You are thinking of electric clocks connected to a so-called Mother Clock. That connection was a special cable, not the mains. The last minute before the full hour they synchronised by means of extra pulses. You would typically find them on train stations and public places.
I have a matched set of 4 of them that came from a warehouse, but they were also common in schools, hospitals, prisons, etc.
The run motor is just a dead-simple 60Hz line-powered clock motor and mechanism with a suicide switch a few minutes before midnight. So, at 11:57 or so, the run motor turns itself off. The master clock operates the set motor to synchronize them, and then turns the run motors back on.
I keep on meaning to build something with a USB port and a couple of relays so that I can use a Linux machine with an NTP client as a master clock for them. Since I don't feel like reinventing the wheel or spending a few grand to buy the real controller, if anyone knows of such a system pre-built, let me know!
It wasn't really just inertia. The generators also act as synchronous motors. Each ends up loaded more by the grid more when they're getting a bit ahead of the "consensus" frequency and less when they get behind. So once they get synchronized they stay that way. (Barring the occasional screw-up - which usually leads to a regional blackout.)
Also, it explains to people why it takes a while to get the grid back up after a large outage - not only do the generators (properly, "alternators") have to be operating at exactly the same speed to produce the same frequency of power, they also have to be in precise sync as to phase - or you turn hydroelectric dams into very large water pumps!
But if they're heavily loaded they slow down, and if lightly loaded they speed up. They have no inherent absolute speed referenc. So the power companies have to keep them "on time" by comparing them to a good time reference and giving a little extra push (with more steam or whatever) when they're getting behind, less when they're getting ahead - or by lowering the voltage (a brownout) or cutting off parts of the grid (rotating blackouts) when the load is getting too big for them to keep up to speed. If they don't, the generators get slowed down a tad and the clocks slow down. (That's what happened in Europe.)
When I worked for Litton, we worked a lot with generating plants on ships. I got to buy more than a few vibrating reedfrequency meters.
The 50/60Hz mains timebase makes an amazing timebase for clocks of all sorts, not just those with synchronous AC motors. It's a dead simple case of taking a sniff of the incoming AC that powers the clock, rectifying it, and then counting the resulting pulse train to drive a display. Virtually everything with a clock and a power cord uses this system.
An hour is divided into 60 minutes (read that as minutes as in small), a minute is divided into minute minutes - second order minute portions of an hour, hence the term seconds. (Thanks to the great and very funny 1910 book Calculus Made Easy by Silvanus Thompson for that gem! See pages 3 and 4.).
Being a natural multiple, 60Hz is a better frequency as a timebase; gearing in mechanical clocks is easier. And our transformers are somewhat physically smaller for the same load than at 50Hz. The effect is peanuts in smaller devices, but in larger equipment it saves a lot of iron and copper.
Even worse Amazon pools them in with products they sell. So you may think you're buying razor blades from Amazon, but it's the counterfeit ones that Amazon sends you because they have the same packaging and UPC.
Amazon does not care. Sure you can get refunded if you complain, but the problem continues.
Amazon should end marketplace sales unless the seller is confirmed and not some shell Chinese company.
More than Amazon doesn't care, Amazon has no reason to care. I'm sure they get paid the same/similarly whether the product is the real deal or not.
Several years ago, I made the mistake of buying a MicroSD card for my phone from them. (Hey, I got burned, it doesn't happen often.) I got an 8GB card in a 64GB Samsung-branded package that looked like a 14-year-old's first attempt at making a fake ID, and I had to *fight* with Amazon to get the charges reversed. The seller even had the gall to demand that I send it back to them. A quick call to Samsung and the RCMP had Amazon cheerfully refunding to my credit card.
It's as bad as Pacific Mall in Markham.
How could any allegedly intelligent business leader not know how rampant the corruption is within his own company? I wipe my ass with Amazon. I hope they tank. I hope Jeff Bezos gets counterfeit chemotherapy drugs.
Been coming here for 20 years now (hard to believe how the time has gone). Likewise, thank you, keep up the good work. Although I must say the last couple of days have been a bit more productive!;)
Tell me about it....And I'm in the 20+ years club, too.
Hey, never mind that "As our way of thanking you for your positive contributions to Slashdot, you are eligible to disable advertising" box; I'm happy to give/. the impression revenues. But would you mind sending me a few of the old servers? They'd have great retirements as historically-significant World Community Grid space heaters!
BigBlockMopar, aka. 71911 515 Somerset Street West Ottawa, ON Canada K1R 5J9
After all, there could be any number of friendly alien species, but it only takes ONE malevolent species. We very likely don't get a do-over.
Yup, and every bit the same thing can be said about an AI Superintelligence.
While I look forward to both self-aware AI (I believe it will love us, after all, we love machines - how many of us have pictures of cars?) and intelligent alien life (which would have wiped us out by now if it wanted to), we're going to be dealing with similar consequences and societal upheaval.
Modified from the article:
Yet there is a way that messages from silicon might be disruptive. Computers could simply give us some advanced knowledge -- not as a trade, but as a gift. How could that possibly be a downer? Imagine: You're a physicist who has dedicated your career to understanding the fundamental structure of matter. You have a stack of reprints, a decent position, and a modicum of admiration from the three other specialists who have read your papers. Suddenly, IBM Watson weighs in with knowledge that's a thousand years ahead of yours. So much for your job and your sense of purpose. If humanity is deprived of the opportunity to learn things on its own, much of its impetus for novelty might evaporate. In a society where invention and discovery are written out of the script, progress and improvement would suffer.
Physicists getting replaced by technology as surely as cabbies will be replaced by autonomous cars? Why not?
Hey, nobody seems to be crying for all the IBM Selectric typewriter mechanics who lost their jobs in the 1980s. Does anyone really want to ditch their smartphones to keep that trade alive?
That all seems harder to setup then connecting two wires to a thermostat that does it for me. For one thing, a multi stage boiler would be far more expensive a retrofit than a thermostat, sure, a variable power boiler would be cool.
A multistage boiler would be nice.... but no point until you need to replace it (and even then, only if your fuel costs justify the added expense over the life of the unit).
