A 60 GHz phased array for $10

Since the wavelength of 60GHz is approximately 5 millimeters, this technology is sometimes referred to as millimeter-wave (mm-wave). (Copied quote).

That explains how close together the antennas are - close enough compared to wavelength to be able to beamform.

Edit: also explains why it would be extremely difficult to build something yourself at 60GHz - where every wire needs length to be matched to submillimeter length, and a submillimeter tail acts as an antenna and as an electronic component.

Or just buffer each broadcast segment into some 60GHz memory (is there such a thing?), and either rely on your signalling protocol being TDMI (and you therefore not needing to send/receive more than a fraction of the time) or on your broadcast signal being periodically repeating, such that the radio can just treat that memory as a ring buffer to play over and over.

Or, do what old computer architectures did when their CPUs were slower than their DACs: add a Programmable Interval Timer (i.e. a very simple synthesizer) in between, such that you just send a few commands and it adds together some 60GHz triangle and square waves to achieve the signal shape you want. Maybe even add a sequencer, and then stream it some 60GHz MIDI files!

> If you invest in corporate bonds, you're giving cash to companies to innovate (or at least helping increase the value of loans, which decreases future interest rates, encouraging innovation).

The point is that the way banks or other consolidated funds allocate this funding to corporate accounts, can be either inefficient or misanthropic if you take a certain stance toward innovation, namely that innovation isn't quite the same as rent capture and should be more than just efficiency for existing processes.

Share price can decouple from the actual profitability of a corporation which gives the bank the option of either selling or providing a cash injection if the corporation risks solvency. And then if they run out of everyone else's cash they can ask the Fed to print more just so that they can continue the cycle of ownership for that corporation.

But all that does for the economy on a whole is (a) raise the total rate of inflation for everyone, including people who aren't invested in the bank and (b) consolidate more and more assets into the holdings of these banks, and by association the actual wealth (while not actually creating anything that can give you more money than you put into it, otherwise you wouldn't need the cash injection).

This is what 2008 gave us: a feedback loop where more growth of non-profitable companies needs more inflation, and more inflation requires more growth from your holdings.

If Uber and Amazon are anything to go off of this strategy is actually preferred, probably due to the thesis that "software can eat the world" and you ought to lose as much cash as possible to "innovate" new interfaces to commodity industries at any cost, which essentially optimizes existing supply chains instead of finding use for novel technological capabilities.

Maybe I have the wrong idea that innovation and profitability go hand in hand? Or that the tech industry should be about tech?

This doesn't have anything to do with the Reserve but it's still an illustrative example: we've been here with WeWork where the business failed and yet the CEO was rewarded billions of dollars on exit. Who knows what he intends to do with that money now as a failed innovator. In hindsight maybe the reason that Adam was given such a large exit package was because of how he facilitated one of the fastest foreign asset takeovers of the last 40-50 years?

Microlens arrays, for all intents and purposes of consuming and recording media (for human consumption), are essentially equivalent to ideal phased array optics (while having spacing much larger than phased array usual requirements). We perceive light non-coherently, phase information is lost to our eyes; microlens arrays suffice to reproduce a light field sans phase effects[1] -- that includes the perception of most phenomena that are affected by light coherence, like oil on water or viewing laser experiments (not totally sure, but I don't think there are experiments that can't be reproduced by geometric-optical light fields that don't rely on coherent measurement?; maybe some interference phenomena though?).

There are practical problems with the technology though, as light sources we can currently make have some minimum size limitations, and incoherent optical behavior starts to degrade at very small lens size (at or below micron scale I guess).

[1] You could probably create a good approximate phased array optics with led-scale (~ 10 micron scale) coherent lasers as light sources, but again I don't see any application that's not scientific

You mean Apple. AirPlay was there years before google made a move in this area.