz-local-and-national-broadcast-personality-has-died
https://www.mediaite.com/online/how-larry-king-and-fmr-msnbc-host-ed-schultz-may-have-helped-russia-create-fake-anti-hillary-clinton-news/amp/
If a radio station cannot market itself to get listeners successfully, why should an advertiser think the radio station can get them customers?
In Chrome (at least on Android tablets) there is a checkbox in the main dropdown list to force the web sites to believe you are a desktop and not try to forcefeed apps on your device
In Chrome on the Windows desktop, you can also Ctrl+Shift+I to Inspect, then Ctrl+Shift+M to get the Device tool bar in the upper left corner. From there, you can have your desktop Chrome browser tell the web pages you are an iPad, iPhone, or an Android.
That is particularly useful on some sites that stream with Adobe Flash for the desktop, but HTML5 or some other alternative for other devices.
Following up on Haiti’s post about corporations moving back inside cities…
A lot of the motivation of young people seems to be a disdain for the idea that car ownership is “freedom”. They have no intention of having children, and sitting alone in a 600 sq foot condo watching Netflix and drinking themselves to sleep with a $40 bottle of wine is contentment.
Here in Charlotte (and around the country), the next big thing is rental electric scooters and bicycles, creating mobility that is less useful than uber/lyft but more useful than walking or public transit. The “gig” economy then hires people to pick up the scooters to recharge and redeploy them each night, probably using someone else’s pilfered electricity.
Very convoluted morals. Somehow having a child is evil because it will contribute to the US’ Paris Agreement carbon footprint goals yet …
they generally support flooding our country with illegal aliens despite it also keeping the US from meeting the same Paris Agreement carbon objectives.
they also don’t understand that an illegal alien living in the US generates a much larger carbon footprint then if said illegal alien remained in his home country.
Apparently, crytopcurrency exchanges offer a better career path than working for the NYSE
https://cointelegraph.com/news/winklevoss-gemini-exchange-recruits-nyse-chief-information-officer/amp
Darwin award for going around crossing gates (with video)
https://www.mercurynews.com/2018/07/08/two-people-dead-after-vta-train-car-collide-in-san-jose/amp/
Hey Ya’ll , I’m back again. ( Trip to ‘Mordor’ for work) this time. WMAL is still transmitting on AM.
I miss you all ! I’m having a hard time keeping up with the conversations! I was listening to John B Wells tonight. He’s pretty good.
Man it sure is dry here in Virginia. Grass is ded ( dead) . Havn’t had much rain at all in June and July. Not since I took Vacay in May at Memorial day, It rained all week .
I think I need Java on my computer to see these video’s . New Flash isn’t doing it.
I have a couple SSD from NewEgg, going to install on a couple Dell D-630’s laptops,
( Chairman knows what they are) and convert them to Ubuntu. I take my travel one with me , its good!
Fired up the ‘whole house fan’ . Its a exhaust fan in place of the attic access door. Up stairs on the second level and it draws out hot air and blows it into the attic where it goes out the eaves and ridge vent. Keeps air moving up there too. I put it in place when we have hot summers. Last time I used it was two years ago. makes a positive difference.
Mrs Parrott made zucchini bread today. She used pecans, cause we didn’t have any walnuts. I was at the store and she didn’t tell me. Its all right, I guess.
Oh I meant to tell you last week or week before, I now have wireless for my Internet access now. Cut the DSL and phone lines, by by Verizon. I have allpoints wireless now. 15.5 Mbps and upload of 5 mbps, for $85 bucks a month , unlimited. Its rock solid. I have my 10 year old Linksys WRT54G Wi-Fi series router back off the shelf and in the game again ! Its cool !
Radio Dead plays like a champ ! ( CC)
Mrs parrotts Ipad and old Samsung Tab work like champs, Her Mac and Toshiba laptop, work well. My XP, 7 & server 2003 computers work super good now ! I have a dam museum here .
I have a new Dell windows 10 something I am setting up , its annoying. It tries to guess what I am going to do. Its for work. DSL was dragging everything down.
talk to you guys later
Have a good one !
parrott
Java and Flash are dead, thank God. And QuickTime on Windows. And Internet Explorer on Apple.
I wish Javascript was dead, but it has totally subsumed HTML at this point. Chrome/Google has totally subjugated the web. Folks are now voluntarily letting Google modify their web pages using “AMP” to speed up mobile devices.
I just learned that Firefox has abandoned firebug for debugging and has adopted the Chrome standard for remote debugging of web browser page rendering…
Glad you like Dead Radio.
Have you ever listened to “Radio Free Phoenix” ? They are kind of a cross between two SiriusXM stations – Vinyl and Deep Tracks. The best way I can describe them is to imagine a bunch of hippies from the 60s that started running a radio station then and never stopped. You hear a lot of 60s and 70s music but also new music that sounds like 60s and 70s music. Its commercial free listener sponsored…. and a great alternative if you want to hear from a living breathing artist. lol
They prominently display their links for your VLC player on his page:
http://radiofreephoenix.com/whatsup/listen/
I like it as good background music while I am doing other things.
