Hacker Newsnew | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submitlogin

> The interesting part of this is the fact that every radio station is required to a special light that turns on when a Royal dies and this is broadcast throughout the UK by the military.

This sentence makes no sense.



Yes. It's almost genius. "required to a special light"? "this is broadcast... by the military"?


Not everyone's first language is English.

I understood exactly what they meant.

It's cool, I do this myself sometimes thinking people are talking about the US just because I live here.

Just try and be a bit more open minded?


Sure. Mind is all the way open. Pointing out that a sentence doesn't make sense isn't an insult. As a foreigner in Finland, I try to speak Finnish every day. Believe me, I am well familiar with constructing nonsense and being told so.

Anyway, the military broadcasts a light? What's going on there?


Ok, so every radio station in the UK has a special light. The light is turned on whenever a royal dies. And then there is a prepared message pre-recorded by the UK military that the radio station broadcasts? How does the station know which royal died? Is the light different colors? Blink different patterns? The station calls the military?


I'd like to know more too. I can understand that posters vagueness as most of what I can find about it (e.g Wikipedia) is quite vague on the technicalities https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Independent_Radio_News#Obituar...

From what I can gather a network of radio stations has pooled news bulletins and the organisation behind it provides this 'obit light' in it's members radio studios that signify someone important has died and to prepare for a bulletin, upcoming news programming will follow a certain format and the output should be changed to suit the mood.

Looks like it's a bit of a legacy thing. They also mention a serial channel that has a 'Major Story Alarm' - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Independent_Radio_News#Serial_...

It'd be interesting to see how it works/worked from tech point of view - perhaps some kind of long wave radio signal on the frequency that the news broadcast is sent from?

But yeah, doesn't look like a military thing or that it holds any authority


Insert the missing “have” and there you go.

Says more about your reading incompetence.




Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: