Daemon Silverstein

historically we’ve been using AM at lower frequencies, and these travel further

While I agree with that statement…

AM doesn’t reach further than FM

… i disagree here. Yes it kinda does, and there’s why: FM deteriorates with phase shifting introduced by phenomena such as ionospheric reflection, while AM is more resilient to it because it encodes information as amplitude variations instead of frequency (and therefore, implicit phases) variations. Also, FM needs more bandwidth than AM. Also, the overlay of two or more simultaneous AM transmissions is “more understandable” than two or more simultaneous FM transmissions laying on the same frequency. Both the three are the reasons why the modern aviation continues to use AM for comm between TWR and airplanes, as an example. Not just by historical reasons, it’s because AM is more resilient than FM.

By “reaching further”, I don’t mean the range of propagation because, as you correctly said, it has more to do about wavelength and, therefore, the carrier frequency. By “reaching further”, I actually mean the capability for the signal to be correctly demodulated and minimally understandable at the end. If a signal can propagate across hundreds of thousands of kilometers (for example, between Earth and the Moon), but it can’t be recognizable at the other point (because the phases are all messed up to the point of being unable to be demodulated), then the signal (as in the content to be transmitted/received) couldn’t really “reach further”.

Here goes an example: I live in Brazil, in the southeast. I was in Sao Paulo state (not the city) when I once managed to receive an English-spoken CB (Citizen Band, 11 meters, approx. 27MHz) transmission. Most of our neighboring countries are Spanish-speakers, the only nearest English-speaking country is Guyana (the nearest corner close to Jatapu River being 3,000 km from Sao Paulo in straight line), but I could tell by the operator accent that he was not from Guyana. The reception would be almost crystal-clear, if my receiving setup were better (I was using a RTL-SDR with a piece of long wire barely touching the outside of the antenna’s jack). While there are repeaters for CB, they’re not as common as VHF or UHF repeaters, where you can even find, for example, EchoLink repeaters, so the international transmission really made into my Brazilian home, and it was even daylight! I only could tell the signal because it was AM modulated.

When we talk about deep space communication, sure some things change, but most of the same rules apply.

These radio telescopes don’t transmit anything at all,

Back in 1974, the former Arecibo radiotelescope was used to transmit the famous Arecibo message (some sources Wikipedia and Universe Today). So, while they’re most used for reception, they can be (and they were) used for transmitting as well. It’s not a straightforward thing, it’s not simply a switch to be toggled receive-or-transmit because they involve different electronic circuitry, but the structure, the dishes and the antenna, can both transmit and receive: for reception, it just interacts with electromagnetic fields, which induces an oscillating electrical current all the way through the structure until it’s filtered (through electronic components such as variable capacitors) and amplified by a receiver circuit, while as for transmission, it conducts an oscillating electrical current and irradiates it, depending on the antenna shape and properties.

Much like a normal telescope doesn’t transmit light.

It’s also a possible thing: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lunar_Laser_Ranging_experiments#List_of_retroreflectors

I once saw a video of a person touching a grounded sausage to the metallic structure of an AM radio tower, the transmission was audible as the sausage was being zapped. If there’s a merely conductible thing grounded near the tower, I guess it’ll sort of “coil whine” (a well-known phenomenon when electrical components physically vibrate due to the passage of current), converting to sound whatever it’s being transmitted at the moment. This includes the tower structure itself, if the electrical grounding isn’t properly done or if there’s some grounding leak. Otherwise, a grounded thing touching the tower would suffice to convert the transmission into sound, if those radio-telescopes use AM modulation (I’d guess they do, because AM modulation is known for reaching longer distances than FM).

Let S be an endless string which is a concatenation of every binary counting in succession, starting from zero all the way to infinity (without left zero-padding):

S = 01101110010111011110001001101010111100110111101111…
(from concatenating 0, 1, 10, 11, 100, 101, 110, 111, 1000, 1001, and so far)

Let S’ be a set of every sequential group of octets (8 bits) from string S, which can be represented as a base-10 number (between 0 and 255), like so:

S’_2 = [01101110, 01011101, 11100010, 01101010, 11110011, 01111011, …]
S’_10 = [110, 93, 226, 106, 243, 123, …]

I’d create an audio wave file whose samples are each octet from S’_10 as 8-bit audio samples, using a really low sampling rate (such as 8000 Hz or even 4000 Hz).
That sound, that particular sound, is what I’d transmit to the cosmos: the binary counting, something with a detectable pattern (although it’d be not so easily recognizable, but something that one could readily distinguish from randomness noise).

In Brazil we officially call it something like “National Enabling Card” (here I’m translating “Carteira Nacional de Habilitação”, CNH, in a literal way). By joining the meanings from words “Carteira” and “Habilitação”, it takes the meaning of “license”. But here’s the catch: while the English part of CNH is “Driver License”, the original Portuguese name doesn’t mention the “motorista” (i.e. the driver). It’d be something like “National License”, focusing more on the collective (nation) instead of who is actually being licensed (the driver, the individual, the citizen).

Edit: I noticed that your map is wrong for Brazil. The Brazilian CNH (the newer models) has “Driver License”, not “Driving License”, among the international languages below the original Portuguese title for the document: English, Spanish and French.

