Congratulations! You've shown that you care enough about human life that you started a homicide statistic with "lol"! You definitely seem like you do give your time supplying food to the homeless, or volunteering on a suicide hotline, and don't just use the excuse of "this isn't an issue that directly affects me" to avoid actually helping anybody not related to you by blood.

I'm sorry that not enough trans people are dying to warrant your empathy - let's hope it stays that way.

Tell me, how are you fighting the Opioid epidemic in America? What are some concrete steps I, as a citizen, can take to stop the deaths of 33,000 of my peers? I certainly don't know anyone who is addicted to prescription pills, so by your reasoning I have no reason to care about it - that's just not something which affects me. I do know a young trans woman who was beaten to within an inch of her life in an alley, but hey, my number's smaller than yours, I should care about your thing instead - fuck her statistically insignificant life!

See, here's the thing about proportions: they tend to point to something larger than themselves. If you actually did give your time to helping the homeless, you would find that between 10-20 of those 50 people might be gay or trans (and before you have a chance - I know I linked to a liberal rag and you are going to debate the numbers, I don't particularly have the energy to find better sources) - a number which is disproportionately high. Or if you actually spent your time with opium addicts, you would find that, again, a disproportionately high amount of them are gay or trans. And do I even have to tell you how many gay and trans people would be calling you on that suicide hotline?

I get it, you don't know any trans people, but some of us do. Some of us may even want to start a family with the trans man they've been dating for 5 years - a thing that becomes significantly harder if he's dead. I completely agree that there is a finite amount of energy that we can all channel to causes that we deem to be important - I just hope that you're channeling yours towards something bigger than complaining about people mourning the dead.

EDIT: I'm sorry that this is pretty aggressive, I don't mean it as a personal attack - in all seriousness, I have no doubts that you are a good person, and I get where you are coming from. This is just an issue that hits really close to home.

I am slowly coming to the conclusion that if David Wong had started at Vanity Fair instead of Cracked, he'd be Hunter S. Thompson by now.

How half of America lost its fucking mind

The Monkeysphere

I don't know what to tell you Taco that you don't already know. Obviously the months (years?) leading up to this moment have been a rollercoaster. Perhaps, like me many times past and present, you're thinking that you've just had a stroke of bad luck lately and if people would just fuck off and give you some space to get your collective shit together everything will go back to normal. It won't. I think we both know that. The only question you need to ask yourself is how far down the rabbit hole you're willing to go?

Do you have any criminal charges pending? Probation? Before you make any harsh decisions about rehab realize they WILL make those for you eventually. You'd be better off just letting go and letting God as the AA nuts are wont to say. It'll go a lot harder for you if you don't, believe me. Don't even think about driving anywhere far right now. If you plan on sleeping in your car don't you dare keep any shit in it. They will find you, and your family, love notwithstanding, WILL let you rot in jail.

Have you ever been homeless? I spent about half a year in my car and IT SUCKED. Worst months of my life. Spent a week truly roughing it when a cop dropped me at the doors of a state facility and didn't bother to check me in himself. I learned a lot about myself and the world around us that week, none of it inspiring. That is a dark road man, and it's getting colder outside. That's what stuck with me the most: the cold.

Rehab SUCKS. I've been to the best and the worst and they're all fucking miserable. THEY'RE SUPPOSED TO BE. You will meet some truly sad and crazy individuals there. You will be sick. Hopefully they'll give you some decent meds and you'll hit the pink cloud within the week. By the month's end you'll be more than ready to get the fuck out of there. You'll think that was a one time thing and you've got your addiction under control now. You will be wrong.

You've still got family that cares about your welfare. That's a plus for sure. No matter how much you may hate them or how much you think they hate you, you've got people and that's most important. What you decide now will determine how many of those loved ones will remain once the dust settles.