Welcome back Parrott! Your post brought back memories, years ago we took a July vacation in the N.C. Mountains, the place we stayed had one of those ‘whole house fans’ — turning it on was all that was needed to provide “air conditioning” on those hot summer days. We went tubing on the Nantahala during that trip, great fun! We also drove up to the dam where they filmed the famous scene in “The Fugitive” movie.
Hi Foyle , Good to see you to ! I know where that dam is. Nice area to visit.
Hey CC, Plastic roads are an excellent idea ! You know I was thinking that maybe the plastic could be used in manufactured cross ties for a railroad? Instead of spikes, you would use a bolt like a ‘lag bolt’ to bore into a plastic tie to hold the rail and ‘fishplate’ in place. Supposedly the concrete ties are not the super cool replacement as once originally thought.
There are many uses for this plastic. Plastic Material added to asphalt is an excellent idea, it would obviously reduce potholes.
we recycle straws and any plastic we have around here I tell you
best
parrott
https://www.rta.org/assets/docs/ResearchPapersArticles/Miscellaneous/final%20creo%20ties%20lca-jtts-apr2013.pdf
Concrete is a huge part of CO2 emissions. The paper makes too many assumptions, but looking at the entire life cycle, concrete uses 1.8x the fossil fuels, 8 times as much water and 5.8x the Greenhouse gasses compared to creosote infused wood ties. My memory is that early experiments resulted in cracking due to extreme temperature differences, which would not be an issue in places like Cuba.
While they think plastic ties might last 40-45 years, there is no real world data to back that up. At the end, you still have a lot of plastic to dispose of somewhere…
Wood vs concrete is kind of interesting. For utility poles (aka the “telephone poles” that are really the responsibility of the electric company) wood infused creosote was all the rage when we were growing up. Not it is not legal to buy creasote – Lowes and Home Depot are not allowed to sell if for mailbox posts and have told me that it is not legal due to the EPA (this was pre-Trump).
Having lived in hurricane areas, I know that the wood poles are good for up to about 100 mph winds, so the Florida coastal areas use concrete. The 100 mph is an approximate number depending on the weight they are supporting, how far to the next pole, wind direction, and a host of other things, but it is an easy to remember rule of thumb.
I’ll go with concrete ties. The spacing between ties is larger, life-span is longer, and they have other uses at end-of-life (e.g. for breakwater, jetties). I see a lot of concrete ties out west.
Creosote off-gasses for years, and leaches carcinogens into the water, lakes, rivers, etc Never liked using them for landscape purposes.
The plastic composite ties consist of a variety of nasty materials which would be destined for a landfill instead of re-purposing at end of life. Not sure how they’ll hold up to UV exposure.
Oh yeah, UV rays. Forgot about that.
Bummer.
Okay, What about ‘Plastic encased ‘ wood cross-tie ? You have the longevity of the concrete tie with cheaper wood core in plastic. The wood tie would last longer as its not exposed to water. Its inside a ‘Plastic-dip’ and the spike goes through the plastic into the wood. The plastic seals its self around the spike. The spike driver machine would have to be modified to heat the spike. Then the hot spike is driven into the tie. Plastic seals around the spike. Spray the plastic tie with UV protectant like ‘303’ mixed with Glyphosate, to keeps weeds away every year or so.
Other than the glyphosate, it may work?
what do you think ?
parrott
One of the strangest media marriages is about to unravel – for reasons best known to the parties, the Onion parody site was acquired by the Univision Spanish language broadcaster. Univision is looking to unload the Onion and gadget site gizmodo.
Let’s see if the Onion reports that the new President of Mexico has agreed to pay for building Trump’s border wall
France won.
Trump declares the EU is a foe of the E.U.
Good News!
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/jul/09/the-man-who-paves-indias-roads-with-old-plastic
Not sure it will work as well with with trains and we all know flying trains are the world’s future. 😉
Now drink down that Latte and pass me a straw. 😉
WTF, WWFD ! lol
https://radioink.com/2018/07/16/no-more-analog-for-this-am-station/
Well, I remember WOR-AM being the technical real world trial. Digital AM requires more than the normal bandwidth in order to imbed the digital signal. This means that it clobbers adjacent channel signals on both sides. DXers hate that.
Existing HD radios can receive hybrid and pure digital AM. A pure digital AM signal has FM quality sound without static and will not suffer from adjacent channel interference. The transmitter would also need much less power.
With the profileration of FM translators, this is a logical next step. Your AM radio is analog only? Just listen on the FM simulcast. Once the audience grows on AM Digital, you someday can split the simulcast (not under current rules).
The odd part is using a sports station. I had a car in the 1980s with AM stereo and the only stations using it were WWJ and WJR, which didn’t play music.
Shiver me timbers, mately!
https://www.radioworld.com/news-and-business/alleged-pirates-contacted-in-n-y-n-j-connecticut-and-miami
Congress is currently working on passage of a law that would impose 6 digit fines on unauthorized operations and permit civil forfeiture of buildings where the owner is aware of the transmitter and doesn’t evict the tenant.
This is a high priority for the NAB, but they need to be careful what they ask for. Licensed operators regularly break the rules knowing the FCC is not currently an agency with police powers. Just wait until the first AM station is fined $500,000 for failing to go to low power after sunset and padlock the building until the fine is paid.