A 1987 Honeywell Chronotherm programmable thermostat (probably still works!) will learn, over a few days to weeks, how long it takes to heat or cool your home. You set the temperature you want when you get home at 5:PM, and it will average out the time it took to heat or cool the home, so it will figure out to turn on the AC at 3:45PM and the heat at 4:15PM.
This technology has been used in the HVAC industry for decades now.
I suppose instead of controlling the boiler fire, you could control the water temperature,
Which is the idea of a multistage boiler...
but again, that's a pretty expensive retro fit to gravity fed system.
And won't work, gravity fed water systems and octopus hot air systems only work by the temperature gradient, the working fluid has to be hot enough to rise, and as it cools down, becomes dense enough to sink back down. It's a chimney.
Unless you add a pump (hot water) or a fan (octopus/gravimetric furnace like in the basement of Home Alone), your heat won't create enough draft to get distributed throughout your home. Your boiler or furnace would end up cycling constantly but the radiators/floor vents would remain cool.
I'm actually not aware of any boilers that work by controlling the water temperature and pumping continuously (for a small home), generally they heat the water to whatever, and pump it until it's whatever - 20 degrees,heating it again then. But if the thermostat tells it to go off, they stop pumping (and heating).
Why they didn't use systems like that I don't know, I'm also upset that most American systems I've seen don't have room thermostats on each radiator, but that's life.
With the Nest, I can sleep with the house in the low 60s and still wake up to the high 60s, before nest, it could take anywhere from an hour to three (depending on outside temperature) to get to the upper 60s.
In most parts of North America, we have a more extreme climate than in most parts of Europe and the rest of the world. I live in Ottawa, Canada. It was -30C for our first week in January, -40C equivalent when you factor in how fast the wind cools warm objects like people and houses.... and it easily reaches over 30C every summer.
Our HVAC systems are pretty robust. You have an old house with a gravimetric system. You cannot have multistage (though you did just reinvent it) without finding some way to replace convection with a pump or fan.
The point is that Alphabet absorbs the risky propositions, and allows them to cut off money to them if the risk doesn't pan out, while google remains an isolated profit making group that is insulated from risk.
You take pictures of dessert with an Android phone, or get into a Waymo car, and your Nest thermostat will know that you're coming home and adjust the temperature for you.
It's both genius (they/'ve perfected the programmable thermostat like the way a PVR has perfected the VCR) and scary, given the building damage it could cause if it were hacked or crash-prone and caused frozen pipes.
I recently posted about how to install an old thermostat in parallel with the new programmable one, just to keep it as a backup.
(Posting as AC only so as not to undo prior upmods in this thread.)
Wow, thank you, you and a few others posted my thoughts, my optimism, my hope so perfectly.
I was sitting there glued to the TV, watching it, just thinking to myself "Come on, Beautiful Machine, you can do it!"
Sadly it seems like the main rocket was lost, but they'll get the kinks out. What a beautiful achievement.
It would have been nice if you'd been able to post that as yourself and keep your moderations - I have a feeling that they were as insightful as your post here.
Well sure, a computer can do a lot. But I hate watching TV on my computer, I want to watch TV from my couch. I never liked Chromecast much, because there's no remote for it. Trying to use a smart phone to control something is amazingly clumsy, especially if you've got the lights dim. Ie, turn on phone, unlock phone (slow if it's a pin), get eyes to adjust to light, push pause about 7 seconds too late.
I hate watching TV on my computer too; that's why wanda (the hostname of my media computer) runs my TV through HDMI.
But all TV sets are computer monitors now, so you may as well get used to a TV with a keyboard. The keyboard sits wirelessly on my coffee table in front of my couch. Glowing keys would be nice but this rig works well enough.
I'm old enough to know what a 1B3GT is and how to tell when I need to replace it. I certainly remember the stack of media equipment I used to have underneath my Sony Trinitron. There was the VCR, the DVD player, the cable box. Now I have wanda under a Samsung HDTV, she plays DVDs and anything else on my home network quite nicely. VHS is gone, I have a really nice Panasonic commercial VCR in my closet in case I ever need it. And, yes, I still have a Sony Betamax SL-HF500 ready to go in case wanda needs to digest anything to digital. I used to work on Quad machines and I'd love to have one, but since my place won't accommodate a forklift truck, I'll have to forgo the 2" tapes of goodness.
Grab an old smartphone, set that up as your remote control with KDE Connect (works AMAZINGLY well), the biggest caveat is that you have to remember to let your remote control charge when it's not in use. Obviously, you can control what the smartphone connects to through your firewall settings on your router.
It's not perfect, but it sure beats the days when "Be Kind, Rewind" stickers were everywhere, TVs took up a lot more space, and your PVR required switching actual cassettes back and forth.
I remember the 6:PM news anchor describing an event and then his usual "Film at 11" - before VCRs and camcorders, TV crews used film, and we'd have to develop the film, dry it, edit it, all before a story could be aired.
Now I can do that from my pocket with a 5-year-old cellphone in my pocket. In 1080p.
Things are a little easier now than doing an A-B roll edit on non-timecoded UMatic. The only thing I really miss is the satisfying clicks and clunks of the VTRs when I was doing it. It was doing something.
Watching a video was far more important when it took effort. Even just going to Blockbuster and renting a videocassette made the whole experience more special.
My Roku 3 feels like a high quality product in my hands. The remote control, the user interface, even the cute little animation as it boots up. I love the Roku fabric label at the bottom end of the remote control, it orients it in my hand without being obtrusive and reminds me of Levi's Red Tab jeans.
Also, love the fact it gives me a hard-wired network connection, which is a serious bonus if you've got a few WiFi devices in the area; streaming video doesn't wait for the neighbours to stop gaming.
My beefs are with the internal player - needs to support more filetypes - Roku really needs to open that up (or maybe open-source it, so that the user community can help with it). And of the 1500 or whatever channels, without a formal survey, I think 1000 of them are fly-by-night churches and other whackos who believe in invisible boogeymen who watch you while you're taking a dump. In other words, these may be "channels", but the only people watching them are mentally infirm, scientifically ignorant and gullible to religious BS, or physically incapable of changing the channel. 500 channels is a more accurate description; truth in advertising.
I love my Roku 3, but in the end I just set up a real computer running openSUSE Linux. It plays everything. My remote control is KDE Connect from my Android phone, and a USB wireless keyboard and mouse so finding things on YouTube isn't a total pain in the ass.
openSUSE's "lizard in a lightbulb" flickers intentionally while it loads. It's not as cute as the Roku bootup, but it looks really nice, and has all the gloss of a professional-grade solution but with a real feeling of power. If I was back in the professional video business and a reboot ended up on public display or going out as a TV broadcast, the Roku can't compete with the polish and power of openSUSE's boot.
The Roku is great for playing *some* things, but not enough things to make the space and power savings worthwhile, at least for my needs. The (wired!) Roku beats a Chromecast stick for YouTube ONLY if the WiFi is crowded. And I don't use Netflix enough to bother with either.
I haven't tried to get the Roku to automatically play an arbitrary video off its USB port on boot, which would be crucial for kiosks and stuff.
I love my Roku. It's like a really high quality VCR. Without the features I need. It's an absolutely great solution for a family member who just wants to watch Netflix.
Any old laptop with an HDMI port and openSUSE will serve you far better and do far more, and, depending on your hardware, allow you to freak out your non-geek friends by simply dragging a VLC window from one monitor to the other - in 2018, it's amazing how many people have never seen a dual-head display.
Just don't trust ANY programmable thermostat, never mind the Internet-connected ones which are vulnerable to hacking and stuff like this.
Up here in Ottawa, Canada - which is damned cold at the moment, -25C but cools things as fast as if it was -40C with the wind chill - any heating system outage could do serious damage to your home.
You're not worried just about frozen pipes. I've personally seen the water in the bowl of a toilet freeze, split the bowl, and cause the tank to fall over. The fill valve in the toilet then helpfully tried to keep the tank full... tens of thousands of dollars in damage, and, to add insult to injury, a huge water bill.
It could be an asshole ISP, North Korean hackers, or it could be a pair of weak AA batteries while you're away on vacation, but the more complicated something is, the more prone it is to failure. Even a top-quality Honeywell Commercial can't turn on the heat if it's got dead batteries.
When you install a programmable thermostat, keep the old one!
Most central heating systems have thermostat terminals labeled R and W (or W1). When R is connected to W, the furnace will go through its startup rituals and produce heat. As soon as you disconnect them, the furnace will start its shutdown rituals.
Startup/shutdown may take a few seconds before the furnace appears to do anything. Any relatively modern (since 1990 or so) gas or oil furnace will do things like start the drafting fan (blows air up the chimney) and heat the igniters before it turns on the fuel, and once it has the fuel burning, it will wait until the heat exchanger is warm before it turns on the blower that moves the warm air into your home. Likewise, shutdown may take a few seconds, usually with the main blower running until the heat exchanger has given up all its heat.
Mount the old mechanical thermostat someplace where it will ensure the house never gets below about 15C. Connect its R and W (W1) terminals in parallel with the R and W terminals on your new thermostat, so that they work as an OR gate (two switches in parallel).
That way, even if the programmable - or those silly/dangerous Nest things - fails, the old-school mechanical thermostat will click the heat on.
Keep the old thermostat set to a lower temperature than the house should ever normally reach and it won't interfere with the energy-savings provided by the programmable thermostat.
When you're connecting the old thermostat as a failsafe, don't assume that the colors on the wiring mean anything - not all R terminals are connected to the red wire, and not all W terminals are connected to the white wire!
The G and the Y terminals control other functions in your furnace, no need to touch them.
R - transformer common, 24V AC W - call for heat (W1, W2, etc. are for multistage furnaces - use W1) Y - call for air conditioning - leave it alone G - call for fan (the fan will start automatically when the furnace is heating or cooling, connecting R-G will cause the fan to run continuously for air flow)
Other terminals can be Googled.
Do the wiring carefully, using proper thermostat/doorbell wire. Put a sticker on your furnace to remind you of where you mounted the backup thermostat. If you're in the least bit unsure of what I'm describing, call a licensed HVAC contractor.
A final warning is that while this COULD be done with baseboards and other line-operated electric heat, it would require suitable thermostats and a licensed electrician to do it - burning your house down to save a flood is counterproductive.
This is a great way to recycle an old mercury-filled thermostat; you've changed it from hazardous waste into a safety device.
Yes, it does. Mariners have more superstitions and brand loyalties than pro athletes.
And I don't think the main advantage of diesel-electric is (energy) efficiency. A direct-drive diesel arrangement should be more efficient. The advantage is that you don't need a ridiculous and heavy system of clutches and several-dozen-speed transmissions to make it possible to run at different speeds.
Well, I'm glad you don't *think* it is. That's such a relief.
If you were more astute, you might realize the need for the diesel-only propulsion system to have so many transmission gears is the same reason cars keep on adding transmission gears. And that a diesel engine, running at an ideal fixed speed, connected electrically rather than mechanically to its load, is the idea behind a diesel-electric.
You're welcome to submit your resume here: http://marine.man.eu/
It's a container ship. Now, if only someone could think of a way to install and uninstall battery capacity quickly and easily, and what to do with those batteries while they're sitting there in the sun not being used...
It's a bulker, don't look at that picture at the top of the article. (For one thing, the ship is only 200-something feet long, isn't a standard cointainer 53'?)
I'm sure the batteries are below her belt, (indirectly) cooled by the water. And why would you need to change battery capacity quickly? She'll be doing the same route her entire life. They can probably change out a faulty group of cells very quickly and easily any time she's in port, and probably even while she's under way.
Not at all silly. Diesel-Electric is a time-tested and reliable technology that offers huge increases in fuel efficiency.
I should have called it the All-Electric ship, and I certainly didn't mean "rechargeable" as in any way a denigration. It is not, however, proven way of powering a ship. Yet. But with electric cars on the cusp of true practicality, I see no reason why it shouldn't scale up. In fact, in a ship, mass of the batteries will be less of an issue.
Oh...and Ironically, the world's first all-electric cargo ship is being used to move coal.
Like an op-ed written by a self-righteous ninth grader.
