litchralee

joined 2 years ago
[–] litchralee 9 points 6 days ago (1 children)

Did an LLM/AI write this article? It says so much, but tells so little. Every link in the article is either to an irrelevant story or is inapplicable to Orange County, California. What are the "speed limits and precise definitions" being implemented? Why is Stockton mentioned? That's a city in San Joaquin County, hundreds of km to the north of Orange County.

Purchasers of electronic bikes operating in Orange County must shift their behavior in accordance with the upcoming April regulations

What is this? "Electronic" bike? The word used by basically everyone is "electric bike". And I don't even know if "shift their behavior" is a poorly-landing bike pun or an attempt at summarizing this "article". What concrete things should a resident in Orange County be doing now when considering a purchase?

I'm not sure I learned much at all from this.

[–] litchralee 3 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

have bandwidth that is some % of carrier frequency,

In my limited ham radio experience, I've not seen any antennas nor amplifiers which specify their bandwidth as a percentage of "carrier frequency", and I think that term wouldn't make any sense for antennas and (analog) amplifiers, since the carrier is a property of the modulation; an antenna doesn't care about modulation, which is why "HDTV antennas" circa 2000s in the USA were merely a marketing term.

The only antennas and amplifiers I've seen have given their bandwidth as fixed ranges, often accompanied with a plot of the varying gain/output across that range.

going up in frequency makes bandwidth bigger

Yes, but also no. If a 200 kHz FM commercial radio station's signal were shifted from its customary 88-108 MHz band up to the Terahertz range of the electromagnetic spectrum (where infrared and visible light are), the bandwidth would still remain 200 kHz. Indeed, this shifting is actually done, albeit for cable television, where those signals are modulated onto fibre optic cables.

What is definitely true is that way up in the electromagnetic spectrum, there is simply more Hertz to utilize. If we include all radio/microwave bands, that would be the approximate frequencies from 30 kHz to 300 GHz. So basically 300 GHz of bandwidth. But for C band fibre optic cable, their usable band is from 1530-1565 nm, which would translate to 191-195 THz, with 4 THz of bandwidth. That's over eight times larger! So much room for activities!

For less industrial use-cases, we can look to 60 GHz technology, which is used for so-called "Wireless HDMI" devices, because the 7 GHz bandwidth of the 60 GHz band enables huge data rates.

To actually compare the modulation of different technologies irrespective of their radio band, we often look to special efficiency, which is how much data (bits/sec) can be sent over a given bandwidth (in Hz). Higher bits/sec/Hz means more efficient use of the radio waves, up to the Shannon-Hartley theoretical limits.

getting higher % of bandwidth requires more sophisticated, more expensive, heavier designs

Again, yes but also no. If a receiver need only receive a narrow band, then the most straightforward design is to shift the operating frequency down to something more manageable. This is the basis of superheterodyne FM radio receivers, from the era when a few MHz were considered to be very fast waves.

We can and do have examples of this design for higher microwave frequency operation, such as shifting broadcast satellite signals down to normal television bands, suitable for reusing conventional TV coax, which can only carry signals in the 0-2 GHz band at best.

The real challenge is when a massive chunk of bandwidth is of interest, then careful analog design is required. Well, maybe only for precision work. Software defined radio (SDR) is one realm that needs the analog firehose, since "tuning" into a specific band or transmission is done later in software. A cheap RTL-SDR can view a 2.4 MHz slice of bandwidth, which is suitable for plenty of things except broadcast TV, which needs 5-6 MHz.

LoRa is much slower, caused by narrowed bandwidth but also because it's more noise-resistant

I feel like this states the cause-and-effect in the wrong order. The designers of LoRa knew they wanted a narrow-band, low-symbol rate air interface, in order to be long range, and thus were prepared to trade away a faster throughput to achieve that objective. I won't say that slowness is a "feature" of LoRa, but given the same objectives and the limitations that this universe imposes, no one has produced a competitor with blisteringly fast data rate. So slowness is simply expected under these circumstances; it's not a "bug" that can be fixed.

