pc486 @ pc486 @sh.itjust.works

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A white paper from a civil engineering arm of a university closely associated with TX DOT citing MDOT?

"It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it." - Upton Sinclair

I'm bad at following instructions. Here's several tips. :)

• A washing bag (e.g. Scrubba). The bag and a dry bio-compatible laundry soap weighs the same as one pair of wool socks. Using it means you can cut out underwear/shirts/socks bulk for a slightly higher camp chore load. Very useful for weight/space sensitive camping and doubles as a dry bag!
• Prefer good clothing over sunscreen (big hat, long-sleeved shirts, buff, sun gloves, etc). It's lower weight, less greasy, and doesn't run out. When using sunscreen, stick form tends to be light and easy to pack.
• Camp shoes. Always bring them. Crocks, thin flip-flops, anything but a tight shoe that you spent the last 12 hours in.
• Avoid cotton in general, but also look for quick-dry clothing. Being wet sucks. Being wet for long periods of time can be dangerous.
• Umbrellas are amazing. Shade when there is none and amazing at avoiding wet-out. Very useful for short trips and car camping, though I sometimes bring it backpacking even with the added weight.
• Light (1lb / 0.5 kg) camping chair. If you're young enough you could skip this, but my god is it worth the weight after a long day.
• Wear warm clothing in your sleeping bag/quilt. Bag ratings are inconsistent, often assume you're wearing clothes, and are labeled for "won't kill you" rather than "you'll sleep like a baby."
• A good sleeping pad with a solid R value. It's as important as your top sleeping layer.
• Dry electrolytes, especially in warmer areas, like SaltStick or Gatorlytes. Hypotonic dehydration can sneak up on you and you cannot escape it by drinking more water. This is particularly dangerous with aerobic camping, like backpacking or bikepacking. Hypotonic dehydration can be mitigated with the food you pack, but it's a lot to plan ahead on and complicates re-hydration with caloric intake. Do not avoid high-sodium foods unless your doctor has you on a low-sodium diet (in which you should also discuss with your doctor about your outdoor activities).
• Sleep with your electronics. Cold weather will kill your phone's battery.
• A portable bidet (e.g. CuloClean). There are many places where you must pack out TP (sometimes everything). Less TP means less to carry in and out. It's also very clean feeling.
• Similarly, WAG bags are nice. Zero trace and you don't even need to dig a cat hole.
• Ear plugs. Nature is loud sometimes. People in campgrounds are even louder.
• A small towel or sponge to wash with. It's nice to wipe off sweat and dust, even if it's not as good as a full shower. It's multi-purpose too. Moisture on your single-walled tent? A quick wipe and no indoor rain for you.

Yeah, there's a lot of pots that are coated and it sucks. However, the tests and methodology are not tied to them. It's more about how to select different stoves and pots (e.g. lid or no lid?) than a particular product pick. For me, I didn't even buy a new kit. All I did was learn how to optimize my existing kits.

Regarding temperature, I luckily haven't had too much of an issue. Gas gets to sleep with me or hang out in my jacket if it's that cold out. No need for white gas stoves, yet! Maybe someday if the very high mountains call to me.

There are great alternatives to Jetboil and other heat exchanger systems. Some systems are also cheaper and much lighter. I highly recommend checking out Gearskeptic's Backpacking Stove Efficiency series.

They do, if you know where to look.

That department has been RIFed.

Aquaman.

Broadcast TV is already going that way. ATSC 3 requires an internet connection to get decoding keys. For your protection, of course.

That's a great question. My guess is the bandwidth comes from bonding those extra modes and from the lower signal-noise ratio. That lower SNR means they could modulate with more sensitive but faster modes.

Perhaps today you'll also learn about Hellschreiber. Old tech is really clever!

Yep. My consumer concerns are less of retail sticker-shock than people not realizing how dependent they are on consumer surplus. Even a few thousand a year in tariff related expenditure can be quite impactful on comfort.

Sticker-shock will happen with the tariff-adjacent removal of de minimis. Right now it's China, but it was threatened against Canada and Mexico too (officially delayed, whatever that may mean). A $50 per-item charge is going to be quite a surprise to many.

E.g. if Canada is going to be levied like China, then my plan of getting a pair of oversized Cam-Lock kits for my Canadian-made Arkel bike panniers is gone out the window. There's no way I'll buy small parts when the total package cost is the same as getting a whole new set of panniers.

Correct, tariffs are not a consumption tax. That fact doesn't mean prices will not increase, nor does it mean that small increases don't have a big impact. We, the common people, will have have to go about our lives with less. Maybe wear your shirts an extra day because laundering more regularly consumes more soap. Perhaps it's going without avocado on your lunch sandwiches. You'll still have shirts and sandwiches, but you certainly wouldn't be as clean or as filled. (See the "surplus" chapter of your high-school/undergrad econ books.)

That's fair. Comparing regular drivers doing typical city trips to commercial big rigs is a bit apples-and-oranges. I wonder how CDL data would compare when the self-driving semi-trucks start putting on miles. Aurora is about to launch in that exact space.

Uber had a net income of 9.86 billion dollars and spent 7.14 billion in operations in 2024. That's a single transportation company. Do you really think Uber or anyone else is going to ignore researching the technology that could significantly reduce their billions in operations costs?

