@ptz@dubvee.org avatar

ptz

@ptz@dubvee.org

Ask me anything.

I also develop Tesseract UI for Lemmy/Sublinks

This profile is from a federated server and may be incomplete. For a complete list of posts, browse on the original instance.

ptz ,
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Before I watched the Picard finale, I started back at the first season and watched all the way through. I may do that with Disco. Which sadly means avoiding spoilers for another few weeks.

ptz ,
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Always have been.

ptz ,
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Why just China? I don't trust any "connected" product regardless of country of origin.

ptz , (edited )
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End child marriage in the U.S.? You might be surprised at who's opposed

No, I really wouldn't be.

'Confused' Judge Cannon needed concept explained 'slowly' to her in court by lawyers: NYT ( www.rawstory.com )

As part of an analysis of how U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida Judge Aileen Cannon, reports from her courtroom show a judge who is both "prickly" and" insecure" and often has trouble understanding what lawyers from both sides try to explain to her....

ptz ,
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What if she's feigning stupidity to enact malice?

ptz ,
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Einniv Nisouc Ym ?

Why is Nikki Haley scrawling genocidal messages on Israeli bombs? | Moustafa Bayoumi ( www.theguardian.com )

...on Tuesday, the former Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley was all over social media for a picture taken of her during a visit to Israel. In the picture, Haley – the one Republican who had been frequently lauded for her smarts on foreign policy – is seen squatting down in front of a row of Israeli artillery...

ptz ,
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not because she is vile — because she is a Republican. she has sacrificed her better nature for power and closeness to Trump.

I would argue that's what a vile person would do. She had a choice, and she chose the path of cruelty and hate.

ptz ,
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Same. Both in getting the same email and not thinking about Reddit at all since then.

I guess I should finally get around to deleting my account. I kept it only because I was afraid my content would be restored if I deleted it during the protests (I edited all my stuff to [deleted] and it seems to have stayed that way).

ptz ,
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That's 10% more than I would have thought, and 70% less than we need.

Still a good start, and hopefully the momentum keeps up.

Use for excess clean energy at home

I have a 100 W rigid solar panel including a charge controller that I currently only use for camping to charge batteries (also useful in an emergency at home). It strikes me as a waste that I could be generating more clean energy with equipment that I already have, but I don't have anything in mind to use this energy for....

ptz , (edited )
@ptz@dubvee.org avatar

I had a spare 50W panel and charge controller that I used similarly for camping. Had more or less the same thought as you: I should use this year round.

Ended up building a wooden box with a couple of old car batteries inside along with the controller. Kept it outside and ran a cable inside carrying 12v (make sure you put an inline fuse after the battery in case it short circuits along the way). Used the 12v from that and some old car chargers to set up a charging station for all my devices.

The car chargers were all random plug styles since they were from a box of stuff I've accumulated over the years, so I cut those off and spliced on USB-A female ports so they could charge any USB device. I eventually ran a second pair of 12v wires so I could run a small 100w inverter from the batteries.

Worked great, but the car batteries crapped out after about 3 years (in all fairness, they were junk to start with).

If I had to do it over again, I'd do it similarly but use 12v USB-C power-delivery adapters instead so I could charge bigger stuff like my laptop without having to use an inverter.

ptz ,
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It doesn't exist anymore, but yeah, good call. I never replaced it once the batteries finally gave out, and I moved less than a year later.

It did have vents on the sides for airflow, but that was more of a consideration for heat build up and keeping the controller from cooking in the summer. It was also less a "box" and more like a small doghouse (including shingles lol). I atually gave it to a neighbor after I was done with it; they cut a hole in the door and used it as a cat house.

ptz ,
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3 years seems pretty good for using a car battery outside of it's preferred use case.

Better than that :) They were junk car batteries when I got them, and I still got 3 years out of them. But yeah, they didn't get deep cycled much or at all since there were 2 in parallel and the loads I had on them were very small (5-6 500 mAh cell phone chargers and occasionally some LED rope lights).

When I eventually hooked an inverter up to charge my laptop or run a lamp during power outages, they started to show their age with the extra current draw. I think that's what finally did them in.

