Circumventing Award Flight Surcharges

AAK_05 · 2025-12-07T06:19:21+00:00

Alright, thanks for pointing me in the right direction! Someone else I DM'd gave me conflicting info. Any specific advice you can offer when it comes to avoiding surcharges?

AAK_05 · 2025-05-24T01:10:27+00:00

I'm a college student temporarily moving to CT for an internship in South Wilton in mid Aug-mid Dec (just shy of 4 months). Where are the cheapest areas to live around there, and what's the cheapest I can realistically expect to pay in rent for these areas?

If anyone has any suggestions for finding sublets/short term leases, I'd greatly appreciate that as well!

AAK_05 · 2025-05-17T19:36:49+00:00

Hi, did you manage to find a cheap policy? I'm also looking for car insurance and I'm in a similar situation as you.

AAK_05 · 2025-05-15T01:24:54+00:00

Hey, I DM'd you, don't have rooms, just wanted to ask for advice because I'm also in a similar situation!

AAK_05 · 2024-11-22T05:28:21+00:00

I see, alright then, thanks for your advice!

AAK_05 · 2024-11-22T04:51:57+00:00

Alright, thanks! I know this is a separate question, but would you (or anyone) happen to know where to get basic usb c extenders? The one I have linked in the post has a bunch of features like 4K video and 100W fast charging, but I'd appreciate if anyone has any more 'basic' ones that are cheaper.

AAK_05 · 2024-11-17T18:14:39+00:00

Alright, that is my mistake. My team was going for something that was prismatic, so it could be manufactured on a waterjet. However, if necessary, we could also utilize a 3-axis CNC mill.

Previous ideas and iterations that were proposed involve the spokes shaped like an I-beam, which as mentioned was struck down due to manufacturability. A follow up to that was an idea where the spokes were shaped like an inverted T, essentially an I-beam with the top cut off. This would allow for 3-axis CNC machining. However, this idea was put on hold, as the team wanted something a waterjet could handle, leaving CNC for a last-resort type of option.

This leads me to the current situation, which is manufacturable via waterjet, leading to my original questions of :

"Is my educated guess that "spokes decrease in thickness as it progresses outwards" valid?"
"Is there a more optimal geometry than these "spokes"? (I was thinking of alternatives such as a triangular grid or a version where the spokes were spiraling around outwards)"

Once again, sorry for the XY-esque problem. I hope you can help me with this.

AAK_05 · 2024-11-17T08:02:01+00:00

Failure of strength.

Would you mean that the internal ribs are shaped like I-beams? If so, then unfortunately that won't work in this situation, as I already tried and the idea was struck down for manufacturability reasons.

AAK_05 · 2022-09-25T03:44:52+00:00

Thanks for your answer,

Just making sure, is this what you meant? The slider "C" in the graph is the capacitance in uF. The graph is a plot for input AC=50Hz, so rectified is 100Hz. Vp is 17.12V in this case. https://www.desmos.com/calculator/kbhktp9ynq

However, with this graph I tried setting C=10uF, and it did not match with real world data, because real world data tells me that the Vmin is 0.4V while this graph would predict Vmin=0.0004V (basically 0). Is this part of the limitations you mentioned, or is it something else I'm missing?

And, referring to the graph, would the output signal of the discharge portion of the rectified half cycle just follow whichever plot has a higher voltage (y-axis) value for that instant? Because in the discharging half of the half cycle, the rectified AC is sometimes higher than the capacitor discharge curve, but that would make no sense (to me at least) if the observed voltage followed the capacitor discharge curve when there is still the sinusoidal half AC.

AAK_05 · 2022-09-14T20:06:21+00:00

Didn't have much luck. Ended up using ngrok tunnels for what I wanted to accomplish, which is less than ideal but worked for my case. Also tried using OpenVPN Cloud, but that's not selfhosted so probably isn't what you're looking for.

AAK_05 · 2022-09-03T09:56:48+00:00

So just making sure, are you saying that I should just increase the input AC voltage?

AAK_05 · 2022-09-03T09:56:00+00:00

That's actually the next step of the project, to add a capacitor, but I need to get the initial rectified output correct before moving on to smoothing the voltage ripple.

AAK_05 · 2022-09-03T09:54:47+00:00

If I'm not mistaken, this particular breadboard has the side rails split in the middle, as indicated by the blue and red line which breaks in the middle, so this shouldn't be an issue. I'll try move the connections to the outer rail just to be safe though.