In the final edit of my original comment, I added this:

Radio engineering, like all other disciplines of engineering, centers upon balancing competing requirements and limitations in elegant ways. Radio range is the product of intensely optimizing all factors for the desired objective.

[–] litchralee 15 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (3 children)

Also, what if things that require very little data transmission used something lower than 2.4Ghz for longer range? (1Ghz or something?)

No one seemed to touch upon this part, so I'll chime in. The range and throughput of a transmission depends on a lot of factors, but the most prominent are: peak and avg output power, modulation (the pattern of radio waves sent) and frequency, background noise, and bandwidth (in Hz; how much spectrum width the transmission will occupy), in no particular order.

If all else were equal, changing the frequency to a lower band wouldn't impact range or throughput. But that's hardly ever the case, since reducing the frequency imposes limitations to the usable modulations, which means trying to send the same payload either takes longer or uses more spectral bandwidth. Those two approaches have the side-effect that slower transmissions are more easily recovered from farther away, and using more bandwidth means partial interference from noise has a lesser impact, as well as lower risk of interception. So in practice, a lower frequency could improve range, but the other factors would have to take up the slack to keep the same throughput.

Indeed, actual radio systems manipulate some or all of those factors when longer distance reception is the goal. Some systems are clever with their modulation, such as FT8 used by amateur radio operators, in order to use low-power transmitters in noisy radio bands. On the flip side, sometimes raw power can overcome all obstacles. Or maybe just send very infrequent, impeccably narrow messages, using an atomic clock for frequency accuracy.

To answer the question concretely though, there are LoRa devices which prefer to use the ISM band centered on 915 MHz in The Americas, as the objective is indeed long range (a few hundred km) and small payload (maybe <100 Bytes), and that means the comparatively wider (and noisier) 2.4 GHz band is unneeded and unwanted. But this is just one example, and LoRa has many implementations that change the base parameters. Like how MeshCore and Meshtastic might use the same physical radios but the former implements actual mesh routing, while the latter floods to all nodes (a bad thing).

But some systems like WiFi or GSM can be tuned for longer range while still using their customary frequencies, by turning those other aforementioned knobs. Custom networks could indeed be dedicated to only sending very small amounts of data, like for telemetry (see SCADA). That said, GSM does have a hard cap of 35 km, for reasons having to do with how it handles multiple devices at once.

Radio engineering, like all other disciplines of engineering, centers upon balancing competing requirements and limitations in elegant ways. Radio range is the product of intensely optimizing all factors for the desired objective.

[–] litchralee 1 points 1 week ago

I habitually remove the automatic +1, so I won't feel self-aggrandizing haha

[–] litchralee 3 points 1 week ago (2 children)

It's for this reason that I sometimes spell out the units as: 1000 GBytes/sec or 1000 Gbits/sec. In my book, Byte is always "big B" and bit is always "little b", and then spelling it out makes it unambiguous in writing.

[–] litchralee 3 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

Let's say you have a household of 5 people with 20 devices in the LAN, one can be infected and running some bot, you do not want to block 5 people and 20 devices.

Why not, though? If a home network is misbehaving, whoever is maintaining that network needs to: 1) be aware that there's something wrong, and 2) needs to fix it on their end. Most homes don't have a Network Operations Center to contact, but throwing an error code in a web browser is often effective since someone in the household will notice. Unlike institutional users, home devices are not totally SOL when blocked, as they can be moved to use cellular networks or other WiFi networks.

At the root of the problem, NAT deprives the users behind it of agency: they're all in the same barrel, and the maxim about bad apples will apply. You're right that it gets even worse for CGNAT, but that's more a reason to refuse all types of NAT and prefer end-to-end IPv6.

[–] litchralee 4 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (2 children)

exclusively developed brakes

This worries me somewhat. On one hand, when the objective is a sub 10 kg ebike, all options should be available, even if that means having to custom-build components, and brakes would be no exception. On the other hand, there are some parts on bikes which have been refined by existing engineering efforts for racing bikes, which includes brakes, although racing did remove the incentive for lighter bikes when the bikes became structurally unsound.

