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Comment Re: Don't encourage him (Score 3, Informative) 230

by jrmcferren (#54203589) Attached to: US Hacker Sets Off 156 Sirens At Midnight

Don't laugh, but that's actually how the sirens in my county are activated. Each fire station's siren has a tone pair along with an all siren tone pair and a cancel tone pair for the all call tone. For an auto accident you usually get (not sure of the order) Siren Tones, Fire Pager Tones, EMS Pager tones, and a human decoded auto accident tone. This is simulcast from two sites on the main frequency (not sure if the other UHF system is still active) and the audio is carried on the digital P25 dispatch talk group.

Oh and we don't use what the people in the business call VHF (15X to 16X MHz range) we use Low Band (3X and 4X MHz Range).

Comment Re:Cold weather? (Score 4, Interesting) 198

Only on startup will electric heating be required to heat the cabin. Once the battery is up to temperature heating can be accomplished the same was it is now by piping some of the battery coolant through a heater core. If designed correctly (and the driver plans correctly) initial heating can actually be done while the car is still connected to the charger.

Comment Re:Why purge? (Score 1) 258

by jrmcferren (#53589071) Attached to: Library Creates Fake Patron Records To Avoid Book-Purging

I know my local library used to sell their old books it isn't like they are tossing them in the dumpster. The money from the sale can also help buy the newer materials that are in demand, be it books, movies (IIRC the local library had and may still have a rental service), or anything else that the public using the library needs.
Facebook

Donald Trump Won Because of Facebook (nymag.com) 499

Posted by BeauHD from the right-and-wrong dept.
Max Read makes his case via New York Magazine for how Facebook was the reason for Donald Trump's surprise victory on November 8th. Though, to be fair, "Facebook" is called out specifically due to its large online presence, but in reality all the "large and influential boards and social-media platforms where Americans now congregate to discuss politics" are to blame. The main reason why has to do with Facebook's "inability (or refusal) to address the problem of hoax or fake news" that is spread rampantly and effortlessly across the platform: Fake news is not a problem unique to Facebook, but Facebook's enormous audience, and the mechanisms of distribution on which the site relies -- i.e., the emotionally charged activity of sharing, and the show-me-more-like-this feedback loop of the news feed algorithm -- makes it the only site to support a genuinely lucrative market in which shady publishers arbitrage traffic by enticing people off of Facebook and onto ad-festooned websites, using stories that are alternately made up, incorrect, exaggerated beyond all relationship to truth, or all three. Many got hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of shares, likes, and comments; enough people clicked through to the posts to generate significant profits for their creators. The valiant efforts of Snopes and other debunking organizations were insufficient; Facebook's labyrinthine sharing and privacy settings mean that fact-checks get lost in the shuffle. Often, no one would even need to click on and read the story for the headline itself to become a widely distributed talking point, repeated elsewhere online, or, sometimes, in real life. When roughly 170 million people in North America use Facebook every day and nearly forty-four percent of all adults in the U.S. say they get news from Facebook, the spread of "fake news" is all the more detrimental. The problem is that Facebook seems "insecure about its power, unsure of its purpose, and unclear about what its responsibilities really are." Earlier this year, Facebook acted on what was right and wrong by censoring the iconic "napalm girl" photograph, later issuing a statement saying "These are difficult decisions and we don't always get it right." Of course, lies and exaggerations have always been central to real political campaigns; Facebook has simply made them easier to spread, and discovered that it suffers no particular market punishment for doing so -- humans seem to have a strong bias toward news that confirms their beliefs, and environments where those beliefs are unlikely to be challenged.
Government

Slashdot Asks: Should The US Abolish The Electoral College? 1081

Posted by BeauHD from the popular-vote dept.
Last night as votes were still being counted, statistician and editor-in-chief for FiveThirtyEight Nate Silver pointed out that while Donald Trump has been elected president of the United States, "it's possible, perhaps even likely, that [Hillary Clinton] will eventually win the popular vote as more votes come in from California." We now know that she has indeed won the popular vote by a slim margin. American journalist Carl Bialik adds via Silver's blog: Hillary Clinton could still conceivably win the election -- or she could lose the national popular vote. But since both outcomes look unlikely, we should start preparing ourselves for the possibility of the second split between the national popular vote and the electoral vote in the last five presidential elections. A coalition of 11 sates with 165 electoral votes between them has agreed to an interstate compact that, once signed by states with a combined 270 or more electoral votes, would bind their electors to vote for the winner of the national popular vote -- in effect ending the Electoral College. New York just joined this week. It wasn't enough to affect this election, but maybe today's result will spur more states to join. The results of this election echo the 2000 results, where Democrat Al Gore narrowly won the popular vote, but George W. Bush won the White House. It brings into question whether or not the Electoral College should be abolished in favor of the popular vote. As a refresher, the Electoral College is comprised of electors that cast their votes for president. Each state has a set number of electors that is based on the state's population -- the candidate who wins the state's popular vote gets those electors. Technically, on Election Day, the American people are electing the electors who elect the president. The New York Times has a lengthy article describing how the Electoral College works, which you can view here.

Comment Re:Analyzing... (Score 1) 79

by jrmcferren (#53155287) Attached to: Nuclear Plants Leak Critical Alerts In Unencrypted Pager Messages

Satellite communication is only required for long distance pager networks. A pager network with a local coverage can be done on site along with the other IT infrastructure. The antenna can even be installed on site as well depending on the coverage needs. Pager networks do not require public infrastructure at all.

Comment Re:sea-fiber + microwave towers = partial fix (Score 1) 101

While towers tall enough for line of sight is ideal, microwave communication can also occur with what is called Tropospheric Scatter. This is a propagation mode where signals are transmitted above the horizon of the receiving station. Some of the energy is reflected by water vapor back to the receiving station completing the link. Troposcatter links can work for a few hundred miles and used to link remote communities such as Nome, Alaska. A troposcatter link was also used to connect West Berlin to West Germany during the cold war since cables could not be laid on East German Territory.

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