I understand the poster's frustration, but there are lots of great reasons to use coal as a load for the first test of a rechargeable ship. (I refuse to call it an electric ship, there have been diesel-electric propulsion systems on ships, as railway locomotives, for decades.)
The route is well-traveled and familiar between the coal dock and the power plant or steel mill, it's as familiar to local mariners as your drive to work is to you.
The freight is easy to load and unload
The freight isn't particularly valuable
The freight isn't particularly irreplaceable
The freight isn't particularly hazardous, coal dust explosions during loading and unloading aside
They'll rack up miles and load/unload (charge/discharge the battery!) cycles quickly
You don't test your new server in production on your client's most important website, right?
If the rechargeable ship works out - no battery fires, especially! - then it might start to be used to carry heavier or more valuable cargo, like iron ore, then maybe even refitted for something else.
And if the technology works out, the rechargeable ship would be *amazing* for a short-hop ferry service, especially in an urban area where air pollution is a problem.
Ya gotta be able to crawl before you can walk, and walk before you can run. This is at the crawling stage. But it's encouraging.
That worked like a charm when they closed the sears hardware by me. Everything was long gone by the time the real discounts appeared.
[sigh] I remember when Sears Canada sold hardware. Good quality Craftman hand tools and power tools. Then sometime in the late 1990s, all the Sears stores in Canada seemed to drop their great hardware and tools, and from there it was a competitive race to the bottom selling appliances (against Best Buy, Leons, Bad Boy, The Brick, Home Depot, Lowe's) and women's fashions (against the rest of the tenants in the shopping mall).
Sears, at one point, couldn't be beat. It used to be that if Sears sold it under the Kenmore name, it was good stuff with top-notch after-sale support. It used to be that if Sears sold it under the Craftsman name, it was good stuff... again, with top-notch after-sale support. By staff who gave a shit. And a great house brand is unbeatable in retail: you never have to price match the Kenmore against the Whirlpool which rolled off the same assembly line, and Kenmore had more brand recognition and brand admiration than the company that actually made it.
Hell, isn't Craftsman-style architecture literally named after Sears mail-order house kits?
Part of the problem might be the way the Sears Electronics 12" black-and-white TV I had was made in Korea in 1978 by a little company no one had ever heard of. It was great quality, great price, served me well for many years. Being an electronics geek kid I took the lid off and found a now-familiar name on the label on the picture tube and the chassis: Samsung. Likewise, an Eaton Viking (Canadian house-brand, now defunct Eatons Department Stores) TV had Gold Star labels everywhere - You know that manufacturer now as Lucky Gold Star - LG. Apple should take note of its relationship with Foxconn.
I've also got to give Sears a shoutout for one particular piece of AMAZING customer service. In the 1980s, as a kid on my paper route, I found a classic 1950s Sears Craftsman lawnmower. The deck was cast aluminum, the engine was two-stroke, and I managed to get it running almost immediately, it was built like a tank and almost could have mowed down the annoying fire hydrant on your lawn. I copied down the model number, went to my local Sears store just to ask about it. Two weeks later, a large manila envelope showed up at my place, return address was Chicago. Inside, copied from microfiche, was the entire Owner's Manual and Service Manual for that 1951 Craftsman lawnmower. That lawnmower (with that envelope tucked under the deck) now hangs restored in an automotive museum.
Sears Canada is finally officially dying. But I've missed them for years. I wish nothing but the best for the rest of Sears, they always provided a great product with great support at at fair price for both parties.
Running Azure is the first sign that your computer is sick. Using Azure is the first sign that the sysop is sick. And not in the "good" way hipsters currently misuse the word.
Secure Windows is a contradiction in terms, like "Hurricane-Proof House of Cards".
You will never, never, never see a self-driving car with a Windows operating system doing the driving. Because Windows is crap.
If you use Microsoft garbage, you're either stuck by spec or an idiot. If you spec Microsoft garbage, you're not worth the electricity it took your monitor to display this reality of your uselessness to you.
There is no excuse for your computer to be less reliable than the outlet it gets its power from.
That standard of reliability is from the 1960s. When was Microsoft founded again?
Yeah i would expect it to be a lot more complicated than to turn to the most notorious supplier of "crapware", that breaks, or simply refuses to work because you didnt upgrade your service contract to Platinum or Plutonium, or even dared to use unapproved paper or ink...
Epson (the old printer) and HP (maybe the new printer) are both capable of building top-notch commercial quality printers. Look at the POS equipment next time you buy something in a store: Epson thermal receipt printers abound - and for good reasons, like their dot-matrix machines, they're pretty damned near unstoppable. And HP is HP. HP invented and popularized the desktop laser printer by strapping a Motorola 68000, a laser, and a spinning mirror onto a Canon photocopier engine. HP is the IBM of printers - like, for all their prowess in computers and typewriters like the Selectrics, even IBM isn't the IBM of printers.
The ISS printers may benefit from the experience of mass-produced cheap printers made of lightweight plastic, festooned with Energy Star stickers, and getting relatively low product return rates at big-box retailers like Best Buy - all of these things are what NASA would want.
But those cheap mass-produced plastic printers probably won't be getting stock firmware, Windows drivers [shivers in horror at the thought of using Microsoft crap on the ISS], and probably won't be getting stock ink or toner cartridges. They'll be getting something better. They'll be getting the "Yes, Sir, Mr. Mission Commander" Service Contract.
"Oh, Mr. Mission Commander, you need to refill the ink cartridges with human urine? Here's how to disable the error message."
1000 pages per month is nothing for any modern printer, if you have the toner/ink, and you're using good quality paper. Throw a few separator pads and transfer rollers onto the next replenishment launch, and you're good to go to print War And Peace anytime you want.
Slashdot Mirror
You are thinking of electric clocks connected to a so-called Mother Clock.
That connection was a special cable, not the mains. The last minute before the full hour they synchronised by means of extra pulses.
You would typically find them on train stations and public places.
I have a matched set of 4 of them that came from a warehouse, but they were also common in schools, hospitals, prisons, etc.
The run motor is just a dead-simple 60Hz line-powered clock motor and mechanism with a suicide switch a few minutes before midnight. So, at 11:57 or so, the run motor turns itself off. The master clock operates the set motor to synchronize them, and then turns the run motors back on.
