Hearted Youtube comments on Technology Connections (@TechnologyConnections) channel.

  1. Your original videos on this seriously helped my depression. I started doing “depression loads” and not pre washing my dishes before loading and throwing in extra detergent for the pre wash that I wasn’t doing before. And I’ve gotten into the habit of cleaning out the filter every time I unload. The dishes used to be my wall of “can’t” and not it’s not. I can’t thank you enough.
    702
  2. You need a counter for "we'll get to that later" which counts up and then back down as you, well, get to those points later.
    701
  3. Now I'm wondering, if you had your TV plugged in to your Clapper, and the Clapper's commercial came on, would the claps in the commercial turn off your TV?
    701
  4. Lets look at the comments. Oh. They're 1500 watts.
    701
  5. One application where Peltiers are great is cooling mobile electronics, like the sensors in high performance digital cameras. When recording at 4k and higher resolutions they generate a TON of heat, and a Peltier can help move that out into the air. Not only does this prevent the camera from shutting down, but can actually increase image quality.
    698
  6. I am here for this heat pump content. It's hot! (Get it?). Pump it out! (Ok, I'll show myself out...)
    695
  7. Your videos are great!
    694
  8. I am a HVACR professional and I now train others in the HVAC industry. This is solid gold. I strive to instill in my trade that we have been constantly oversizing equipment for as long as the trade has been around. I converted to what is called a dual fuel setup about 10 years ago that is a heat pump with gas backup heat (lots of boring details as to why I went with that setup) When I bought my house it had a 120,000 btuh furnace installed. I now heat the house with a 3 ton heat pump which matches the cooling load on the home it is matched with the smallest furnace I could get that can provide airflow for the HP and has the capability to operate at 40% of its rated capacity. I live in a cold weather climate and with some minor help from the furnace on that colder than cold day once In a while it keeps my home very comfortable. Using similar thermostat technology I can track my power and gas usage and typically my furnace runs less than 15 minutes per day most days. And that runtime is almost all when the heat pump is defrosting. My area has incentives from various agencies and organizations will completely if not more hand cover the equipment cost to the contractor for the cost differences in the equipment from AC to HP units. Installation cost differences given modern thermostats is almost $0 A lot of what someone people will call out as flaws in his analysis are not reading between the lines in his data and methodology. You simply cannot give a masterclass on absolutely everything that goes into this stuff in one hour! Some details are left out. Great video Anyone who says otherwise is definitely selling something
    689
  9. There is a significant difference between thermoelectric cooling being good and a thermoelectrically cooled toy "refrigerator" being good. Thermoelectric cooling works to cool energy dispersive x-ray spectrometers (EDS) without transmitting vibrations (say, to the electron microscope to which the EDS is attached - electron microscopes do not like vibrations).
    687
  10. Drip coffee machines are the dishwashers of coffee makers. They're consistent, reliable, and effective AS LONG AS YOU USE THEM PROPERLY. If you weigh your coffee and use the same mass of coffee each time, the other variables will make a much bigger difference (bean freshness, how recent the beans were ground, whether you're using an insulated carafe). Plus, guess what I'm not doing while my drip machine is making coffee! Yep, you guessed it! Making coffee! Great vid, Alec.
    686
  11. 3:27 That shot! Dude!
    671
  12. Its amazing to me how much of an engineering marvel a pinball machine is. No matter what era it's from. They are a perfect example of art, engineering, and design being merged together perfectly to just entertain people for a few minutes at a time. Can't wait for part 2.
    670
  13. What astounds me is we had filament bulbs 'forever' and when CFLs hit, i replaced all my filament bulbs with those as they died. But by the time my CFLs started to die off, LED bulbs were here.
    658
  14. When I found your channel a long time ago when you only had a few tens of thousands of subscribers I wanted to copy your set almost exactly. Seeing as though you have now passed me in subscribership, I'm glad I didn't do that 🤣
    644
  15. Cooler than I thought indeed, what a hot topic. Feeling grounded now, despite not being a common subject!
    639
  16. Correction: Tesla HPWC's in fact do talk to the car, in the same way that superchargers do, and the car can even download and push firmware updates to the HPWC over the cable, as the Gen 1 and Gen 2 HPWC's don't have internet connections themselves. Pretty crafty, but not especially necessary in most cases (OTA firmware updates). https://teslamotorsclub.com/tmc/threads/charge-connector-update-in-progress.112886/
    639
  17. That little audio gap in the music to help illustrate the over sampling/ tape gap workaround, was absolute genius! Awesome Idea!
