Nice in theory, but just when I think I have it figured out something changes and the script quits working. Specifically with 3rd-party hosting like NearlyFreeSpeech, not my own, but still a PITA.
A chance encounter with a stranger gave Joe Gebbia an idea to help pay his rent. That idea turned into Airbnb — a company that now has more rooms than the biggest hotel chain in the world.
Of my 140 orders over the last two years on Aliexpress, only one has been originated in the US (California, to be exact). All but a few of the remainder were from China. I reside in Colorado. Mostly I buy hobby electronic components, chemicals/substances, and the occasional household or automotive item.
I've used Alibaba.com as well, but the payment methods are far different and it's a more risky situation with fewer guarantees. That service I use for high-value orders after a thorough vetting of the seller. Mostly commodity items like a pallet of green coffee beans, or weird chemicals in unusual quantities.
Sometimes an order on Aliexpress will be large enough that I must consider negotiating with someone on Alibaba.com instead. Negotiations happen for me on Aliexpress as well, but the sellers on Alibaba.com seem to have greater latitude in not only price, but also packing, shipping, and handling to destination.
I'm rural and have a lot of things sending data to a central node for collection. I found LoRa interesting, but sadly none of the modules offered native encryption capabilities. Ended up using RFM69HW modules with AES128 in the same band and still get pretty good range, up to a mile+ NLoS (but not through 300m hills either..)
I imagine the low throughput of LoRa would make encryption a greater challenge than with other modules, but maybe there are other reasons for that.
I see and appreciate your point, and yeah, you might get a little dead, but they can turn a Walmart roast into a tender and delicious cut of meat with the right cooking strategy.
Like anything, it's a trade-off, and a good test of your evolutionary worthiness as a human. Pay attention to what you're doing or die.
Related: If you tenderize with a Jaccard-like tool, examine the teeth very closely before you cook your meat. I have had the blades break in half longitudinally where it still looked like a full blade, but had actually "delaminated" toward the end and left a 15mm chunk of pointed metal in my steak. It ended up in my gums.
I still use the broken blade set, but simply make sure it has all the parts before moving on. Nothing tenderizes quite like it in my experience. Had I swallowed that piece however it would have been a bad situation.
I've had breadboards like his react to air flow. Those cheap ones especially have such horrible connections that the slightest motion of flimsy part like a resistor or LED wagging in the breeze will cause a significant change in impedance where the leads meet the contacts.
Since this signal is dependent upon the series resistance, the output could vary as a result.
It's a little troubling to see only one mention of PGP in the comments. Thunderbird+Enigmail+GPG makes a highly functional way to send and receive PGP-encrypted mail.
As far as I know it has run fiber through most of the electrical conduit in town. The fiber is mainly for business, but there may be some kind of option for residential, don't know - it's too expensive for me to live here.
On the Aspen question, I think they were one of the first to get Comcast internet in the region (before Glenwood) and may be stuck in that rut.
As a business subscriber, they have provided friendly and capable local support for many years, and the service itself is top-notch at a tenth the price of the same service from a telco. Price isn't everything however - their support is excellent.
They communicate with their customer base regularly on maintenance issues and system status, having no issue with owning the rare, but inevitable screw-up expected with any industry.
At one point they had a few local ISPs reselling their service, mostly as wireless. That infrastructure is still in place but I don't see anyone currently reselling it for some reason, however other wireless providers with their own connectivity are active.
I've been dreading the day that some telco beats them up on legal grounds enough to make them go away, but now it looks like there's some momentum behind this concept making it less likely.
It doesn't appear to have any compatibility with the newer TinyGPS++ library which I had been using, but I guess that's not really the intent.
Also I didn't know there were modules commonly available for multiple systems. Mouser has the A5100-A mentioned in the blog for $17 in singles, plus an antenna I assume. I've been using the NEO-6M GPS-only modules from China that run about $10 with antenna. Nice to have more options.
