Apple is building an operating system for health - <AUTHOR> https://divinations.substack.com/p/healthos <comment><USER2> Maybe it's the french in my talking, but I really have a hard time trusting anything else than the state to handle health data.

Anytime you associate health with financial motivation, you end up with something twisted on the long run.

Sure, you can say that Apple, right now, is in the proper state to do that (although given they were part of PRISM, it's debatable).

But what about in 10 years? What if their executives decide that Apple Pay should lead to the creation of a bank? Then from a bank to an insurance company? Then they have a conflict of interest.

Simpler than that, what if they change their stance on user data, and decide to exploit it to understand their customers better? Or sell it? Or just partner it to labs, insurance companies, hospitals?

Like with facebook, it will of course all be "made anonymous", until it's not anymore.

Money and health data are not meant to be mixed IMO.

But even without all that, we are adding yet another tracking system on top of what is already a sensor packed pocket self-spying device.

It's hard to not worry that such concentration of power has a high potential for suffering.

<comment><USER3> The solution to this conundrum and similar potential problems with other 'smart' devices is to leave them on the (virtual) shelves. If your insurer starts to promote the use of such a device you change insurer. The same goes for car insurance which wants to have access to (live) tracking data on your car, home insurance who demand the installation of and access to 'security systems', the list gets longer and longer. The way things are going this new nosy technology is set to create a new class of Luddites, those who while not averse to technology in itself do not accept their lives to be steered by profit-seeking entities through the use of such.

Another interesting question is whether law enforcement will be allowed to access such data and whether it can be used as proof against the wearer. If your data indicates you were in a higher state of alert with a raised pulse, the gyroscope and position sensors indicate you were physically active, the location data puts you in a given area and the microphone picked up suspect sounds they won't need much more to convict you. Who is the legal owner of the data? Some countries give people the right to refuse to testify against themselves so if the data is owned by the wearer I'd expect it to be off- limits to the law.

The potential good uses of this type of technology are myriad, it just needs to be made big-brother-proof. That will be a hard task since there are situations where you'd want some of these easily-abused features to be used - e.g. call in emergency services if the device detects a life-threatening condition, etc.

<comment><USER4> > leave them on the (virtual) shelves

That's easy today because this option is unpopular. But look back and see how many things we (as entire populations, not necessarily individuals) starting accepting that was unfathomable a couple of decades ago.

Without strong government intervention we may end up at the point where you can take it or forfeit the insurance.

<comment><USER5> This is what I see coming as the mega corps eat our society alongside software. Look at the regulatory capture the telcos have managed with their negotiated service area monopolies or duopolies. It's easy to say "buy something else" until there's nothing else to buy and the product is a requirement for functioning in society (insurance, internet connectivity, healthcare). We need trust busting candidates now.

<comment><USER6> I don't think trust busting can make the telco problem go away. You can punish someone for their past wrongdoings, but that doesn't necessarily incentivize anyone to become an ISP after the fact. You have to look at how we invest in infrastructure instead. In most of the country, ISPs are responsible for building their own infrastructure; they have to either dig up streets or beg the local power company for pole access. If they didn't have to do that, many more companies would be interested in being ISPs. As it stands right now, it's too expensive and too risky. Sure, being an ISP is 95% profit once you've paid for the infrastructure, but the payoff period is many decades. Nobody has that risk appetite anymore.

In Manhattan, under every street is a subway where you can put power cables, fiber optic cables, etc. The result is that there are a multitude of business ISPs around, because someone already dug a hole in the ground where their cables can go. The actual stringing of cables is a straightforward procedure; sure you need to buy trucks and cables, but that's a lot cheaper than saying "hey we're closing 5th Ave. for 3 months" and digging the whole thing up. The street was dug up once (in 1891!), and now nobody has to do it again. (OK, the tunnels are pretty full, but it's better than nothing.)

If every street were built like this, it is likely that there would be many more ISPs. The big risks are gone. (There is a secondary problem in that many people still like linear TV, and many TV networks are owned by companies that are also ISPs. AT&T owns HBO. Comcast owns NBC. So that would be the sticking point after there is infrastructure, and sure... have the government break them up. They'll probably be dead long before we have the infrastructure, though.)

The short term solution is probably to invest in better trenching techniques. I've heard of microtrenches, nanotrenches, and picotrenches. Maybe we need femototrenches where you just run a fiber to someone's house through their lawn and cover it up with tape where it crosses the sidewalk. It's better than nothing. But probably still too risky for anyone to attempt.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> The question is, will all these data aggregated together actually give us any actionable data that we can and will act on? If there's one thing Google Analytics has taught me, it's that it's quite possible to have a lot of detailed data at your fingertips, but still not be able to answer any valuable questions with it.

<comment><USER8> I'm using the Watch and with my iPhone. The Health and Activity apps work great together.

The visualizations are clear and understandable. For example, I'm significantly less active this spring than last spring—average of 2.2 miles walking per day in 2019 vs. about 1 mile in 2020.

That's mostly due to stay at home orders due to COVID-19 the past 3 months. Once the weather got better and the number of cases subsided, I started taking walks in my neighborhood due to the actionable data I had.

Remember, the Watch and the iPhone can do machine learning on the device.

What's missing is an easy way to do more advanced health data processing on my Mac if I wanted to.

I'd like my public health department release an app for COVID-19 exposure notification, using the Apple/Google API.

You could also envision broad clinical trials of treatments for COVID-19 using these components.

<comment><USER9> What valuable question did you answer with the data? You didn't need a watch to know you were walking less.

> Remember, the Watch and the iPhone can do machine learning on the device.

Great, what is the machine learning?

<comment><USER8> It's not just the amount of walking; it was also calories burned, heart rate not getting into an aerobic range, my VO2 max and other data that I'd have no idea about if I didn't have a device monitory this during my waking hours.

Regarding on device machine learning: [https://developer.apple.com/machine- learning/](https://developer.apple.com/machine-learning/)

<comment><USER9> Neat! You managed to not answer either of my questions:

1\. What valuable question was this data answering?