Where is that radio station, you ask? Have a browser?
https://hackaday.com/2018/07/16/global-radio-direction-finding-in-your-browser/
Not sure how this works, but it looks interesting and may be of interest to readers here.
Countess is currently binge watching “French Village”, a 7 season series about living in France during the German Nazi occupation.
I only have seen a tiny bit of bit, but there was a scene with the Germans trying to locate the transmitter that was sending coded messages to England.
So this series is fiction, but I chafe at the lack of understanding of technology when the author applies current technology to a 70 year old story.
In the video, the Germans find the transmitter by measuring signal strength from two locations and based on that draw two circles and find where the two circles intersect at two places. I’m pretty sure that is not how this was done – England had the same issue tracking down German spies. In the United States, during the war, Americans were prohibited from operating short wave transmitters and AARL members were recruited to triangulate on suspected German spies.
Knowing the distance to a transmitter based on signal strength of a battery operated transmitter is preposterous. At best, you might get a simultaneous relative strength. Germans used triangulation that involved direction finding. You can approximate this by attaching a compass to a portable AM radio with a ferrite core. By rotating the radio, you can find the compass direction to the signal. Have two sources, draw lines on a map and where the lines intersect, that is exactly where the transmitter is.
Except that North on a compass is not true North. Maps in the 1940s were not sophisticated enough to show the magnetic deviation correction, which can vary widely over local areas and over time.
Using two antennas on the same device improves accuracy. If you feed both signal into the detector inverting one signal, rather than relying on maximum signal strength when pointing at the transmitter, the two antennas cancel each other out and create a null signal that is much more accurate.
In addition, the earth is curved, maps are flat. The key to triangulation is proximity to the signal, so having portable detectors on a truck that can drive toward the signal while it is broadcasting is helpful. Also, if you don’t know the frequency, you don’t have a starting point.
This technology was used primarily for very high value targets where approximate location was close enough – like tracking the current location of a division of tanks.
The plot also injected the notion that one could have a burnt out tube in the transmitter and a teenage girl at a hardware store could come up with a replacement tube. She got caught, but the premise is suspect.
Yeah, sometimes I think Colonel Hogan is going to ask Sargent Kinchlow (Kinch) to ‘fax’ secret maps and German codes from Klinks code book to the allied offices in London.
The antenna in the flagpole, yeah that is funny and could work, but that implies Hogan and his guys are under Klinks office.
The flagpole is not connected to the prisoners barracks.
On ‘Hogan’ the Germans have a radio detection truck that uses a ‘circular’ antenna to try and locate allied radios. It looks like the ‘hoop’ antenna on TV’s for UHF .
I think the biggest ‘bah’ on Hogan, is when they portray to have voice communications to the British submarine and sometimes to Allied headquarters in London.
Morse code is believable. When Kinch does morse code and when he says he can only contact allies or ‘underground resistance’ only at certain times, its like someone did a little research.
So yeah I watch for that too Fred. I dislike when a movie has a train locomotive out of place. A model that was’t made yet, in reference to time period of film. That’s annoying.
I guess in the movie that Countess is watching, if the teenage girl went to an Aldi or Lidl and they had a self test ‘Tube tester’ and a few replacement tubes locked at the tester, and a store flunky has to open it and get a tube for you,
that would work ? : )
Best
parrott
Her dad ran the hardware store. Her boyfriend talked her into swapping out the burned out tube and her dad could just blame the Tube maker (see: K-Mart return policy)
I have no idea who made portable radio transmitters for the French underground, but it seems unlikely you would find transmitter tubes in a small town hardware store.
The police told her that they had required tube makes to put serial numbers on each tube and the one she had tried to pass off as defective had no serial number. Needless to say, she was grounded for like forever
Grounded is important for radio transmitters. 😉
Whenever I point out technical absurdities in a show, my wife tells me to “just be quiet and watch, you’re spoiling the fun of it.”
Fred, this is a bit off topic, but we’ve been wondering: did (or will) you and Countess ever return to western NY & Niagra? As I recall, your trip was abruptly suspended.
Extremely unlikely. We watched videos of what we missed and it was nothing like what Countess had expected to experience.
> “Using two antennas on the same device improves accuracy. If you feed both signal into the detector inverting one signal, rather than relying on maximum signal strength when pointing at the transmitter, the two antennas cancel each other out and create a null signal that is much more accurate. ”
That is right. I have an antenna in my garage that uses that concept. It is basically 4 FM car whip antennas tuned to the FM band connected together. Physically, they are connected by a block of wood so they form an “X” but electrically the end of each rod does not touch any of the others, instead, each is connected to a tuned length or wire to add a phase delay. The net effect is that signal arriving from the “front” of the antenna is the sum of what is received on each, whereas the signal received on the back it a difference – hence a very high front-to-back ration for a small antenna that I could (and did) hand on the wall of my small apartment years ago…. now if I can only write a consumer-friendly description for ebay, I can take a step toward cleaning out my garage. ; )
I found an older Accurail kit in the ‘pile’ of stuff in my office. Western Maryland 55 ton hopper. I had spray painted the weights that attach to the ‘slope sheet’, primer oxide red, and put them in the box, to be built later. well it looks like its twenty years later !
so I attached the weights using some marine epoxy I have. Spread sparingly with a toothpick, it still pushed out from under the weight on a couple spots. I guess I lost my touch on building these kits.