You're one of us now. It's a big club. You're not special. Left unchecked you will die a lonely, excruciating death. AA is mostly bullshit. It's bullshit you would be wise to suffer through at least a couple months. There's no going back. You will have this disease the rest of your life. Like I said: HOW FAR DOWN ARE YOU WILLING TO GO?

I'll be thirty next year. My addictions have cost me half my family, several relationships, over a year in county, half a dozen hospital visits... my sanity. Yet, even with all that misery, I still go back. She welcomes me with open arms every time. One day I fear she'll never let go.

Get your shit together man. I'll keep you close to heart. Take your medicine and come back to us stronger and wiser.

I can't give a great answer to all of these, especially since my knowledge of 2G and especially 3G is pretty basic, but I'll give it my best.

Is speed/quality of connection the only difference between the two generations of communication?

Again that's kind of vague, but the short answer is no. There are many differences. However, what most of these differences are attempting to achieve is better speed and quality. As my experience lies in the physical layer, that's what I can comment most on. The modulation schemes (how the physical signal is transmitted) are different between all three. I started writing about the differences, but it just got too long and complicated. I don't think it would interest you too much anyway, and I wouldn't want to say anything wrong about 2G/3G.

Are there any particular interesting events connected to the transmission of the signal with 4G (or in general)? I remember seeing something about radio echo while skimming over the Wikipedia article, and it sounded fascinating.

What I think you're getting at here are reflective channels (to put it in layman's terms). When you send a signal over the air, it'll bounce off of all sorts of stuff, like buildings or mountains, etc. Therefore the receiver will receive the same signal several times, with different amplitudes and delays, in very rapid succession. These will overlap, and that of course causes problems. What was really sent, and how can you determine that when what you receive is basically a jumbled mess of reflected versions of the original? Think of it as if you were in a room that had a lot of echo in it. Somebody speaks to you, but the echo is so long that all the words just get blended together in a mush.

The answer, and this is true for 2G, 3G and 4G, is that you periodically (in 4G about 4000 times per second) send a reference signal, a signal that you know what is supposed to be, and you compare that with what you receive. That's the purple blocks in the image in my last post. You take the differences, and use those to make a guess about what happened to the signal between the transmitter and the receiver. This is called channel estimation. Once you have a channel estimate, you use it to correct the received signal.

Another thing that is done is that if you're sending, let's say, 8 bits of data, you will actually send a lot more bits over the channel. Something like (this varies based on channel quality) 24 bits of data. By adding these 16 "redundant" bits, you can retrieve the signal even if some received bits are wrong. This is called channel coding.

Are there differences in physical structure between the 4G and 3G signal transmitters/accepters (the proper term skips my mind) - as in, are they physically different schemes? I remember reading that 4G is non-backwards-compatible, but does it mean protocols only or the transmitters as well? Can one encode a 4G signal with a 3G transmitter (if there even is such a difference)? Do they have to upgrade the equipment of the cell towers to match the new generation?

Short answer: yes, they are different, and they must be upgraded. Here my knowledge is very limited, but I know that these standards are made in such a way that network providers shouldn't have to completely change all of their equipment to make it work.

To give you a little bit of context, one of my more experienced colleagues at the company told me that when they originally implemented the 4G in the modem I was working on, they did it with a 3G receiver. This shows that it's possible, but he made a point of how impressive it was that they achieved this. I consider this guy to be a straight up genius, so the fact that he found it difficult to do makes me think it was far from the optimal situation.

How is it possible to remain within the same cell of the station and not tangle up the signal with others?

Modern digital processing. It's what I was talking about in the previous post, with that time/frequency grid. The base station tells you which of the squares are for you, and it tells you which squares you can send on. In 4G, you will actually receive all of those squares, but you will only decode the ones which are for you.

This is made possible by using the Fourier Transform, which is a mathematical operation. The Fourier Transform takes a time domain signal (in this case, some radio wave) and decomposes it into its frequency components. In the picture you see there are 7 symbols in each time slot. That means that you must take the Fourier Transform at 7 different times to get the frequency components of each time instance. This is how you get the grid, which then in fact just becomes a grid of numbers. Those numbers each represent a set of bits. When you know which ones are for you, you can go ahead and decode your data.