2\. What is the machine learning?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> P-NP Many studies show that modern machine learning could revolutionize healthcare. However, many hospitals and governments are extremely protective of patient data. And many hospitals don't even know how to exploit their data through deep learning. Enter Apple and Google and others with big machine learning departments. They are finding new ways of collecting health-relevant data. For example:

Through Apple Heart Study, Stanford Medicine researchers show wearable technology can help detect atrial fibrillation

[https://med.stanford.edu/news/all-news/2019/11/through- apple...](https://med.stanford.edu/news/all-news/2019/11/through-apple-heart- study--stanford-medicine-researchers-show-we.html)

[https://www.apple.com/healthcare/docs/site/Apple_Watch_Arrhy...](https://www.apple.com/healthcare/docs/site/Apple_Watch_Arrhythmia_Detection.pdf)

An OS with a focus on health seems to make a lot of sense.

<comment><USER10> That's why it was genius for Apple to bet on privacy. It's the only big tech company I can trust with my health data.

<comment><USER11> Apple's privacy marketing seems like just that. All of their proprietary software is highly suspect. And remember, the COVID-19 contact tracing APIs were built by both _Google_ and Apple. If Apple was so concerned about privacy they would have implemented the tracing APIs themselves for the iPhone and released the source code.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I hate Apple's approach of doing 70% of the work all the time. If they _truly_ cared about health, they'd make it incredibly easy for any company to add health data in to their ecosystem and not just try to sell more Apple Watches. As a Whoop user, it's so much more beneficial than their basic Apple Watch stats (which btw are fine for most people, I just want more/better HRV data)

<comment><USER13> > If they truly cared about health

It's a company, it doesn't and cannot care about anything other than profit.

<comment><USER14> A company is just a group of people working together.

It can care about whatever those people choose to care about.

<comment><USER13> That has nothing to do with the position of the company, though. The employees can care about what they want.

<comment><USER15> Companies used to serve multiple stakeholders that included, employees who worked for them, communities they were present in, customers they served, etc. in addition to stock holders. Slowly, slowly, the definition of stakeholders has been shrunk and reduced to stock holders and responsibilities reduced to maximizing profit. Of course these stakeholders and responsibilities are being further reduced slowly slowly to where companies only exist to benefit large shareholders and corporate executives.

I am guessing you might be young and may not be aware of history of corporations.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Apple Health is one of those products that's useless until it suddenly isn't. We're reaching that point for some folks and I only expect that group to expand rapidly in the coming years.

<comment><USER12> Sort of like Evernote. It's a note taking app until it's your 2nd brain.

<comment><USER17> Why not OneNote?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Ever since I heard Mary Lou Jepsen (OLPC/Oculus Rift) talk about her work on a revolutionary holographic medical imaging system, I've been expecting Apple to buy her Openwater startup, add resources and introduce cheap, safe MRI-like body/brain scanners for the masses. If it works, it could be bigger than the iPhone. [https://www.openwater.cc/technology](https://www.openwater.cc/technology)

<comment><USER19> She did a talk at the Long Now Foundation about the possible implications of this work. Definitely a bit out there - but fascinating.

[http://longnow.org/seminars/02018/oct/29/toward-practical- te...](http://longnow.org/seminars/02018/oct/29/toward-practical-telepathy/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER20>
      Traditionally, these data sets have lived in silos.
      But what could happen if it all was aggregated safely
      in one place?

It seems unwise IMO for me to give a large corporation (Apple, Equifax, etc) rich data with which to characterize my lifestyle and physical health.

<comment><USER21> Which is why Apple is not looking at your data?

<comment><USER22> Not yet.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> What happened to Palantir handling NHS data in UK? There was some privacy concern there but it happened anyways. Call me a pessimist and this a rant but it seems like the public doesn't really control what their governments decide to do with their data. The best the tech firms do is issue an apology for infringing on privacy or pay a light fine while they get to keep majority of their profits.

<comment><USER22> Its not much of a rant. Its taken centuries of hard work for the average person's body to mostly not be the owned property of other people or governments.

The battle's barely been started for self determination and self ownership of our data.

</comment></comment><comment> david-cako Apple has a talent for putting themselves right at the center of important technologies. I wonder if this strategy plays out as integrated medical devices and a full-blown healthcare platform. Their reputation for top-notch hardware, good UX, and their shift towards in-house SoCs gives them a serious edge there. Everything about their brand feels well suited for healthcare, and IMO they still don't have a killer enterprise app. This could be what Watson was promising to be.

<comment><USER24> Top notch hardware, like their top notch keyboards?

<comment><USER25> No, not like their recent keyboards. But exactly like almost every model of their laptops, most of their desktops, their servers, their phones, tablets, watches, NAS/routers and set-top boxes. Every year, for >30 years.

<comment><USER26> Which laptops? The ones that could be made to repeatedly kernel panic due to GPU issues, that Apple denied was an issue until shown otherwise? Or the ones with the logic board issues? Or the ones with battery issues that caused burns? Or the SSD failures? Or the T2 issues that cause repeated kernel panics?

> their servers

As novel as the Xserver might have been, let's not pretend it was anything more than an unimaginably small surface area for a product

Apple makes well-designed products, mostly. But let's pump the brakes on the idea that everything that comes out of Cupertino is flawless, as you seem to imply.

<comment> david-cako Apple's got a lot of surface area, and a pretty damn good track record.

Who else is doing what they're doing? No other consumer hardware company goes top-to-bottom from the software to the chip, and no other company has such a cohesive ecosystem. Google EOLs a product once a week, Microsoft is making some nice stuff these days, but is nowhere near the same experience ("Windows is like a bundle of drivers", as in the article).

There is value to being prescriptive over their platform. It gives them skin in the game to make things good; they are much less willing to just blame a vendor.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> The notion that the industry isn't exposing any data is patently false. FHIR and HL7 have been around for years now and I've connected many data sources into both Apple and other services that use those APIs.

<comment><USER28> FHIR helps quotes a bit, but I think the challenge is that HL7 is expensive to work with and that integrations are point to point.

I've also connected sources using HL7, but it's hard to scale because it's like everyone creating import/export interfaces to their system.

I think the benefit of Apple health is that it's a common, trusted intermediary. Me, the patient.

I think it's easier for me to pull data from multiple sources and show it to my doctor than for all those medical systems to share with each other so my doctor can see data. If I have 5 health services, it requires 5 export to Apple interfaces for me to collect my data, securely store it, and show it to my doc or to any one of those 5 providers.

