The Worldās First Podcaster?
When do you think the first podcast occurred? Did you guess in the 1890s? Thatās not a typo. TelefonhĆrmondĆ³ was possibly the worldās first true ātelephone newspaper.ā People in Budapest could dial a phone number and listen to what we would think of now as radio content. Surprisingly, the service lasted until 1944, although after 1925, it was rebroadcasting a radio stationās programming.
Tivadar PuskĆ”s, the founder of Budapestās āTelephone Newspaperā (public domain)
The whole thing was the brainchild of Tivadar PuskĆ”s, an engineer who had worked with Thomas Edison. At first, the service had about 60 subscribers, but PuskĆ”s envisioned the service one day spanning the globe. Of course, he wasnāt wrong. There was a market for worldwide audio programs, but they were not going to travel over phone lines to the customer.
The Hungarian government kept tight control over newspapers in those days. However, as we see in modern times, new media often slips through the cracks. After two weeks of proving the concept out, PuskƔs asked for formal approval and for a 50-year exclusive franchise for the city of Budapest. They would eventually approve the former, but not the latter.
Unfortunately, a month into the new venture, PuskƔs died. His brother Albert took over and continued talks with the government. The phone company wanted a piece of the action, as did the government. Before anything was settled, Albert sold the company to IstvƔn Popper. He finalized the deal, which included rules requiring signed copies of the news reports to be sent to the police three times a day. The affair must have been lucrative. The company would eventually construct its own telephone network independent of the normal phone system. By 1907, they boasted 15,000 subscribers, including notable politicians and businesses, including hotels.
Invention
This was all possible because of PuskĆ”sā 1892 invention of a telephone switchboard with a mechanism that could send a signal to multiple lines at once. The Canadian patent was titled āTelephonic News Dispenser.ā
There had been demonstrations of similar technology going back to 1881 when ClĆ©ment Ader piped stereo music (then called the slightly less catchy binauriclar audition) from the Paris Grand OpĆ©ra to the cityās Electrical Exhibition. Fictionally, the 1888 novel Looking Backward: 2000-1887also predicted such a service:
All our bedchambers have a telephone attachment at the head of the bed by which any person who may be sleepless can command music at pleasure, of the sort suited to the mood.ā
No Bluetooth for her. (Public Domain)
The 1881 demonstration turned into a similar service in Paris, although it was mostly used for entertainment programming with occasional new summaries. It didnāt really qualify as a newspaper. It also wasnāt nearly as successful, having 1,300 subscribers in 1893. London was late to the game in 1895, but, again, the focus was on live performances and church services. Both services collapsed in 1925 due to radio.
Several attempts to bring a similar service to the United States were made in several states during the early 1900s. None of them had much success and were gone and forgotten in a year or two.
In Budapest, they rapidly abandoned the public phone lines and created a network that would eventually span 1,100 miles (1,800 km), crisscrossing Budapest. Impressive considering that there were no active amplifiers yet. From reading the Canadian patent, it seems they use āinduction coils.ā We imagine the carbon microphones at the studio also had very high voltages compared to a regular phone, but it is hard to say for sure. As you might expect, youād need a lot of input signal for this to work.
To that end, the company hired especially loud announcers who worked in ten-minute shifts as they were effectively screaming into the microphones. The signal would run to the central office, to one of 27 districts, and then out to peopleās homes. We had hoped a 1907 article about the system in Scientific American might have more technical detail, but it didnāt. However, The Electrical World did have a bit more detail:ā¦the arrangement which he adopts is to have a separate primary and secondary coil for each subscriber, all the primaries being connected in series with the single transmitterā¦
Last Mile
In a subscriberās home, there were two earpieces. You could put one on each ear, or share with a friend. There was a buzzer to let you know about special alerts. An American who returned from Budapest in 1901 said that the news was āhighly satisfactory,ā but wasnāt impressed with the quality of musical programs on the service (see page 640 of The Worldās Work, Volume 1).
Concert room at the studio (Public Domain).
The company issued daily schedules you could hang on the wall. Programs included news, news recaps, stories, poetry readings, musical performances, lectures, and language lessons. Typically, transmissions ran from 1030 in the morning to 2230 at night, although this was somewhat flexible.