Does different encoding mean that it's simpler/easier/quicker to decode the signal by those of ill intent, thus enabling for easier eavesdropping? Alongside that, does 4G protocols of transmission mean that one would have to catch the required frequency first? is it as easy to do as with 3G communications?

You're confusing channel coding with encryption. Channel coding (which is what I was referring to) is about how you represent bits on a physical signal, it's not about obfuscating the data. In fact, data transmitted over 4G isn't encrypted, although it's not trivial to eavesdrop. I think, however, that if you implement your own base station clone (a very non-trivial task), you'd pretty much be able to listen to anything going on around you. You'd have to know which frequency network operators are using, but this is not exactly secret information.

This turned out fairly long, but I didn't want to be too superficial. I hope this helps.

Last week I was waiting for Chelsea to get out of work so we could head to the cat cafe (again), so I'm heading down to Georgetown. Y'all know Georgetown. It's the bougiest place on Earth. I have not even remotely the money to buy some of the clothes I like in the the designer shops there and it hits me, "the fuck?! How does Georgetown not have a record store, or one that I know of?" Google search, boom. Hill & Dale Records. I don't get my hopes up. What are the chances it's indie in this neighborhood?

End up finding it in this little hidden back alley I'd never noticed that opens into a gorgeous courtyard. Place looks so tiny but they have an incredible, absurdly eclectic mix, and the owner, Rob, one of the coolest guys I've talked to, is cranking from the most expensive, beautiful setup Technics deck I've ever seen. A $4k table with a $4k needle at least. So I'm happy to be browsing jazz with the punk with the indie with the local with the world and just loving it. And what do I finally find, the thing I've been checking every local shop for since October?

Fuckin' Sunn O))) + Scott Walker - Soused. Never have I been so excited to drop that much on a record. I find a great shop owner, a great location, a great collection, a record I've been searching high and low for, and I got to support it all. It's such a unique feeling, having all that come together perfectly, on on whim of "fuck I'm bored let's wander". It's not just a 'support your local record store and musicians, kiddo because capitalism is a cold bitch and then we die", it's just the whole process is so... Human and global. Musicians put their heart out there, a guy opens a shop that won't ever make him rich because he's passionate, and same dude has his life brightened because it came together, passionate about all of it. It's how everything should work in life.

Before I left, he puts on the most entrancing thing. Something just so familiar I couldn't place. The Blade Runner soundtrack. I couldn't get it out of my mind after leaving, so of course I had to go back the next day and pick that up. I'll gladly empty my wallet for any of that.

kb,

I want to apologize to you for my rude comments from last week.

You were right in your assumption that the anger was not 100% directed at you. I was stressed out with work and personal shit and your comments pushed me over the edge. Although I do not appreciate comments like "That makes you, what? Thoughtful?" my response was over-the-top and misguided and flat out wrong. Regardless of stress or no stress, your words or no words, there is no excuse for my actions. My response was uncalled for and I am sorry.

I do value your contribution to hubski and your stories. Even if I misunderstand, or misinterpret, or disagree with something you say, I should never have responded in the way I did.

I also want to reiterate that the "fat" comment was not directed your bodyweight, rather a poorly-chosen adjective meaning "extreme." Although I apologize and wish I could erase everything I said, I hope you especially understand that I truly did not intend insult your weight or open up some old internet drama between you and the reddit masses.

Again, I am sorry for my words. There is no excuse and I will keep my hatred & anger off hubski and away from you from here on out.

I hope you can accept my apology and put this internet drama behind us.

<3 insom

ps: anyone else that is reading this, I hope you also accept my apology and understand that I regret filling this thread and community with anger and hate and promise it won't happen again. I'm quite embarrassed and ashamed of my actions. I am sorry