Lord Of The Rings Style Beacon Systems!

Yw. :)

That worked! Thanks so much for your help!

Marc-Andre Ouimet

Oh, right. It looks like they added a trailing space to the URL of this one. The correct URL is: http://traffic.libsyn.com/nodumbqs/NDQ_076_Lord_of_The_Rings-Style_Beacon_Systems.mp3?download=true

This was used at the light house in Crydee: “He used it to pry the lid off the jar and then tossed the entire contents into the fire. Instantly the flames turned bright crimson, a warning beacon none could confuse with a normal light. Arutha turned toward the castle, standing away from the window so as not to block the light. Brighter and brighter the flames burned as Arutha found his mind going vague again. For a long moment there was silence in the night, then suddenly an alarm sounded from the castle. Arutha felt relief. The red beacon was the signal for reavers in the harbor, and the castle garrison had been well drilled to meet such raids.” By the way - if you’ve not read this series- they are fantastic books (Raymond Feist - Riftwar Cycle)

Richard Cole

Hear, hear!

Yes, that's what I usually do. It's not working on this one for some reason.

Marc-Andre Ouimet

Did you try right-clicking and choosing "Save link as..."?

Lol, was wondering the same thing. :D

A signal with two possible values (0/off and 1/on) is equivalent to a binary digit = bit. A signal with three possible values (0, 1 and 2) is equivalent to a ternary digit = trit. Btw, you touched upon communication in adversarial situations, about blockchains, bitcoin and crypto mining, yet you *didn't* talk about the Byzantine Generals' Problem, which is the *core* problem that bitcoin mining solves (given the assumption that the majority of the communication participants are benign and the "traitors" are in the minority). You really should look into it, since it is yet another topic where all the ideas you talked about (including crypto) would merge. Background: https://blog.goodaudience.com/the-byzantine-generals-problem-d979c5d8c467

NDQ just keeps getting better! I love these kind of episodes. Actually, I love all the kinds of episodes.

I have an idea for a confirmation system for the beacons. Copper sulfate is one example of a powder that you can add to a flame to give it a distinct color. You could use this or any other color changing additive to either confirm the message after the beacon is lit, or use different colors to even convey different emergency situations. If this was kept encoded then attackers wouldn’t be able to disrupt the system as easily, since they wouldn’t know what colors mean what. Its just like using baseball signs to either confirm or clear a command. I even thing you could use permutations of different colors to convey complex ideas between the different beacons.

Donovan

Based on this episode I think you guys might like the book, "The Information: A History, a theory, a flood."

Really fun episode. Mr Wizard was my favorite educational show growing up. I might have to attempt the flashlight record player with the kids...

Josh Murphy

Good morning. Has anyone else noticed that the Download link on the web site for this one isn't working?

Marc-Andre Ouimet

The cat got me! I was listening in my garage. There's a stray that comes around every once in a while and gets my attention for treats when I'm in there. I heard the cat on the podcast and immediately hit pause and went outside looking for him.

Jason Stice

I too would like to opt out of the random selection. I have already have a lovely set of my own. Send em to Hussars that don't have the opportunity

We use a lot of signaling devices at my work to sense product on roll lines and such! Some are lasers some light curtains and some are just proximity switches. They all do the same thing though, just provide a discrete signal saying yep somethings here or nope nothing here and with that information we can pretty much run the entire plant site without much human interaction.

It's so rare that Matt can say to Destin "You're smiling at me, what am I doing wrong?" in a NDQ episode. Great one!