I think it's most obvious in hindsight, probably it was a long time (some decades) before cars were understood to have much of a negative effect at all. Nobody* thought much about air pollution (even adding lead to the gasoline) or climate effects, or what would happen when cities were built enough that they were then dependent on cars, or what happens when gas or cars gets expensive.
All they saw was that trips taking a day could now be done in an hour and produced no manure, and that meant suddenly you could reasonably go to many more places. What's not to like? A model T was cheap, and you didn't even need to worry about insurance or having a driver's license. Surely nobody would drive so carelessly as to crash.
*well, not technically nobody, but nobody important.
If you read the period news, pretty much everything except lead poisoning and climate change was well known by the 1920s. Rich people wanted cars but a ton of places had resistance from everyone else to what they correctly recognized as removing the public spaces they used and shifting externalities to, for example, the people being hit by cars.
What’s really interesting is that you can find newspaper columns in the 1920s recognizing what we now call induced demand as even by then it was clear that adding road capacity simply inspired more people to drive.
I've been to a few mineral museums like this and one of the interesting ones you can come across is Asbestos. Just hanging out there on display right next to some other mineral. It forms beautiful formations just like the rest, but I've heard so many mesothelioma lawyer commercials that it's easy to forget it's a completely natural material. Also one you can pick apart like cotton and weave into a fabric - it's a flexible material, made out of a rock, which can kill you.
The asbestos formations are ones they keep behind glass.
We used to have asbestos rocks sitting around in our house when I was growing up (my mother was born a raised in the town formerly called Asbestos, QC). You could just peel the fibers off the rock. In that form the asbestos is harmless: it's only when it's chopped into shorter fibers and inhaled that it's seriously unhealthy. Industrial uses almost always chopped the fibers so almost no commercial products using asbestos are safe, but the rocks just sitting there are harmless.
Central California has several abandoned asbestos mines which continue to release asbestos into the nearby air and water. I remember considering some hiking around the area once and then came across the warnings regarding exposure.
CA also has a lot of naturally occuring mercury as well. I seem to remember that some lakes in CA are so high in natural(i.e. not from gold mining) mercury that you shouldn't eat the fish.
The Monte Cristo basin in Washington is high enough in Arsenic that you shouldn't drink water there. There are warning signs at trailheads EG the trailhead leading into Gothic Basin and Gothic Peak.
There are several different kinds of asbestos and they differ radically in their level of risk and the worst kinds are not (generally?) found in California. So that signage might just be out of an abundance of caution.
I wouldn't be surprised if by the numbers you have a lot more risk of serious injury driving to and from the hike than from the asbestos, particularly if your hiking doesn't involve intentionally disturbing the ground. :)
For the many posters on HN in the bay area-- watch road cuts for green rocks, asbestos co-occurs with serpentinite all over the coast range-- and serpentinite is the state rock! You can easily find some with asbestos, usually grey/white fibrous strands on the rocks. Don't grind it up and huff it, but you can thrill your friends by showing them some boogieman-mineral you found.
(It's only fitting that the state rock is technically known to the state of california to cause cancer... :P)
Prop 65 requires me to tell you that the device you are reading this on contains chemicals known to the state of California to cause Thinking-regulations-are-stupid in mice.
I also learned programming on QBASIC around the same time frame, but in my case it was mostly because all the old 90's computers were getting thrown away at that time, so there were plenty of parts around for a kid to learn about computers without breaking anything expensive.
It was pretty easy back then to find software that would work on those machines on the internet, too. I'm not so sure it would be as easy for young people to learn using yesterday's computers today.
I have both, and a manual lathe and mill, and a laser cutter. 95% of everything I do is with the 3D printers. There is no indexing, no work holding, no dealing with shavings or smoke or dust or cutting oil that gets everywhere, no accidentally breaking your last end mill, no screwing up the only one of the thing you're cutting into, no cutting down stock so it fits in your machine, etc. You just press print. Setting up another machine is a right hassle by comparison.
3D printing and plastic parts isn't good for everything, but it is good enough (and easier) for a lot of things.
If you ever want more phone lines than that, you can pick up an old Cisco VG-224 from Ebay for less than half the price of that line simulator, and you get 24 lines. There is a configuration that will let you use it as a standalone unit where all the lines can call each other with custom phone numbers (here's some notes [1]).
The main catch is that they have a 50-pin Centronics style connector on them which you will have to break out somehow to your RJ11s. Also, they are big (1U rack) and have fans.
I've got a few of these and have been meaning to set them up with a bunch of modems and a bunch of computers, but haven't gotten to it yet. Modems do seem to work in the limited testing I've done. They do (as expected) work great with telephones, including pulse dialing.
Do the VG224's manage V.90/V.92 speeds? Jeff's setup falls into the usual trap other YouTubers do. Dialing a modem through an ATA or other device directly into another modem caps the speeds at V.34 (33600 baud)
From what I understand of telecom of that era. You want to effectively keep as much of the signal digital as possible. With (ideally) the only "analog" part remaining being the link between the customer modem and the PBX.
The VG224 being (effectively) 24 ATA's in a trenchcoat seems to meet that requirement. Though once installed you'd need to connect it to a PBX such as Asterisk. Then, as I understand it, "trunk" that as a T1 line into something that can digitally handle modem calls such as a Cisco AS5300.
> The main catch is that they have a 50-pin Centronics style connector on them which you will have to break out somehow to your RJ11s.