    631
  18. Blue LED Christmas lights trigger the same “fuzziness” in my eyes that black lights do. They’re really hard to look at. Pretty stoked to see these Christmas lights.
    629
  19. Half-frame 35mm is larger and better resolution than Kodak Disc, so I don't think its failure to catch on was a quality issue. And composing pictures in a vertical format doesn't seem to be an issue for most people (smartphones have shown that, for better or worse). So it's surprising that this was a niche format, you would think less fumbling with loading film would have been a big selling point.
    623
  20. Ok, free idea for outlet manufacturers: A duplex recepticle with a small (sliding recessed?) switch that lets you toggle one of the receptacles between the "always hot" and "switched" input terminals from the front. So now you can wire all both the "hot" and "switched" bus to every duplex outlet in a room, and the user can easily select which locations have a switched outlet and which are all always on. This isn't the cheapest to install, but it's by far the most flexible and frustration free for the user. (Especially if the mode toggle has a neat little indicator when the outlet is in switched mode.)
    623
  21. I do agree with much of this. However, there is absolutely still a need for more public charging spaces. Being that I have driven EVs since 2011 I do wind up with unusual circumstances a few times a year where I need to use a public charger. One of the barriers to this infrastructure development is that not enough people need the chargers on a regular basis, which affects the income of the operator, thus creating a situation where the do not want to invest in new stations. So the number of public chargers you need compared with the number of EVs in that area is much wider ratio than gas pumps per gasoline vehicle. That's because most EV drivers don't need the public chargers on a regular basis, but gas drivers rely on gas stations 100% of the time. However, in order to get more people comfortable driving electric vehicles, we need to have a much better charging infrastructure in most of the country. Because of the conundrum I think the only way to solve it in the short term is for some government money to be spent on some basic charging infrastructure.
    620
  22. An alternative take on "You don't hate your heat pump, you hate your thermostat" would be "You don't hate your heat pump, you hate the guy who installed it" If your heat pump seems to break all the time (like several times in one winter) get a different company than the installer to check it.
    617
  23. Thanks to the resources you present here, I was able to: 1) compare my natural gas and electricity costs directly in kWh to find the breakeven CoP (3). 3) use historical weather data for my location to see that my winter temps are above 17 degrees Fahrenheit ~100% of the time. 2) use the NEEP list to find multiple heat pump models with CoP > 4 at 17 degrees Fahrenheit. Now I know that replacing my natural gas furnace with ductless mini-splits will decrease my heating costs. Thanks Technology Person!
    613
  24. glad you mentioned censoring captions being bad practice, youtube's autocaptions do it sometimes and it's absolutely infuriating. If it's not censored for those who don't need captions, it shouldn't be censored for those who do!
    589
  25. Oh boy I sure do like my USB C 3.2 Gen 2x2 ports! What a great name!
    582
  26. This is why Sony and Philips both initially only advertised the CD as being able to hold "one hour of music", not its official maximum capacity of 74 minutes -- because that's the longest length of U-Matic videotape that was available at the time.