I keep on meaning to build something with a USB port and a couple of relays so that I can use a Linux machine with an NTP client as a master clock for them. Since I don't feel like reinventing the wheel or spending a few grand to buy the real controller, if anyone knows of such a system pre-built, let me know!
It wasn't really just inertia. The generators also act as synchronous motors. Each ends up loaded more by the grid more when they're getting a bit ahead of the "consensus" frequency and less when they get behind. So once they get synchronized they stay that way. (Barring the occasional screw-up - which usually leads to a regional blackout.)
Also, it explains to people why it takes a while to get the grid back up after a large outage - not only do the generators (properly, "alternators") have to be operating at exactly the same speed to produce the same frequency of power, they also have to be in precise sync as to phase - or you turn hydroelectric dams into very large water pumps!
But if they're heavily loaded they slow down, and if lightly loaded they speed up. They have no inherent absolute speed referenc. So the power companies have to keep them "on time" by comparing them to a good time reference and giving a little extra push (with more steam or whatever) when they're getting behind, less when they're getting ahead - or by lowering the voltage (a brownout) or cutting off parts of the grid (rotating blackouts) when the load is getting too big for them to keep up to speed. If they don't, the generators get slowed down a tad and the clocks slow down. (That's what happened in Europe.)
When I worked for Litton, we worked a lot with generating plants on ships. I got to buy more than a few vibrating reed frequency meters.
The 50/60Hz mains timebase makes an amazing timebase for clocks of all sorts, not just those with synchronous AC motors. It's a dead simple case of taking a sniff of the incoming AC that powers the clock, rectifying it, and then counting the resulting pulse train to drive a display. Virtually everything with a clock and a power cord uses this system.
An hour is divided into 60 minutes (read that as minutes as in small), a minute is divided into minute minutes - second order minute portions of an hour, hence the term seconds. (Thanks to the great and very funny 1910 book Calculus Made Easy by Silvanus Thompson for that gem! See pages 3 and 4.).
Being a natural multiple, 60Hz is a better frequency as a timebase; gearing in mechanical clocks is easier. And our transformers are somewhat physically smaller for the same load than at 50Hz. The effect is peanuts in smaller devices, but in larger equipment it saves a lot of iron and copper.
It's a hook to hang your headphone so it doesn't take up desk space.
Actually looks liker a nice product, I think I'll buy one.
Yeah, I don't care about the bad parting lines on the Amazon knockoffs...
(LOL - Just kidding. I'll get the real ones, from the manufacturer's site, I wouldn't trust Amazon to sell me cigarette butts.)
Anyone want to bet that there will be not a single counterfeit Alexa device on their site, but counterfeit memory and headphone hooks are fair game!
Even worse Amazon pools them in with products they sell. So you may think you're buying razor blades from Amazon, but it's the counterfeit ones that Amazon sends you because they have the same packaging and UPC.
Amazon does not care. Sure you can get refunded if you complain, but the problem continues.
Amazon should end marketplace sales unless the seller is confirmed and not some shell Chinese company.
More than Amazon doesn't care, Amazon has no reason to care. I'm sure they get paid the same/similarly whether the product is the real deal or not.
Several years ago, I made the mistake of buying a MicroSD card for my phone from them. (Hey, I got burned, it doesn't happen often.) I got an 8GB card in a 64GB Samsung-branded package that looked like a 14-year-old's first attempt at making a fake ID, and I had to *fight* with Amazon to get the charges reversed. The seller even had the gall to demand that I send it back to them. A quick call to Samsung and the RCMP had Amazon cheerfully refunding to my credit card.
It's as bad as Pacific Mall in Markham.
How could any allegedly intelligent business leader not know how rampant the corruption is within his own company? I wipe my ass with Amazon. I hope they tank. I hope Jeff Bezos gets counterfeit chemotherapy drugs.
Just put a bunch of electrician's tape over the circuit breaker so it can't pop out. Works every ti
Just for old-time's sake (all those cute little Millenials won't get this):
[NO CARRIER]
Been coming here for 20 years now (hard to believe how the time has gone). Likewise, thank you, keep up the good work. Although I must say the last couple of days have been a bit more productive! ;)
Tell me about it....And I'm in the 20+ years club, too.
Hey, never mind that "As our way of thanking you for your positive contributions to Slashdot, you are eligible to disable advertising" box; I'm happy to give /. the impression revenues. But would you mind sending me a few of the old servers? They'd have great retirements as historically-significant World Community Grid space heaters!
BigBlockMopar, aka. 71911
515 Somerset Street West
Ottawa, ON
Canada
K1R 5J9
I'm glad you're back up, guys. Missed you.
After all, there could be any number of friendly alien species, but it only takes ONE malevolent species. We very likely don't get a do-over.
Yup, and every bit the same thing can be said about an AI Superintelligence.
While I look forward to both self-aware AI (I believe it will love us, after all, we love machines - how many of us have pictures of cars?) and intelligent alien life (which would have wiped us out by now if it wanted to), we're going to be dealing with similar consequences and societal upheaval.
Modified from the article:
Yet there is a way that messages from silicon might be disruptive. Computers could simply give us some advanced knowledge -- not as a trade, but as a gift. How could that possibly be a downer? Imagine: You're a physicist who has dedicated your career to understanding the fundamental structure of matter. You have a stack of reprints, a decent position, and a modicum of admiration from the three other specialists who have read your papers. Suddenly, IBM Watson weighs in with knowledge that's a thousand years ahead of yours. So much for your job and your sense of purpose. If humanity is deprived of the opportunity to learn things on its own, much of its impetus for novelty might evaporate. In a society where invention and discovery are written out of the script, progress and improvement would suffer.
Physicists getting replaced by technology as surely as cabbies will be replaced by autonomous cars? Why not?
Hey, nobody seems to be crying for all the IBM Selectric typewriter mechanics who lost their jobs in the 1980s. Does anyone really want to ditch their smartphones to keep that trade alive?
Same thing.
That all seems harder to setup then connecting two wires to a thermostat that does it for me. For one thing, a multi stage boiler would be far more expensive a retrofit than a thermostat, sure, a variable power boiler would be cool.