To have provider interoperability it requires 30 interfaces (maybe my math is off 2^5-2).

There is stuff like Project Blue Button [0] that tries to make a standard interface to export data.

The complaint that it's easy to export data is only true if you want to pay some consultant to make an interface. In the US, there's a report on information blocking [1] that called out areas in healthcare with blocking and proposed some changes to lessen it.

[0] [https://www.healthit.gov/topic/health-it-initiatives/blue- bu...](https://www.healthit.gov/topic/health-it-initiatives/blue-button) [1] [https://www.healthit.gov/topic/information- blocking](https://www.healthit.gov/topic/information-blocking)

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> I really welcome the Health Kit or Google Fit approach for sharing data among health app, I actually want to use that for health research. The main problem is that as soon as you mention the fact that patients data is going to be shared with a company (besides in the US) doctors shy away because of data protection, regulations etc. We need the data to be on the device and possibly outside of the control of one (or 2) companies. I know Apple says that data is encrypted end to end, and I wish Google did the same, but even so it is still problematic. When you add the fact that _every_ manufacturers of wearables obliges users to share data on their dodgy platforms... I don't see a solution to this. At least not until the mindset changed completely.

</comment><comment><USER29> Feature request: Heat stroke prevention.

Just heard an interview with author of recent paper about global risk of increased mortality due to climate change. (Radio, no cite, sorry.) Research team has clarified impact of "wet bulb", which is somehow combo of both ambient temperature and humidity, and prevalence of heat related deaths.

Not just the Middle East, but also provided examples from Europe, Toronto, Louisiana.

While wet bulb temp of 35 °C is life threatening, paper shows that with higher humidity even 27 °C can be dangerous for at-risk persons and has led to greater mortality.

While the risk will certainly get worse, people have no intuition for it. Especially for outdoor work and activities.

Any way.

My immediate thought was my watch can alert me to wet bulb risks, a combination of weather and health monitoring.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wet-bulb_temperature#Wet- bulb_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wet-bulb_temperature#Wet- bulb_temperature_and_health)

<comment><USER30> Feature request: Connect Diabetes Insulin Pump, and Sugar level measurement devices.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> What is all this "health data" people are talking about? When I go to a new doctor that has none of this apparently super complicated, dense health data, they give me a single page form to fill out where just about 90% of people below the age of 50 will tick every box with "no" or leave the field empty.

<comment><USER22> Lets say they want to raise premium revenue by 25%. The solution will be to increase premiums on smokers, because everyone hates smokers, by 25%.

How does that math work, you're asking? Right now you and I can check "non- smokers" on medical documents. And that's true, at least for me, medically speaking.

However after we fuse all sources of data we can punish everyone. I bought two packs of cigars in the 90s when I was a dumb young kid. Medically speaking a quarter century later I'm a non-smoker from a health perspective. However, from a revenue generation perspective...

Big brother is not going to fund this out of the goodness of their heart to be revenue neutral or (gasp) positive for the public. The only purpose for this expensive initiative will be to screw over the general population even more to increase income inequality a little more and make the rich just a little richer.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> Apple could be planning to make an EHR system, like Epic and Cerner. Google is supposedly working on one, too. (I don't think the article really arrives on that possibility)

Most electronic health record systems are really terrible software, and they're also very profitable pieces of software. Google, Apple, and Microsoft are probably the only companies with enough money and software engineering talent to start from scratch and disrupt that space.

Some interesting further reading: [https://medium.com/design-and-tech-co/how- google-ehr-could-f...](https://medium.com/design-and-tech-co/how-google-ehr- could-fix-one-of-healthcares-epic-flaws-280036a988e3)

<comment><USER33> Rather than go through the trouble of entering a new complicated market building an EHR to unseat some very entrenched players and force retraining of millions of healthcare workers, which would be relatively antithetical to Apple's consumer-not-enterprise approach, they could focus behind the scenes efforts on data portability and interoperability via EHR customers (hospitals) so that those EHRs worked better with Apple Health.

You really don't want to build an EHR if you can avoid it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> If you want to learn more about where research in this area is headed:

Santosh Kumar has been heading a large NSF research center investigating wearable medical sensing and how to turn sensor data into actionable health advice:

[https://md2k.org/](https://md2k.org/)

Tanzeem Choudhury has been doing some work at the intersection of AI and sensing and health:

[https://pac.cs.cornell.edu/](https://pac.cs.cornell.edu/)

Deborah Estrin's Small Data Lab is doing some interesting work too:

[https://smalldata.io/#portfolio](https://smalldata.io/#portfolio)

</comment><comment><USER35> I really wish Apple would get on with it - the process for trying to upload medical records was super broken for me (plus as an American, I can't even find most of my medical records since they're in different doctors offices across the 4 states and many cities I've lived in). That said, I am nervous about just how much data they'll own. Does anyone know if there are government backed open systems that someone from another country could use? I know that Estonia for instance has an okay patient health portal where you can see all your info but it's not useful unless you live there.

</comment><comment><USER36> Just last night I read an essay by Galloway where he pointed out that the really huge companies (Apple, Google, etc) have a hard time maintaining growth so have to move into different sectors where there are huge pools of money. Health is the most obvious one.

</comment><comment><USER37> The epistemology of the thing...

In the immediate human sense recall that this was the health app that launched with no way to record your menstrual cycle (a very important aspect of health for about half of humanity, the half that makes new humans I should add.)

In the deeper sense, we might encode "humors" into the design of our system. Our knowledge is incomplete. (E.g. the microbiome, or the "interstitium" which has been called "a new organ" [https://www.livescience.com/62128-interstitium- organ.html](https://www.livescience.com/62128-interstitium-organ.html) )

It's important that our data systems handle _open-world_ rather than closed- world data, eh? [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open- world_assumption](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open-world_assumption)

(As a practitioner of Reiki I can attest that scientific medicine does not yet capture all relevant variables.)

Last but not least, the crux of the issue turns on what Martin Buber called "I and Thou": [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_and_Thou](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_and_Thou)

> Buber's main proposition is that we may address existence in two ways:

> The attitude of the "I" towards an "It", towards an object that is separate > in itself, which we either use or experience.

