Search results

  1. J

    DJI drones - New Mavic 2 pro announced tomorrow

    To me, "97°F" and "enjoy" are mutually exclusive.
  2. J

    DJI drones - New Mavic 2 pro announced tomorrow

    So basically it sounds like all I could legally do with a drone is fly it directly over my property during the daytime, and no higher than 400'. So much for having it follow me on a bike ride and other cool stuff like that. I also would want to be able to go way higher than 400', which should be...
  3. J

    Something Random

    Call block is your friend. I have Verizon blocking all numbers with no caller ID in addition to the ones I add to the block list. I'm also using Nomorobo. A few assholes still get through each day but I never answer any number I'm not familiar with. And anyone calling from the same number more...
  4. J

    DJI drones - New Mavic 2 pro announced tomorrow

    Here's a map: https://www.dji.com/flysafe/geo-map I was pleasantly surprised to see the only restricted zones in NYC are near the airports. With NYC having a penchant for banning just about everything that's remotely fun, I half expected the entire city to be a red zone.
  5. J

    Beverages

    No, but I think I'll try next time I have some.
  6. J

    Beverages

    I obviously was playing on what SD said. It's all tougue-in-cheek. Wines definitely would have measurable resistivity but I doubt that correlates much with taste. However, they certainly do have a fairly low resistance to preventing people from drinking them, and a fairly high capacitance to get...
  7. J

    Beverages

    DMMs are great tools to measure the quality of wine. The capacitance and resistance of wine is crucial, sometimes even the inductance. Fine wines have fairly low resistance, fairly high capacitance, and sometimes exhibit measurable inductance.
  8. J

    Something Random

    No, I would never need a setup like that. I'm just saying if I did, that's the way I would go. My pair of monitors works just fine. Most of the time I'm using the one in front. Sometimes I need to go between two documents open at the same time. That's where two monitors shines. I'm nearsighted...
  9. J

    Something Random

    Multiple monitors are all about ergonomics. Right now I'm using two displays, one in front and the other angled on my right. Both displays are 1600x1200, or will be as soon as I put an LP2065 in place of my Viewsonic VA912b. In theory I would have the same number and size pixels with a (very...
  10. J

    Something Random

    I can easily see the pixels on a 32" 4K monitor. The pixel pitch is 0.185 mm (137 ppi). I'd need to get a 24" or smaller 4K monitor to not notice pixelation but I'm not interested in 4K monitors until they start making them in 4:3, not 16:9. 2880x2160, maybe in a 20" or 21" size, would be...
  11. J

    DMM

    The AD584s used in those cheap eBay references are salvaged from equipment. That's actually a plus since this means they're nicely aged, and hence already did all their drifting (most of which occurs in the first few months of powered operation). The only open question is whether or not the...
  12. J

    DMM

    You might be pleasantly surprised. My friend had a Fluke of similar vintage which he asked me to check. Most of the ranges were either dead-on-nuts or a few counts off.
  13. J

    DMM

    That's one reason I have a few voltage and resistance standards. Occasionally I check my instruments to see if they're still calibrated. Other than the Harbor Freight multimeters, which might drift a few tenths of a percent, everything else holds its calibration nicely. I seriously question if...
  14. J

    DMM

    Agilent is fine. I was seriously considering getting the U1253B for a while. Love the OLED display, although because of it battery life sucks. For a bench DMM something like the 34461A is great if you want to spend that kind of money. I couldn't justify it personally. Or you can opt for its...
  15. J

    DMM

    A few questions: 1) What do you intend to use it for? 2) What kind of resolution/accuracy do you need? 3) Why is calibration important here? The answers to these questions will at least give you a starting point. I have a Fluke 189. I really needed the accuracy and 50,000 counts of resolution...
  16. J

    AMD Ryzen Threadripper 2990WX Unboxing

    I'm glad it exists also. Generally, products like this foreshadow what may be mainstream a few years down the road. Remember there was a time when many thought 4 cores were overkill and would never be needed. Eventually software caught up. It'll probably be much the same here. However, I still...
  17. J