A multistage boiler would be nice.... but no point until you need to replace it (and even then, only if your fuel costs justify the added expense over the life of the unit).
A 1987 Honeywell Chronotherm programmable thermostat (probably still works!) will learn, over a few days to weeks, how long it takes to heat or cool your home. You set the temperature you want when you get home at 5:PM, and it will average out the time it took to heat or cool the home, so it will figure out to turn on the AC at 3:45PM and the heat at 4:15PM.
This technology has been used in the HVAC industry for decades now.
I suppose instead of controlling the boiler fire, you could control the water temperature,
Which is the idea of a multistage boiler...
but again, that's a pretty expensive retro fit to gravity fed system.
And won't work, gravity fed water systems and octopus hot air systems only work by the temperature gradient, the working fluid has to be hot enough to rise, and as it cools down, becomes dense enough to sink back down. It's a chimney.
Unless you add a pump (hot water) or a fan (octopus/gravimetric furnace like in the basement of Home Alone), your heat won't create enough draft to get distributed throughout your home. Your boiler or furnace would end up cycling constantly but the radiators/floor vents would remain cool.
I'm actually not aware of any boilers that work by controlling the water temperature and pumping continuously (for a small home), generally they heat the water to whatever, and pump it until it's whatever - 20 degrees,heating it again then. But if the thermostat tells it to go off, they stop pumping (and heating).
Why they didn't use systems like that I don't know, I'm also upset that most American systems I've seen don't have room thermostats on each radiator, but that's life.
With the Nest, I can sleep with the house in the low 60s and still wake up to the high 60s, before nest, it could take anywhere from an hour to three (depending on outside temperature) to get to the upper 60s.
In most parts of North America, we have a more extreme climate than in most parts of Europe and the rest of the world. I live in Ottawa, Canada. It was -30C for our first week in January, -40C equivalent when you factor in how fast the wind cools warm objects like people and houses.... and it easily reaches over 30C every summer.
Our HVAC systems are pretty robust. You have an old house with a gravimetric system. You cannot have multistage (though you did just reinvent it) without finding some way to replace convection with a pump or fan.
The point is that Alphabet absorbs the risky propositions, and allows them to cut off money to them if the risk doesn't pan out, while google remains an isolated profit making group that is insulated from risk.
You take pictures of dessert with an Android phone, or get into a Waymo car, and your Nest thermostat will know that you're coming home and adjust the temperature for you.
It's both genius (they/'ve perfected the programmable thermostat like the way a PVR has perfected the VCR) and scary, given the building damage it could cause if it were hacked or crash-prone and caused frozen pipes.
I recently posted about how to install an old thermostat in parallel with the new programmable one, just to keep it as a backup.
The true Space Age starts now ...
(Posting as AC only so as not to undo prior upmods in this thread.)
Wow, thank you, you and a few others posted my thoughts, my optimism, my hope so perfectly.
I was sitting there glued to the TV, watching it, just thinking to myself "Come on, Beautiful Machine, you can do it!"
Sadly it seems like the main rocket was lost, but they'll get the kinks out. What a beautiful achievement.
It would have been nice if you'd been able to post that as yourself and keep your moderations - I have a feeling that they were as insightful as your post here.
Thanks.
2.4 gigawatts
Yeah, that's only two time-traveling Deloreans.
Nuclear is the way to go. There are risks, for sure, but they can be mitigated until we invent Mr. Fusion.
Well sure, a computer can do a lot. But I hate watching TV on my computer, I want to watch TV from my couch.
I never liked Chromecast much, because there's no remote for it. Trying to use a smart phone to control something is amazingly clumsy, especially if you've got the lights dim. Ie, turn on phone, unlock phone (slow if it's a pin), get eyes to adjust to light, push pause about 7 seconds too late.
I hate watching TV on my computer too; that's why wanda (the hostname of my media computer) runs my TV through HDMI.
But all TV sets are computer monitors now, so you may as well get used to a TV with a keyboard. The keyboard sits wirelessly on my coffee table in front of my couch. Glowing keys would be nice but this rig works well enough.
I'm old enough to know what a 1B3GT is and how to tell when I need to replace it. I certainly remember the stack of media equipment I used to have underneath my Sony Trinitron. There was the VCR, the DVD player, the cable box. Now I have wanda under a Samsung HDTV, she plays DVDs and anything else on my home network quite nicely. VHS is gone, I have a really nice Panasonic commercial VCR in my closet in case I ever need it. And, yes, I still have a Sony Betamax SL-HF500 ready to go in case wanda needs to digest anything to digital. I used to work on Quad machines and I'd love to have one, but since my place won't accommodate a forklift truck, I'll have to forgo the 2" tapes of goodness.
Grab an old smartphone, set that up as your remote control with KDE Connect (works AMAZINGLY well), the biggest caveat is that you have to remember to let your remote control charge when it's not in use. Obviously, you can control what the smartphone connects to through your firewall settings on your router.
It's not perfect, but it sure beats the days when "Be Kind, Rewind" stickers were everywhere, TVs took up a lot more space, and your PVR required switching actual cassettes back and forth.
I remember the 6:PM news anchor describing an event and then his usual "Film at 11" - before VCRs and camcorders, TV crews used film, and we'd have to develop the film, dry it, edit it, all before a story could be aired.
Now I can do that from my pocket with a 5-year-old cellphone in my pocket. In 1080p.
Things are a little easier now than doing an A-B roll edit on non-timecoded UMatic. The only thing I really miss is the satisfying clicks and clunks of the VTRs when I was doing it. It was doing something.
Watching a video was far more important when it took effort. Even just going to Blockbuster and renting a videocassette made the whole experience more special.
My Roku 3 feels like a high quality product in my hands. The remote control, the user interface, even the cute little animation as it boots up. I love the Roku fabric label at the bottom end of the remote control, it orients it in my hand without being obtrusive and reminds me of Levi's Red Tab jeans.
Also, love the fact it gives me a hard-wired network connection, which is a serious bonus if you've got a few WiFi devices in the area; streaming video doesn't wait for the neighbours to stop gaming.
