Design challenge

It looks like oscillation I guess, at times the positive feedback gets too much for the power supply to handle, the system crashes and eventually restarts oscillating - or not...

One might think that starvation creates revolution. Starving people have nothing to lose.

But there are huge counter-examples. USSR. China. North Korea.

John Larkin Highland Tech Glen Canyon Design Center Lunatic Fringe Electronics

The USSR did collapse in 1991. They went bankrupt.

North Korea would disappear without support from China.

Ancient China is actually a good example. The Imperial Emperor could order anything, and did so often. While conquest was more common, many a Dynasty ended when a famine devastated and cornered the Chinese population, who had literally nothing to lose and so revolted.

Xi Jinping is effectively the current Emperor of China.

Present-day Totalitarian governments are certainly harder to overthrow, but a sufficiently cornered population can do it. What also happens is that parts of the government lose their faith and become unwilling to enforce the governments orders. We saw this in East Germany when it merged with West Germany in 1990.

Joe

But not from hunger. Stalin starved tens of millions.

Mao starved about 45 million to death.

It's hard to overthrow determined thugs.

Maybe some cultures are basicallly passive, no matter how badly they are abused.

John Larkin Highland Tech Glen Canyon Design Center Lunatic Fringe Electronics

The issue I see is that modern society, smart phones, and the hangover from the covid lockdowns have badly undermined social cohesion. It’s very hard for isolated individuals in a very low-trust society to undertake any kind of collective action. (It’s far worse in places like China, where cheating is a way of life.)

Looting and banditry, yes. Astroturfed color-revolution protests , sure. Actual bottom-up revolution? Dunno about that.

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

In each case the starvation was local, rather than general. Crucially, the security forces were never starved. Starving people may have nothing to lose, but they don't have any money to pay for weapons either.

Stalin starved the land-owning peasants - the kulaks - in the early 1930's

The North Korean famines

He could do worse in his second term. So far his ill-conceived war on Iran hasn't killed all that many people, but he's looking even less competent this time around.

But it happens. Castro got rid of Batista in Cuba.

Seems unlikely.

That was just a more determined thug taking over. And the consequences are more repression and more poverty and trash in the streets and blackouts.

Seems actual.

John Larkin Highland Tech Glen Canyon Design Center Lunatic Fringe Electronics

Fidel Castro started off as left-wing lawyer.

The experience of getting power and holding on to it did develop other sides of his character.

Cuba's perilous economic situation hasn't been helped by US economic aggression. If the US government doesn't like your regime and goes out of it's way to make life difficult for it, your economy isn't going to do well

That implies that you have a particular culture in mind. Do tell us what that might be. You don't seem to be able to offer much in the way of insight, but your misconceptions can be amusing. You did tell us that you thought that Donald Trump had common sense.

Don't be stupid. The bonds between members of a tribe are quite strong. They are relatives and life-long acquaintances.

The internet doesn't offer face-to-face contact, and the period of acquaintance is quite short. I've been swapping e-mails with you here for about thirty years (which is a very long time by internet standards) and clearly neither of us has got much of a clue about what makes the other tick.

Am 30.04.26 um 09:42 schrieb Jan Panteltje:

But then, the Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy classifies this planet as "mostly harmless":

------------------------------------------------------------------------ “What? Harmless! Is that all it’s got to say? Harmless! One word!’ Ford shrugged. ‘Well, there are a hundred billion stars in the Galaxy, and only a limited amount of space in the book’s microprocessors,’ he said, ‘and no one knew much about the Earth, of course.’ ‘Well, for God’s sake I hope you managed to rectify that a bit.’ ‘Oh yes, well I managed to transmit a new entry off to the editor. He had to trim it a bit, but it’s still an improvement.’ ‘And what does it say now?’ asked Arthur. ‘Mostly harmless,” ― Douglas Adams, The Complete Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: The Trilogy of Five

------------------------------------------------------------------------

Gerhard

Not any more.

Well, I have never called you stupid.

John Larkin Highland Tech Glen Canyon Design Center Lunatic Fringe Electronics

The word "tribal" is pretty specific. Imagining that that the interactions of specific groups in modern societies reflects those in more primitive societies that are organised on a purely tribal basis is pretty fatuous argument by loose anology.