> The attitude of the "I" towards "Thou", in a relationship in which the other > is not separated by discrete bounds.

There is a subtle trap in thinking of the body as "it" (and also a trap in thinking of the body as "thou", and another as "I"). It behooves us to be careful what we automate.

</comment><comment><USER38> Microsoft's almost always either too late, or in this case too early.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_HealthVault](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_HealthVault)

<comment><USER39> Often, they'll come in again, and be both too early and too late.

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> Reminds me of The New, New thing!

[http://michaellewiswrites.com/index.html#the-new-new- thing](http://michaellewiswrites.com/index.html#the-new-new-thing)

</comment><comment><USER41> I would be happy if they would still support older machines with macOS. A macmini of 2010 that is still working good can't be left without security updates!

</comment><comment><USER34> The USA has been making plans for widespread sharing of Electronic Health Record data for many years:

[https://www.healthit.gov/hitac/committees/health-it- policy-c...](https://www.healthit.gov/hitac/committees/health-it-policy- committee)

This is seen as desirable for more than one purpose, including allowing people to move their medical records to a new doctor or hospital easily, and for doing research on what makes for the best care, as well as giving doctors the ability to look at case histories similar to that of a patient they are treating.

Computerization of medicine has been resisted by doctors for a long time, which has meant that all the data and observations and diagnosis made over the years has essentially been lost when it could have been informing doctors decisions and being used in research. There are definitely privacy and abuse problems with putting everyone's health data in a central database run by the government, and it is very difficult to de-identify health data (how many people have your height, weight, age, and diseases?), but without some way to gather all the knowledge and experience and data from the practice of medicine we have been missing important correlations and creating harm due to each doctor making their own decisions instead of having a set of best practices informed by hard data. Whether the police, FBI, NSA, courts, and politicians should have access to this data are difficult questions and hard to implement so they are not subject to abuse. The police already can make some kinds of queries at hospitals for medical data.

The UK has started a large scale Precision Medicine project that is collecting health data on 500,000 people:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UK_Biobank](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UK_Biobank)

There are other ongoing large scale projects collecting health data also:

[https://www.hdruk.ac.uk/](https://www.hdruk.ac.uk/)

and I'm sure there are others, in many countries. A lot of this is part of the move towards Precision Medicine, medicine based on data and personalized to an individual, rather than treating all people as being identical and letting each doctor make their own guess on how to treat a patient (I've been in meetings where doctors say that 80% of the time they are guessing, though guesses get better as they see what works and what doesn't for any one patient):

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Precision_medicine](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Precision_medicine)

The space Apple is aiming to dominate is currently one small part of all this. One big question is what do doctors do with all this data? It's too much to look at it all. They have no experience with such detailed info also. What is normal for the way your blood pressure changes as you go about your day? Your doctor doesn't know and hence even if she had continuous blood pressure measurements from you 24/7 wouldn't know what to do with it. What is a reasonable blood pressure while having sex? When climbing stairs? The only measurements like this that we've had historically are from astronauts. Machine Learning may help, but what do you do with an opaque message from an algorithm that there is a 75% chance you have some abnormality in some obscure biological parameter? The chance of 25% of those notifications being wrong means you can't use it as the basis of a diagnosis. Maybe it suggests something you can investigate further, but then how much time will you waste following up on those 25% of notifications that are in error? Was the ML trained for your age, weight, and specific set of health conditions or will it fail to detect anything for people outside the scope of the training data, yet be used to evaluate your health (incorrectly) anyway? And using ML also creates yet another path for bad actors to steal and tamper with your data.

There are a lot of complicated questions surrounding medical data.

</comment><comment><USER42> I don't see why I'd need Apple to tell my personal trainer I have a herniated disk. I can tell them myself, and I'm looking to be less locked into the Apple ecosystem, not more.

If that's what they're doing (which I bet it's not), I'd consider it as a good sign that Apple has run out of good ideas.</comment>


Opera 11 will have extensions - <AUTHOR> http://my.opera.com/chooseopera/blog/2010/10/14/opera-11-will-have-extensions

<comment><USER2> Why you should care about Opera:

1\. More minimal interface than Chrome. New-tab Speed-dial can be a solid background [or image] with no extra cruft. Unlike Chrome which adds bookmarks, recently closed, help links etc.

2\. Equivalent performance to Chrome including JavaScript.

3\. Firefox-isms while offering chrome performance. Aka Pop-in sidebars for downloads and history rather than new tabs.

5\. CTRL-Tabbing is similar to operating system alt-tabbing. _You don't even need a tab bar occupying screen real estate._

6\. Password manager light-up button is a superior user experience to saved password autocomplete in Chrome and Firefox.

7\. Right click mouse gestures. [and fully navigable keyboard only]

<comment><USER3> Does Opera have an Awesome Bar (i.e. find-as-you-type in the address bar autocompleting from browser history and bookmarks)? Does that integrate with Delicious?

That's probably the biggest reason I stick with Firefox. Chrome's autocompletion doesn't compare (it only does prefix search on the URLs or entire page titles, whereas Firefox does _infix_ search on URLs and _words in titles_ , which makes it much easier to recall a given page).

<comment><USER4> Well..."Opera 11 will have extensions" so probably.

<comment><USER3> "Yes because you can write your own" wasn't quite what I meant :P

<comment><USER4> Well, it kind of does have that bar already. The delicious integration would probably be an addon, though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This seemed to be the main excuse that people had for not trying out Opera in the past, but people already have their favorite browser by this point. Without a significant marketing campaign, I don't see Opera's browser share changing significantly with version 11.

<comment><USER6> > but people already have their favorite browser by this point

I disagree. People were saying that in 2009 before Google Chrome _really became popular_. Now people are switching from FF to chrome all the time for a number of reasons.

If Opera brings new things to the table, people very well may switch. The browser wars are not over.

<comment><USER7> Google has a lot of money (and more importantly, exposure) to push their browser forward and make ridiculously huge marketing campaigns. Opera does not.

<comment><USER6> Opera's net income in 2008 was about $90 million. And that's from about _half a billion dollars_ in revenue that year.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opera_Software>

Yes, Google is much bigger. But don't suggest Opera is poor.