My beefs are with the internal player - needs to support more filetypes - Roku really needs to open that up (or maybe open-source it, so that the user community can help with it). And of the 1500 or whatever channels, without a formal survey, I think 1000 of them are fly-by-night churches and other whackos who believe in invisible boogeymen who watch you while you're taking a dump. In other words, these may be "channels", but the only people watching them are mentally infirm, scientifically ignorant and gullible to religious BS, or physically incapable of changing the channel. 500 channels is a more accurate description; truth in advertising.
I love my Roku 3, but in the end I just set up a real computer running openSUSE Linux. It plays everything. My remote control is KDE Connect from my Android phone, and a USB wireless keyboard and mouse so finding things on YouTube isn't a total pain in the ass.
openSUSE's "lizard in a lightbulb" flickers intentionally while it loads. It's not as cute as the Roku bootup, but it looks really nice, and has all the gloss of a professional-grade solution but with a real feeling of power. If I was back in the professional video business and a reboot ended up on public display or going out as a TV broadcast, the Roku can't compete with the polish and power of openSUSE's boot.
The Roku is great for playing *some* things, but not enough things to make the space and power savings worthwhile, at least for my needs. The (wired!) Roku beats a Chromecast stick for YouTube ONLY if the WiFi is crowded. And I don't use Netflix enough to bother with either.
I haven't tried to get the Roku to automatically play an arbitrary video off its USB port on boot, which would be crucial for kiosks and stuff.
I love my Roku. It's like a really high quality VCR. Without the features I need. It's an absolutely great solution for a family member who just wants to watch Netflix.
Any old laptop with an HDMI port and openSUSE will serve you far better and do far more, and, depending on your hardware, allow you to freak out your non-geek friends by simply dragging a VLC window from one monitor to the other - in 2018, it's amazing how many people have never seen a dual-head display.
Just don't trust ANY programmable thermostat, never mind the Internet-connected ones which are vulnerable to hacking and stuff like this.
Up here in Ottawa, Canada - which is damned cold at the moment, -25C but cools things as fast as if it was -40C with the wind chill - any heating system outage could do serious damage to your home.
You're not worried just about frozen pipes. I've personally seen the water in the bowl of a toilet freeze, split the bowl, and cause the tank to fall over. The fill valve in the toilet then helpfully tried to keep the tank full... tens of thousands of dollars in damage, and, to add insult to injury, a huge water bill.
It could be an asshole ISP, North Korean hackers, or it could be a pair of weak AA batteries while you're away on vacation, but the more complicated something is, the more prone it is to failure. Even a top-quality Honeywell Commercial can't turn on the heat if it's got dead batteries.
When you install a programmable thermostat, keep the old one!
Most central heating systems have thermostat terminals labeled R and W (or W1). When R is connected to W, the furnace will go through its startup rituals and produce heat. As soon as you disconnect them, the furnace will start its shutdown rituals.
Startup/shutdown may take a few seconds before the furnace appears to do anything. Any relatively modern (since 1990 or so) gas or oil furnace will do things like start the drafting fan (blows air up the chimney) and heat the igniters before it turns on the fuel, and once it has the fuel burning, it will wait until the heat exchanger is warm before it turns on the blower that moves the warm air into your home. Likewise, shutdown may take a few seconds, usually with the main blower running until the heat exchanger has given up all its heat.
Mount the old mechanical thermostat someplace where it will ensure the house never gets below about 15C. Connect its R and W (W1) terminals in parallel with the R and W terminals on your new thermostat, so that they work as an OR gate (two switches in parallel).
That way, even if the programmable - or those silly/dangerous Nest things - fails, the old-school mechanical thermostat will click the heat on.
Keep the old thermostat set to a lower temperature than the house should ever normally reach and it won't interfere with the energy-savings provided by the programmable thermostat.
When you're connecting the old thermostat as a failsafe, don't assume that the colors on the wiring mean anything - not all R terminals are connected to the red wire, and not all W terminals are connected to the white wire!
The G and the Y terminals control other functions in your furnace, no need to touch them.
R - transformer common, 24V AC
W - call for heat (W1, W2, etc. are for multistage furnaces - use W1)
Y - call for air conditioning - leave it alone
G - call for fan (the fan will start automatically when the furnace is heating or cooling, connecting R-G will cause the fan to run continuously for air flow)
Other terminals can be Googled.
Do the wiring carefully, using proper thermostat/doorbell wire. Put a sticker on your furnace to remind you of where you mounted the backup thermostat. If you're in the least bit unsure of what I'm describing, call a licensed HVAC contractor.
A final warning is that while this COULD be done with baseboards and other line-operated electric heat, it would require suitable thermostats and a licensed electrician to do it - burning your house down to save a flood is counterproductive.
This is a great way to recycle an old mercury-filled thermostat; you've changed it from hazardous waste into a safety device.
Time-tested does not change what it is.
Yes, it does. Mariners have more superstitions and brand loyalties than pro athletes.
And I don't think the main advantage of diesel-electric is (energy) efficiency. A direct-drive diesel arrangement should be more efficient. The advantage is that you don't need a ridiculous and heavy system of clutches and several-dozen-speed transmissions to make it possible to run at different speeds.
Well, I'm glad you don't *think* it is. That's such a relief.
If you were more astute, you might realize the need for the diesel-only propulsion system to have so many transmission gears is the same reason cars keep on adding transmission gears. And that a diesel engine, running at an ideal fixed speed, connected electrically rather than mechanically to its load, is the idea behind a diesel-electric.
You're welcome to submit your resume here: http://marine.man.eu/
It's a container ship. Now, if only someone could think of a way to install and uninstall battery capacity quickly and easily, and what to do with those batteries while they're sitting there in the sun not being used...
It's a bulker, don't look at that picture at the top of the article. (For one thing, the ship is only 200-something feet long, isn't a standard cointainer 53'?)
I'm sure the batteries are below her belt, (indirectly) cooled by the water. And why would you need to change battery capacity quickly? She'll be doing the same route her entire life. They can probably change out a faulty group of cells very quickly and easily any time she's in port, and probably even while she's under way.
Then we have replaced slaves eating coal with machines, and we're back to square 1.