I found some red primer, sprayed in a piece of recyclable plastic outside, and got my tiny paint brush. Covered that epoxy, looks great, I think.
Have to glue the main frame to the hopper and choose the wheel sets. I have some left over when I use to build a lot, some nice Kadees. I need to look in the box.
work gets in the way with good things in life.
parrott
Parrott – If you can, reply with a photo attached. It sounds interesting.
yeah, I’ll take a pic of the car upside down. Its a simple kit nothing extravagant like a Proto 2000 kit. Now most model trains come from china assembled, or RTR ( ready to Run).
You antenna sounds cool.
parrott
The antenna is way cool. I’d like to take credit for the idea, and am an electrical engineer but I actually found it by a guy making them out of his garage and advertising in the back of a HIFI magazine in the 80s.
His physical design and construction had a few shortcomings which I improved. First, he used 4 telescoping antennas. I found that they would not stay fully extended and was forever having to re-extend them. The antenna is extremely directional and I was forever moving it and turning it and tilting it to get the best reception when I changed from one distant station to another. Eventually one of the telescoping rods broke and I cut off all but the first segment which I used as a base to insert car “whip” antenna which flex and do not break.
As originally designed, the antenna was tuned to the middle of the FM band, 98 MHz which is the middle between 88 -108. I was particularly interested in a noncommercial station near 91, so using the old telescoping rod as a holder, was able to extend each of the rods so that 91 MHz would be its tuned frequency. I also had to replace the wires that connect the rods with one that was also proportionately longer.
The way is works is also pretty interesting to me. It is called “circularly polarized” and works a bit like polarized sunglasses. Back in the beginning of FM broadcasting, radio stations broadcast with “horizontal polarization” and people used dipoles spread out horizontally across their walls or a flat roof antenna like a TV antenna.
As more cars started getting FM receivers, most radio stations also started to apportion some of their broadcast power to “vertical polarization” so that vertical FM car antennas would get a better signal.
The way this “circularly polarized” antenna works is by combining the vertical signal with the horizontal signal (with the 90 degrees phase delay). Signals from one direction will have a positive vertical component (they are added) and signals from the other will have a negative one (they are subtracted)
I loved it and it works great…. but everything I want to listen to now streams and I don’t need it.
Which begs the question of how one locates a spread spectrum transmitter.
For bonus points, what famous actress was awarded the patent for spread spectrum radio communications? It was a mechanical implementation, but same basic principle.
The easiest way to locate a spread spectrum transmitter is this link: https://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_from=R40&_trksid=m570.l1313&_nkw=spread+spectrum+transmitter&_sacat=0 😉
Maybe I’ve been watching too much Chris Cuomo and Alex Trebek, but for the bonus points, in the category of Famous actresses known for spread spectrum I’m going to go with: “Who is Stephanie Gregory Clifford?”
double 😉
Yeah CC, that was my thought also… show-and-tell time.
Charlotte is expected to get the 2020 RNC Convention when the selection is announced this week. The City Council voted 6-5 to support hosting the convention.
While I can’t find the actual city council vote in 2011 for the DNC convention n Charlotte that nominated Barack Obama, Republican leaders welcomed the convention, not calling Obama a Kenyan Communist…
https://www.charlottecentercity.org/charlotte-to-host-2012-democratic-national-convention/
Perhaps Donald Trump will encourage rich white people to move to Charlotte to restore political balance…
Charlotte officially broke ground on moving the Amtrak train station back to the exact location it was in 1962 on the Southern Railroad mainline. The CSX mainlne had a station of its own that still exists and is a homeless shelter.
https://www.charlotteobserver.com/news/business/article214956630.html
First, we need $80 million + cost overruns to add tracks and widen rail bridges and signaling changes. My sense is NS wants nothing to do with any of this, so it quotes ridiculously high costs, knowing governments don’t value money.
After 4 years and $80+ million for track work, then we can start spending $400 million on a new station so that by 2024, we can have adequate facilities for 4 or 5 trains a day.
Denver is probably the prototype for this – where after years of construction, they have a nice looking Amtrak Station for the once a day train from Chicago to California
For those playing SimCharlotte at home
1) is the current location of the Amtrak station – very dangerous neighborhood at 2 A.M. when the New Orleans to New York trains meet, more or less
2) is the former Clinchfield / Family Lines / CSX Station. It houses a huge melees shelter for all your druggie hobos with easy drop off service because of
3) The NS/CSX diamond under the bridge. There is an interlock derailer on the CSX track. CSX trains get to stop there for clearance.
4) is the location of the organization nail Southern RR station, and the future union station for Amtrak, Greyhound, City buses and the Gold Line LRV
5) is the current main LRV on the Blue Line. Note that the Blue Line was built on the former Southern RR tracks through the middle of Uptown. The gold line will connect 4) and 5) for your Amtrak to Blue Line connection, except no public transit is running at 2 AM
Closeup of the derailer. In the event a CSX train at full speed blew through the signals, I doubt the derailer would have any tangible benefit in mitigating damage, and may well take out the bridge supports. The derailers should be back 1000 feet.