Yeah, lithium batteries wouldn't like that kind of daily cycle without some kind of charge/discharge limiter to keep them in the 30-70% range. That's basically what hybrid and EV battery managers do to prolong their useful lifespan. I think LiFePO4 lithium batteries would tolerate that better (they're the ones typically used in e-bikes), but they're not cheap. I've also found it difficult / expensive to find solar chargers for them (to be fair, mine is 48v 20AH so finding any aftermarket charger for it has been a challenge lol).

ptz ,
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Cannon said "that prosecutors’ request was 'wholly lacking in substance and professional courtesy' ”

IMAX levels of projection there.

ptz , (edited )
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I get the same server error when trying to hit feddit.de directly in browser, but I see posts/comments from users there, so I'm assuming it's up. The user I checked there commented 2 hours ago.

I can also switch Tesseract's guest instance to feddit.de successfully, so the API is responding.

Best guess is their main web frontend (and maybe their pict-rs) is down?

They have https://status.feddit.de linked in their sidebar, but I can't get it to load.

ptz ,
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I feel an easy and rational solution is to criminalize a certain category of defamation… presenting something untrue/fabricated as true/real or in a way that it could be construed as true/real.

I would love that solution, but it definitely wouldn't have bipartisan support.

ptz ,
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I just want a 'dear leader' like the fascists have, is that so wrong?

Cult. That's called a cult. You probably don't actually want that.

ptz ,
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Stink Floyd

New warp drive concept does twist space, doesn’t move us very fast ( arstechnica.com )

The researchers did indeed discover a warp drive solution: a method of manipulating space so that travelers can move without accelerating. There is no such thing as a free lunch, however, and the physicality of this warp drive does come with a major caveat: the vessel and passengers can never travel faster than light. Also...

ptz OP ,
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The funny / sad thing is that this scene is from Death to 2020 and they're running the same playbook as they did 4 years ago.

ptz OP ,
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How dare he?!

ptz ,
@ptz@dubvee.org avatar

For me it's more time travel than teleportation. Whiskey + record collection = good times

Why Your Wi-Fi Router Doubles as an Apple AirTag – Krebs on Security ( krebsonsecurity.com )

Apple and the satellite-based broadband service Starlink each recently took steps to address new research into the potential security and privacy implications of how their services geo-locate devices. Researchers from the University of Maryland say they relied on publicly available data from Apple to track the location of...

ptz OP ,
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Starlink's fix was to randomize the BSSID. I can do that on my gear running OpenWRT, but I'm not sure if consumer-grade routers/APs have that capability (probably not).

However, randomizing the BSSID might throw a wrench in any setups that are configured to match the SSID to specific BSSIDs.

ptz ,
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(Pats it) Good plant.

ptz ,
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So they're too offensive to talk about but not too offensive to rally behind for president? 🙄

ptz ,
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Didn't EmptyG bring a poster-sized print out of Hunter's junk onto the floor for some stupid "gotcha"? I don't recall Republicans getting upset over that.

ptz ,
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Ron Swanson saying ' Never half ass two things. Whole ass one thing'

Unless it's being an ass clown. Then it's okay to go halfway.

ptz ,
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At first, I thought maybe it used heat to drive a refrigeration cycle (like the gas-powered refrigerators), but it's got a solar-powered compressor that freezes ice packs in the walls combined with some hefty insulation. Still cool, but yeah, also uses electricity.

Bibi Is Choosing Stefanik and Trump. President Biden, Don’t Be Fooled. ( www.nytimes.com )

If you are keeping score at home, you have surely noticed that the two most important defense officials in Benjamin Netanyahu’s war cabinet — Defense Minister Yoav Gallant and the former military chief of staff Benny Gantz — warned last week that Netanyahu is leading Israel into a disastrous abyss by refusing to present...

ptz ,
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Because the right isn't hem-hawing around and are all in-line behind Trump. The left they're talking about are the ones sowing division, banging the drum on the left-side wedge issues, and encouraging apathy / vote 3rd party / sit out the vote. Some of those are shills, sure, but not all.

IMO, it's perfectly reasonable to call those people out because they're completely missing the bigger picture.

ptz , (edited )
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I keep hearing how the (US) grid needs updated to handle the influx of renewable plants, but wouldn't rooftop grid-tied solar help with this in the short run?

I had a small 1.5 KW proof-of-concept grid tie PV system at my old house, and the way it was described (and appeared to operate) was that it offsets any local usage, reducing the amount drawn from the utility/grid, and if there's any excess, it's fed back out.

