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Hank001
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Post by Hank001 » Wed, 16. May 18, 08:30

Morkonan wrote:
And, the crystal radio I had clipped to it didn't get fried, either. Weird. (No, I don't know why I had a crystal radio clipped to it. Likely because that was "what I had" and a Mad Scientist uses what is at hand.) The fuses finally tripped, though.
Crystal sets sometimes actually worked better in some places using the "Ground" as the "Antenna". Your "crystal" (if it wasn't a diode) survived because the current reversed... and it did what it was suppose to. If it was a true galina (lead crystal) then I've seen them survive a lightning strike on the antenna that fried the "cat's whisker". (Yes it was spark gapped. Jumped the gap and vaporized the spark plug... or at least blew it somewhere.) At about age 12 my life changed when a Lafayette store opened in town. My career in serious electronics (besides changing tubes in TV's) started by building their kits. At the time Radio Shack was second banana.
What killed Layayette was they were too into vacuum tubes.
Ahhh the good old days when I could drag a neighbor's TV into the garage and nine out of ten bring it back to life. Know what I mean?
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Post by mrbadger » Thu, 17. May 18, 13:46

I was in Sainsburies yesterday, our local supermarket, and overheard this chap complaining about the amount of spices there where to choose from. As he said "I don't see what's wrong with good old british black pepper".

The ignorance of some otherwise quite possible fairly capable people astonishes me.
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Post by Morkonan » Thu, 17. May 18, 19:27

mrbadger wrote:...As he said "I don't see what's wrong with good old british black pepper".

The ignorance of some otherwise quite possible fairly capable people astonishes me.
"The ignorance of some otherwise quite possible fairly capable people astonishes me." <- This.

How does someone go through life this far and successfully avoid learning where pepper comes from? ("Comes from usually" that is. It's not, necessarily, exclusive, to certain regions. I have no idea if there is any commercial growing of pepper in the UK, though I'd kinda doubt it.)

I'd like to point out that the UK has benefited from it's Empire period, which brought in great wealth in the form of foreign goods, especially spices. Curry dishes seem to be really popular in the UK and I would not be surprised at all for a young person to think curry was a native spice.

Still... People being able to rise through the ranks of adulthood to become mostly functioning members of human society should, at least, accidentally learn some things that aren't in their own backyards.

Maybe there should be a class in school that teaches stuff like this?

"Things you should know so you don't look stupid 099?"

Water is wet.
Salt does not come from plants.
Wood is more flammable if it is first soaked in wood.

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Post by Alan Phipps » Thu, 17. May 18, 23:01

@ Mork: "Wood is more flammable if it is first soaked in wood."

You know, I never knew that! I must look stupid now. :D

Also in cookery and survival, I thought that sufficient salt for a healthy diet could come from certain plant ingredients? (Seaweeds and certain roots maybe?) Also from certain animal body parts and fluids of course. Sure, seawater is the main economic volume source of common salt.

I guess that knowing about trivia and stuff is always a matter of degree and that what may be common knowledge to some will seem obscure to others. Change the topic and the tables may be turned.
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Post by Hank001 » Fri, 18. May 18, 00:23

@ AP

Allow M the grace of hitting edit and substituting Gasoline (Petrol, Diesel fuel) or simply adding "grain alcohol" after the wood. Edits, lovely things when you're keypad thinks it's smarter than you are and isn't. :roll:
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Post by OmegaKnight » Fri, 18. May 18, 07:29

@Alan Phipps
While I'd agree that the oceans have a fair bit of salt in them,
most Table salt you find in a supermarket comes from a salt mine.
(You can get sea salt but it usually costs more.)

Edit #1 - Spelling
Last edited by OmegaKnight on Fri, 18. May 18, 07:52, edited 1 time in total.

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Post by Hank001 » Fri, 18. May 18, 07:44

OK said:
While I'd agree that the oceans have a fair bit of sail in them
Not so many sails as they used too. :roll:

(No joke, I think these wells and most spelling and grammar checkers butt heads. Sort of a battle of electronics wits.)
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Post by OmegaKnight » Fri, 18. May 18, 07:51

damn these infernal electronics
(and my lack of proof reading)

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Post by Hank001 » Fri, 18. May 18, 08:01

OmegaKnight said:
damn these infernal electronics
(and my lack of proof reading)
Seriously, I'm beginning to believe more the former than the latter.