The bridge carries I-277, the very busy freeway that encloses Uptown Charlotte
So, if I (theoretically) happen to live over on Graham or Church street, you are saying my house should be up for sale on Zillow?
I guess that depends on your strategy. The city/county already owns the parking lots. The bus station land will be acquired as part of the big $200-$400 million building yet to be built.
The area to the west of the amtrak station was a Ford plant that assembled Model Ts from flat packs. Can’t get enough workers to move North? Move assembly to the South. It didn’t last long. Ford was a time and motion guy, Southerners were poorly educated and hated Yankeees. The ford plant is being repurposed as the trendy artsy place for childless adults. It had also built Hurcules missiles during the cold war and a supply depot during WW2
Filling in more detail, somewhat consciously, uptown is built like a fort, bounded by the railroad on the West and the freeway on the other 3 sides. All major government functions are inside the walls, along with the Federal Reserve branch. Grocery stores and gas stations, not so much.
Get outside the moat, safety and property values plummet, especially to the North and West. The South End is rapidly filling with 5 story mixed use housing along the LRV line, creating a canyon.
Yes, that was gist of my question: should one sell in anticipation of declining safety/value, or should they hold out and await the ‘holy grail’ of urban renewal? (aka millennial ‘gentrification’ of the area)
Those areas to the north of the tracks look like single homes, whereas the south side seems like it is already filling in with multi-family housing.
Compass directions are problematic in Charlotte as the Uptown area is aligned to the railroad tracks that were following old indian trails. In the Old Settler’s cemetery around 7th street back a block from Tryon, (some) grave stones are aligned to the compass rather than the bounding streets. So the “wrong side of the tracks” is considered West of downtown (uptown). Because of the Civil War, the cemetery filled up and Elmwood/Pinewood was opened on the West of the tracks It remained segregated until the 1960s.
I just noticed last night that Bank of America built a walkway under the NS tracks over to the practice field. Duke Power used to operate an Electric interurban line (Piedmont and Northern) that went through that opening to freight and passenger terminals. Having to walk under any railroad tracks or freeway is always a little intimidating and there is a significant issue with vagrants and panhandlers. From a broader view, West of the tracks is “black” turf and will result in the usual cacophony of cries of “gentrification”. West Trade Street has seen a spurt in high density construction, but it is still a hard sell. The ultimate focus of that area is Johnson C Smith University, a historically black college started after the civil war supported now by a permanent income stream from the Duke endowment, protecting black students from academic rigor.
To flesh that out a bit more, in my senior year of high school, Statesville responded to an organized walkout by black students by relieving the principal (for things like expelling students with knives) and hired a black teacher. I signed up for personal finance, a nothing course that would be an easy A. Our teacher was a graduate of Johnson C Smith and apparently had passed the requirements to be a teacher.
She really struggled to read the big words in the dumbed down textbook – but my fondest memory was her going through the example of balancing your checkbook. It was unrealistically simple – one check hadn’t cleared and a service charge that needed to be added to the check register. She went to the chalkboard and was unable to figure it out. Eventually, in desperation, she looked to me and asked me to finish the work on the board. At that time, I had my own checking account, operated the cash register at work and was taking bookkeeping class…
Filling in more details for train nerds. You can see more residue of the Piedmont and Northern. Duke Power’s HQ was next to Rearden Park. You can see residue of a spur that used to run to the back of the building where electrical equipment was stored. That was still present in the late 70s. Crossing over 6th street is a P&N bridge that was not removed.
If you start at the BofA underpass, you will see that the RoW is mostly intact and much of the track was never removed. Passenger service from Gastonia ended in 1951
The remains are owned by SCL/CSX – if you go to Mount Holly, there are parallel train bridges – the Southern one was the P&N. CSX now uses it as a passing siding.
West of Mount Holly, the tracks were bought by NCDOT
The “4” was off by a couple blocks. The existing greyhound bus station will be absorbed into the larger transportation center. Notice the proximity of the NFL stadium and the AAA minor league baseball stadium.
Charlotte was skiddish about trying for a full fledged MLB franchise, so they will probably look to expand it as this neighborhood is reshaped. Those parking lots are a major resource for the sporting events, not so much for office workers.
Useful story to rebut the “all serial killers are white” thing you see plastered in comment sections
http://www.thecharlottepost.com/news/2018/07/18/arts-and-entertainment/documentary-recounts-murder-spree-that-brought-charlotte-to-standstill/
Charlotte Post is the community newspaper for Black Charlotte. They endorsed the white incumbent sheriff over the immigrant loving black man. The incumbent sheriff lost, but helps to give a sense that the paper is hard core law and order.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Louis_Wallace
Tad Devine, Chief Strategist for Bernie Sanders in 2016 (and Al Gore and John Kerry) is showing up in more than a dozen emails with Paul Manafort discussing their work in Ukraine and meetings with Russian “spies”.
https://pjmedia.com/trending/bernie-sanders-strategist-named-in-new-cache-of-mueller-evidence/
Plaster a room with flypaper hoping to catch a fly means you might end up catching yourself.
