madengr

103 ms·

721.
by madengr 7y ago
Thanks. Damn, glad I don’t live in one: “In 2012, the media reported the case of John Pittas, whose mother had received care in a skilled nursing facility in Pennsylvania after an accident and then moved to Greece. The nursing home sued he
722.
by madengr 7y ago
That’s insane, as there is no limit to the amount of money that can be spent on elderly care, and whole industries with the sole purpose of bilking the life savings of the elderly. Do you have a link to the list of states?
723.
by madengr 7y ago
I’d start a hobby, classical station. The local KPR (Kansas) is pretty much classical, but is polluted with the drivel from NPR. Instead of advertisements. You can’t go thirty seconds without hearing the name “Trump”
724.
by madengr 7y ago
I did the same, but on reel-to-reel. Finally got a boom box, then switched to cassette. I remember the dual deck boom boxes, threw the recording industry into a tizzy.
725.
by madengr 7y ago
Problem is you can’t fund a 401k and traditional IRA at the same time. Then you can’t fund a Roth IRA if you make too much (and it’s only $3k/year anyway). The government has rigged it so they are getting a cut of your retirement sav
726.
by madengr 7y ago
C++, hell, I’d say C. The more abstraction, the less reliability. My group would never use anything but C in our embedded projects. I think it’s the “move fast, break stuff” attitude of non-embedded developers that has poisoned everythin
727.
by madengr 7y ago
I live in flyover country, with a paid off house, and good income. If you don’t have a mortgage, then it will be medical insurance (which costs just a much). If not that, the college savings, which is also equivalent.
728.
by madengr 7y ago
Damn it, can’t the entire country be wired with fiber? It was done 100 years ago with heavy conductors for electrification, then again with twisted copper pair for phone, but now in the 21st century no one can do shit. Save wireless for wh
729.
by madengr 7y ago
They are still technical. The spreading doesn’t buy you anything in terms of channel capacity, just processing gain over narrow band interference, and the downside is now you need precise power control to keep all those codes at the same n
730.
by madengr 7y ago
Probably not. 45-50 YO are still to young to have pensions. The fact of having a 401k pretty much means no pension. Everyone I know with a traditional pension is 60+. I’m lucky to come in on the tail end with a 401k and employer funded a
731.
by madengr 7y ago
My 401k is now worth about 5x what it was in 2008, mostly due to compounding, which is why I don’t understand “people losing everything”. They would of had to sell it all at the bottom of the market.
732.
by madengr 7y ago
QUCS is nowhere near equivalent to Microwave Office or ADS; those each have well over 100k man-hours of code development. Harmonic balance, transient for distributed circuits, envelope and system simulation, layout, 2D and 3D EM, and hundr
733.
by madengr 7y ago
You would need PRN codes with zero cross-correlation; no such thing. So when you add more users, they appear as noise in your de-spread bandwidth. Add more users, your noise floor goes up, degrading your SNR. There are optimum codes to us
734.
by madengr 7y ago
Spread spectrum still has limitations. The more codes you add just brings up the noise floor for everyone else.
735.
by madengr 7y ago
Look into the ADI Analog Discovery 2 for audio work, as it has a Bode analyzer and THD in the spectrum analyzer. https://youtu.be/1rOvdsxQVTY
736.
by madengr 7y ago
The majority of the remaining 6/10 have inadequate retirement savings. I believe the average 401k balance of 45-50 YO is between $96k to $108k.
737.
by madengr 7y ago
A two channel logic analyzer seems very inadequate. Need four minimum.
738.
by madengr 7y ago
High dynamic range (i.e. low noise figure, high linearity, and especially shielding) and low phase noise will always be expensive. They are independent of software and Moore’s law. The design software is not cheap either, as typical softwa
739.
by madengr 7y ago
In some countries, that is a good way to get killed.
740.
by madengr 7y ago
I slept on the floor for 6 years, only getting a bed several months after I bought my house. No furniture either other than two fold out tables for old Unix work stations and a bean bag. It’s an excellent method of birth control; no bed th
741.
by madengr 7y ago
That’s a double edged sword. The schools will charge exorbitant tuition if they know employers are paying for it. Did your employer reimburse you, or was it a direct payment? I took several classes after my MSEE, and employer reimbursed,
742.
by madengr 7y ago
Who the hell pays for an MS? At least back when I was in engineering grad school, everyone was covered by RA or TA grants, in addition to being paid by those. Of course in-state tuition at KU in 1996 was under $100/credit-hour, so if I
743.
by madengr 7y ago
I’m doing them the favor of not taking out $80k in student loans at 7% interest.
744.
by madengr 7y ago
I can cash flow it as long as they go in-state, then use the saved cash to buy a cheap house instead of paying for rent. No way I’d have them take out a loan if I can pay for it; just debt slavery.
745.
by madengr 7y ago
The parent probably means harmful to society, not that they or I would agree with that. Gun ownership is beneficial to freedom. I suppose some could complain about lead, but it is not soluble in water, and lead shot is rare these days.
746.
by madengr 7y ago
Tower workers are the most dangerous (by fatalities). Tower Dogs is a book about it.
747.
by madengr 7y ago
Ditto, but despite having mortgage paid off and healthy 401k, I have 2x kids college expenses coming up over the next 12 years. I’m resigned to working till I drop dead. 63, or whatever Medicaid will be at, is the minimum.
748.
by madengr 7y ago
My employer froze pension benefits at current salary level, freezing people out of 20 years of salary growth. I switched 17 years ago to the portable pension plan (annuity), which was probably the wise thing to do. At least I can convert
749.
by madengr 7y ago
Yep, I have a Keysight 7 GHz diff probe at work that cost $25k, and that’s one of the cheaper ones.
750.
by madengr 7y ago
Like these (no BS like stock photos of models around conference tables, just the products): https://www.fairviewmicrowave.com/ https://www.digikey.com/ Of course this is not marketing to the general public.

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