You are probably wondering what this all cost? A yearās service ā including a free receiver ā was 18 krones. At the time, that was about US$7.56. That doesnāt sound like much, but in 1901 Budapest, you could buy about 44 pounds (20 kg) of coffee for that much money. The service also ran ads, costing 1 krone for a 12-second spot. They also had some coin-operated receivers to generate revenue.
Radio
It makes sense that in 1925, the service opened Budapestās first radio station. The programming was shared, and by 1930, the service had over 91,000 subscribers. The private phone network, however, didnāt survive World War II, and that was the end of telephonic newspapers, at least in Budapest.
The technology was also put to use in Italy. A US businessman tried to make a go of it in New Jersey for about a year and then in Oregon for another year before throwing in the towel. Ironically, the tube technology that made phones more capable of covering distances with clear results also doomed phone broadcasting. Those same tubes would make radio practical.
Why Budapest?
You have to wonder why the only really successful operation was in Budapest. We donāt know if it was the politics that made an independent news source with a little less scrutiny attractive, or if it was just that Popper ran an excellent business. After all, Popper and the PuskĆ”s brothers anticipated the market for radio. And Popper, in fact, successfully embraced radio instead of letting it sink his business.
We talked about Hugo Gernsbackās predictions that doctors would operate by telephone. He also predicted telephone music in 1916. Of course, music by phone is still a thing. If you are on hold.
Featured image: āA TelefonHĆrmondĆ³ announcer reading the news in 1901 (Public Domain)ā
Thumbnail image: āTelefon Hirmondo ā Home subscriberā in the public domain.
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Lāintelligenza artificiale spinge le aziende a tornare ai colloqui di persona
Il processo di ricerca di lavoro ĆØ stato profondamente alterato dallāintelligenza artificiale, spingendo numerose aziende a riesumare un approccio piĆ¹ tradizionale: i colloqui faccia a faccia, come sottolinea il WSJ.
I colloqui virtuali sono diventati la nuova norma negli ultimi anni, grazie allāaumento del lavoro da remoto e al desiderio dei datori di lavoro di assumere piĆ¹ rapidamente. Tuttavia, i reclutatori affermano che sempre piĆ¹ candidati utilizzano lāintelligenza artificiale per ingannare, ad esempio ricevendo indizi nascosti durante i colloqui tecnici.
Raramente, ma si verificano casi piĆ¹ pericolosi: gli strumenti di intelligenza artificiale consentono ai truffatori di impersonare chi cerca lavoro per rubare dati o denaro dopo aver ottenuto un impiego.
In risposta a ciĆ², le aziende stanno tornando agli incontri di persona. Cisco e McKinsey ora includono almeno un incontro di persona in diverse fasi del processo di assunzione, e questāanno Google ha reintrodotto i colloqui di persona per alcune posizioni per testare competenze chiave come la programmazione.
āVogliamo assicurarci di effettuare almeno un giro di colloqui di persona per accertarci che il candidato abbia le conoscenze fondamentaliā, ha affermato il CEO di Google Sundar Pichai nel podcast di Lex Friedman.
CiĆ² ĆØ particolarmente vero per i lavori di sviluppo e ingegneria, dove le attivitĆ di codifica in tempo reale sono diventate troppo facili da eseguire con lāintelligenza artificiale. āSiamo tornati al punto di partenzaā, afferma Mike Kyle di Coda Search/Staffing.
Secondo lui, la percentuale di datori di lavoro che richiedono riunioni di persona ĆØ aumentata dal 5% nel 2024 al 30% nel 2025.
Si tratta di una fase inaspettata nella corsa agli armamenti dellāintelligenza artificiale, in cui i datori di lavoro, sopraffatti dal flusso di candidature, si sono rivolti a software per esaminare i curriculum e filtrarli in massa. I candidati, a loro volta, hanno iniziato a utilizzare lāintelligenza artificiale per rispondere automaticamente a centinaia di annunci di lavoro e creare curriculum personalizzati.
Le nuove tecnologie deepfake consentono non solo di impersonare uno specialista piĆ¹ qualificato, ma anche di organizzare truffe su larga scala. LāFBI ha lanciato lāallarme su migliaia di nordcoreani che si spacciano per americani per lavorare da remoto negli Stati Uniti.