I wonder if Congress will subpoena the translators regarding the conversations President Obama had with Raul Castro in Cuba.
Would you want to run KKKK-FM (LP) in Colorado Springs, CO?
Some Low Power FM stations are very focused on a specific issue.
Enjoy the videos!
https://bearcreekfelinecenter.org/bcfc-videos/
Happy 49th Apollo 11 day. 49 years ago that that Eagle had landed. That is a surprisingly big number, but this story shocked me because I had not really been paying attention – of the 12 people that had walked on the moon during the entire Apollo program, only 4 are still alive:
https://www.aol.com/article/news/2018/07/19/what-happened-to-the-12-men-who-walked-on-the-moon/23485728/
Even more shocking than that, AOL is still alive. 😉
That is fake news! AOL never existed.
As you know, but some readers may not, AOL is actually Verizon…
Huffington Post is Verizon’s more well known political mouthpiece.
Comcast owns MSNBC and NBC News.
ATT is trying to take control of CNN.
One reason I like T-Mobile is that it doesn’t promote Democrat talking points… or any other political talking points – they focus on what I pay them do do.
What electric cars are capable of
https://arstechnica.com/cars/2018/07/this-full-video-shows-just-how-bonkers-the-vw-pikes-peak-record-was/?amp=1
Now if the condo association would install charging stations in the parking lot, paradise awaits
I’m thinking of different ways to take advantage of the free electricity stations. A compact device that takes in air and separates it into Oxygen and Hydrogen and then pumps it into pressurized tanks until each turns into a liquid would be a compact way to collect the energy and store it for transport. Need to build a small scale model that uses the right range of kilowats watts / hour and fits into my trunk or a small u-haul sized trailer.
You can probably tell that I’m still thinking of the first lunar landing and the first stage of the Saturn V. 😉
Maybe you could add an ion accelerator?
And put a windmill on the hood and draft behind the BMW autonomous electric trucks. It worked for Richard Petty.
Sounds good. Does the condo association require a parking decal for the “free juice”?
Keep a close eye on your monthly assessments. 😉
I mentioned some time ago that about 10 years ago, I clicked on a story about the California high-speed train when reading news in news.google.com and have been getting updates on it almost weekly for the last decade.
As you might imagine, I also click on radio related articles and get a steady stream of interesting and often obscure articles. Today is a good example.
Turns out that rather than recording radio airchecks one station at a time, people in the 80s realized they could record the entire band at once so that years later you could tune from station to station and hear what each was playing at that moment in time. The entire AM radio band goes from approximately .54-1.7 MHz – just over 1 MHz wide. Analog videotape in the 80s recorded analog TV signals that were 6 MHz wide. So people used standard video recorders to record the entire band.
The old analog tapes have since been upgraded to computer disk drives and are an interesting toy for radio hobbyist. Enjoy
https://hackaday.com/2018/07/23/hope-xiii-time-travel-with-software-defined-radio/
Fred, are you and the Countess staying dry above the rising waters?
Neither of us heard anything – the flooding was up on the North Side. In theory, some water might show up nearby, but the golf courses are lower ground. It would take huge floods to affect us, and even then the result might be road closures, not water in the basement. Old trees falling over were the main issue, and our association just cut down 17 trees, mostly for being too close to foundations.
Orders for new railcars are strong
https://www.railwayage.com/financeleasing/railcar-orders-backlog-soars-rsi-keybanc/
In related news, the Toronto Transit Commission discovered faulty welds on streetcars outsourced to Mexico
https://www.railwayage.com/passenger/light-rail/welding-problems-impact-ttc-streetcar-deliveries/
The Charlotte Transit Brainiacs are proposing to essentially build another rail corridor to the airport that looks almost identical to the Piedmont and Northern that ended passenger service in 1951. NCDOT already owns the tracks West of Belmont.
https://www.charlotteobserver.com/news/politics-government/article215031055.html
Left out of the airport rail discussion:
There is an existing “express” bus to the airport that has very little ridership. It makes frequent stops in a low income unsafe area of Charlotte.
Light rail doesn’t fix that issue, and out of town business travelers will not use it no matter the cost saving
The “plan” shows a stop near the airport, but not at the airport. That means a bus transfer, or more likely a future undisclosed half $billion people mover to connect the light rail, long term parking and terminals
In northern climates, these rail stations become homeless shelters because they are warmer than the outside climate and have a steady stream of strangers to harass.
The subways and trains are not interested in profits – they are more interested in riders because riders justify how much they can tax drivers so that riders don’t have to pay for even the operational costs.
The result is what I saw when taking the subway in Philadelphia – the subway stops in a poor neighborhood and the car fills with a gang of break dancers that dance in your face until the next stop. Before they get off the subway, they expect “tips” from you for the entertainment. They ride back and forth without going anywhere all day intimidating people that want a quiet ride.
When I rode the CTA in 1991, riding the Red Line every night around 9PM, you see the patterns – exactly as you describe. They picked the two stations with the longest time between stops. They would get on at Wilson Street, which is something very few real riders would do. It was safe to assume that everyone getting on were working together, pretending to not know each other.
