litchralee

Is it a requirement that the Windows box needs to be able to interact with the serial stream to/from the PLC and instrument? If it only needs to monitor the serial connection, would it suffice to just have Windows "tap" the RS232 lines to receive the signal but otherwise let it continue, and never TX onto the lines?

Would you be able to draw an ASCII art picture of what you're asking? I'm having a hard time understanding whether the L3 switch is in the same networking closet alongside the PoE switch, and if the NVR is also right next to the L3 switch. Also, is the NVR powered with PoE? Or it needs it's own AC power?

Seeing as this is aimed at cycling on trails/off-street paths -- the only realistic place where conflict would occur that isn't with multi-ton motor vehicles -- I'm of the general opinion that adding weird noises to a tranquil environment detracts from the very purpose for going to that place at all.

Some sounds are nature-provided: by wildlife, rustling foliage in the breeze, or even the local 16 meter high waterfall, which are all unavoidable. Other sounds are from the visitors themselves, be it the occasional dog bark, a cough, running shoes trodding on asphalt, or baby strollers rolling by.

Then we have the sounds of enhanced human effort, usually bicycles but also motorized wheelchairs and mobility scooters. In recent years, the whirling of more electric motors in ebikes, escooters, e-skateboards, EUCs, and more have added to this auditory landscape, but usually no more than a whoosh and is counterbalanced by enabling more people to enjoy the natural environment. A reasonable trade, in my opinion.

So then we get to the purported utility of an ostensible bike bell that's really more like a programmable Bluetooth speaker. What exactly is this solving? Is the trail so jam-packed with people that only a loud and gregarious sound can break through to indicate one's intent to pass? How much passing can one realistically achieve in such a people-dense situation?

If there are such places here in the USA, then they're few and far between, falling victim to their own success. The solution would not be to add noise, but to add space. If everyone and their mother wants to be somewhere peaceful and away from the deadly hazard of automobile collisions and road noise, then that should be a hint that more trails and pedestrianized places need to exist.

Degrading the trail experience for everyone else with obnoxious sounds seems like the wrong solution to the wrong problem. And finally, bonafide bike bells are cheaper. Or ya know, just use your words while passing: "I'm on your left".

I also agree that this is a helpful development, since lots of people with Amazon Prime subscriptions will naturally gravitate towards products that they can receive within 2 days or sometimes even overnight. And that's really only possible with either Amazon directly selling something (eg Amazon Basics), or with Fulfilled by Amazon sellers, which this order covers.

I just wanted to provide the context for the brief headline, so people don't just assume that all of Amazon's listings would soon become safety-compliant. They won't.

Unsafe product "sludge" will continue to be a problem even outside Amazon, as platforms like eBay and recently Temu continue to flog some fairly dangerous goods. But addressing that requires a holistic educational approach, such as why unrecognizable e-scooter brands with no UL labels are a problem, among other concerns.

Basically, it's slow progress but good progress.

The headline is almost correct, but as with all things, the devil is in the details.

From the CPSC order -- which I'm very grateful the article has linked to -- Amazon is a distributor as defined in the Consumer Protection Safety Act for products they market as part of the Fulfilled by Amazon program. Since they're not the manufacturer, Amazon is not subject to product liability, but they do have a responsibility to not sell products that don't comply with published, mandatory safety standards. They also have an obligation to recapture hazardous products that were sold and to provide refunds. Amazon has not been doing all of this.

In short, Amazon's defense was that they're a "third party logistics provider" under the Act, meaning they just warehouse and ship the products, which doesn't come with the aforementioned obligations for a "distributor". The administrative law judge and CPSC rejected this, because Fulfilled by Amazon is more than just warehousing. They noted that Amazon also substantially handles payment processing, customer service, returns, and packaging/gift packaging. They also noted that the terms between Amazon and its sellers heavily discussed things which are the customary province of distributors, with Amazon assuming a lot of those roles.

So what can we expect? Possibly an appeal through the courts. But the order has decent odds of standing, as it's premised on fairly clear definitions in the law, plus the findings of an administrative law judge and the CPSC's own findings, which all agree. And the order really just requires Amazon to draft a plan to implement its obligations; it doesn't force a change quite yet.

