syedkarim

Big antennas (25 square meters?) which are highly directional go along way to improve the link budget. The main lobe is focused on a pet small area of land. My guess is they will also use the lowest bitrate modulation/coding for additional improvement to the link budget. I think LTE goes down to QPSK 1/12, which supports demodulation down to about -7 SNR? Something around there.

Who is offering a 1U for $20k? Is that to sun-sync, or one of the last-minute ISS specials?

What’s the benefit to using archive.ph instead of archive.org (Internet Archive)? Seems like the latter is much more likely to be around for awhile.

Those FCC regulations are for broadcasters.

Huy Fong makes a garlic chili sauce, which appears to be Sriracha, but without any sugar at all. I think the garlic chili sauce comes off the same line, but gets bottled before the sugar is added.

Have any laptops/mobile workstations ever used ATX motherboards?

I don’t disagree with this reality. What I don’t understand is how Prusa manages to do so well.

The thing to remember is that one in fifty people qualifies to be in Mensa, which is not particularly selective or exclusive. This is 2% of the general population, not 2% of, for example, readers of Hacker News. Or 2% of software developers or 2% of people who read more than one book per year.

My experience with Mensa is from 20 years ago with the group in Chicago. I was in my twenties and my guess is that the average age of members was late-fifties. In theory, they were interested in recruiting younger people, in practice they were not interested in changing the activities in a way that would attract younger members, like focusing efforts to solve real-world problems. I felt they were more interested in showcasing depth in various atypical hobbies, or to simply talk about how smart they were. I was never in awe of anyone’s intellect. Pretty much just normal people. I don’t think I came across anyone that was exceptionally accomplished at anything.

Why doesn’t the American Medical Association start its own insurance company?

Did they advertise the fact that an internet connection was required to initially turn the tv on? What happens when a TV like this is purchased for places without internet connections?

Why would you even want to change an organization?

Where are you from?

Will rural America see a population implosion, as boomers die? A relatively small number of young people stay in rural America after graduating high school and virtually none return after college.

This is just from my observation of central Illinois; I’m assuming it’s the same all over.

I've found the process of writing a business plan to be a complete waste of time. I've also found the organizations and investors who require a business plan to be a complete waste of time. Specifically, I'm referring to early stage, high-growth (potential) businesses. The short-term questions that a business plan answers are basic and a lot of fluffy writing goes into stating simple answers. The bigger-picture statements are really just short-form fiction.

>> In rural areas, cars make sense, because public transport is (usually) abysmal.

Where in rural America is public transportation not abysmal? I don’t believe there is anywhere in rural America where a personal vehicle can be completely replaced by public transportation.

We hired a builder about five years ago to build our home. What we found after talking with a dozen (or more) local custom home builders was that the math doesn’t make sense for lower-cost custom homes. A custom home, in this case, is anything that is not a part of a development or subdivision. The GC (general contractor/builder) charges about a 20% management fee on top of all costs that are paid to build the house. GC have minimal full-time staff of their own and use sub-contractors for most everything. Builders with really good reputations might charge up to a 30% management fee. The net income, after the builder’s operational costs (insurance, taxes, overhead) are 10% of the home cost if the management fee is 20%.

A builder can only take on so many projects per year. Typically three or four. The amount of work that goes into managing a $300,000 project (not including land) is mostly the same as one that costs $600,000 or $1,200,000. Why make $30,000 per project when there’s an opportunity for $60k or $120k?

After 2008, I believe banks started being much less willing to provide construction loans to builders, as many went upside down on projects when the market crashed. The bank doesn’t want to repossess a halfway-done new construction project, which is the hardest thing to resell. There are fewer speculative custom homes being built now, compared to before 2008. And builders are no longer taking any kind of risk on projects, so their customers need to acquire financing on their own.

Relatively few banks offer reasonably priced construction loans. We were required to have the land paid in full and also bring 30% as a down payment for the construction loan.

From my observations, I think patent litigation is pretty high up on the legal totem pole. Patent lawyers who focus on actual litigation (through federal district courts, as opposed to the USPTO PTAB (Patent Trial and Appeal Board) are responsible for cases that have legal fees at the $10M-level. But to support your point, a trial attorney who focuses on patent litigation is not necessarily a patent lawyer (though can be). There is a sort of arbitration at the PTAB for patent disputes, which does require a USPTO-registered attorney, but that's a process that is cheaper for all parties involved, so it's less money for the law firm. I assume those lawyers have less prestige at larger firms.

From my experience, patent lawyers who focus on patent prosecution bill at rate ~$300 - $500; patent litigators are $500 - $1000 (and I'm sure some litigators are much higher).

Do you mean manufacturers of RTLSDR devices? Those don’t need to be locked down (in the US), as they are receive-only devices.

Accel's $250k deal does not appear to be a grant, which is truly no-strings attached money. It looks like a convertible note with no valuation cap; so non-dilutive until the first priced-round.

Why not pay the farmers for that data (or share the resulting revenue) and sell the data feed to traders?

This statement is not accurate. Everyone summer I visit my friend's farm in central Illinois. Three people are responsible for farming 1000 acres. I've seen tractors and combines that are the size and cost of the 8R in the shed. This is a very normal and common family farm (though incorporated). Many of the farms in the area are this size and operated by private farmers.

I've spoken to someone in business development at AWS Ground Station in the past and have also navigated the ITU filing process for operating a satellite(s). I don't believe AWS does anything to reduce coordination requirements for downlinking from a satellite; I don't see how they could be at all involved with coordination.

AWS does eliminate the capex of setting up your own antennas all over the world. If you just want to downlink from your satellite, radiating into another country's borders is possible as long as that country did not object/request coordination with the satellite/ITU filing.

Some countries require receive-only earth stations (which is any antenna/terminal that receives a signal from a satellite) to be licensed, but many do not. AWS would eliminate that particular set of paperwork, but that's really not that much paperwork compared to ITU regulations.

Why doesn't the radiomesh.org website have any real details?

That last paragraph…TI sells a part for set top boxes (TPS65235). It’s been sold out for months, but it’s possible to receive a notification email when they suddenly decide to run their own productions for the part (their website says 50 weeks). I always receive the notifications in the middle of the night, so by the time I order in the morning, all of the inventory is sold out. One time I happened to be awake during a notification and was unable to purchase just six minutes after receiving the notification.

Othernet is a relay for APRS messages which include “outnet” in the text. A parabolic antenna/dish is not required.

What's the best way to receive that list? My email address in my profile.

I don't believe that the HackRF cluster is required for receiving the beacons. After the 11 GHz signal is down converted by the LNB, an RTLSDR should be fine for reception. happysat77 on Reddit used a PlutoSDR, but an RTLSDR should be ok, since the down converted signal is around 1600 MHz. The bandwidth of the beacon is only 1 kHz or so.

https://www.reddit.com/r/RTLSDR/comments/qtofau/comment/hkq2...

Can’t a similar thing be said about Christmas, Easter, etc?

Isn't this really a skid steer/wheel loader, rather than a tractor?

What are the other chirp-based protocols?