The two main attractions were 3 card monte and the shell game. The confederate pretends to win, then the gullible line up – mostly Spanish speaking immigrants. They would get off at the next stop as a group then wait on the platform for the next Southbound train. There is no way this happens unless the transit police condone it.
The main activity on the morning route was the parent with their young son (on a school day) hopping on the express train full of white people breaking out in a rap “song”, the essence of which was “give me money today so I do not grow up to be a gang member and rape and murder you someday”.
Another pest was the deaf woman handing out cards begging for money. Beyond knowing for certain she was actually deaf, at some point I was tempted to have cards made that said something like “I gave at the ADA – get a job”
well I made a decision. I am going to sell the Triumph and I am going to get one of these: https://www.hikertrailers.com/
small trailer. It can be pulled by the Jeep. ( either one of them)
One of these days, I am going to west Virginia, & Michigan, and Saskatchewan and
Yukon territory and Alaska. Not necessarily on the same trip.
Sometimes the AS is a big production. This is small , I can set my chair out, heat beef stew on the sterno stove. Listen to the owl. look at the stars. Fall asleep at 2am. Yeah, I seen those stars when I was in Scouts. Out on the AT in Mount Rogers rec area. That was a long time ago. Sure wish I could go back and redo a few of those trips!
Any of you guys been to Alaska ? I had a great aunt that lived there in the 60’s and 70’s. They used to send canned Salmon and Moose back to my dad when we lived in West Virginia.
Eh, I getting older and the Triumph is a lot of motorcycle. Let someone else enjoy it.
It has 3200 miles on it. It has a lot of life left in it, and I don’t need to lay it down, that’s for sure. If I hurt Ms. Parrott while on that bike, I’d never forgive myself.
chaos
parrott
Hi Parrott – I’ve been on the ground at all the placed you named except Yukon (although I have flown over the Yukon a number of times.
If you do make it to Alaska, I strongly recommend getting to the Arctic coast in summer. After a few days of the 24 hours of daylight, I was looking for Star Trek communicator to ask someone to beam me up – it felt like a totally different planet with the sun just circling – east at 6 pm, south at noon, west at 6 pm and north at midnight. I hope to do it again someday.
Much much closer to home, consider driving up to Labrador and seeing the Icebergs in summer. On the way, drive up Mount Washinton in New Hampshire. Wonderful places much closer to home.
Thats so wild CC, yeah, Alaska is a dream. I hope I can go there before I get old and cant drive anywhere and they take my truck away. I like the Labrador suggestion. I always wanted to check out Newfoundland also.
Have a good one!
parrott
You won’t find friendlier people anywhere on earth than you will find in Labrador and Newfoundland. They remained part of the UK until well after Canada became a country and officially joined Canada only after WWII.
We drove there from NJ- to the northern top of Nova Scotia, then a car ferry to Newfoundland (that allowed us to sleep) then another ferry to Labrador.
From Newfoundland, there is also a third ferry that is shorter than the ferry to Labrador or the ferry to Labrador – that is the ferry to France! lol
When France ceded “New France (Quebec)” to the British, they were allowed to keep two small islands off Newfoundland so that their fishing fleets would have a safe port in the storm and be able to restock on fresh water and food. I have not visited but wanted to. They use Euros, fly the French flag, and the part I like – I had heard that the cable TV company there has dozens of TV channels from Paris.
If you like seafood, that is a great part of the world. It does get dark at night in summer but only for a few hours.
No tickey, you walkie.
“China is building a global empire of state-controlled projects that leave developing nations supportive of and often deeply in debt to China. The real winner of these projects is the Chinese government and the losers are the Western nations that are rapidly losing influence. ”
from:
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/china-bankrolled-a-new-railway-in-nigeria-heres-why-its-a-big-deal
Check out the “Iron Monster” graphic showing how they build railroads over valleys and canyons to avoid bend:
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-41206772
A few days ago, we watched a YouTube video looking at the 4 year old Metro system built by China in Mumbai (Bombay) India. There is a big observable difference between India and a similar effort in Nairobi Kenya.
The Indians have a hundred years of experience running and maintaining railroads. The Chinese systems are very sophisticated with computer operated train control. Ultimately, they want the countries to do the day to day operations, so they recruit locals and send them to China for education. The Indians have the literacy, scientific training and railroad experience to be a success, although they still view the primary purpose of railroads to be as a provider of “make work” jobs.
In Subsaharan Africa, the recruits cannot even read and write in their native language and have no understanding of computers and following maintenance processes. As a result, Chinese workers end up doing most of the work, letting the native workers do only menial stuff that requires little skill. One of the pervasive problems is copper theft, so security is much of the employment. This leads to much cultural resentment of the Chinese. These countries are incurring huge debts and within a decade or two will be fully occupied by China.
We learned in the 1860s how valuable railroads are to quickly transport troops to quell a population in revolt. Africans may yearn for the days of European colonization.
The real opportunity though for China in Mumbai is to build a sewage treatment system. Mumbai is proud that they have deployed enough toilets so only 600 people share a toilet. Even so, those toilets are portapotties, not an actual treatment system. Public defecation is the social norm. It should be no surprise why cholera is such a problem.
