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farva

69 karma · joined June 22, 2014

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farva··on Identifying satellite interference due to GSM rebroadcast (2011) [pdf]
For an example of more malicious interference, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Captain_Midnight_broadcast_sig...
farva··on Identifying satellite interference due to GSM rebroadcast (2011) [pdf]
Block up-converter (BUC) at uplink site (in this case, likely part of a VSAT terminal or Satellite Internet "antenna") takes L-Band (950-1525mhz) input via cable, converts it to C-band uplink (5850-6425mhz) frequency, and transmits to satellite. Satellite then rebroadcasts verbatim at C-band downlink frequency (3400-4200mhz). Except that one of the inputs didn't have a cable or filter attached so it picked up a GSM signal at 936-960mhz. This caused interference on the satellite.
farva··on Identifying satellite interference due to GSM rebroadcast (2011) [pdf]
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15371607
farva··on Identifying satellite interference due to GSM rebroadcast (2011) [pdf]
TLDR: Unterminated input port at satellite uplink site acted as antenna, picking up nearby cell tower by accident. Fix: put a terminator on the port.
farva··on AT&T allegedly “discriminated” against poor people in broadband upgrades
I agree that we shouldn't be too quick to label every potentially unfair situation as discrimination. But part of the original intent (Ajit Pai notwithstanding) of the USF was to bring quality service to rural and low income areas, so AT&T should be careful to fulfill their obligation and, ideally, the government should hold them to it.
farva··on AT&T allegedly “discriminated” against poor people in broadband upgrades
That would be all well and good if they didn't collude with the local authorities against competition and collect "universal service" funds from the government in exchange for, at most, the barest minimum effort. Either be a benevolent monopoly (no such thing IMHO) or compete in a free market.
farva··on Letter From Human Rights Leaders Asking President Obama To Pardon Edward Snowden
Ford pardoned Nixon without him being convicted. Amnesty is a pardon given to a group of people, rather than an individual.
farva··on The secret world of microwave networks
All this effort put into making low latency networks and what are they used for? Uselessly siphoning money and destabilizing markets.
farva··on Cheap MacBook chargers create big sparks
I've repaired dozens of laptops and the one thing the broken power connectors had in common was being soldered directly to the motherboard instead of using a separate assembly.
farva··on Cheap MacBook chargers create big sparks
The standard barrel connector protects against short-circuiting with a simple plastic ring. The magsafe connector requires a fucking microcontroller.
farva··on PulseAudio has been removed from dports
Pulseaudio did not work on DragonflyBSD. At all. Hence the removal. A feature that doesn't work isn't really a feature, is it?
farva··on Lonnie Johnson: The father of the Super Soaker
Wouldn't that be a CNC lathe?
farva··on The new TrueType interpreter in FreeType 2.7.0
Surely *BSD accounts for more than 0.0001% of UNIX-like servers.
farva··on Carl's Jr. wants to open automated location
Fast food is more of a luxury...if you want the best value on food then go to the grocery store.
farva··on Rappel: A REPL for x86, amd64, and armv7
The OpenFirmware system used on old Macintosh and Sun machines used an extended FORTH for the bootstrapping and hardware management. FreeBSD's bootloader has a similar system as well.
farva··on GPL enforcement is a social good
Rob Landley (former Busybox developer) begs to differ.

See http://landley.net/notes-2011.html#13-11-2011 http://landley.net/notes-2011.html#15-08-2011 http://landley.net/notes-2009.html#15-12-2009

farva··on Show HN: A fireplace for Emacs
Haven't they suffered enough?
farva··on Old Stuff That Rocks
AT&T and Sun did a good job of rendering Unix irrelevant during the "Unix Wars". Microsoft hedged their bets with Xenix until it became clear that wasn't the way forward.
farva··on How Inflight Wifi Works
It's possible (at least with the HN7000 ku-band system) to put a Hughesnet dish on a tripod and point it yourself (with the proper tools and knowledge). You'd need to get it from a dealer that allows self-installs (Hughesnet won't sell you equipment without a professional installation), such as Montana Satellite.
farva··on NASA’s 1976 Graphics Standards Manual [pdf]
This document, especially section 1.6: Incorrect Uses seems to inadvertently make a good case against the inflexible (and short-lived) "worm" logo. Or maybe that's just me.
farva··on [dead]
If you're relying on DNS for security, you're doing it wrong.
farva··on Cisco to Acquire OpenDNS for $635M
No doubt the usual Cisco strategy will be followed: embrace, neglect, extinguish.
farva··on Tmux 2.0 released
Have a look at abduco as well. It's a (IMHO) more user-friendly (and supposedly cleaner) dtach replacement, from the author of dvtm.
farva··on Terminated .gov Domain Names
It's available on the Internet Archive: https://web.archive.org/web/20120913081458/http://www.africa...

Looks like it was moved to the National Parks Service website: http://www.nps.gov/afbg/index.htm

farva··on Nasa to hack Mars rover Opportunity to fix 'amnesia' fault
You would think they'd have engineered at least some basic wear leveling in. I guess it didn't occur to them at design time that it might survive as long as it has.
farva··on A tmux Crash Course
I used to use tmux, now I use dvtm and dtach with the following alias:

  alias vtmux="dtach -A /tmp/dvtm -z -e ^s -r winch dvtm -m ^a"
farva··on Vegetable Spawns Larceny and Luxury in Peru
Peruvians will suffer, but the elephants will be alright and that's all that matters.
farva··on What is the “minimal” set of primitives needed for a Lisp interpreter?
There's been a lot of discussion about the minimal set of primitives to build an interpreter in the Forth community (for instance https://groups.google.com/d/msg/comp.lang.forth/KHw28PKZXUk/.... ) Particularly interesting is eForth, a Forth made to be easily ported while still having acceptable performance, and Minimal ANS Forth, a heavily-commented ANS compliant Forth written in Forth (both of these use significantly more than the minimum for practical reasons.) The answer, for both Lisp and Forth, is somewhere between 8 and 11. In "real world" usage, the set of primitives largely depends on the hardware you're targeting and how well you need it to perform.
farva··on Great Works in Programming Languages (2004)
Surprised SICP isn't mentioned.
farva··on Cantonese Proverbs in One Picture
Shaka, when the walls fell.
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