Even still, it's hard for me to imagine how much mass can be shaved off of brake handles, calipers, and discs, such that they make the savings worthwhile. The flowery language on their website does not adequately explain exact what their brake design improves upon, other than being "engineered in Switzerland" and "exceptional reliability and performance".

Still, 10 kg is quite the achievement unto itself. Though the €12k price tag means this won't be an everyday city bike for the masses.

[–] litchralee 0 points 1 week ago

It pains me that some of these awesome electric motor bikes are still hamstrung by limited battery sizes. But on the flip side, when (not if) newer battery technology becomes available, we'll know exactly what to use it for.

[–] litchralee 3 points 1 week ago

There are, but the process may be truly arcane -- 1993 for the .us process found in RFC 1480 -- but people have done it: https://web.archive.org/web/20160316224838/https://owen.sj.ca.us/~rk/howto/articles/usdomain/usdomain.html

[–] litchralee 3 points 1 week ago

I'm of the opinion that gloves are a solution for avoiding or limiting calluses, but with the asterisks that: 1) it can also be a (minor) crutch if not also developing your grip strength in tandem, and 2) that gloves must be properly fitting or else it might be even worse than no gloves at all.

If the calluses seem to relate only to isolation exercises, then #1 is less of an issue. But if they appear due to compound exercises, then that's a clue to improve your grip, as a callus ostensibly is due to uneven pressure around your hands.

For #2, ill-fitting gloves might grip the implement or barbell or dumbbell, but if the glove slides against your palm, then it'll bunch up and that virtually guarantees uneven pressure. You might also consider fingerless gloves, so that there's material only where it's needed to avoid palm calluses.

[–] litchralee 5 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

I happened to have a friend that is into lifting, but also my work has an on-site gym with a dedicated fitness instructor. But had those circumstances not been available, I would have considered hiring a personal trainer for a few sessions. Another option is to see what your local city might offer in terms of continuing education, since that often also includes time with a fitness expert.

That said, while it's true that a video won't properly describe the full motion for an exercise, it should be the case that watching a video should avoid all the major pitfalls that might cause injury. If there's a risk that you'll injure yourself, it might be because you're trying too much weight too early.

If needed, you can even try an exercise with little or no weight, to make sure your form is dialed in. Also, do not underestimate the utility of setting up a camera on a tripod to record your form. It's something which is fairly easy to do, and more people can quickly review a video and give tips, even online.

[–] litchralee 1 points 1 week ago

For reference, the letter written to the Governor of California is to invoke the provisions of Government Code 3612, which if used would cause an automatic 1 week cooling-off period so a Board of Investigation can convene and gather facts for the Governor. At that point, if the Governor concludes from those facts that significant transit disruption would occur, or there is a risk to public safety or welfare, the cooling off period can be extended by court order up to 60 days.

This proviso in law appears to have been added in 2012, as a trailer bill off the end of that year's Budget, that reorganized some parts of the state government.

 

Use the code on the Walgreens app and the website to claim the same offer twice!

When uploading photos using the desktop website, make sure to select Full Resolution in the Upload Preferences.

 

Use the code on the Walgreens app and the website to claim the same offer twice!

When uploading photos using the desktop website, make sure to select Full Resolution in the Upload Preferences.

 

When uploading photos using the desktop website, make sure to select Full Resolution in the Upload Preferences.

 

Use the code on the Walgreens app and the website to claim the same offer twice!

When uploading photos using the desktop website, make sure to select Full Resolution in the Upload Preferences.

12
submitted 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) by litchralee to c/[email protected]
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submitted 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) by litchralee to c/[email protected]
 

In November 2024, the California State Transportation Agency (CalSTA) awarded the latest round of funding to various transit and rail projects, including $63 million towards development of the Coast Rail Corridor. This corridor will link the existing, successful rail systems in Northern and Southern California by conventional rail, per the state's rail plan. This project does not overlap with ongoing efforts to build the inland High Speed Rail system.