<comment><USER8> That's not U.S. dollars, that's kroner. On December 31, 2008, that was $13 million on $71 million revenue (<http://finance.yahoo.com/currency- converter/#from=NOK;to=USD> ; change the date to get historical data).

<comment><USER6> Oops! Thanks for the correction.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I was an Opera fan for-frickin'-ever, but I switch to Chrome just recently.

Opera's been light-years ahead of most in the browser industry, but then Things Just Stopped Working. Updating my browser for any reason would mean that bookmark syncronizing stopped for a few days until I figured out why it was broken _this time_ , then I had to manually re-sync my bookmarks.

It has a bunch of features I don't use (torrent client, chat client, mail client, Opera Unite), isn't supported as well, so you run into render problems from time to time, and hasn't copied some of the REALLY good ideas from its competitors, despite having ample time to do so (when I close a tab, I expect the next tab close button to align itself automatically under my mouse button like Chrome).

Opera's my #2 fave browser, but that doesn't mean it really gets any use. I use Chrome for browsing, Firefox for developing, IE for testing, and Opera...

Opera, we had a good run. But it's over. I'm sure you'll find someone new.

</comment><comment><USER10> Cool. Opera already supports Greasemonkey-style user scripts [1], as does Google Chrome [2].

They're handy for writing simple browser hacks e.g. injecting additional links into certain pages.

[1]: <http://www.opera.com/docs/userjs/examples/#greasemonkey>

[2]: [http://dev.chromium.org/developers/design-documents/user- scr...](http://dev.chromium.org/developers/design-documents/user-scripts)

</comment><comment><USER11> Open Question for any Opera users out there: Why should I go and use Opera? With Firefox for extensions and Chrome for performance; I'm not sure I need another browser. What benefit does Opera give you? Why do you use it?

<comment><USER12> For me, it's mouse gestures. Last time I tried getting them in FF with a plugin, it just wasn't as well done (forces you to make distinctions between tabs and windows, for example, that you aren't used to having to think about). Mouse gestures get to be very addictive, and they really are a faster and better way to work.

I'm also a big fan of the developer tools. While similar to Firebug etc, I prefer some of the minor differences in Opera.

I also think built-in support for torrent files is a really nice feature (don't know if any other browsers have caught up with this yet).

<comment><USER13> Besides mouse gestures I've gotten so used to browsing via keyboard (especially when using Shift+arrow keys) that switching to another browser is nigh impossible, because I get irritated too easily.

And the builtin RSS reader is better than anything else I've come across (not that I spent that much time looking ;-))

<comment><USER14> I love the rss feed: no signing in, no opening tab upon tab upon tab, no silly magazine layout. Just the feed menu on the top of the page, the individual feeds displayed on the bottom- it's perfect.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Useless for anything except media exposure. Opera already has all the functionality you would need in a browser (as a regular user, at least). This is probably a move for bonus point with Firefox users who can't do sh*t without extensions - again, not the case in Opera.

Sorry, that's the harsh truth. Might be good news for advanced users that need to do some esoteric stuff but most people using Opera already have all they will ever need, out of the box.

<comment><USER15> Firefox has everything I need in a Browser. As has Chrome. Or Safari. I don't need all that stuff Opera can do.

<comment><USER7> You know what the greatest common divisor of Firefox, Chrome and Safari is? Internet Explorer 6.

That's right Jack, all the functionality you're using in a browser is the one Internet Explorer 6 has. Sadly, most of the people using the browsers you mentioned do the same.

The world you live in is the cave mentioned by Plato. You have never went outside and see there's so much things a browser can do, you're content in your small little world thinking "meh, my browser already has anything I would ever need".

Wrong. You could use a better interaction with the browser, you could use some extra features to make your life easier and stop checking your webmail when you have pop3 and smtp. You could have a lot of things if you would just come out of the cave.

Sure thing, Firefox has the extensions, but Chrome does not. You're missing out on a lot of functionality that you never knew existed.

How are you supposed to know that there is such a thing since you usually search for an extension when you KNOW you need (such as ad-block) but it never occurs to you that you might use a neat clever feature? You're stuck in the dark because you don't know light exists.

<comment><USER15> Now I'm depressed.

I never said that I will never use extensions. I never said that I will never use Opera. I have Safari, Chrome, Firefox and Opera on my HDD and ready to go. If somebody on HN or anywhere else tells me about a cool new extension or a cool new feature I will of course want to try it out. I love doing that, I really do!

It's just that for my day to day usage I have until now always returned to vanilla Safari [+]. That's just how it is and I can't change it. That's how I like it best.

[+] The only extension I have installed is ClickToFlash.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Best one liner to install bash script - <AUTHOR> I'm working on a bash script and I want to make available a simple one-liner that automatically downloads and runs the install script. I've seen many variations of this one-liner. For example oh-my-zsh uses
sh -c "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/robbyrussell/oh-my-zsh/master/tools/install.sh)"
What's the best way to do it? Or the most simple/pure? Is there maybe a blog post outlining the different ways? <comment><USER2> Please don't. Running random scripts from the internets to install stuff is a idiotic idea that deserves to die already.

Make your build process dumb and installation process even dumber. The former should just run the compiler (as opposed to downloading and installing semi- related stuff; this belongs elsewhere), and the latter should just copy files. This way somebody could easily make a tarball or RPM/DEB package, which allows for repeatable installations. Running sh&t from the internets doesn't allow to reliably build packages and install software.

Don't assume that your users are idiots who cannot run two or three commands in terminal.

</comment><comment><USER3> Hi! Take a look at sparrow - script package manager - [https://sparrowhub.org](https://sparrowhub.org) as easy way to distribute portable scripts across servers.