    578
  27. RE: chroma dots @6:27. Your speculation is correct. The chroma signal is encoded by "wiggling" (modulating) the Y signal within that range. I find it helps to understand this by looking at the signal from the perspective of the TV doing the decoding. A black and white TV has two radio demodulators, one that locks onto the sound sub-carrier to demodulate the sound (which is FM encoded) and one to lock onto the video sub-carrier and demodulate the video signal (aka, Luminance or Y), which is actually AM encoded. These two radio demodulators are essentially independent, apart from the fact they are tuned to two signals that are right next to each other on the dial. Early TVs are actually really simple, electronically. All they do is take the output of the video demodulator (which is a nice voltage between 0v and 1v), detect the horizontal and vertical sync pulses (which are used to lock the frequency/phase of the two flyback transformers controlling the CRTs vertical and horizontal scanning) and then send the remaining signal directly to the CRT's electron gun to control the brightness of the electron beam at that position. 0.33v Represents black, 1v represents white, while 0v represents a sync pulse. The most logical way of adding color to such a system would be to add a 3rd radio demodulator, one which picked up 3rd sub-carrier and decoded a chroma signal. But this would make the TV signal take up more bandwidth, and the FCC had already allocated 6Mhz channels. Additionally, you would have to replace all the black and white video equipment in the recording studios and transmitters to carry and transmit this extra signal. So instead, the two demodulators are left untouched and the chroma signal is actually modulated on top of the Y (aka Luminance, Black&White) signal to create a combined Luminance/Chrominance signal (which replaces the Y signal and decodes fine as a Y signal on old Black and White TVs). Color TVs actually have to demodulate the demodulated the combined Y/C (Luminance/Chrominance) signal a second time to extract the chroma I and Q signals. The chroma signal is encoded in the high frequency of this combined Y/C signal. A black line on the TV would have a Y/C with a constant 0.33v across the entire line. A white line would have a Y/C signal of a constant 1v across the entire line. For a solid colored line (say bright-green) the Y/C signal will fluctuate between 0.93v and 1.07v at a rate of 3.58 mhz. The phase difference between those fluctuations and the 3.58 Mhz color burst signal at the start of the line encode the hue of the color, with 225° representing green (178° for Yellow, 100° for Red, 0° for blue). The height of the fluctuations represent the saturation of the color (±0.07v represent 100% saturation and ±0v would be 0% saturation, or grayscale). The average height of the Y/C signal of course represents the luminance. For complex lines with multiple colors, the fluctuations in Y/C won't be a constant 3.58 mhz, as it will speed up and slow down rapidly to change into the correct phase for the color at each location on the screen. To decode this complex signal, first Color TVs have to split the Y/C signal by frequency. Early Color TVs would have used a Notch Filter, with a range of frequencies around 3.58Mhz (say 2.8Mhz to 4.1Mhz) being extracted as the chromance, while the rest (say 0 to 2.8Mhz and then 4.1Mhz to ~5.5Mhz) being interpreted as Luminance. Frequency in a luminance signal is the rate of change of brightness across the line. A solid color across the line would have a frequency of 0hz. An image with vertical b&w bars across the screen, each about 1/10th of the screen wide, would have a frequency of 0.2 Mhz. With vertical bars 1/100th of the screen wide the frequency would be 1.9 Mhz. If you had vertical bars which were were about 1/188th of the screen wide, a color TV would actually interpret it as color infomation and show a solid color. (A number of 8bit computers like the Apple II actually took advantage of this to create color). But as the width of of the vertical bars got thinner and the frequency increased over 4mhz, they would become visible as black and white bars again. Modern TVs use Comb Filters that use the infomation from previous and following lines to extract a much better Luminance signal that preserves most detail even around 3.58mhz. See this document for more details: https://www.intersil.com/content/dam/Intersil/documents/an96/an9644.pdf So what are chroma dots? They are simply the actual chroma infomation which has been modulated right in the middle of the luminance signal. B&W TVs that were manufactured after NTSC was standardized are meant to the same notch filter that color TVs use, and simply discard the infomation with that frequency.
    574
  28. Nothing more satisfying than the CHONK of a contactor being energized.
    572
  29. A while back I bought the clapper to turn on a couple of lights aimed at my dartboard. I figured out really quick that the sound of a dart hitting the dartboard and then the echo made in my garage triggered it to switch my lights on and off. So, it became part of the game... Throw one dart in light, then the next in the dark, and the 3rd in the light again
    564
  30. Dude, I could not love this channel more. I've been working with electronics and circuit boards and whatnot for years, and I've never seen someone 'trace' the... heh, traces... and explain the function of a piece of consumer technology in such a clear way to a generally-layman audience. Fascinating and well-done. Thanks for the effort.
    558
  31. I bought an expensive dishwasher due to your advocacy (it has a crazy capacity/compactness with 3 drawers, small for cutlery) and 3 sprayers. If the information they provide for them is correct, both the extra space and the more efficient systems should be a saving over its warranty period, though electricity is pricy here. The other tradeoff is longer cycle lengths for the maximum economy. I had never used a dishwasher, and was reliant on your explaination and advice. Shortly after the birth of my son I became disabled and my wife would spend over an hour at night doing dishes and getting only 4 hours sleep. Your videos were life changing for our family. You have saved us hundreds of hours labour far in excess of the expense of operating it. Thank you.