In un sondaggio di Gartner, il 6% dei candidati ha ammesso di aver partecipato a ātruffe durante i colloquiā e, secondo le previsioni dellāazienda, entro il 2028 un quarto dei profili dei candidati in tutto il mondo sarĆ falso.
Un anno e mezzo fa, McKinsey ha introdotto un incontro personale obbligatorio prima di presentare unāofferta. Inizialmente, questo ha aiutato a valutare il modo in cui un candidato stabilisce un contatto, una competenza importante per lavorare con i clienti.
Ora lāazienda ammette che lāaumento delle frodi basate sullāintelligenza artificiale non ha fatto altro che rafforzare questa pratica.
L'articolo Lāintelligenza artificiale spinge le aziende a tornare ai colloqui di persona proviene da il blog della sicurezza informatica.
Ore Formation: Introduction and Magmatic Processes
Hackaday has a long-running series on Mining and Refining, that tracks elements of interest on the human-made road from rocks to riches. What author Dan Maloney doesnāt address in that series is the natural history that comes before the mine. You canāt just plunk down a copper mine or start squeezing oil from any old stone, after all: first, you need ore. Ore has to come from somewhere. In this series, weāre going to get down and dirty into the geology of ore-forming processes to find out from wither come the rocks that hold our elements of interest.
Whatās In an Ore?
Though weāre going to be talking about Planetary Science in this series, we should recognize the irony that āoreā is a word without any real scientific meaning. What distinguishes ore from other rock is its utility to human industry: it has elements or compounds, like gems, that we want, and that we think we can get out economically. That changes over time, and one generationās ārockā can be another generationās āore depositsā. For example, these days prospectors are chasing copper in porphyry deposits at concentrations as low as 1000 ppm (0.1%) that simply were not economic in previous decades. The difference? Improvements in mining and refining, as well as a rise in the price of copper.
This may or may not be the fabled āmile of goldā. Image: āMain Street Kirkland Lakeā by P199.
Thereās a story everyone tells in my region, about a street in Kirkland Lake, Ontario that had been paved using waste rock from one of the local gold mines and then torn up when the price of gold rose enough to reprocess the pavement a part-per-million of microscopic flakes of yellow metal. That story is apocryphal: history records that there was mine product accidentally used in road works, but it does not seem it has ever been deemed economic to dig it back up. (Or if it was, thereās no written record of it I could find.)
It is established fact that they did drain and reprocess 20th century tailings ponds from Kirkland Lakeās gold mines, however. Tailings are, by definition, what you leave behind when concentrating the ore. How did the tailings become ore? When somebody wanted to process them, because it had become economic to do so.
Itās similar across the board. āAluminum oreā was a meaningless phrase until the 1860s; before that, Aluminum was a curiosity of a metal extracted in laboratories. Even now, the concentration of aluminum in its main ore, Bauxite, is lower than some aluminum silicate rocksā but we canāt get aluminum out of silicate rock economically. Bauxite, we can. Bauxite, thus, is the ore, and concentration be damned.
So, there are two things needed for a rock to be an ore: an element must be concentrated to a high enough level, and it be in a form that we can extract it economically. No wonder, then, that almost all of the planetās crust doesnāt meet the criteriaā and that that will hold on every rocky body in the solar system.
Blame Archimedes
Itās not the planetary crustsā fault; blame instead Archimedes and Sir Issac Newton. Rocky crusts, you see, are much depleted in metals because of those twoā or, rather, the physical laws they are associated with. To understand, we have to go back, way back, to the formation of the solar system.
It might be metal, but thereās no ore in the core. Image: nau.edu, CC3.0
Thereās a primitive elemental abundance in the solid bodies that first coalesced out of the protoplanetary disk around a young Sol and our crust is depleted in metals compared to it. The reason is simple: as unaltered bodies accreted to form larger objects, the collisions released a great deal of energy, causing the future planetoid to melt, and stay molten. Heat rejection isnāt easy in the thermos vacuum of space, after all. Something planetoid sized could stay molten long enough for gravity to start acting on its constituent elements.
Like a very slow centrifuge, the heavier elements sunk and the lighter ones rose by Archimedes principle. Thatās where almost all of Earthās metals are to this day: in the core. Even the Moon has an iron core thanks to this process of differentiation.