</comment><comment><USER4> try this:

curl [https://example.com/file.sh](https://example.com/file.sh) | bash

If your shell script needs sudo access, just:

curl [https://example.com/file.sh](https://example.com/file.sh) | sudo bash</comment>


India: The Republic of Scams - <AUTHOR> http://news.in.msn.com/gallery.aspx?cp-documentid=5140159

<comment><USER2> Its really nothing new. Impressive fact is that corruption is finally being shown in news the way it should be have been decades ago</comment>


Who is Peter Thiel and why is he advising Donald Trump? - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-38315682 <comment><USER2> Oh boy, another Ayn Rand loving psychopath in the whitehouse.</comment>


Ask HN: Do you currently or plan to run a firewall at home(Pfsense, Sophos)? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> PFSense, but imo microsegmentation of the network is more important than which one big lock you've got hanging on the front door.</comment>


In the UK, You Will Go to Jail Not Just for Encryption, but for Noise, Too - <AUTHOR> http://falkvinge.net/2012/07/12/in-the-uk-you-will-go-to-jail-not-just-for-encryption-but-for-astronomical-noise-too/ <comment><USER2> > Yes, this is where the hairs rise on our arms: if you have a recorded file > with radio noise from the local telescope that you use for generation of > random numbers, and the police ask you to produce the decryption key to show > them the three documents inside the encrypted container that your radio > noise looks like, you will be sent to jail for up to five years for your > inability to produce the imagined documents.

Alarmist and inaccurate. If you read the statute that Mr. Falkvinge links[0], it turns out that if there's a serious question about whether you have the key to some piece of supposedly encrypted data, the burden of proof is on the prosecution to prove you do have the key to it (and therefore that it is encrypted data) beyond reasonable doubt, just as you'd expect. s.53(3).

[0] [http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2000/23/section/53](http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2000/23/section/53)

<comment><USER3> What counts as proof? Will a jury understand what doesn't count as proof? If a very official and nice looking prosecutor stands up and makes an argument that is slightly too complicated for the average juror to understand, claiming that Mr. Smith's "random" file is actually an encrypted information, is the Jury going to believe him?

It is not uncommon for juries to accept flimsy and circumstantial arguments no matter how hard the defense tries to explain that the Prosecutor is spewing nonsense. The scenario the author lays out is not certain, but it is plausible.

<comment><USER2> > What counts as proof? Will a jury understand what doesn't count as proof? > ... It is not uncommon for juries to accept flimsy and circumstantial > arguments no matter how hard the defense tries to explain that the > Prosecutor is spewing nonsense.

You're right, those are problems. But they're not problems with this law, they're problems with jury-based criminal justice systems. And the system's had 900 years to evolve solutions -- judges summing up, "No case to answer" / directed verdicts, etc.

There's room for disagreement about how effective those solutions are. Point is, as the main objection to this law, that complaint 'proves too much' \-- since essentially the same objections apply to all but the most trivial criminal offences, the solution then becomes scrap juries and go for a Germany-style professional/inquisitorial justice system. (And maybe we should, I don't know).

(btw, this is very, very far from being the most complicated law or subject matter that juries have to face, compared to e.g. complex fraud trials)

(To be clear, I think this is a terrible law! But just because I agree with TFA's conclusions doesn't justify his fearmongering, IMO)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Wait. So if I am suspected of being a terrorist or a pedophile, I can refuse to give my encryption key, go away for 5 years then get out without charges?

How is this not a valid defense?

<comment><USER5> The onus of providing evidence is,and always should be, on the accuser - so if the police is suspecting you of being a terrorist/pedophile, they should produce evidence that you are. In ideal world, you should be able to refuse to hand over your encryption key and go home without any charges, not a stupid 5 year sentence for not giving out a key to data which might/might not be encrypted.

It's not a valid defense, because usually, if the police is investigating you, they probably already have some evidence on you. Finding out some random data on your drive usually comes later.

<comment><USER6> I haven't read the statute, but I got the impression from the link that the law reads like the laws in the US compelling you to give a breath or blood test when suspected of DUI. If you refuse, you receive punishment whether or not you were actually guilty.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> "Looks like we found some encrypted data at /dev/urandom, hand over the keys!"

<comment><USER8> "Just let me drill through my skull, sir"

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Why should encryption even matter? The principle is, you may not keep any secrets. If the government suspect you know the time and place of a planned terror bombing, then logically, they should argue you be punished if you don't tell them some plans, even if they don't claim you ever committed encrypted plans to paper or bits.

</comment><comment><USER9> So, how do you know if something is encrypted or just random?

You could imagine someone being thrown in jail for not being able to decrypt a random block of characters.

</comment><comment><USER10> 2012\. Still very relevant though.

<comment><USER11> I wonder what has come of this though?

<comment><USER12> The process has a few stages. NTAC (GCHQ) approves the issue of a Section 49 Notice ( _" decrypt or jail"_); a Section 49 Notice is issued; and it's then either complied with or not.

Eight Section 49 Notices had been issued up to April 2008. Since then the rate has increased steadily; 37 were issued in 2014/15 (latest year of data).

Eighty-eight were approved to be issued.

[https://wiki.openrightsgroup.org/wiki/Regulation_of_Investig...](https://wiki.openrightsgroup.org/wiki/Regulation_of_Investigatory_Powers_Act_2000/Part_III#Cases)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> This is the assange/guardian/greenwald law.

So they can jail journalists as terrorists and hunt their sources.

<comment><USER14> This significantly pre-dates the Assange/Guardian/Greenwald stuff. The purpose of the law was to stop being able to get off child pornography and terrorism charges by refusing to provide an encryption key.

Now, I think the law is misguided in principle and potentially malicious in practice, but it was never about prosecuting journalists.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> so what if there was a encryption method that had two keys, one to decrypt innocuous data and the second to decrypt sensitive data?

<comment><USER16> This is exactly what TrueCrypt does, with its 'hidden' [1] volumes!

        1. http://forensicswiki.org/wiki/TrueCrypt#Hidden_volumes

<comment><USER17> Call it VeraCrypt, because TrueCrypt is dead now.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Write your key into 2 pieces of paper. Mark one as part 1 out of 2, the other as part 2 of 2. Make you write something like "please note that if I am not served with the appropriate RIPA key disclosure when this equipment is seized I will destroy the other part of the key and this piece of paper proves beyond reasonable doubt that I am not in possession of said key"

Keep one piece with you at all times and be ready to destroy it. Write a post on Hacker News explaining what you would do.

Now you don't go to jail. And you can live like Jason Bourne.

PS. Or move to a real democratic country... ?

<comment><USER19> Can you then be incriminated for destruction of evidence?