The Coast Rail Corridor was first formally described in a study undertaken by the San Luis Obispo Council Of Governments (SLOCOG), a group of municipalities in San Luis Obispo (SLO) County, located in the Central Coast region of California. The area includes the prominent CalPoly SLO university campus and is approximately halfway between Los Angeles and the San Francisco Bay Area.

As background, the existing state rail system includes two privately-owned Class I freight railroads (UP and BNSF), various publicly-owned shortline railroads (eg Caltrain, Metrolink, SMART, NCTD), and light-rail and metro rail systems that don't connect to the national system (eg BART, SacRT, LA Metro). On the heavy rails, existing services include the two interstate, long-distance trains owned-and-operated nationally by Amtrak (California Zephyr, Coast Starlight, Texas Eagle, and Southwest Chief) and regional/suburban/commuter trains that are state-subsidized but co-branded under the Amtrak California name (Capitol Corridor, Pacific Surfliner, San Joaquins), or are independently operated by a Joint Powers Agreement (JPA) composed of served municipalities (eg Caltrain, ACE, Metrolink). Some confusion arises when the name of the train service, the name of the JPA, or the name of the rail owner, are the same. Relevant to the Coast Rail Corridor are the Capitol Corridor, Pacific Surfliner, and Coast Starlight services.

The Capitol Corridor operates in Northern California, from the heart of Silicon Valley in San Jose along the East Bay via Oakland and Martinez, north to the state capitol Sacramento and its suburbs in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada mountain range. The majority of this service operates on UP's Coast Line and Niles and Martinez Subdivisions, and a small segment on Caltrain's tracks.

The Pacific Surfliner operates predominantly in Southern California with a segment into Central California. The route begins in San Diego along the coast through Orange County and Los Angeles, then proceeding further along the coast through Santa Barbara to San Luis Obispo. This route uses track owned by UP, BNSF, Metrolink, and NCTD. But the relevant portion north of Los Angeles towards SLO is UP's Coast Line.

Amtrak's Coast Starlight service is a daily roundtrip service from Los Angeles to Seattle, Washington, via SLO, San Jose, Martinez, Sacramento, operating mostly on UP's Coast Line and Valley Subdivision in California. Without a state subsidy, this service is often more expensive between the same destinations, with far less frequency and relative comfort onboard.

The Coast Rail Corridor identifies the section of UP's Coast Line located south of the Capitol Corridor in San Jose, and north of the Pacific Surfliner in SLO, to quantify what rail improvements can be made to enable additional passenger service beyond the two daily one-way Coast Starlight trains. If enabled, this corridor would parallel the inland San Joaquins route from Bakersfield (almost LA; inland) to Sacramento, and would yield the first wholly-in-state all-rail link between the two state-sponsored systems in NorCal and SoCal. Existing connecting bus services between the two systems would be repurposed to provide more frequent connections outside of peak hours.

As the study describes, UP is amenable to making improvements to the Coast Line -- especially since UP wouldn't be ponying up the cash -- with the proviso that tunnels along the route be modified to enable double-stack freight trains. As a note, all passenger trains operated by Capitol Corridor, Pacific Surfliner, and Coast Starlight use bilevel train cars, which are 4.9 meters tall above the rails. Whereas two stacked shipping containers would be at least 5.8 meters tall, so a double-stack freight car is even taller than that.

Other changes would include upgrading various existing one-way sidings -- adjacent tracks that stub off the mainline and terminate, used to park traincars -- to have remote controlled switches, and add crossover tracks so trains can pass each other. Most of UP's Coast Line is single-track, and these upgrades would provide double-track meeting points for when freight and passenger trains need to pass. The exact location where the trains would meet depends on the scheduling, which limits how many new passengers trains can run on this route.

In addition to infrastructure changes, the study explores how new service or expanded existing service can use the upgraded route. The three options explored included an expansion of the Capitol Corridor down to SLO, an expansion of the Pacific Surfliner up to Salinas (just south of San Jose), and entirely new through-running service from San Francisco to Los Angeles.