In some ways, you can consider this the first ore-forming process, though geologists donāt yet count planetary differentiation on their lists of such. If we ever start to mine the nickel-iron asteroids, theyāll have to change their tune, though: those metallic space-rocks are fragments of the core of destroyed planetoids, concentrated chunks of metal created by differentiation. Thatās also where most of the metal in the Earthās crust and upper mantle is supposed to have come from, during the Late Heavy Bombardment.
Thank the LHB
Image: āComet Crashā by Ben Crowder. Repeat 10000x.
The Late Heavy Bombardment is exactly what it sounds like: a period in the history of this solar system 3.8 to 4.1 billion years ago that saw an uncommonly elevated number of impacts on inner solar system objects like the Earth, Moon, and Mars. Most of our evidence for this event comes from the Moon, in the form of isotopic dating of lunar rocks brought back by the Apollo missions, but the topography of Mars and what little geologic record we have on Earth are consistent with the theory. Not all of these impactors were differentiated: many are likely to have been comets, but those still had the primordial abundance of metals. Even cometary impacts, then, would have served to enrich the planetās crust and upper mantle in metals.
Is that the story, then? Metal ores on Earth are the remnants of the Late Heavy Bombardment? In a word: No. Yes, those impacts probably brought metals back to the lithosphere of this planet, but there are very few rocks of that age left on the surface of this planet, and none of them are ore-bearing. There has been a lot of geology since the LHBā not just on Earth, but on other worlds like the Moon and Mars, too. Just like the ore bodies here on Earth, any ore we find elsewhere is likely to be from other processes.
It looks impressive, but donāt start digging just yet. (Image: Stromboli Eruption by Petr Novak)
One thing that seems nearly universal on rocky bodies is volcanism, and the so-called magmatic ore-forming processes are among the easiest to understand, so weāll start there.
Igneous rocks are rocks formed of magma ā or lava, if it cools on surface. Since all the good stuff is down below, and there are slow convection currents in the Earthās mantle, it stands to reason some material might make its way up. Yet no one is mining the lava fields of Hawaii or Icelandā itās not just a matter of magma = metals. Usually some geochemical processes has to happen to that magma in order to enrich it, and those are the magmatic ore forming processes, with one exception.
Magmatic Ore Formation: Kimberlite Pipes
Cross-sectional diagram of a kimberlite deposit. You can see why itās called a pipe. The eruption would be quite explosive. (Image: Kansas Geological Survey)
Kimberlite pipes are formations of ultramaphic (very high in Magnesium) rock that explode upwards from the mantle, creating vertical, carrot-shaped pipes. The olivine that is the main rock type in these pipes isnāt a desirable magnesium ore because itās too hard to refine.
Whatās interesting economically is what is often brought to surface in these pipes: diamonds, and occasionally gold. Diamonds can only form under the intense pressures beneath the Earthās crust, so the volcanic process that created kimberlite pipes are our main source of them. (Though not all pipes contain diamonds, as many a prospector has discovered to their disappointment.)
The kimberlite pipes seem to differ from ordinary vulcanism both due to the composition of the rock ā ultramaphic rocks from relatively deep in the mantle ā and the speed of that rockās ascent at up to 400 m/s. Diamonds arenāt stable in magma at low pressures, so the magma that makes up a kimberlite pipe must erupt very quickly (in geologic terms) from the depths. The hypothesis is that these are a form of mantle plume.
A different mantle plume is believed to drive volcanism in Hawaii, but that plume expresses itself as steady stream and contains no diamonds. Hawaiiās lava creates basalt, less magnesium-rich rocks than olivine, and come from a shallower strata of the Earthās mantle. Geochemically, the rocks in Hawaii are very similar to the oceanic crust that the mantle plume is pushing through. Kimberlite pipes, on the other hand, have only been found in ancient continental crusts, though no one seems entirely sure why.
You bet your Tanpi that Mars has had mantle plumes! (Image: NASA)
The great shield volcanoes on Mars show that mantle plumes have occurred on that planet, and thereās no reason to suppose kimberlite-type eruptions could not have occurred there as well. While some of the diamond-creating carbon in the Earthās mantle comes from subducted carbonate rocks, some of it seems to be primordial to the mantle.
It is thus not unreasonable to suppose that there may be some small diamond deposits on Mars, if anyone ever goes to look. Venus, too, though itās doubtful anyone will ever go digging to check. The moon, on the other hand, lacks the pressure gradients required for diamond formation even if it does have vulcanism. What the moon likely does posses (along with the three terrestrial planets) is another type of ore body: layered igneous intrusions.