Exactly the same applies to Portuguese: Janeiro, Fevereiro, Março, Abril, Maio, Junho, Julho, Agosto, Setembro, Outubro, Novembro, Dezembro. Only the names for days of week are different here: Domingo (Sunday), segunda-feira, terça-feira, quarta-feira, quinta-feira, sexta-feira and sábado. Colloquially (at least here in Brazil) we omit the “feira” suffix, saying just “quarta” or “segunda”.

Curious to see how the peaks aren’t specifically for a country, but for a region. The tallest peaks within Brazilian territory geographically correspond to São Paulo (actually, Sao Paulo’s neighboring region including Guarulhos as well as Campinas) and Rio de Janeiro. Between them it’s possible to see a smaller peak, it’s probably Belo Horizonte. The peak below is probably Curitiba. There are peaks on the northeast corresponding to Northeastern capitals, such as Salvador, Fortaleza and Natal. The Brazilian north and middle-west are sparsely populated. So, in a sense, the indicators are specifically placed within the map, corresponding not just to countries, but accounting for local demographics as well. Nice.

It seems like alarms can trigger Google Assistant routines. Alarm sounds can either use local ringtones or YouTube Music. These things, Google Assistant and YouTube Music, they are cloud services. I imagine that the clock’s privacy policy is there due to the usage of these cloud services (along with the rule from Play Store that requires every app to have a privacy policy).

Just a tip: always strip the si=... parameter from URLs. The si parameter is a form of tracking from platforms (particularly Youtube and Soundcloud, although other platforms use it as well), so the platforms can know who shared things and who opened the things that the former shared. When you send a clean link, without the si parameter, it’s more difficult (if not impossible) for platforms to determine who shared the link being opened/downloaded.

I’ve been using it on Android because of its seamlessly crossfade feature (i.e. the next music/replay gets faded in as the current music is approaching the end). I made some loops with Audacity and it’s the only music player that manages to play them endlessly with no gaps.

A naive question of mine, but isn’t using a browser/extensions that silently/transparently blocks cookies (such as Brave, but not just it) enough to fearlessly click “Accept All Cookies”, since ultimately they would be pointless for the purpose of tracking (due to the browser’s own cookie blocking capabilities)?

Teenagers today were born in the aftermath of a global financial crisis, are seeing war after war after war, grow up with the knowledge that the world is going to shit and the older generations aren’t willing to do anything about it. They see everyone pull up the ladder behind them, the ‘fuck you I got mine’ mentality is everywhere.

Not just teenagers (Alpha generation), but also GenZ and part of Millennials. I’m personally a Zennial (microgeneration between both GenZ and Millennials) and I feel the same as described in your comment: things are going worse everyday, most of the older generations (Gen X and Boomers) seems deadpanned about climate change, wars, economic crisis, and I’d also add broken dreams (lots of plans were destroyed because of things such as COVID pandemics, for example). It’s depressing to know that living will be worse and worse as the time passes.

Browser reader’s mode and Archive Today: hold our beers.

Websites from alternative networks such as Onion, Freenet, I2P and GNUnet, where speed and privacy are a must-have. Onion webchats, for example, uses neverending-loading with iframes/HTML frames (and another frame/iframe with a standard HTML form), so to not depend on JS.

At the surface web (clearnet), however, it’s harder to find. Even the remaining old sites, from blogosphere and personal tilde websites (those whose URL contained a tilde “~” followed by an username) have some degree of JS.

Exactly! Thanks! I couldn’t point the exact label, I’ve been using Linux for years in a daily basis so I forgot most of the Windows shortcuts/options.

When I read the title, I was thinking of something sophisticated such as hidden executable streams inside the MKV container (IIRC, it’s possible to append binary data other than audio, video or subtitles specifically inside a MKV). The “.lnk” trick only works in Windows and, even there, it’s easy to prevent: Windows Explorer > Options > Advanced > find and check “Always show extensions for files” (i can’t really remember the exact label for this option as I’m not a Windows user, but something like this will be there).

It’s-a Nebrask-a!

Most of the systems I worked on, were legacy, badly-engineered systems. I worked for five years “maintaining” (or trying to maintain) a commerce platform made with pure PHP, an old version of PHP that couldn’t be really updated. The platform depended on an external API that’s constantly changing (as we speak): changes that couldn’t be reflected on this platform as it’d imply a complete rewrite of such system. No documentation, no worry about good practices, “just keep it” (while dealing with angry customers, as I was also responsible for internal support intricacies). Good thing I left, although I miss that money for… I dunno… surviving, as I have no prospect of being hired any time soon. I worked for 10+ years (cumulative experience) as an IT professional, but I’m sincerely thinking of abandoning my “career” for a simpler job. I love computers and I love math, but I hate being a cog inside a broken machine.

Portuguese has no different word for them as well. Both raven and crow are translated as “corvo”.

In Portuguese we have the word “venenoso” for “poisonous” and “peçonhento” for “venomous” (i.e. something with a “peçonha”, any toxin substance produced and injected on another animal). But we often use “peçonhento” e “venenoso” interchangeably (e.g. “cobra venenosa”).

Isn’t a file browser needed for browsing the saved documents and spreadsheets?

Not to mention that office suites (such as WPS, OpenOffice and LibreOffice) will inevitably pop up a file browser when the “Open” or “Save” buttons/menu items are clicked.