Not at all silly. Diesel-Electric is a time-tested and reliable technology that offers huge increases in fuel efficiency.
I should have called it the All-Electric ship, and I certainly didn't mean "rechargeable" as in any way a denigration. It is not, however, proven way of powering a ship. Yet. But with electric cars on the cusp of true practicality, I see no reason why it shouldn't scale up. In fact, in a ship, mass of the batteries will be less of an issue.
Oh...and Ironically, the world's first all-electric cargo ship is being used to move coal.
Like an op-ed written by a self-righteous ninth grader.
I understand the poster's frustration, but there are lots of great reasons to use coal as a load for the first test of a rechargeable ship. (I refuse to call it an electric ship, there have been diesel-electric propulsion systems on ships, as railway locomotives, for decades.)
You don't test your new server in production on your client's most important website, right?
If the rechargeable ship works out - no battery fires, especially! - then it might start to be used to carry heavier or more valuable cargo, like iron ore, then maybe even refitted for something else.
And if the technology works out, the rechargeable ship would be *amazing* for a short-hop ferry service, especially in an urban area where air pollution is a problem.
Ya gotta be able to crawl before you can walk, and walk before you can run. This is at the crawling stage. But it's encouraging.
That worked like a charm when they closed the sears hardware by me. Everything was long gone by the time the real discounts appeared.
[sigh] I remember when Sears Canada sold hardware. Good quality Craftman hand tools and power tools. Then sometime in the late 1990s, all the Sears stores in Canada seemed to drop their great hardware and tools, and from there it was a competitive race to the bottom selling appliances (against Best Buy, Leons, Bad Boy, The Brick, Home Depot, Lowe's) and women's fashions (against the rest of the tenants in the shopping mall).
Sears, at one point, couldn't be beat. It used to be that if Sears sold it under the Kenmore name, it was good stuff with top-notch after-sale support. It used to be that if Sears sold it under the Craftsman name, it was good stuff... again, with top-notch after-sale support. By staff who gave a shit. And a great house brand is unbeatable in retail: you never have to price match the Kenmore against the Whirlpool which rolled off the same assembly line, and Kenmore had more brand recognition and brand admiration than the company that actually made it.
Hell, isn't Craftsman-style architecture literally named after Sears mail-order house kits?
Part of the problem might be the way the Sears Electronics 12" black-and-white TV I had was made in Korea in 1978 by a little company no one had ever heard of. It was great quality, great price, served me well for many years. Being an electronics geek kid I took the lid off and found a now-familiar name on the label on the picture tube and the chassis: Samsung. Likewise, an Eaton Viking (Canadian house-brand, now defunct Eatons Department Stores) TV had Gold Star labels everywhere - You know that manufacturer now as Lucky Gold Star - LG. Apple should take note of its relationship with Foxconn.
I've also got to give Sears a shoutout for one particular piece of AMAZING customer service. In the 1980s, as a kid on my paper route, I found a classic 1950s Sears Craftsman lawnmower. The deck was cast aluminum, the engine was two-stroke, and I managed to get it running almost immediately, it was built like a tank and almost could have mowed down the annoying fire hydrant on your lawn. I copied down the model number, went to my local Sears store just to ask about it. Two weeks later, a large manila envelope showed up at my place, return address was Chicago. Inside, copied from microfiche, was the entire Owner's Manual and Service Manual for that 1951 Craftsman lawnmower. That lawnmower (with that envelope tucked under the deck) now hangs restored in an automotive museum.
Sears Canada is finally officially dying. But I've missed them for years. I wish nothing but the best for the rest of Sears, they always provided a great product with great support at at fair price for both parties.
Thank you, Sears Canada. I loved you.
Seems to run Azure just fine.
Running Azure is the first sign that your computer is sick. Using Azure is the first sign that the sysop is sick. And not in the "good" way hipsters currently misuse the word.
Like "President Trump". Or "First Post"
I think you got First Post. :)
Secure Windows is a contradiction in terms, like "Hurricane-Proof House of Cards".
You will never, never, never see a self-driving car with a Windows operating system doing the driving. Because Windows is crap.
If you use Microsoft garbage, you're either stuck by spec or an idiot. If you spec Microsoft garbage, you're not worth the electricity it took your monitor to display this reality of your uselessness to you.
There is no excuse for your computer to be less reliable than the outlet it gets its power from.
That standard of reliability is from the 1960s. When was Microsoft founded again?
Yeah i would expect it to be a lot more complicated than to turn to the most notorious supplier of "crapware", that breaks, or simply refuses to work because you didnt upgrade your service contract to Platinum or Plutonium, or even dared to use unapproved paper or ink...
Epson (the old printer) and HP (maybe the new printer) are both capable of building top-notch commercial quality printers. Look at the POS equipment next time you buy something in a store: Epson thermal receipt printers abound - and for good reasons, like their dot-matrix machines, they're pretty damned near unstoppable. And HP is HP. HP invented and popularized the desktop laser printer by strapping a Motorola 68000, a laser, and a spinning mirror onto a Canon photocopier engine. HP is the IBM of printers - like, for all their prowess in computers and typewriters like the Selectrics, even IBM isn't the IBM of printers.
The ISS printers may benefit from the experience of mass-produced cheap printers made of lightweight plastic, festooned with Energy Star stickers, and getting relatively low product return rates at big-box retailers like Best Buy - all of these things are what NASA would want.
But those cheap mass-produced plastic printers probably won't be getting stock firmware, Windows drivers [shivers in horror at the thought of using Microsoft crap on the ISS], and probably won't be getting stock ink or toner cartridges. They'll be getting something better. They'll be getting the "Yes, Sir, Mr. Mission Commander" Service Contract.
"Oh, Mr. Mission Commander, you need to refill the ink cartridges with human urine? Here's how to disable the error message."
1000 pages per month is nothing for any modern printer, if you have the toner/ink, and you're using good quality paper. Throw a few separator pads and transfer rollers onto the next replenishment launch, and you're good to go to print War And Peace anytime you want.
Can you post those videos in more Linux-friendly formats? Flash is so, like, 1999.
[rummaging around an old bin of floppy diskettes to find a Flash player to run in Wine]