It's time for a news diet! Maybe.
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@Zerosquare Uh, TIL that France Inter on 162 kHz long wave wasn't a thing anymore...
I almost never used it (when available, FM usually has a better signal-to-noise ratio), but this being long wave and thus far-reaching (and less affected by local geography), it was one of those few frequencies that I knew by heart as it always kind-sorta-more-or-less worked anywhere in France... Now I know I can definitely relegate this knowledge to the "useless trivia" folder.
Another one I know is 198 kHz which is the BBC, and for the same reason is reasonably available more or less everywhere in the UK, and at least in the northern half of France, and often further south as well. I read some time ago that while they have no plan to stop it, their transmitter was using a specific type of bulb that wasn't manufactured, nor available in stock, anywhere in the world. Which means that the day the bulb will break, transmission will likely cease forever (since, for the same reason as France Inter, they'll probably decide it's not worth spending money to change the equipment).
It's indeed a
that since they had to keep it running (though wiki says it's running at 800 kW since last year, not 2 MW) they still dropped the audio. But the public broadcaster is making some weird choices these days (or should I say, public broadcasterS, since the BBC also did weird things with BBC Sounds and BBC 3/4...).
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@nerd4sale said in It's time for a news diet! Maybe.:
But although I still have an FM radio lying around somewhere, I wouldn't know the frequency because I never listen to that station. And it doesn't run on batteries, so if the power goes down, no radio for me.
I bought a hand-crank / battery radio a while ago for use when I was offgrid in my trailer. I should probably find it and plug it in to cycle the battery at least. Assuming it will still hold a charge.
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Those hand-crank radios and flashlights are a good example of an idea that seems good, but actually isn't. Since they're typically never used unless there's an emergency, their batteries keep discharging down to a level that causes irreversible damage. And when you actually need to use them three year later, the battery is completely dead.
Instead, use a normal radio, but put lithium (non-rechargeable) batteries in it that won't go bad:
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@apapadimoulis have you considered only reading "satirical" news sources? The Onion, Babylon Bee, etc? Sometimes they make stuff up based on real events, sometimes they make stuff up to be funny and sometimes they print stories a few days ahead of the stuff actually happening.
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@remi By discontinuing voice, they're probably able to bilk more money out of the remaining users.
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@JBert @boomzilla good ideas. I guess was never trained on it as a kid, just CRAWL TO SAFETY / STOP DROP AND ROLL for fires and GO TO THE BASEMENT for tornados.
I felt a few minor earthquakes in Japan, but didn't really noticed them, because it's not unusual for buildings in Cleveland to shake or rattle a bit in wind storms, or because of big trucks passing. Neither really happen in Tokyo.
We had a major quake a couple weeks back, and it was strange. I was pretty focused on work, and just thought, oh I guess the airplane is experiencing turbulence. Took a moment to realize, I'm not in an airplane.
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@apapadimoulis said in It's time for a news diet! Maybe.:
We had a major quake a couple weeks back, and it was strange.
I generally don't notice any until they get over a 5.0. (4.5 if it's really close)
Every couple months on Slack, someone asks "did you just feel that?" The last one I looked at (on USGS), it was something like a 3.2. My first thought was "how did you even feel that".
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@dcon I've been through a couple of big quakes: Sylmar in 1972 and Loma Prieta in 1989. I got pretty good at judging the intensity of the large aftershocks — most tended to be about 3.5 or so — usually within .1 or .2 of the value that was eventually reported by USGS.
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@apapadimoulis said in It's time for a news diet! Maybe.:
@acrow for sake of argument, I'll challenge the necessity...
Wars and recessions.
Assuming the war wasn't literally happening in my city (I think I would hear this), how do either of these effect me?
With enough heads up, it's easy to escape to another country and avoid draft.
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@TwelveBaud said in It's time for a news diet! Maybe.:
By discontinuing voice, they're probably able to bilk more money out of the remaining users.
Also they apparently reduced power drastically since dropping voice (from 2 MW to 800 kW), which obviously saves them money and probably wouldn't have been possibly without dropping voice (I don't think they could have said "we're keeping voice but now it's only gonna be available only in a much a shorter range", doing so would have attracted as much hate as simply dropping it altogether).
So yeah, I kinda understand why they did it, but if I were really motivated about that (hint: I'm not
), I'd want to know how much money they're saving. I'd be surprised if it's more than a few days of salaries of the highly paid champagne-guzzling executives and their consultants who do nothing but costly "brand refreshing exercises."(about that: my company had one, I'd be interested to know how much money was spent given that people are being laid off right and left and that the whole "refresh our brand" thing didn't change our logo or company colours or anything and only changed PowerPoint templates by adding a flashy bar of ugly colour on the side and that's all...
)
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So like, denial of reality while retaining opinions on it? How is this going to be different?