<comment><USER20> I don't suppose, if you're not aware of any investigation against you. Besides that you don't have to testify against yourself (in a functioning democracy that is)

Edit: obligatory IANAL :)</comment></comment></comment>


μWWVB: A Tiny WWVB Station - <AUTHOR> http://www.anishathalye.com/2016/12/26/micro-wwvb/ <comment><AUTHOR> Hi HN! I wanted to share the story of µWWVB, a watch stand that I built that automatically sets the time on my atomic wristwatch.

Because I can't receive the regular atomic watch radio signal where I live, I built a device that determines the current time by using GPS and then emulates the WWVB protocol to set my atomic watch.

In the process of building this, I learned a lot about time, clocks, radio, and WWVB, and so I thought I'd share what I had learned.

<comment><USER2> Very nice work! Can you receive WWVB via a larger, resonant loop antenna; say a 10 cm diameter solenoid and resonating capacitor? If so, you may be able to place the watch at the center of the resonator (i.e. within the solenoid) so it parasitically couples.

The antenna gain will be proportional to area, so much more gain than that of a watch antenna.

<comment><AUTHOR> Oh, that's a neat idea! Yeah, I think I should be able to receive WWVB in my dorm room via a larger antenna. I should try it when I'm back in my dorm room after the winter break.

<comment><USER2> Maybe build one with a short piece of large diameter PVC pipe as the coil form. Use a signal generator at 60 kHz to drive a smaller, transmit probe coil. Then another receive probe coil hooked to an oscilloscope. Use this loose magnetic coupling technique to tune the large coil for resonance. You'll of course want to shoot for as high of Q as possible, but that's an engineering trade off of AC wire resistance, capacitor Q, etc. Go for as large of inductance as feasible, until your self resonance is just above 60 kHz, then pull it to down on frequency with a silver mica cap, or adjustable air variable cap.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> While currently I have no use for this, I definitely appreciate the research and effort that went in to solve a localized problem, and sharing the results. Epitomizes hacker culture to me. Thanks for sharing :)

</comment><comment><USER4> The WWVB protocol has been interesting me for the past few months. I have been thinking about doing the opposite: building my own WWVB receiving station.

There are modules which can automatically receive the WWVB radio signal and output the high/low pulses (which still need to be translated from PWM to ones and zeros).

[https://www.amazon.com/60kHz-atomic-clock-radio- module/dp/B0...](https://www.amazon.com/60kHz-atomic-clock-radio- module/dp/B01KH3VEGS)

\</comment><comment>----

If I were to make a recommendation: you're hiding a bit of magic here:

> I designed the board using the EAGLE PCB design software and milled the > board from a single-sided FR-1 circuit board blank on an Othermill v2:

You haven't said the kinds of endmills you're using (flat square mills? Or did you use a V-tip?). If so, where did you source the V-Tips from? The software side probably had a few extra steps as well (IIRC, its usually Eagle -> Eagle CAM Plugin export -> CAM software -> GCode -> Mill)

So expanding on what you did here would be most helpful... to me at least :-)

> It's challenging to design good antennas for such long wavelengths

FYI: the loopstick / Small Loop antenna operates on the magnetic-portion of the wave instead of the electric-portion of the wave. Instead of making a very large wire (which "receives" the voltage as the wave passes), the small loop antenna is basically an inductor that generates a current as the magnetic wave passes over it.

That's how it gets so small, since the electric wave is 5000-meters long, its a bit difficult to make.

<comment><AUTHOR> Ah yes, I didn't go into details on the milling process. I used a 1/64" flat end mill for the traces and a 1/32" flat end mill to cut out the board from the stock.

Also, the software workflow was really easy - Otherplan (Othermill's CAM software) can directly import Eagle's .brd files and drive the Othermill.

<comment><USER4> > Also, the software workflow was really easy - Otherplan (Othermill's CAM > software) can directly import Eagle's .brd files and drive the Othermill.

Hmm, good to know. The only CNC Mill I have access to however is the Nomad 883. So I guess for my purposes, I'd have to do something else. But that's a nifty feature of "Othermill" for sure.

> I used a 1/64" flat end mill for the traces

I'm glad to know this is feasible for some of these larger surface-mount parts (like an ATTiny44A).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> That's the computer hacker solution. The RF hacker solution would be to build something that receives WWVB and retransmits its own signal on the same frequency without interfering with itself. The wavelength is long enough that you could pull this off. This has the advantage that you're not degrading the accuracy of the time signal.

<comment><USER6> It's not that accurate anyway; WWVB doesn't compensate for its propagation delay like GPS time does.

<comment><USER7> WWVB's worst case propagation delay is ~20 ms. This project's error can be up to 500 ms. For a wrist watch or wall clock, the former is imperceptible and the latter is not.

<comment><USER6> Yeah, the conclusion I reached after making a GPS-based NTP server is that having my clock accurate to a few nanoseconds didn't really matter for anything.

My watch is a minute behind my computer right now. Doesn't matter.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Could someone provide quick background on WWVB, or at least say if the Wikipedia page is accurate? I clicked the link to the NIST page,[0] which helped a little but was written for someone already familiar with it - it's both too detailed and leaves fundamental questions unanswered; for example:

* Is WWVB the norm for consumer clocks that synchronize to an outside source? If I see a clock with that feature, should I assume it uses WWVB? Is it one of several options?

* Why not use GPS? Because of poor signal indoors?

* How far does this signal from Colorado propagate?

[0] [https://www.nist.gov/pml/time-and-frequency- division/radio-s...](https://www.nist.gov/pml/time-and-frequency- division/radio-stations/wwvb)

<comment><AUTHOR> EDIT: apparently a couple other people have already answered your questions, but I didn't see the other answers because I was typing my response. I'll leave my answer here cause it contains some information not in the other responses.

The Wikipedia page seems to be pretty accurate. To answer your questions:

> Is WWVB the norm for consumer clocks that synchronize to an outside source? > If I see a clock with that feature, should I assume it uses WWVB? Is it one > of several options?