    553
  32. I appreciate this one last long, effortful video before no effort November hits
    545
  33. Regarging early tv: I think the most amazing thing was that they would shoot live TV-shows live for the east coast, radio the live signal to the west coast on a non-standard frequency, film the broadcast, develop the film and then broadcast a projection of the film live to the west coast because they had no way of time shifting otherwise. TV Studios would use more film than actual hollywood at the time.
    539
  34. Appliance Repair Technician here. 7:36 The "second hidden sensor" for water level you pointed to is actually the High-Limit Thermostat which opens at 200°F in the case that the heating element runs away.
    535
  35. For everyone suggesting that he attach a massive battery to the UPS ... it was supplied by his mums workplace and i bet he doesn’t want to muck about with it.
    524
  36. I have a couple of light switches in my house that have those little neon lamps in them. The neon's on when the switch is off, so you can find the switch in the dark. Pretty neat.
    523
  37. Don't ever let the credits music die!
    517
  38. As for the difficulty with reconstituting the milk: if you mix the desired amount of powdered milk with a very small amount of cold water, you should be able to create a slurry which will allow the fat to emulsify. Then you can add the rest of the water. I do this when making cocoa with pure cocoa powder (I don't use sugar). It faces the same basic challenge due to the high amount of fat in cocoa powder.
    516
  39. The best solution, obviously, would be just to learn how to blow glass and construct new bulbs yourself out of colored glass.
    510
  40. When I renovated my garage to make it into my "studio" I chose to put in 20 evenly spaced octagon boxes and bulb holders for the very reason of choice and future proofing. Had I installed 4 ft led fixtures, if one goes bad I had better have a spare or I'm f-ed. Not to mention the ever changing technology advancements in lighting, I figure the bulb holders are the smart way to go. Also helped that it was far and away the cheapest option.
    508
  41. Fascinating! I never knew about this. Thanks for the video and thorough explanation.
    508
  42. "Long been thriving in the homebrew scene." You have no shame. NONE.
    508
  43. TC writing part 2: "This is going well, I should be able to talk about everything I just thought about in part 3 and be done." TC writing part 5: "AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA-"
    504
  44. I built water heaters like this once. This doesn't matter, but the foam is injected with the lid off at just the right amount to expand by the time the lid is assembled on the line. The extra holes in the lid is just a multi-use design for many different tanks, such as tanks with multiple fittings for dual zone or aux floor heating.
    496
  45. Former HVAC sales rep here. Great video! While attending a hvac training, I was giving a rather shocking Stat, less than 10% of hvac sales in 2022 had a load calculation preformed prior to the sale of a new system. I'm not innocent either, as I was never told what or how to preform one of these and became part of the problem. The more I learned in that role the more shocked I was at how much damage and headache I likely caused for homeowners. Your comments on the lack of communication between departments is actually rather accurate and something that has, as of late become a much bigger focus for the company. (who I still work for under a different position, in another trade department) so atleast at our national company things are changing and loadcalcs are becoming a much larger focus company wide. The issues of system sizing has been a regular cause of issues, callbacks, and heachaces for us and the customer.
    488
  46. 'Darkening the Blue' sounds like an amazing pop fusion jazz album, that I now want to hear.
    482
  47. Three consecutive utterances of "aluminium" and "autumn", and you are duly forgiven.
    477
  48. Turning on massively large lighting systems with a more or less simple wall switch actually did make me curious how it could. Now i know!
    468
  49. "a latent image of vaporization" got me. the dedication to your extremely silly jokes is equally admirable and infuriating
    465
  50. Pretty certain the H is actually a large MOSFET called an H-Gate. The bright H is the gate and the dark squares on the top and bottom are the drain and source. I'm guessing the infrared sensitive material is impregnated onto the h-gate in order to induce a voltage to switch the transistor, which in turn provides enough current to switch the larger one beneath it. The advantage of this design is that you can have an extremely low standby voltage to switch on a relatively high powered device like a floodlight.
    465