You've implied it pretty often. When I drew your attention to the classic two-transistor emitter-coupled monostable, your response implied it pretty clearly.

Incorrectly, as it happened.

CNN must have read my call for a trump blocker ;-)

CNN went black (now it is encrypted) on satellite for UK (English) Astra sat

So decided to googe why it stopped on the UK channels

I know the orange ape was after TV and radio that critised him..

From:

He sued BBC too a while back for some edited report ... So free press in the US? Forget it.

Jan Panteltje schreef. Can you get the European-TV - not CourtTV.com - version of Court TV in the Netherlands? I lost it months ago! :( (S.

I have no idea what Court TV is, so googled:

So..... The best satellite info is from kingofsat.net

Just checked, perfect free to air reception on satellite here :-)

Jan Panteltje snipped-for-privacy@comet.invalid wrote: |--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------| |"28.2°E Astra 2G 1 11082.25 H 65 Europe DVB-S2 8PSK 23000 2/3 44.5 Mb/s 2 2065 | | Court TV Royaume Uni TV Réalité Sky Digital Clair 50397 2336 2337 eng 284 2336 2025-11-09 +| | | |Just checked, perfect free to air reception on satellite here :-)" | |--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------|

Dank u wel! Is Court TV probably also receivable in Italy? (I am not in Italy, but an anti-extradition lawyer in Italy complained that Holywood movies give the public in Italy a misleading impression of court cases in the U.S.A.)

Before I have asked you, I had known that Court TV is available here via Sky, but I do not have Sky.

What I own here claims (via an Amiko box) to have Court TV via its EPG but actually what it calls Court TV makes an Amiko box or a TV set say "No signal!"

Before I have asked you, I asked a local-TV-support professional who responded with tips like . . . You would receive Court TV through satellite so we are not able to provide further information in regards to that.

I would advise you to try doing a rescan of the channels following the steps below:

1. Select “Home” or “Menu” on the remote 2. You will see a Menu (E.g. Picture, Sound, Set-up, etc.). 3. Look for something like: Re-tuning, Set-up, Channel, Installation, Broadcasting, Settings or Plug & Play 4. Try to find something like: Auto Tuning, Satellite Automatic scan, DVB-T Tuning or First time installation [. . .] 6. Combi menus will include options for ‘terrestrial’ and ‘satellite’ scan. The ‘terrestrial’ option should always be selected but this time you change for ''satellite'' in order to complete the scan 7. FTA Only is Free To Air. This should be YES or ON 8. If LCN (Logical Channel Numbering) is an option – YES / ON 9. You should then see an option towards the bottom of the screen to Start Scan, Search or Blind Scan. It will take few minutes to complete the rescan.

If after the rescan you still face the same issue, please contact an installer to check your TV/box connections, satellite dish, etc.

I had tried numerous variants of much of the above advice (this Amiko box shows nothing like "First time installation"), but despite showing names of numerous satellites (e.g. Astra), each scan always fails with "No satellite found", but I am able to look at (a few) TV channels after each failure. (S.

Jan Panteltje snipped-for-privacy@comet.invalid schreef: |--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------| |"Astra 2E / Astra 2F / Astra 2G (28.2°E) | |28.2°E Astra 2G 1 11082.25 H 65 Europe DVB-S2 8PSK 23000 2/3 44.5 Mb/s 2 2065 | | Court TV Royaume Uni TV Réalité Sky Digital Clair 50397 2336 2337 eng 284 2336 2025-11-09 +| | | |Just checked, perfect free to air reception on satellite here :-)" | |--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------|

This Amiko box says: "No Signal!

No Info L0 No Info Q6

i<ASTRA2A 28.2E/11568/V/22000".

By contrast, it says about a station which it can still really show: "L78" and "Q90" and "i<DVB-T/570000/8MHz>".

We did not move our satellite dish, so why have I stopped receiving this satellite station? (S.

I use a small cheap Chinese box for viewing and recording satellite programs. It even drives my dish motor!

I did do a new scan with it a few weeks ago, Maybe you need to do that, Astra 28.2 East often changes channels. Did you check the transponder frequency?