    AMD Ryzen Threadripper 2990WX Unboxing

    I'm glad AMD one-upped Intel here but I totally agree. I can't envision any scenario where most home users would need even a fraction of the computing power this chip offers. Even for most power users this chip is gross overkill. It's evidently for things like a powerful workstation or a server...
  18. J

    HOT

    For me subtract about 40°F from those temperatures, more if I'm somewhat active. On the flip side, I cope well with cold. I'll be out shoveling snow with just a sweater in the middle of a 15°F blizzard.
  19. J

    Something Random

    Thanks! Been gone a while because of my mother. She was in the hospital with a cranial hematoma in November, then in rehab for ~2 months. The workload taking care of her now is a bit more than it was the past 3 years. Not sure if she'll be able to walk independently again but we'll be seeing an...
  20. J

    Something Random

    And on top of all that, I was sick most of the 3 weeks the system was down. Not sure what exactly, but I had virtually no energy, plus a fever which hit 103°F a few times. I also had to take care of my mother while all this was going on. At this point she's not really able to walk without...
  21. J

    Something Random

    Something similar happened to me a month ago. The power briefly went off. Usually this is no big deal. Just turn the computer back on and all is well. This time around nothing happened. It wouldn't even post. No beeps, no nothing. I was thinking three possibilities-dead CPU, dead motherboard...
  22. J

    Second opinion on some electrical calculations

    Just be aware those step-down transformers likely aren't very efficient (the large heat sink area should be a give away). You need synchronous rectification to get better than low 80% efficiency when stepping down from a high voltage to something like 5V. I doubt these have it, although I could...
  23. J

    Retiring PSU after 10+ Years

    The real advantage there is less waste heat to get rid. In a lot of cases it means the PSU fan is either off or turning very slowly. If you have an SSD then this leaves the CPU fan as the only noise source in the machine.
  24. J

    HOT

    I was bitching about the high 70s and low 80s we were having until mid-October. I would be screaming if we had 90s in October. Only so much of that kind of weather my body can take.
  25. J

    3D Printer Thread

    I'm thinking of getting one in the next year or so. I'll need to research my options. I'd probably use it for both prototyping and scale modeling.
  26. J

    Something Random

    +1. You can never have too much light. ;) I converted my workroom to LED about two years ago. 5000K, CRI 90+, 1800 lumens per tube, 10800 lumens total. I actually need this much light when I'm working with tiny surface mount parts. The rest of the time, I just have one fixture on. Nice job...
  27. J

    Intel Coffee Lake Another Rush Job

    +1000 to that. My last system was still mostly serving me well when it was over ten years old. My present system is nearly 5 years old. However, given the slower rate of CPU advances since then it's highly likely I'll get a good ten more years out of this system. So maybe around 2027 or...
  28. J

    Something Random

    They've also been testing recharging on the fly: http://www.machinedesign.com/news/they-sound-millennium-falcon
  29. J

    Something Random

    I personally seem to go in spurts. I might not have any alcohol for a month, and then I might have it daily for the next few weeks.
  30. J

    Sous Vide cooking Great stuff

    Your reasoning seems sound to me. A home freezer isn't going to be able to freeze food all that fast.
  31. J

    Sous Vide cooking Great stuff

    I think it's more how food is frozen than the fact it's frozen which affects the taste. A few years back, we used to regularly order from Omaha Steaks. The meat was shipped in a styrofoam container with dry ice, and each piece was individually wrapped in plastic. To me it tasted better than...
  32. J