I'm also not so sure that Europe is 20x safer than the US. A quick search pulled up the International Transport Form's Road Safety Annual Report 2023 and their data disagrees. The US, even with its really poor showing in the general numbers, is safer than Poland and Czechia (Road fatalities per billion vehicle‑kilometres, 2021). I could see an argument for a 2x gap of Europe outdoing the US, but a 20x? Citation needed.

Why are we still doing this?

Because there's a lot of money in it. 10.3% of the US workforce works in transportation and warehousing. Trucking alone is the #4 spot in that sector (1.2 million jobs in heavy trucks and trailers). Couriers and delivery also ranks highly.

The self-driving vehicles are targeting whole markets and the value of the industry is hard to underestimate. And yes, even transit is being targeted (and being implemented; see South Korea's A21 line). There's a lot of crossover with trucking and buses, not to mention that 42% of transit drivers are 55+ in age. Hiring for metro drivers is insanely hard right now.

They're definitely keeping all the old comments, even if you "delete" them. What an edit is doing is making a new version of a comment. While this seems strange, it's literally easier to do on a technical level and provides a layer of safety if there's a bug in the code (allows recovery to previous data).

Honestly, this seems like a good move from Reddit. If they believe they're removing a bad actor by a ban, then of course they're going to prevent a bad actor from interacting on their stuff. Allowing edits post-ban for abuse is not a good outcome.

Don't like it? Angry at Reddit? Leave and never interact with them again. Pulling that bandage off will sting but you'll be better off for it.

You're not off the mark. Honestly not a bad overview to squeeze into a few sentences. Here's some extra detail for those who remain more curious.

The circuit complexity reduction happens by changing the math behind the radio signal. Much like how you can describe a vector in cartesian coordinates (a point in x, y) or in polar coordinates (a point in angle and length), choosing how to represent the radio math allows for different techniques to arrive in the same answer. That's what the author did: he picked a polar modulating scheme over a quadrature modulation scheme. (Note, there are even more mathy ways to modulate a radio signal, but those are what the author is presenting to us.)

The author's choice avoids generating unwanted frequencies that must be filtered out before amplifying. That's components on the board that don't need to be designed nor exist. A solid win.

The drawback? Polar modulation is non-linear in frequency space. What that means is certain frequencies are over-represented and others are under-represented. Imagine playing notes on a piano where some keys are very loud and others you could hardly hear them. That's the unwanted non-linearity.

Herein lies the trick: what's bad can be turned into good. Power amplifiers typically need to be linear. Imagine a piano that works fine but the auditorium's loud speakers make it sound terrible. Those loud speakers would be a non-linear amplifier. The trick is that it's possible to match the modulator's non-linear behavior with a power amplifier's non-linear behavior to end up with a clean signal! A non-linear piano and a non-linear loud-speaker can produce beautiful music! This engineering trick unlocks all kinds of non-linear power amplifier architectures (that's the "C/E/F" described in the article) which are drastically more energy efficient than linear ones (linear designs max out around 65% efficient).

As long as the aquafaba is salt-free, it makes an awesome substitute for egg whites in mixed drinks. Whiskey sours are absolutely elevated with this substitution.

And this comes from a guy who isn't a vegan. Try it out, folks. You won't regret it.

I upgraded my license when my grandfather had to move in with my parents so I coul help him setup a smaller shack and assist in operating the radio with him. He deeply appreciated the family time, and I'm sure your Uncle wouldn't mind spending time with you too.

For whatever it's worth, these web interfaces are great at listening and cost nothing. Ask him to help you operate (finding signals and how to listen to them) using a KiwiSDR online. If you find out he's also having fun, then perhaps look into remote radio station equipment. There's a wide selection of transmitting capable SDRs, like FlexRadio, and DIY solutions (e.g. https://www.remotetx.net/). You can even rent remote operation time with incredibly nice hardware in amazing locations (e.g. https://www.remotehamradio.com/). Perhaps he'll be come interested in another side of ham radio that he hasn't done before either, like working satellite passes. That doesn't take more than one nice, or two very cheap, handheld radios and a small handheld yagi.

Ham radio can be used as voice chat with friends, but that would be a pretty limited view of it. Here's some things that a Discord Voice Chat cannot do that radio can:

• Chat without internet (e.g. places without cell towers).
• Chat without voice. (digital communications of all kinds; email/text, keyboard-to-keyboard, pictures, etc).
• To build an internet (e.g. building WiFi meshes with extra power [AREDN], AX.25 packet, WinLink).
• Used as a tool during emergencies (see ARES/RACES/CERT).
• Chat completely randomly (it's just one big discord channel, but you can only hear some people).
• Chasing the challenge of unusual radio propagation (earth-moon-earth, meteor bounce, tropospheric ducting, aurora).
• Chasing the challenge of collecting the most point-to-point contacts (contests).
• Chasing the challenge of difficult radio propagation (microwave links).
• Constructing and using radios that you cannot buy off the shelf parts with (usually with those funny microwave guys).
• Higher power versions of things unlicensed folks cannot do (RC toys, Meshtastic/LoraWAN, WiFi, etc).
• Historical preservation (restoring old radios, keeping ship-shore coastal stations running [e.g. Maritime Radio Historical Society]).
• Conducting scientific experiments (HamSCI, and I conducted one listening to the ionosphere during the recent total eclipse).
• Building and controlling satellites (AMSAT).

And there's even more. The way to view ham radio is the government grants you a license to operate on many pieces of radio spectrum so long as you can show your technical ability to not cause harm (interference, safety, and things that will prevent you from blowing up your radio as well as find success in using it). What you do with that spectrum is up to you!