The whole thing seems fragile, both in terms of the physical properties and legalities. Some thoughts:
Cost: $1400 for $12 worth of parts obviously hacked together in a project box seems a bit much. While not for this specific application, it's a really common project for people starting out with Arduinos: Arduino+ultrasonic sensor+display and a beeper. Usually used as a parking distance alarm in a garage. In this case the police add their own GoPro for evidence purposes I assume. Hopefully it clearly shows the position of the bicycle as well, and that he was fully to the right of the lane at the time of the measurement.
Safety: Could the possibility of a citation for uncertain margins with a bicycle cause the same nervous reactions that red light cameras cause possibly increasing the number of accidents?
Prior art: My car has an ultrasonic backup alarm with display and beeper that serves this exact purpose (measuring distance before impact). That was done in 2002, so not at all a new idea.
Value as evidence: Isn't a common defense to speeding tickets the lack of recent calibration of the RADAR gun? This thing is probably subject to all manner of interference and inaccuracies.
Countermeasures: It could be easily jammed/confused by a transmitter designed for that purpose, and that should be legal since we're talking about audio frequencies, and inaudible ones at that. Ever see those ultrasonic deer transducers that go on the bumper? They don't work for deer, but they do emit sound in the ultrasonic range at certain speeds. I could see designing one specifically as a passive jammer mounted to the right-hand mirror.
My own experiences: I've biked thousands of kilometers in the US and been hit a few dozen times, nothing very serious. Some were my fault, most the driver's fault. None were malicious, just poor observations/judgement/conditions. I ride defensively and don't really care about these laws and behave as though they don't exist since it's not wise to count on the driver, and the driver shouldn't count on me either.
I have a slight fascination with sweeteners. About five years ago I imported a kilo of "Neotame" sweetener from a chem factory in Shanghai. It was claimed to be 10,000-12,000 times sweeter than sugar. It's a white powder and came in a metal can with a crimped lid and typically plain chemical labeling. Supposedly it is FDA-approved and a distant derivative of aspartame.
US customs held it for two weeks before sending it on to Colorado with no explanation. When received, the box was covered in "inspected" tape and they had put the canister in a clear plastic bag. The crimped lid looked like a rottweiler chewed it open and white powder was all over the inside of the bag. I unwisely opened this in my kitchen with no respirator as advised by the MSDS which I read after the fact (I am not a smart man).
Despite careful handling of the bag, it is so fine in composition that a small cloud of powder erupted in front of me and a hazy layer of the stuff settled over the kitchen. Eyes burning and some mild choking from inhaling the cloud, I instantly marveled at how unbelievably sweet the air tasted, and it was delicious. For several hours I could still taste it on my lips. The poor customs inspector will have had a lasting memory of that container I'm pretty sure.
Even after a thorough wipe-down, to this day I encounter items in my kitchen with visually imperceptible amounts of residue. After touching it and getting even microscopic quantities of the stuff on a utensil or cup, bowl, plate, whatever, it adds an intense element of sweetness to the food being prepared, sometimes to our delight. I still have more than 900g even after giving away multiple baggies to friends and family (with proper safety precautions).
We have been hooked on it since that first encounter. I keep a 100mL bottle of solution in the fridge which is used to fill smaller dropper bottles. I've prepared that 100mL bottle three times over five years, and that works out to about 12g of personal (somewhat heavy) usage for two people in that time. Probably nowhere near the LD50.
I carry a tiny 30mL dropper bottle of the solution for sweetening the nasty office coffee and anything else as appropriate. Four drops to a normal cup of coffee. We sweeten home-carbonated beverages, oatmeal, baked goods (it is heat stable), use it in marinades, and countless other applications.
I don't know if it's safe. The actual quantity used is so incredibly tiny that it seems irrelevant. I'd sweeten my coffee with polonium-210 if it could be done in Neotame-like quantities. Between this, a salt shaker loaded with MSG and a Darwin fish on my car, I'm doomed anyway.