A Delicious Cake of Rock
Chromite layers in the Bushveld Igneous Complex. Image: Kevin Walsh.
Layered igneous intrusions are, as the name suggests, layered. They arenāt always associated with ore bodies, but when they are, theyāre big names like Stillwater (USA) and Bushveld (South Africa). The principle of ore formation is pretty simple: magma in underground chambers undergoes a slow cooling that causes it to fractionate into layers of similar minerals.
Fractional crystallization also has its role to play in concentrating minerals: as the melt cools, itās natural that some compounds will have higher melting points and freeze out first. These crystals may sink to the bottom of the melt chamber or float to the top, depending on their density relative to the surrounding lava. Like the process of differentiation writ in miniature, heavy minerals sink to the bottom and light ones float to the top, concentrating minerals by density and creating the eponymous layers. Multiple flows of lava can create layers upon layers upon layers of the same, or similar, stacks of minerals.
Thereās really no reason to suspect that this ore formation process should not be possible on any terrestrial planet: all one needs is a rich magma and slow cooling. Layered igneous intrusions are a major source of chromium, mainly in the form of Chromatite, an iron-chromium-oxide, but also economically important sources of iron, nickel, copper and platinum group elements (PGEs) amongst other metals. If nickel, copper, or PGEs are present in this kind of deposit, if theyāre going to be economically extractable, it will be in the form of a sulfide. So-called sulfide melt deposits can coexist within layered igneous intrusions (as at Bushveld, where they produce a notable fraction of the worldās nickel) or as stand-alone deposits.
When Magma Met Sulfur
One of the problems with igneous rocks from a minerās perspective is that theyāre too chemically stable. Take olivine: itās chock full of magnesium you cannot extract. If you want an an easily-refined ore, rarely do you look at silicate rock first. Igneous rocks, though, even when ultramafic like in Kimberlite pipes or layered melt deposits, are still silicates.
Thereās an easy way to get ore from a magma: just add sulfur. Sulfur pulls metals out of the melt to create sulfide minerals, which are both very concentrated sources of metals and, equally importantly, very easy to refine. Sulfide melt deposits are some of the most economically important ones on this planet, and thereās no reason to think we couldnāt find them elsewhere. (The moon isnāt terribly depleted in sulfur.)
The Bear Stream Quarry is one of many Ni/Cu mines created by the Siberian Traps. (Image: Nikolay Zhukov, CC3.0)
Have you heard of the Siberian Traps? That was a series of volcanoes that produced a flood basalt, like the lunar mare. The volcanoes of the Siberian Traps were a primary cause of the End-Perimian mass extinction, and they put out somewhere between two and four million cubic kilometers of rock. Most of that rock is worthless basalt Most, except in Norilsk.
The difference? In Norilsk, there was enough sulfur in the melt, thanks to existing sedimentary rocks, to pull metals out of the melt. 250 million years after it cooled, this became Eurasiaās greatest source of Nickel and Platinum Group Elements, with tonnes and tonnes of copper brought to surface as a bonus.
Norilkās great rival in the Cold War was Sudbury, Canadaā another sulfide melt deposit, this one believed to be associated with the meteorite impact that created the Sudbury Basin. The titanic impact that created the basin also melted a great deal of rock, and as it cooled, terrestrial sulfur combined with metals that had existed in the base rock, and any brought down in the impactor, to freeze out of the melt as sulfides.
Most mining still ongoing in the Sudbury Basin is deep underground, like at Nickel Rim South Mine. (Image: P199.)
While some have called Sudbury āhumanityās first asteroid mineā, itās a combination of sulfur and magma that created the ore body; there is little evidence to suggest the impactor was itself a nickel-iron asteroid. Once the source of the vast majority of the worldās nickel, peaking at over 80% before WWI, Sudbury remains the largest hard-rock mining centre in North America, and one of the largest in the world, on the weight of all that sulfide.
Since the Moon does not seem to be terribly depleted in sulfur, and has more flood basalt and impact craters than you can shake a stick at, itās a fairly safe bet that if anyone ever tries to mine metals on Luna, they will be sulfide melt deposits. Thereās no reason not to expect Mars to posses its fair share as well.
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