Viewing profile — mark-r

I think both WWV and WWVB were on the chopping block a few years ago, because the government decided it wasn't worth the $100,000 per year to keep them running. Thankfully that dec…

That might do to keep it within a minute during power loss, and maybe that's good enough for most people. But if you really want to be worry-free you need something more high tech.…

My uncle was a huge clock collector. Many of his would go off on the hour, it was quite the spectacle.

The beauty of living in the modern age is that there are times when you don't have to worry about being wasteful. This project is a perfect example. It's likely that the most power…

I once researched how accurate GPS time is, and the answer is it's within 40 ns. Good luck finding a way to transmit that to your CPU that doesn't add a much larger delay.

Is there anything which adjusts your base clock frequency based on NTP or anything else, so that when you are unable to correct the time it's still more accurate than an untuned fr…

The time it takes to play a game of golf is much longer than any of the other activities you mentioned.

You may not need to be rich to play golf, but you need to be rich to have the spare time to do it.

Within 5 miles of my house are 5 golf courses. I believe only 1 is government owned, by the city.

I never used to like the morning show hijinx either, until I discovered that a friend hosted such a show. I tuned in every morning after that. He retired a couple of months ago, an…

There's a local station that advertises the fact that they don't do requests. I'm sure the reason they don't is because they can't - the playlist was mapped out long ago and there …

I believe talking through the intro was an actual skill that was taught to DJs, and the closer they could cut it the prouder they'd be. I've always hated it, and there have been oc…

The founders of SO had a theory, that irrelevant noise was what drove a site into insignificance over time. Even if it was just polite chit-chat. They took pains to automate out as…

There's no need (or reason) to blame AI. Between the culture of discouraging new questions as seen in the comments on this thread, and the fact that Google can easily find existing…

The question applies more broadly than Union Pacific. Why hasn't this been an industry standard for 100 years?

It was such an amusing story I never thought to double check it. I'm sure I first heard it before Snopes existed. Thanks.

There's also absolutely no chance that a pure plastic box is going to have proper RF shielding. Good luck finding one with the regulatory marks that make it legal to sell.

I heard a story long ago when it was Japan, not China who was the source of cheap garbage. The town of Usa, Japan got a lot of manufacturing so they could all say "MADE IN USA".

Given enough time, that describes every codebase that exists.

I love Chesterton's Fence and haul it out whenever I can. Even though it's about 100 years old and the context is barely relevant anymore.

The LaserWriter was like something from the future compared to the Laserjet. I think they used the same Canon print engine, but the HP was far less sophisticated. It only used bitm…

And if you don't know the origin of the phrase "lucky 10,000" then it's your lucky day too! https://xkcd.com/1053/

Thanks for mentioning the actual frequency. The article says "long wave" many times without specifying what it actually means.

I once worked at a company that used a Code39 font cartridge in HP Laserjets. When HP stopped putting font cartridge slots in their printers, I had the task of intercepting print j…

In 8-bit (per channel) color there is a standard for when the context is unspecified: sRGB. It was developed to match the characteristics of a "typical" display at the time of its …