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12 kHz AM on a good receiver sounds absolutely fantastic.

I have a Royal 51/810 (one of each) that I use as a travel/bathroom radio, ironically, both have fantastic AM performance, and.. lacking FM - the IF/Audio bandwidth appears twice as wide on AM, and FM just sounds like crunchy - probably needs caps in the audio section, but its so tightly packed, and has a PCB with the heaviest plating I've ever seen - which means it needs work I cannot easily do.


Is it packed too tight for a solder sucker to get in there?

I’d have to figure out how to yank the board.

It’s tight.


Needed an emphasis curve applied to it.

The cost isn't in the radio, you have a single chip which is a complete AM/FM radio - the cost is in making cars quiet enough from an EMI point of view - something which, IMO, they should have to do anyhow to comply with Part 15.

RE "...they should have to do anyhow to comply with Part 15....." Yes I agree 110% So should al the manufactures of LED lights and numerous other gadgets ....

This seems like a super important fact for the discussion. Do you have a cite that it really constrains the rest of the car?

"Several automakers, most notably Tesla and Ford, have decided to stop putting AM radios in their electric vehicles. They claim their electric motors interfere with the audio quality of the signal and insist that FM and satellite radio are enough."

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/am-radio-congress-automakers/

I can find other references as well if you want. EMI in cars has been an issue for a long time, automakers however did do the needed work suppress the noise from spark plugs, I do not see this as any different.


Thanks!

Any idea if the law requires the redesign (i.e., requires that the AM radio meets some level of audio quality when operating in the vehicle) or if it just requires the AM radio to be present and (somewhat understandably) the manufacturer don’t want to include an AM radio if it consistently sounds bad?


No, but they would to avoid customer complaints at the dealer level - I dont think its a huge cost to add needed filtering.

If the reason for keeping an AM radio is really emergencies, then they could keep it in but only have it work when the car is stationary/motor is off. Rebrand it as "emergency radio" rather than AM radio so people don't complain.

We mandated UHF channel reception for televisions (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/All-Channel_Receiver_Act)

I believe that mandating AM reception is perfectly reasonable - as the reason given for leaving it out is because auto manufacturers do not want to spend the money to reduce the EMI from their vehicles.

The total added BOM cost to add AM to a modern radio is zero - because they have a single chip that does both AM/FM.


Does that also mean that those cars could potentially be responsible for tons of interference in the AM band in the future?

My belief? yes, it does. The motor controllers are noisy.

If so, it's interesting the FCC hasn't stepped in since nearly all electronics need that certification.

There’s two types of electronics you’re referring to. There’s incidental radiators, like electric motors, switching power supplies, etc that the FCC understands that RF will be generated from, and they ask that these devices merely minimize their RF.

Then there’s Unintentional Radiators which is probably what you’re thinking of, which include computers and other electronics, which are regulated to limit RF.


Right, but digital radio is a small portion of the US market, and what IBOC stuff that did happen, much of it has been turned off.

So I dont really understand what this comment has to do with the article at hand here?


Interestingly enough, In-N-Out does do their own beef processing, they take whole sides of beef, and turn them into patties.

I moved to WPEngine from a self hosted job, money well spent.

I've never had a lick of trouble, and even though I'm pretty proficient at hosting LAMP apps, it's much less effort than self-hosting.


Same. Work hosts a bunch of client sites on WPEngine. We only ever had one problematic client who uploaded a heap of high bandwidth video and blew out their disk and bandwidth allocations by over 10x - WPEngine didn't cut them off, and worked with us/them to move their large media assets off the WP install (for reasons, the client went with AWS S3/CloudFront).

We know WPE aren't the cheapest way to host WP, but if a client argues about the difference between a $5/month GoDaddy hosting plan and the $20/month starter plan on WPE - that's a pretty good indicator that they're not a right fit client for us. We have a few smaller agencies we'll hand them over to who are a better fit for them.


If you ported an already working app then you missed out on the unmitigated disaster of Atlas Content Modeler, which was advertised as production ready but slowly became abandonware without them ever really acknowledging it. I hope you never need to consume your content via GraphQL, because they absolutely can't handle it at reasonable traffic loads.

Everything these days seems be some sort of violence.

I'd like a future where we're less car reliant, I think modern vehicles are dangerous to pedestrians - that does not make this some sort of violence however - violence implies an intent, and I dont think there is any provable intent here.


Vehicles are safer than ever, for passengers and pedestrians. If you look it up, cars are actually safer than horses. Never before has automatic braking or alerts been an option.

"Violence" does imply an intent. It's CRAZY to try to associate car accidents with acts of violence, or cars with weapons. It's an attempt to push an agenda by creating a victimhood narrative, because the facts are not supportive of getting rid of cars or drastically changing them. The victim/violence narrative can bypass logical argument in the minds of some people. It's very stupid and dishonest but apparently these people don't care about the truth.


Parents will howl at the local admin if its locally changeable policy - I suspect that the thought of being out of touch with their children is unbearable.


This is exactly why they’re not already banned in practically all schools. Teachers and admin want to. Enough parents throw a fit if they can’t text their kid in class just to shoot the shit (seriously) that lots of schools have just given up, though. There are only so many hours in the day.


I think this is great, phones (largely) should be banned in schools.


I don’t think this is the kind of thing that should be a law. Local school policy is good enough


> Local school policy is good enough

An angry parent that can't possibly imagine life without immediate access to their kid throughout the school day is likely to respond differently to the statement "This kid can't have their phone on during the day." when the reason is "local school policy" than when the reason is "state law".

In the former situation, a sufficiently-offended parent will likely try to get the administrator in question fired (or -at minimum- make their life dreadfully difficult). In the latter, the only people the parent can really appeal to are the folks in Sacramento. Busybodies like that rarely have the clout to do anything meaningful to the governor or his staff.

Anyway. It's quite possible that local school administrators requested that the governor help them out by making it so they can say "Sorry, I'd love to help, but The State says I have to order teachers to ban phones from classrooms. You know how it is. Take it up with the governor if you're mad about it.".


I've heard that it's needed to counter heavy parent opposition. If it's not enshrined higher, the PTA will not hear the end of it.


I am ever more disturbed by how often people want the law to enforce their preferences. It is absurd for the state to reach into the classroom to regulate cell phone use.


If the law mandates attendance, then the law should regulate what that attendance entails. Much like how state or municipal exclusivity agreements on broadband should regulate how those broadband companies should behave toward their customers. With great power comes great responsibility.

As for private schools, yes, they should be left to their own policies. But I haven't seen anyone suggesting otherwise.


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