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Links for 2020-06-29

  • Understand Wi-Fi 4/5/6/6E (802.11 n/ac/ax)

    Some excellent advice regarding the currently available wifi devices out there, 802.11ac, 4×4 MIMO, beamforming, and DFS channels. Top recommendations are the Ubiquiti nanoHD AP and the Netgear R7800

    (tags: wifi 802.11n 802.11ac networking wireless home mimo mu-mimo dfs)

  • ????? (revenge bedtime procrastination)

    “a phenomenon in which people who don’t have much control over their daytime life refuse to sleep early in order to regain some sense of freedom during late night hours” Welcome to my life. (aka parenting)

    (tags: day night life kids parenting procrastination bedtime sleep china)

  • Witnessing the unthinkable

    According to this new [analysis of the latest generation of climate models], led by scientists at the CSIRO and [Australian] Bureau of Meteorology, the worst-case scenario could see Australia warm up to 7°C above pre-industrial levels by the end of the century. On average, the results from 20 models show a warming of 4.5°C, with a range of between 2.7°C and 6.2°C. [….] Another profoundly significant result is buried 16 pages deep into the paper. The scientists show that this revision now means that 2°C of global warming is likely to be reached sometime around 2040 based on our current high-emissions trajectory. The implications of this are unimaginable – we may witness planetary collapse far sooner than we once thought.
    This is horrific, if those are solid estimates… those warming levels will mean Australia (and parts of the rest of the world) becomes pretty much uninhabitable.

    (tags: australia future grim climate-change models warming)

  • Weak bits floppy disc protection

    Amazing anti-piracy scheme from the BBC Micro era, devised by Simon Hosler of Sherston Software: “Weak” or “Flaky” bits, caused by “a weak signal or non-existent magnetic signal on the disc surface. You might also see the term no-flux area (NFA), which is the same as a non-existent signal. Weak bits are almost always a non-existent signal, as opposed to a weak signal. The flaky nature of weak bits actually comes out of the drive electronics: when there are no clear flux changes, the drive just amplifies harder until it starts seeing and signalling ghosts within the noise.” Simon Hosler wrote: “Soft lock (was what we called it) was actually my system, so what I remember… This came about because I lived next door to an electronics geek! So break the write data line of the parallel disk cable. Add a bit of electronics to this line. (thank you Mike) Most of the time this electronics does nothing – lets the data go through as normal. If you turn it on (I think I did this through the serial port) and write to a single sector – it would count the bits going through say 256 – and then stop the next 256 bits going through”

    (tags: bbc-micro microcomputers history copy-protection anti-piracy piracy weak-bits hardware hacks simon-hosler)

  • The Center for Land Use Interpretation

    More than 30 uranium disposal cells have been constructed over the last 25 years, primarily to contain radioactive contamination from decommissioned uranium mills and processing sites. They are time capsules, of sorts, designed to take their toxic contents, undisturbed, as far into the future as possible. Uranium disposal cells are unusual constructions because they are built to last far beyond the lives of most engineered structures, to isolate their radioactive contents from the environment for hundreds of years. They are generally low geometric mounds, sometimes as high as a hundred feet tall, covering a few acres or as much as a half mile, and composed of layers of engineered soil and gravels designed to shed rainwater and limit erosion. […] The contents are not considered high-level radioactive waste, like spent fuel from nuclear reactors. That material has yet to find a permanent home. What these cells contain is radioactive tailings from uranium processing sites, as well as the demolished buildings and apparatus from the mills themselves. The amount of radioactivity in these cells varies, but is generally considered harmful to people if exposure takes place over sustained periods. Most of the radiation comes from uranium 238, which has a half life of 4.47 billion years, nearly the age of the earth itself.

    (tags: nuclear uranium history waste toxic-waste radioactivity u-238 radioactive structures land-use)

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