(I put it that way because my system keeps changing the word "latter" to "ladder" and I have to physically edit it back. It also wants to change "because" to "caused". )
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Post by OmegaKnight » Fri, 18. May 18, 08:54

Yeah sometimes I think these things are trying to be too smart for their own good.

Speaking of...
Wood is more flammable if it is first soaked in wood.
You know with a few barrels, a bit of pipe and some back yard engineering you could burn wood and turn it into tar/creosote/diesel/petrol and gases.
So you could soak wood in wood (derived petrol) so that it's more flammable.

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Post by Hank001 » Fri, 18. May 18, 11:23

OmegaKight noted:
You know with a few barrels, a bit of pipe and some back yard engineering you could burn wood and turn it into tar/creosote/diesel/petrol and gases.
Welcome to my little town here. Once the creosote capital of North America. We chugged out railroad ties. (Nasty stuff creosote).
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Post by Alan Phipps » Fri, 18. May 18, 11:53

@ OmegaKnight: You see what I mean about trivia involving very personal subject knowledge. :)

I'd always assumed that free regular tidal action, and free sunlight to evaporate trapped free seawater (in the right climate obviously) would be a far more economic source for common salt than having to mine for it. Bulk transport at a shoreline facility should not be an issue either. Perhaps it is a production capacity and throughput issue - or maybe even a sea pollution one. :gruebel:

I guess that some sea salt variants will be priced more than others because the suppliers like to promote their bespoke source for its crystal tints and maybe other mineral contents.
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Post by Morkonan » Fri, 18. May 18, 18:10

Alan Phipps wrote:@ OmegaKnight: You see what I mean about trivia involving very personal subject knowledge. :)

I'd always assumed that free regular tidal action, and free sunlight to evaporate trapped free seawater (in the right climate obviously) would be a far more economic source for common salt than having to mine for it. Bulk transport at a shoreline facility should not be an issue either...
But, bulk production is an issue.

Small-scale production of sea-sale is, likely, pretty common. It can be taken to local markets pretty easily.

But, you've seen pictures of salt-mines, right? It's not like the Romans didn't know one could evaporate sea water in order to get salt. It's simply that one can not produce salt in high quantity, with high quality, with high production speed when compared to just producing bucket-fulls a second, per square meter, in a salt-mine.

Salt has been around forever... there are huge salt-domes all over the place. Abandoned salt-mines aren't generally abandoned because all the salt is gone. They're abandoned because an more accessible, newer, mine is begun. (Or, someone screws up and water enters the picture...)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3cXnxGIDhOA

This is what happens when you don't know what's under the drill. :) (A clear case of "stoopid.")

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Post by Morkonan » Sun, 20. May 18, 01:35

Where does it end?

Tracking Firm LocationSmart Leaked Location Data for Customers of All Major U.S. Mobile Carriers Without Consent in Real Time Via Its Web Site

So, if you wanted to know the location of a specific someone's cell-phone, armed with a teeny bit of knowledge, all you had to do was ask... Without anyone being the wiser.

When does this stop? Not "hacking," for goodness sakes! That'll go on forever. But, when are users not going to be exploited for the services and products that are sold to them?

Right now, it's the "Wild West" where "law" doesn't hold sway, only "control." It's not about what a person can do with the power of the internetz, it's about how much they can be exploited by those with power and how much power can be taken from them.

It's no longer just the internet that needs an enema, it's the controls, the apps, the things "sold" with "Good for you" advertisements and fifty-eleven end-user agreements that literally violate a human being's rights, blatantly and maliciously, all for profit.

How much are we expected to endure before we break? Is there a profit-margin connected with that?