I was thinking the other day this might be why many Indians don’t eat meat – with no treatment of fecal matter, diseases like worms that pass from human to human or animal to human might be less able to maintain the necessary transmission vectors. It is currently just a theory with no research.
BART seems to have the crime of Subsaharan Africa:
http://www.ktvu.com/news/bart-safety-concerns-transit-agency-reports-3-homicides-in-1-week
Yet, the “make work” jobs and public defecation of India: “As of 4 a.m. Monday through October, the elevators in each station will be staffed with attendants to provide some sense of security and, the transit agencies hope, deter people who use the elevators as restrooms. Pushing the elevators’ buttons will be part of the attendants’ job.” from https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/BART-Muni-introduce-new-strategy-to-keep-12875957.php
New Nick : San PooCisco, CacaFornia.
Wait for the new $100 billion train to come on line… methinks they didn’t budget even $1 for elevator attendants.
To provide a “sense of security”…
Running the elevator at Macy’s or being a train porter used to be a solid good American job…
When a group of knife-wielding MS13 gang members chase me on the train platform, I will remain glad that my high taxes afford me the right to live in the sanctuary city and that the person recently fired as a Walmart greeter and subsequently hired as a unionized unarmed government elevator operator will provide me with “some” sense of security. Don’t poo poo that thought. 😉
Just don’t bring a gun to a knife fight
Trouble at lifelock
https://amp.timeinc.net/fortune/2018/07/25/symantec-lifelock-customer-data-offline
I always thought it odd that within minutes of signing up, people would have hack attempts against them, and LifeLock advertised that as a feature.
457-55-5462 Todd Davis, CEO of Lifelock
http://marketingshmarketing.net/post/130466094301/lifelock-marketing-fail-ceo-get-hacked-13-times
That was about when they added the disclaimer of “OF COURSE, no service can prevent all identity theft”… As if they had been saying that all along..
They had marketed it as “preventing” identity theft, which of course, is impossible. Realistically, it is more of an unregulated insurance product where you pay your premium and if you have a claim you get a payout. Works great until they have more claims than the premium to pay them.
After the advent of the social security number, the financial industry used it as a “password” for borrowers to prove who they said they were. My own first driver’s license did not have a photo on it, it was just a card with my name address and birthdate, height and weight… perhaps hair color too.
The real issue has to main parts- first the federal government had said that there would be a one-to-one relationship between people and SSNs but they knowingly allow illegal aliens to use SSNs for citizens and do not prosecute or confiscate the assets of offenders.
The second is that the financial industry has found they can deflect blame for handing out money to people using fake SSNs by re-victimizing the victims of the identity theft of which they were a party.
“The LifeLock site’s subscription-management page uses a simple sequential account number that, when modified, displays the email address of whichever user corresponds to that account.”
That was unconscionable… even back in 1998.
Random randomness
https://www.wired.com/story/cloudflare-lava-lamps-protect-from-hackers/amp
That is pretty cool. Three secret components that no one else has access to.
I was thinking there might be a way to incorporate a measurement of fake news into the equation but I didn’t find one. Instead, I found fake news of fake news (i.e. humor)
“45 Radio launches in Norwich on DAB multiplex”
The new station and/or its format are not particularly interesting. What is interesting is the structure of the headline. Once the AM and FM broadcasting are sunset and multiple stations are multiplexed into a single signal for a region (similar to a cable company carrying multiple TV channels), the US radio news will be in in the format of this headline. Here is the full three paragraph article: https://radiotoday.co.uk/2018/07/45-radio-launches-in-norwich-on-dab-multiplex/
If you listen carefully, you probably noticed that very few radio stations actually do their own traffic reports. Some semi-anonymous voice from 1000 miles away reads the highway patrol / DOT alerts, then does a 15-20 second commercial sold by the traffic company.
Well, Entercom inherited a mess from acquiring the CBS radio stations, especially the all news stations. Philadelphia based US Traffic Network (Malvern) is suing Bala Cynwyd based Entercom in a Texas court. The details are complicated, but it is clear the arrangement is beyond repair.
http://www.philly.com/philly/business/law/entercom-cbs-radio-kyw-traffic-united-states-traffic-fraud-suit-20180731.html
Earlier this year, the Australian owners of USTN threw in their cards
http://www.philly.com/philly/business/comcast/united-states-traffic-network-malvern-liquidation-sold-top-execs-20180315.html
Traffic and weather (and perhaps railroads 😉 ) are complicated enough to each possibly have their own blogs. 😉
I’m sure Countess would remember “Shadow Traffic” in Philadelphia. It started out in the 1970s as a guy giving traffic reports over CB radio and then he used to give the same reports to the Philly radio and TV stations. It had a tortuous path to get there, but it is now part of iHeart https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shadow_Traffic
One of its announcers in the NYC market was Donna Fiducia who was regularly on WNEW-FM and later a regular on the Howard Stern Show… end eventually an early news reader on the Fox News Channel https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donna_Fiducia
I looked up Shadow Traffic to see if it was related to this US Traffic Network and it appears that the two are unrelated.
FWIW- The weather channel and weather.com have gone through some interesting transformations since NBC bought and sold them.
Which blog would you like to be the editor for?