    Timelapse Video

    I was thinking the same thing. My great-grandfather actually was a ship's captain. Might explain why I was so awestruck watching that.
  33. J

    speed test

    It's all their equipment. When I test using their speed test, I'm getting 948 Mbps up and 927 Mbps down. Any other speed test seems to give something in the range of high 300s to low 500s. Sure, perhaps not as advertised, but still a major step up from the 70 Mbps down and 6 Mbps up I was...
  34. J

    speed test

    Yes. FIOS gigabit internet. They ran fiber right into the house. Price for the package was also $50 less per month than TWC/Spectrum.
  35. J

    speed test

  36. J

    Vehicle Telemetry Recorders

    And here's something we actually completely agree on!
  37. J

    Timelapse Video

    I can excuse the lens distortion given the content. He did mention in the comments about getting a better camera.
  38. J

    Email forwarding from dead email address

    I gradually stopped using it for anything important after seeing what my brother went through keeping his AOL address. I tend to think ISP-provided emails are one way they lock people into keeping shitty service. Once people are heavily dependent on the ISP email, it's a royal pain to switch...
  39. J

    Email forwarding from dead email address

    Probably good advice. 99% of what I was getting was throw-away emails that I rarely read. I stopped using these addresses for business a while ago. There may be a handful of old business contacts who might one day try to reach me, but in truth I'll bet that will never happen. In most cases I...
  40. J

    Timelapse Video

    Just saw this. Might be one of the greatest examples of timelapse video, ever.
  41. J

    Mirrorless Cameras (MILC) and Lenses

    Lenseless cameras are the future. :lol:
  42. J

    Vehicle Telemetry Recorders

    I didn't say it's a good model but it's what we have. Also, how come the right to keep and bear arms seems to only be a right in certain places? Maybe in theory these rights are absolute. In practice they can be selectively violated at certain times and places. If I had even a bullet, I'd...
  43. J

    Vehicle Telemetry Recorders

    Of course any decision as to what constitutes "dangerous" is subjective. And that's exactly why we have courts. If someone is a bit overzealous denying free speech, that person can be taken to court. I tend to think the courts will in general only consider "dangerous" as highly likely to cause...
  44. J

    Vehicle Telemetry Recorders

    Read the article I linked to about Musk. He's aiming to make AVs hack proof. In principal it's not all that difficult. You could have a physical switch which has to be on before the microcontroller will allow new firmware to be written. Remember software is controlling things like nuclear power...
  45. J

    Vehicle Telemetry Recorders

    You're totally misunderstanding me. I'm not looking for risk-free society. That's the province of some liberals who will just as soon wrap kids in bubble wrap to keep them from getting hurt. Mandatory bike helmet laws for children are a perfect example of the type of nanny-statism that I hate. I...
  46. J

    Cryptocurrency Mining and GPUs

    I still think bitcoin is a good investment, but not at ~$3,000. I won't go in unless it drops to around $1,000. There seems to be good support for that price level, making my downside risk pretty low if I go in at $1K. Anything higher is a bubble if you ask me, at least for the time being.
  47. J

    Vehicle Telemetry Recorders

    Show me the specific clauses. If it worked as you claim, then we couldn't even have laws against rape or murder because those laws would interfere with someone else's "right" to kill or rape someone. Now I suppose anarchy (which is really what you propose here) is as valid a form of government...
  48. J

    Email forwarding from dead email address

    I guess I'll just see if TWC offers anything. In truth, at this point 99% of the emails going to these addresses are relatively unimportant stuff like product update notifications and stuff from the trade magazines I subscribe to. I just need to unlink my eBay and Paypal accounts from the old...
  49. J

    Vehicle Telemetry Recorders

    That's pretty much my thoughts on it. And it's why as a cyclist I look forward to autonomous vehicles. I think they'll be much better behaved around both bicycles and motorbikes. I don't see any possibility of automated driving for motorcycles, either. However, as a small part of traffic...
  50. J

    Vehicle Telemetry Recorders

    Someone else's personal liberty ends when it interferes with others in a negative way. For example, I'll defend the right of people to smoke in places where they're the only ones breathing in the smoke. The minute I have to breathe in that smoke, their rights end. That's not a nanny state. It's...
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