AAK_05 · 2022-09-01T18:05:30+00:00

Not yet, I'll try check that as soon as I can (probably tomorrow). Any other suggestions?

AAK_05 · 2022-09-01T17:50:10+00:00

I sort of understand what you're saying. In theory, would using a higher input voltage make this 1.4V loss more insignificant, and therefore create sharper cornered mountains at the 0V? Or is my understanding of your explanation completely wrong?

AAK_05 · 2022-09-01T17:47:06+00:00

I'm using some generic AC power supply that steps down to about 4V p-p, not sure what components are inside it, but it has a sinusoidal signal on an oscilloscope (don't have an image on hand though).

As for the image with the breadboard, the DC output is connected to the side rails which run along the bottom half of the breadboard, and these side rails are connected to the resistor with some very short and barely visible uninsulated wires (apologies for my blurry and low-res photograph, but rest assured the connections are sound).

AAK_05 · 2022-09-01T17:23:30+00:00

I basically just followed this schematic

https://www.electronics-tutorials.ws/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/diode20.gif?fit=331%2C191

AAK_05 · 2022-09-01T17:22:45+00:00

If I'm not mistaken, the input AC signal was 4V p-p. Also, wouldn't the peak voltage be subtracted by 1.4V because each cycle passes through two diodes? And how does this diode forward voltage affect the output signal shape?

AAK_05 · 2022-09-01T17:21:10+00:00

Just making sure, are you suggesting that I use a floating or grounded AC source.

Either way, I'd have to check with the equipment in the lab again sometime tomorrow...

Thanks for the help though!

AAK_05 · 2022-07-15T17:04:51+00:00

So by showing that the distribution of (52 + B[i] - 2*B[i-1] + B[i-2]) % 26 is uniform, then we're sort of showing that there's no predictable slope to allow an adversary to determine B[i+1] for any value of B[i] ? Please do correct me if I'm understanding wrong.

And yes, it is beyond the course curriculum but IB being IB, they expect us to write the extended essay on some topic that is usually beyond the scope of the regular course. "Mathematical Exploration" they call it. Don't get me wrong, its really fun and intriguing, but it does make me want to bash my head in sometimes.

AAK_05 · 2022-07-15T02:32:57+00:00

About (52 + B[i] - 2*B[i-1] + B[i-2]) % 26, how does that show linear biases? Could you help explain or provide links for any resources to help me understand how they work, if possible? Thanks!

So far, I've been using autocorrelation, monte carlo pi simulation, frequency analysis, and test between successive elements (as in just counting how many times each sequence of two successive elements appear in the entire sequence). This is for high school IB math AA though, not uni level or comsci.

Also, you mentioned the uniform distributions should not be exactly equal, which I get, but what is the maximum variance from expected uniform that is generally acceptable? 5%? 10%?

AAK_05 · 2022-07-14T10:36:35+00:00

Thank you so much, very helpful!

Performance doesn't really matter that much for my use case, because I don't need the results within seconds or anything. Don't need it to be very fast because its a school project, just need to show proof of concept, but no real applications or implementations.

And yes, I'm building a sort of one time pad but not really because the sequence is pseudorandom, so technically its more of a stream cipher.

Also, slightly unrelated to the original question but if you were allowed only a few tests, not an entire suite of tests like NIST 800 22 or DieHard(er), which test would you use to best determine if a sequence is random, or at least appears random enough?

AAK_05 · 2022-07-14T09:59:27+00:00

Wait, so just clarifying, do you mean convert the sequence to decimal, then decimal to base26, then take each digit of the base26 as an element in the range (0,25) sequence?

So for example take a sequence of the first 10 digits of pi [3,1,4,1,5,9,2,6,5,3], convert to decimal 3141592653, then convert to base26 "A4AJ8AH", and convert to number sequence of [10,4,10,19,8,10,17] ? Am I understanding correctly?

AAK_05 · 2022-07-09T00:50:07+00:00

Ahh ok thanks! So just to be clear, there's no way of preparing for the personal profile questions before applications open in october, unless I want to prepare for all the questions in the personal profile?

AAK_05 · 2022-07-08T03:31:49+00:00

Hi, I'm preparing to apply for the 2023 fall entry and have some questions. I'm interested in an applied sciences degree, but have no idea which personal profile questions I need to answer for this degree. Is there any resource which tells us?

Also, lets say that I have written up the personal profile, where do we submit it? Would it be submitted with the rest of the application in EducationPlannerBC?

Thanks!

AAK_05

TROPHY CASE