From a cost perspective, the third option was the most expensive, requiring a new governance agency, new rolling stock, new operator contracts, and negotiations with Caltrain to use their tracks to San Francisco. Note that Caltrain in 2024 now operates the state's first all-electric mainline railroad, and is unlikely to want diesel-only passenger trains returning to their tracks.

The first two options would require only small changes in the terms of their respective JPAs to serve additional territory, and as the study notes, economies of scale exist when adding rolling stock to an existing service, as the number of necessary spare locomotives and cars does not grow one-to-one.

A key distinguishment between the two options is layover facilities. The Capitol Corridor is able to park trains at their Oakland Maintenance Facility, at Sacramento station, and at the terminus stations in San Jose and Auburn. The Pacific Surfliner parks trains in Los Angeles or their San Diego maintenance facility, plus space at the SLO terminus station for only one train. A project to expand this station's layover capability was funded in 2023 but will only add a second train parking space and the maintenance capability for that train.

Although the study did not examine the location in detail, a layover facility is needed somewhere on the Coast Rail Corridor, since the length of the corridor will require standby trains, should there be equipment failure or track failure along the route. Ideally, this facility would be centrally located, or as close as practical, within the corridor and still be near its maintenance facility. The Oakland facility is nearer than the San Diego facility, and it would be cheaper to build more layover tracks in SLO than on expensive real estate in the Bay Area. But that's my speculation.

The long term vision is for every-other-hour trains running up and down the corridor, connecting communities along the coast between the LA and Bay Area mega regions. In terms of equipment necessary, the state DOT could reallocate its common rolling stock from the San Joaquins to the Capitol Corridor, since the San Joaquins is slowly receiving new single-level Siemens Venture cars. With SLOCOG funded for the track improvements, they hope to wrap those up by 2028.

The study -- authored in 2021 -- originally envisioned new trains on the corridor running in 2027, so assuming the rolling stock becomes available and Capitol Corridor is in a position to operate on the corridor, it's entirely possible to see new corridor trains by 2030, IMO.

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submitted 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) by litchralee to c/[email protected]
 

Notforusein is a perfectly cromulent word. Or a brand name for sale on Amazon.com.

EDIT: this is a take-out bag for sandwiches, where the inside is apparently lined with aluminum to keep the heat in. Accordingly, they do not recommend the bag to be placed in a microwave oven.

3
submitted 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) by litchralee to c/freebies
 

Use the code on the Walgreens app and the website to claim the same offer twice!

When uploading photos using the desktop website, make sure to select Full Resolution in the Upload Preferences.

 

I saw a 1-year video review for this leg press, where the listing says the brand is BalanceFrom but the photo says Signature Fitness. Whatever may be the case, $700 for a leg press would present phenomenal value for a homegym looking to add lower-body isolation machines.

Now, I already have my Frankenstein Force USA leg press/hack squat/preacher curl machine, but I do think it's interesting that this $700 machine natively supports removing the wide bar, thus narrowing the width requirement. However, because the alternative bar is located above the carriage, some floor space will still need to be dedicated on either side of the machine to load weights. Whereas on my Force USA machine, the alternative bar is below the carriage, meaning it can be loaded from behind the machine, which can then be pushed up against a wall.

Still, for half the price, $700 gets rails that run smooth and only a few minor quality-of-life issues that the video review noted, such as limitations for tall people. No hack squat though, but that might be a fair trade off at this price point for a full-and-proper leg press, rather than a "leg sled", the term used by Garage Gym Reviews.

Has anyone used one of these? Thoughts?

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submitted 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) by litchralee to c/freebies
 

Use the code on the Walgreens app and the website to claim the same offer twice!

When uploading photos using the desktop website, make sure to select Full Resolution in the Upload Preferences.

 

When uploading photos using the desktop website, make sure to select Full Resolution in the Upload Preferences.

 

We live in a very strange timeline where the Ontario Premier is outdoing American governors on what constitutes "really dumb ideas". If you live in Ontario, I would urge you to watch to the end of the video and file a public comment during Bill 212's consultation period, ending on 20 November 2024.

https://ero.ontario.ca/notice/019-9266

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