Assuming small setups, wouldn't that help keep demand lower and put less stress on the grid? I mean, if you're exporting tens of KW from a large PV setup, it still has to go through the transformer (which is what the article is focusing on), but small/medium setups that don't quite meet/exceed your usage would presumably reduce that grid stress.

Or am I missing something?

ptz , (edited )
@ptz@dubvee.org avatar

Yeah, I've always assumed those arguments were at least partially FUD, but our grid is aging and struggling already, so I know there is some truth to it.

Grid-isolated + ATS would be the way to go, assuming batteries aren't a (cost) barrier. It also avoids the pitfalls and artificial BS you have to deal with from (some) power companies if you want to setup net-metering with a grid-tie system.

The setup I had was small enough to fly under the radar, but when I talked to them about setting up net metering for a larger setup, it was such a sham:

  • They install a second meter that your PV system ties into. Only your PV can hook into this. It's configured to meter the power flowing out at wholesale rates. There is a monthly "meter fee" for this (same as your meter fee for your regular hookup - approx $12/mo)
  • All your local usage has to go through your regular meter at retail rates.
  • The PV goes out the wholesale meter and back into your retail meter; excess goes to grid
  • You're billed normally on your regular meter
  • Power company credits you at whoesale rate for the amount fed through the PV meter.

So, in effect, you generate power, ship it out at wholesale rate, and then buy it back from yourself at retail with the power company pocketing the difference.

Talk about a racket.

Edit: I didn't realize exactly how much of a racket it was, but here's some napkin math:

Assumptions:

  • Monthly power consumption is 1,000 KW/h
  • 5 KW PV system that, unrealistically, produces full power 8 hours a day, 30 days a month
  • Retail rate of $0.25 per KW/h (my current rate)
  • Wholesale rate of $0.16/KWh (guessing on this, but it's proportionate to the wholesale rate I was quoted when my retail rate was $0.14/KWh)

5 KW * 8 hours/day * 30 days/mo = 1200 KW/h PV at $0.16/KWh = $192 - $12 meter fee = $180 bill credit

1000 KWh usage * $0.25/KWh = $250 + $12 meter fee = $262 bill

$262 - $180 = $82 bill even though you produced 200 more KW/h than you used.

ptz ,
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True. I lived out in the boonies at that time, had plenty of space, so my setup was ground-mounted. Made the costs much more bearable.

ptz ,
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I'm sad he passed, but I'm more sad he lived to see the anti-vax nonsense of the last decade.

ptz ,
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https://12ft.io/proxy?q=https://fortune.com/2024/05/21/federal-judge-blocks-biden-rule-requiring-dealers-gun-shows-buyers-legally-prohibited-firearms/

That took, like, zero effort. Probably less effort than it took to whine "paywalled"

ptz ,
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https://archive.ph/UlPRM

ptz ,
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That's just the living room. You should see the kitchen.

ptz , (edited )
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Worst case, they're saving it to an encrypted blob storage, calling that encrypted, and hiding deep in the ToS that you actually agreed to that

And then it's discovered that bucket was accidentally set to public for over 8 months. Oopsie daisy! But you can't sue us because also deep in the ToS was a forced arbitration clause.

Also, if you don't agree to the whole ToS, you can't use the computer you just paid for.

ptz , (edited )
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People banging the drum on the wedge issues got me like:

https://media0.giphy.com/media/v1.Y2lkPTc5MGI3NjExam96NHpuOXp4Yms2OGFtMXNhN3VkaTd4MGVyYmRrZG80OXp6dmF5ciZlcD12MV9pbnRlcm5hbF9naWZfYnlfaWQmY3Q9Zw/h36vh423PiV9K/giphy.gif

ptz OP ,
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Thanks for that. I was watching it via the embed in the article and didn't realize the YT link I copied had the timestamp from my current position.

Updated the post.

ptz OP ,
@ptz@dubvee.org avatar

The "what" gets shot into the sun is less important, lol. I just found it interesting that shooting anything into our sun is more difficult than sending it to another sun.

ptz ,
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Thank you!

I knew that photoshop reminded me of someone, but I could not place it. Funny they're both con-artists 😆

ptz ,
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The entire Republican party needs checked for brain worms.

ptz ,
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Assuming $25 per meal, that $90M could have fed 1.2 million people for a day (3 meals/day). Or fewer people for a longer period of time.

Instead, it was spent on hate.

The wrong people have money.

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