In the United States, yes. Clocks labeled "atomic clock" or "radio clock" are set up to sync with WWVB. Nowadays, many clocks are multi-band, which means that they are designed so that they can receive from multiple radio stations (there are a bunch of these; see [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radio_clock#List_of_radio_time...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radio_clock#List_of_radio_time_signal_stations)). Usually, the clock decides which station to try to sync to based on which time zone they are in (which is part of the configuration). For example, my wristwatch, a Casio AWGM100B, can receive from DCF77 (Germany, 77.5 kHz), MSF (UK, 60 kHz), WWVB (United States, 60 kHz), JJY (Japan, 40 kHz / 60 kHz), and BPC (China, 68.5 kHz).

> Why not use GPS? Because of poor signal indoors?

I think the main reason is that GPS is a lot more complicated, so it requires more sophisticated hardware and software (and more power) to get time via GPS. There are some higher-end watches that do use GPS - for example, the Casio GPW1000-1A.

> How far does this signal from Colorado propagate?

Depends on weather conditions and time of day. NIST has coverage maps that show where you can get > 100µV/m for different times of the day: [http://tf.nist.gov/stations/wwvbcoverage.htm](http://tf.nist.gov/stations/wwvbcoverage.htm)

<comment><USER9> > DCF77 (Germany, 77.5 kHz)

Actually DCF77 can be received all over Europe :) I believe reception is even possible in Russia and along the northern African coast.

<comment><USER10> I don't think OP ever claimed it couldn't be, just that that's where the signal propagates from.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Part of the linked page describing the WWVB transmission station which I enjoyed:

"A computer is used to automatically tune the antennas during icy and/or windy conditions. This automatic tuning provides a dynamic match between the transmitter and the antenna system. The computer looks for a phase difference between voltage and current at the transmitter. If one is detected, an error signal is sent to a 3-phase motor in the helix house that rotates the rotor inside the variometer. This retunes the antenna and restores the match between the antenna and transmitter."

Cool technology :)

</comment><comment><USER12> Could you attack WWVB receivers by overriding the transmitted signal and change their time?

edit: Not something I'd want to do obviously, just seems like a rather insecure technology.

<comment><USER13> I believe you can if your signal is strong enough relative to the real one, which can be pretty weak in certain areas (hence the need for this device).

My high school's math and science club tried to do this once to the school's clocks as a prank. We never got the transmission circuitry working, but I did write a program for my graphing calculator that computed and outputed the correct signal sequence for a given timestamp through its 2.5mm jack.

Edit to add: As I recall, our particular clocks synced at midnight or if you hit the reset button. I think that was to increase the chances of a good signal.

<comment><USER14> What calculator was that? That sounds like a lot of fun!

<comment><USER13> Mine was a TI-84, although an 83 would have worked too. I wrote it in native assembly, since TI-BASIC doesn'the give you enough control. You can do clever things with that jack, like play music if you've got a 2.5-to-3.5mm adapter.

And yeah, it was a blast!

<comment><USER14> How did you get programs to and from the calculator? Did you type it all out by hand on the calculator?

<comment><USER13> I developed programs on my computer and transferred them. There's some fantastic communities out there with all the resources and help you'll ever need [1]. I got my start working through this guide [2].

[1] [https://www.omnimaga.org](https://www.omnimaga.org)

[2] [http://tutorials.eeems.ca/ASMin28Days/welcome.html](http://tutorials.eeems.ca/ASMin28Days/welcome.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Very nice, I was originally thinking "Gee with NMEA signals they won't be able to do better than 1/2 second accuracy." and then realized its a wristwatch, you don't generally care about milliseconds and the watch can lose or gain a half second in a day anyway! So in fact it is engineered quite well for the requirement.

I also liked the antenna solution. Very nice piece of work.

</comment><comment><USER16> Great work! And I applaud the concise and thorough explanation of the legality regarding the unlicensed transmissions!

</comment><comment><USER17> That's a cool project.

Something I'd find irresistible is messing with the protocol to find the limits of your watch receiver. I mean sure the spec is 500 ms pulse for a one and 200 ms for a zero, and we can safely assume anything from 499 to 501 ms is close enough, but I wonder how far those limits can be pushed. Is the crossover from understanding 1/0 the arithmetic mean or geometric mean or some arbitrary limits or does the firmware crash or go into easter egg mode or ...

Another fun game to play is the AT44A is much weaker than the 8-bit home computers from the 80s that could synthesize live audio in real time up to a couple KHz. A somewhat more advanced chip in the 2010s could numerically synthesize live 60 KHz signals, which might be fun instead of altering hardware PWM. Then you could play with amplitude and keying signals. Its well trodden ground that square wave modulation of a morse code signal is extremely wide bandwidth. A fancy raised cosine would be very smooth. Perhaps you'd get better SNR at the receiver with less keyclicks, so you could reduce power, or it would be more reliable per watt transmitted. Or it might not matter. But live realtime synthesis would none the less be entertaining alternative to modifying PWM registers on the fly. A cleaner yet simple modulation method might be let the PWM fly free and use a digital pot with a I2C interface to smoothly AM modulate the output, probably only cost one chip and might provide some performance gain. Most digital pots are just FET with some buffers and drivers, they seem to be spec'd to 44 KHz sometimes 192 KHz so I assume 60 KHz would be no big deal.

Another funny thing about ferrites and reciprocity is how interesting their output is when they saturate, and how low the power level is when they saturate. That's why very little ham radio work has been done with ferrites as transmitting antennas, compared to the more conventional yet still rather obscure air core magnetic loop antennas. Ferrites are cool, strange chemical magic. Anyway a simple air core coil made resonant-ish might work better as an antenna than you'd think, maybe better than the ferrite. You get best performance with the correct ferrite core material for the frequency band selected. Probably the gutted radio clock you used, used the correct core material, or maybe it used the cheapest one that mostly worked (although not in your dorm room as you mentioned). Trying to use Amidon core material 17 would be quite futile at 60 khz, a bar of amidon material #3 would probably work at 60 KHz assuming you could find it. Manufacturing your own optimized antenna large enough core to handle some power and with the proper ferrite core material would be an interesting 3rd experiment.

Daydreaming about ways to continue iterating on a design is fun.

</comment><comment><USER18> I'd love to buy one. My house stopped receiving them for a year now. Maybe I have a noise source or something.

</comment><comment><USER19> Nice work!

</comment><comment><USER20> -1 for disabling zoom on mobile devices</comment>