Assuming Amazon decides to cut their losses and comply, only Fulfilled by Amazon products will be affected. Anything sold and shipped by the seller themselves could still be listed on Amazon, with the seller carrying the obligations under the Act.

I don't have "nslookup" handy, but does this mean that DNS queries to OpenDNS from France will return an A record of "255.255.255.255"? Or do the APs default to the broadcast IP when the DNS query fails?

The first scenario would be an utterly insane response from a DNS server. The second scenario is unreasonable, as it means the AP knows that DNS resolution failed but it still wants to try chucking "Hail Mary" packets at the aether anyway.

With scenario 1, I''d be concerned if other parts of the customer's network are using the same nonfunctional DNS server. But in any case, your workaround was pretty clever.

From the State Medical Board of Ohio:

On September 8, 2016, House Bill 523, legalized medical marijuana in Ohio.

From a June 2024 AP article:

Recreational pot sales are nearing reality in Ohio ... The state Division of Cannabis Control began accepting applications [on 7 June] for new dual licenses that will allow existing medical marijuana dispensaries to also sell nonmedical cannabis.

While states with medical cannabis generally issue regulations for which patients are eligible and which doctors can prescribe, the products themselves are mostly subject to meeting lab tests for containing what they say on the label, and distribution in child-resistant packaging. Otherwise, the same stock for medical cannabis customers is about the same as for recreational cannabis.

Hence, while it might be surprising that a new cannabis dispensary could appear out of nowhere -- even without a preceding medical cannabis dispensary at the same location -- the wholesaling, backend infrastructure, and vendor network may already have existed, so propping up a storefront would be the relatively easy part.

Low power ebikes should be allowed on trails.

This 100%. And the trend is moving in this direction, if this news from a while back is any indication. There, the US Forest Service made the following conclusions for Tahoe National Forest:

Class 1 e-bikes are similar to traditional mountain bikes in terms of components, relative speeds and impacts to trails.

And:

The inclusion of Class 1 e-bikes as an approved use on the trail expands access to individuals that may not be able to walk or ride a traditional bicycle as far or long.

This is an interesting application of so-called AI, where the result is actually desirable and isn't some sort of frivolity or grift. The memory-safety guarantees offered by native Rust code would be a very welcome improvement over C code that guarantees very little. So a translation of legacy code into Rust would either attain memory safety, or wouldn't compile. If AI somehow (very unlikely) manages to produce valid Rust that ends up being memory-unsafe, then it's still an advancement as the compiler folks would have a new scenario to solve for.

Lots of current uses of AI have focused on what the output could enable, but here, I think it's worth appreciating that in this application, we don't need the AI to always complete every translation. After all, some C code will be so hardware-specific that it becomes unwieldy to rewrite in Rust, without also doing a larger refactor. DARPA readily admits that their goal is simply to improve the translation accuracy, rather than achieve perfection. Ideally, this means the result of their research is an AI which knows its own limits and just declines to proceed.

Assuming that the resulting Rust is: 1) native code, and 2) idiomatic, so humans can still understand and maintain it, this is a project worth pursuing. Meanwhile, I have no doubt grifters will also try to hitch their trailer on DARPA's wagon, with insane suggestions that proprietary AI can somehow replace whole teams of Rust engineers, or some such nonsense.

Edit: is my disdain for current commercial applications of AI too obvious? Is my desire for less commercialization and more research-based LLM development too subtle? :)

Halfway through reading this, I was concerned there was going to be something like "the phones aren't ringing because they go through the same DC that went down" haha

It's nice when things work exactly as intended

Penny farthing + trike + rowing machine?

100%!

The YouTube channel OhTheUrbanity also observed that for Montreal's REV network (dedicated, physically-separated on-street bike paths), ambulances are often able to use the REV when the adjacent one-way auto lane is impassable due to heavy traffic. This is possible because the REV has 8 ft (2.4 m) lanes as standard, and bicyclists -- albeit minorly inconvenienced -- can clear from the lane quicker than automobiles can.

It certainly shouldn't become standard practice for ambulances to drive on bike lanes, but it showcases that dedicating space to smaller, nimble modes of transport has unique upsides. On a fully pedestrianized street, it's patently obviously that an ambulance will be able to get through unimpeded, barring maybe navigating around bollards.