MarkSummer's comments

The sonos system is an extreme example of "engineered to fail". The only issue is lack of memory. All they needed to do was make the memory upgradable (or supply the system with a decent amount of memory to begin with). Sonos intentionally engineered this End of Life. Listen, we could all make our own DIY Sonos system, but to be honest, a.) We don't have time, and b.) they're software integrated with Spotify/Pandora/etc. (after they fixed major bugs from each release) was actually pretty decent. Instead, unlike my Dad's 1976 RCA reciever/turntable/speakers that still pumps out a sweet sound, my Sonos system will be relegated to the dump. If someone out there is selling an open source sonos replacement with decent control software, post the link here, I will buy it.

> When you say Bitcoin "hurts the environment", what, concretely do you mean? Presumably, you mean it in a stronger sense than "using energy to produce food hurts the environment" or "using energy to run an ER hurts the environment".

Perhaps a more direct analogy is "literally miming gold hurts the environment (since I highly doubt renewable energy is significantly leveraged in the supply chain)".

> That is, you think that relative to the benefit provided, the use of (harmful) energy to run bitcoin miners doesn't justify its environmental cost.

It makes me wonder if you couldn't somehow tie a renewable energy certificate (1) to a mined coin. I suppose green coin (2) is a similar, albeit indirect concept (i.e. value is from a unit of carbon sequestration).

1.) https://www.epa.gov/greenpower/renewable-energy-tracking-sys...

2.) https://coincheckup.com/coins/greencoin/purpose

> ...and that is what they did.

In fact, that is what they still do. As someone who deals with ABS regularly, it is as weird of a conflict of interest as one would think. ABS, as far as I've seen, is comprised of honest folks who take their jobs seriously (i.e. they don't take it easy on shipbuilders or owners in hopes of retaining business). However, it's an odd dynamic. It's kind of like being sued and having to pay not only your defense lawyer, but also the prosecution's lawyer.

...or what frabert said much more succinctly :)

Sure, rather easily in fact. You just need three laser diodes (Red, Green, and Blue), each pointed into the appropriate side of an RGB dichroic optical combiner cube. The cube redirects each of the three beams, combining them into a single beam emitted out of the remaining side (1) (the prisms can also function in reverse to split collimated a white light into constituent RGB components).

In lieu of a cube, you could use three (R,G,B) dichroic notch reflectors (mirrors) (2) and combine the lasers 'manually', but the cubes are nice because you don't have to build a mount for the I individual mirrors.

You can either scavenge a cube or dichroic mirrors from an old standard projector, or pick them up online for a few bucks. After that, just place the combined beam in the same path at the red laser shown in this example set-up, modulate the three lasers according to an image's RGB intensity values (you can separate an image frame into three RGB frames using openCV), and there you go.

Tangentially, the basic idea of scanning a laser to form an image is what underpins the Virtual Retinal Display (VRD) - a head up display technology developed at the Univ. of Washington and later attempted to be commercialized by Magic Leap (ML) for Augmented Reality eyewear. Even though ML hasn't panned out, I still see the VRD as a very viable path forward for high resolution/field of view AR displays.

1. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dichroic_prism

2. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dichroic_filter

> How would you isolate something like this?

On Navy ships you have a slew of EM radiating emitters, not only from your own ship, but also from other ships that may be close by. For that reason, a lot of time and effort is spent EM-hardening equipment and cables from being susceptible to EMI and also ensuring radiating emitters don't exceed spectrum and intensity limits - whether they're intended to radiate (e.g. antennas, radars, range finders, etc.) or not (e.g. generators, motor controllers, etc.).

Mil-std-461 (downloadable here (1)) tells you how to test equipment/environments to ensure EM radiated emissions and equipment susceptibility are within standard/tolerable limits. If problems arise on a ship, there is shipboard testing that can be used to pinpoint the culprit and then you can mitigate (e.g. ferrite beads, shielding, proper grounding per Mil-std-1310, removing cable loops, etc.).

Sounds like these folks could use some good old fashioned EMI testing.

1. https://quicksearch.dla.mil/qaSearch.aspx

I like the idea of using a 'enter code' (where code is pseudo randomly generated) to request your number be added to the white list. This could be done for all users not in your contacts. Then, the user could leave, say a voicemail, which is converted to text that goes into a list that you could later scan for valid requests.

I currently use the "Should I Answer" app, mentioned below, which is about as good as it gets in terms of pissed off people working together to fight the good fight I think.

However, all of this crap is still jist a bandaid for a lack of our governmental ability (at least in the U.S.) to hold phone utilities accountable for the illegal use of phone numbers.(1) Fine the phone companies hard and the problem goes away.

1. https://www.consumerreports.org/consumerist/phone-companies-...

> It's mostly built in for Pixel

I this this "Pixel" reply is misplaced. I've been using "Should I Answer" for about a year on my Galaxy S6, and it does everything the OP was requesting and then some. I just donated to them yesterday for the first time in fact.

Even if you don't choose to use your contacts as a white list (which I don't because I often have client/prospect calls coming in that aren't in my contacts yet), it still catches about 95% of calls thanks to thepower of the masses fighting back.

If you don't have it, definitely worth a download

>>The order will show up in a reusable tote–designed by engineers at UPS to withstand repeated journeys–instead of a cardboard box.

I've always wondered why the scalable/reusable shipping box wasn't a thing. To me, this is would be an incremental improvement over current shipping.

That's... hi-larious. Favorite from the Wikipedia names list: Don Black - white supremist.

All I have to say is that back in I worked for the Navy PEO IWS and every year they send out requests for individuals to submit concepts (i.e. needs) for warfighter capabilities for potential SBIR grants. I think it was about 2011 or so when the idea to work on changing out the common display system (CDS) with a COTS head up display and game controller (vuzix at the time, occulus hadn't really emerged yet) was proposed.

The idea was laughed off the screen.

I went from individual contributer to manager, then back to individual contributer. But I believe the decision is dependant on the quality of work and the team you're managing.

For the latter transition, I got some sideways looks at first from people asking "you realize your taking a step back in your career, right?" My reply was twofold:

A.) I replied "I'm still getting the same pay and benefits, right?" The answer is yes.

and

B.) As an individual contributer I don't have to waste my time (which I could be using to actually work on creative and interesting projects) trying to fix the work/quality of complacent and mediocre engineers.

So, for me, if I get to manage a team of highly competant engineers, then I will gladly take that management role because the team actually extends my ability to accomplish more than if I worked independantly. However, if you want me to manage a group of half-ass engineers who have little-to-no passion for pushing the envelope, then I'd much rather work independantly as an individual contributer.

Life is too short to waste on menial tasks that do little to improve the world.

Ha, agree. This is an amazing story if you haven't read about it: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Azorian

The kind of thing that kind of makes you second guess the "whacky" conspiracy crackpots.

Here's a 'mostly wireless' open/neutral network that seems to be scaling: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guifi.net

> We see the consequences of a non-open Internet every day where we work in Uganda. It is common there for people to have "social bundles" that only work for Facebook, WhatsApp, Twitter, etc.

This is an important perspective. Recommend sharing this insight with the article author to consider appending to their original article.

Out of curiosity (by someone who doesn't know exactly how it works), is there no way for society to go completely off-grid with respect to ISPs, like power customers do with solar panels? Couldn't we then people build an inexpensive wireless black box server/partial cache nodes that everybody owns (stronger ones or bridges for rural users), and that communicate as a smart distributive network - physically detached from the existing GIG and ISPs?