This is just another lost art (traditional phones are either dead or are instead IP) that I once learned a fair bit about:
The name varies regionally (I've heard them called Centronics, cinch, and CHAMP; though around here, we call them Amphenols). The Easy Method is the same regardless of name: It centers around a split (aka "50 pair") 66 punch block[1] that is mounted to a wall, or to a wall-like object.
Buy a pre-terminated 25-pair cable with the right connector on at least one end, and punch that down in order[2] on one side of the 66 block. That connects the system to the punch block. Importantly, those wires never get touched again.
Phones (or more precisely, wires for jacks for phones) connect to the other side of the 66 block. Those wires also never get touched again.
The two things (phones, systems) are connected/disconnected with bridge clips that combine the two halves of the block (which only allows 1:1 ordering, but that's often just fine).
Alternatively, a "we fancy!" variation uses single-pair cross-connect wire so that arbitrary phones can quickly be connected to arbitrary system ports -- maybe on completely separate blocks.
After that, plug in the Amphenol. Plug in the phones. Have fun talking to yourself.
(Or, at least: That's an easy way for small stuff. Bigger stuff (hundreds or thousands of pairs) eventually really wants better organization, but punch blocks are still normally the order of the day there, too.)
I know we ripped out similar, a plastic panel/wall mount version, at an old job when we went VoIP. The Centronics came out of the PBX. Probably find on eBay or surplus. Maybe talk to IT and they have one hanging around in a junk pile.
Sure. One end of the 25-pair cable can be cut down on a patch panel. There doesn't need to be a 66 block.
Or a person can buy a patch panel pre-assembled with an Amphenol connector, and just plug in a 25-pair cable between that and their gear. Here's one from Leviton: https://leviton.com/products/49012-j24
And those kinds of things are great for rapid deployment, but we're not trying to do that -- are we? We're just goofing around with old telco stuff for the lulz.
The most tinkering-friendly option is 66 block (wherein: the structure is whatever we want it to be today), I think. Punch down tools are cheap (including those that have interchangeable blades for also doing tidy work of 110 keystone jacks). It only takes a few minutes to land all 25 pairs, and those pairs can do anything a person wants them to do.
Meanwhile, 66 blocks themselves: They're dandy things. I've used them in the field to build simple circuits: The resistor or the capacitor doesn't care that it is hanging off of a punch down block instead of soldered to a PCB. It works, and it's wall-mountable for permanence.
But yeah, there's certainly options. I've got good familiarity with 66 blocks and their ability to quickly (and rather universally) hack stuff together, so that's what I tend towards using.
It's always important to know the specific and most-correct nomenclature, but it's equally important to use terms that others easily understand. :)
Like, the 4-pin Molex connectors in common use for things like PC optical drives (where those still exist). You probably know exactly what I'm referring to, and can picture one in your head whenever someone mentions a "Molex connector" in the context of a PC.
But those aren't from Molex -- they're instead from Amphenol's Mate-n-Lok line. Molex sells compatible-enough versions (as do countless other manufactures), but Molex had nothing to do with the design or introduction of that part.
Meanwhile: The square 4/6/8/20/24-pin jobbies that connect to things like video cards and motherboards, and that seemingly everyone calls ATX connectors? Those actually are Molex parts (from their Mini-Fit Jr line), but people would be confused AF if you called them Molex connectors.
So if we're doing it right in casual discourse, we use the terms that people understand -- even if they're not necessarily maximally-correct.
I've never witnessed the term "micro ribbon connector" used in face-to-face dealings involving telco stuff.
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Up next: The male 1/4" audio connector. Is it a headphone plug? A guitar plug? TR? TRS? A phone plug? A jack plug? "Like an aux cable but bigger?" Yes, any of those terms work. The best term depends on the audience.
The connector originates in the forgotten world of plug-and-socket telephone switchboards, so of all of those options "phone plug" probably gets the history most-correct (and that's also what Radio Shack labeled them as). But that specific terminology is pretty archaic at this point.
It's so archaic that if I asked a sane and rational person for a cable with "phone plug" on it these days, they might go looking for something with 6P4C, 8P8C, USB C, or (maybe!) a TRS -- depending on their age and/or upbringing.
I've worked in industrial automation and with computers for a long time and have come across a LOT of connectors. It helps to know the exact nomenclature when specking parts or finding replacements. My recent search was for Russian RP10-11's on Vacma motorized vacuum valves (the look like big D-sub connectors.) Not an easy search and luckily found a guy on eBay.
The other catch is actually subscribing to those phone lines (real POTS lines, not VOIP lines). Where I live, the only game in town is Bell Canada. The cost for a single home phone line is $58/month!
They do have enterprise accounts where I presume you'd be able to subscribe to 24 phone lines, but that would not be cheap! Whether they'd even allow you to bring 24 phone lines into a residential house is another question. They might not even have trunk capacity to offer you that many lines at your residence, so then you'd need to lease office space so they could bring in a T1 line.
Ahh I see. I guess I was mistaken about the title, which suggests building a real ISP for friends & family, rather than just a simulated ISP within a local network.
They even have to work around some design mistakes made in the modules in order to read them correctly. Not many living people know more about the AGC than those guys (especially Mike Stewart).
All they saw was that trips taking a day could now be done in an hour and produced no manure, and that meant suddenly you could reasonably go to many more places. What's not to like? A model T was cheap, and you didn't even need to worry about insurance or having a driver's license. Surely nobody would drive so carelessly as to crash.
*well, not technically nobody, but nobody important.
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