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Post by Hank001 » Sun, 20. May 18, 08:50

Morkonan asked rhetorically:
It's no longer just the internet that needs an enema, it's the controls, the apps, the things "sold" with "Good for you" advertisements and fifty-eleven end-user agreements that literally violate a human being's rights, blatantly and maliciously, all for profit.
And all last week our emails were filled with new "privacy policy" statements brought on my the EU's new laws. If actually read they all seem to sum up to: Sure we'll try and make sure nobody gets your private data unless they shell out to us for it. (In which case we'll be more than happy to sell you out.)

Tied into the general assumption that the internet in its entire is simply a tool for cash generation and we simple suckers are going to have to resign ourselves to having a hundred hands in our pockets. (Press here if you've read and agree to our policy changes...[Suckers!] )

Edit: Before it becomes a topic...
On my smartphone it's Yanni
same transferred to desktop
is Laurel so it's dependant on your
device. If you don't know what I'm
talking about then you're probably
better off. :roll:
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Post by mrbadger » Sun, 20. May 18, 19:43

I've had loads of job agencies sending me job opportunities in the last two weeks, after lulls of a few years.

I'm guessing with the idea that if I reply at all they can take this as consent to keep me on thier books, even though I tried and entirely failed to remove myself from jobs websites years back that the job centre forced me to sign up to on completing my Ph.D.

Not that it matters much, each time a new recruiter mails me they get marked as spam and I hear no more.
If an injury has to be done to a man it should be so severe that his vengeance need not be feared. ... Niccolò Machiavelli

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Post by Hank001 » Sun, 20. May 18, 20:17

mrbadger said:
I've had loads of job agencies sending me job opportunities in the last two weeks...
Good plan. I had the same problem last year with it seemed every job site on the web. But so did half the campus, students & teachers.
If that's any hint about why it started. I spammed them too and dried up quick.
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Post by korio » Mon, 21. May 18, 10:30

mrbadger wrote:I've had loads of job agencies sending me job opportunities in the last two weeks, after lulls of a few years.

I'm guessing with the idea that if I reply at all they can take this as consent to keep me on thier books, even though I tried and entirely failed to remove myself from jobs websites years back that the job centre forced me to sign up to on completing my Ph.D.

Not that it matters much, each time a new recruiter mails me they get marked as spam and I hear no more.

The new EU law is no joke, they cant do that, they need to put a box for you to tick that specifically says that you gives them permission to contact you again and use your data.

I am dealing with this new law and is a pain in the a**.

I have seen at least two games companies that are blocking the use of all their assets from the European region just to avoid the costs and time needed to be compliant with the new GPDR Law.

I have even received a mail from Vip's Club (the ones from starbucks and all that) asking me to grant them permission to send me promotions.

I have received so much mails that im waiting a week or so to see if i get some more and then deal with all of them together.

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Post by Alan Phipps » Mon, 21. May 18, 15:28

The thing about this 'opt-in law' is that I still get almost daily spam e-mails from companies that I have used once in the past - sometimes years ago. Their 'promotions and adverts' have sufficient diversity/mobility in sender's details that they defeat my spam blocker even though they do always end up in the spam folder. (Not sure why that seeming contradiction in handling happens.) Yes, I've checked, there's no 'click here to unregister for further e-mails' button in their adverts. Will this new law change anything relevant to this?
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Post by korio » Mon, 21. May 18, 16:50

Alan Phipps wrote:The thing about this 'opt-in law' is that I still get almost daily spam e-mails from companies that I have used once in the past - sometimes years ago. Their 'promotions and adverts' have sufficient diversity/mobility in sender's details that they defeat my spam blocker even though they do always end up in the spam folder. (Not sure why that seeming contradiction in handling happens.) Yes, I've checked, there's no 'click here to unregister for further e-mails' button in their adverts. Will this new law change anything relevant to this?
If you dont agree to handle properly the data of people you may have and get their consent, you cant contact them again. Now this is the tricky point, they must send you a mail stating the change of the policy and they must give you a link to accept it or a place to say you dont want them to use your data anymore.



That's why all the companies are sending mails like crazy trying to get your consent to use your data.

I have even calls from telemarketing guys trying to sell me anything and when i politely say no to their offers then ask if i consent to be called again.

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