So you were wondering about that annoying UTE 6920-6950 kHz...

[ChrisSmolinski]

Off the air as of 1942z.

[paranoid dxer]

From our friends at Google...
https://www.google.com/maps/place/41%C2%B027'24.0%22N+86%C2%B051'37.0%22W/@41.4573539,-86.8598066,852m/data=!3m1!1e3!4m5!3m4!1s0x0:0x0!8m2!3d41.4566667!4d-86.8602778

WH2XWU

+-RH

https://forums.qrz.com/index.php?threads/ham-radio-mentioned-prominently-in-high-frequency-trading-story.617581/

https://apps.fcc.gov/oetcf/els/reports/442_Print.cfm?mode=current&application_seq=66454&license_seq=67065

[GC]

I have been noting this signal as well and my feeble attempts at using the KiwiSDR tdoa function has provided a fix just west of Chicago.


I have also found this signal quite regularily on 12185kHz and have noted some reports on 14462, 7674, and 10222 but have never noted this activity on those last three noted frequencies; one of several my have been noted to being the European end of this circuit.


This signal is pretty easy to find using a SDR - it is usually very strong and has a distinct rather wide bandwidth. My attempt at using the KiwiSDR tdoa on the 12185kHz also provided a fix near Chicago.


cheers, Graham near Ottawa Canada

[Pigmeat]

I've got an old buddy who sits on the Chicago Board of Trade. I'll tell him to cut it out or I'll send the worst of the Fansome clan up to have a talk with him.

[ChrisSmolinski]

https://hackaday.com/2018/08/06/feeling-the-heat-of-high-frequency-trading/

But what in the world does the weather have to do with all this? How can a hot, humid day possibly negatively impact the world of high-frequency trading? As it turns out, those microwave connections are the weak link in the system. During the early July heatwave, the links were experiencing slight delays in transmission times over that 16-mile path and throwing off the timing of the trading algorithms. The delay was minuscule — on the order of 10 microseconds — but in a business where millions are made and lost in seconds, that’s substantial.

The physics underlying this uniquely first-world problem are well known. We tend to think that radio waves travel at the speed of light, and while that’s true in a vacuum, propagation speed varies slightly in different media. Air makes microwaves slower; increased humidity makes them slower still. In addition, microwaves are absorbed and therefore attenuated by water vapor in the atmosphere.

So humidity deals a double whammy to the high-frequency traders’ links, both delaying the microwave signals and reducing their signal strength. Such effects are well-known, having been noticed for years on long distance telco microwave connections and the backhaul links that stitch together the cellular network. Delays and attenuation don’t really impact those services to any great degree, but even over a short path like the link between those two New Jersey data centers, the soupy air that settled into the region was enough to slow the links by a few microseconds, which is an eternity in the HFT business.

[JimIO]

HF trading sounds like an addiction. Tax it and use some of the money for treatment.

[Josh]

A guy I was in MARS with coded for banks. When y2k was a thing he made a fortune going around the US fixing y2k bugs in ancient bank code, they lost millions due to the miniscule downtime, I imagine the hft guys are dealing with millions of dollars per transaction and the profit motive is too overwelming.

[MDK2]

A guy I was in MARS with coded for banks. When y2k was a thing he made a fortune going around the US fixing y2k bugs in ancient bank code, they lost millions due to the miniscule downtime, I imagine the hft guys are dealing with millions of dollars per transaction and the profit motive is too overwelming.

Did he have them do updates during banking hours? I worked for a large bank when that was happening, and all updates happened after midnight.

[Josh]

A guy I was in MARS with coded for banks. When y2k was a thing he made a fortune going around the US fixing y2k bugs in ancient bank code, they lost millions due to the miniscule downtime, I imagine the hft guys are dealing with millions of dollars per transaction and the profit motive is too overwelming.

Did he have them do updates during banking hours? I worked for a large bank when that was happening, and all updates happened after midnight.

His company flew him around and he was gone days or weeks at a time, don't recall anything else other than they were down long enough to lose a lot of money. Apparently there wasn't a lot of guys left working asm, fortran, cobol, or whatever antiquity it was the banks and investing houses used who were willing to fly around the US and fix spaghetti code.

[Pigmeat]

A buddy hired me to do it for him before and after Y2K. I'd tell the young IT guys when they asked me how to do it, "Well first you need punchcards and a machine to sort them." That usually got rid of them.

One day I'll tell you the guys the tale of, "I Was A Teenage Tape Librarian", the most deadly of all positions in the computer rooms of the pre-pc era. Well, other than getting pneumonia. Those rooms had to be kept at a constant 63 degrees. Going in and out during the hot summer months played Hell on the sinuses and lungs.

A friends wife had a similar gig upgrading ancient hospital computer systems. It was the last of the "Geeks get even plucking the tech fearing bigshots" gold rush.

You should have been there in the 80's when you could charge 150 bucks per machine for "refurbishing" a business's pc's by simply cleaning the fan and turning up the resolution on the old monitors. You could do 10 or more in well under two hours, and they would pay for your travel to boot. It was like selling snake oil, except you didn't have to put on a show. As most of our customers were car dealers, I didn't feel bad about hosing them. Turnabout is fair play.

[Josh]

Lol 25 an hour to defrag some windows pcs.

[JimIO]

What's a defrag?

[MDK2]

What's a defrag?

Probably easier to link an article than try to explain in my own words.
https://www.laptopmag.com/articles/defragment-hard-drive-windows

[JimIO]

Thanks for the post MDK2 but I was just jerking around. When I see defrag or registry or malware I think why would anyone put up with that when there is a free alternative.

[MDK2]

Ha! You got me.