There are 2 parts at work. The focus reflex and the blink reflex. The window between them is the dangerous part. If the pulse is fast enough ( a few ms) then the eye can’t focus, and it’s fairly safe (unless you were already focused on the emitter). If the pulse is low enough power then the blink reflex kicks in and protects your eye.

Hitting a mosquito is a hard task, tracking one is even harder. It’s better to use an ultra short pulse, with a bit more power. You can also shift the frequency. If it’s an infrared laser then the eye won’t lock onto it, and will struggle to focus it dangerously.

This idea was tried previously. If done right, it doesn’t take much energy to damage a mosquito’s wings.

Secondly, a laser is only a real issue for vision if the eye focuses on it. With a continuous beam, it would be instinctive, making it dangerous. If the pulse is short enough however, the eye won’t have time to focus and so the power will be safely spread out, even inside the eyeball.

Agreed on that. Though in the scale of the UK there aren’t that many cases. The ones there are however, are (deliberately) high profile. It has a chilling effect on the population, without needing to use it much.

They also hamstring the bobbies via the budget assignments. I know a lot of forces would love to get rid of some of the more overtly racist/sexist/other-ist officers. Their budget limits wages however, which limits the selection of replacements. They end up having to try and weed out the ringleaders (to fire or retire) and split the followers up.

The long and the short, most of the police are working class and do the job to try and make our country better. Some are even trying to counter the bullshit rolling down from on high.

The UK force has its problems, but it functions fairly well. It also has a lot of people in it who honestly want to do a good job.

The problem is the rules and mandates coming down from the government. (And the political upper management level of the police)

America has “police by intimidation” as its default response. Most of Europe seems to have “police by consent” as the default.

It leads to a different mentality. They might still roll out the whole cavalry, but it will more likely be led by a polite knock at the door, and an initial attempt to de-escalate.

A lot of the big building companies, in Europe, treat solar panels as a premium option and so charge a larger profit margin on them. Installing solar, while constructing the house is a LOT cheaper and easier than retrofitting them later.

The panels have gotten cheap enough that it’s no longer a real cost burden, Vs the cost of the house.

I’ve also got a steam deck. Unfortunately it just doesn’t cut it for games like satisfactory or factorio.

Luggables are quite common for gamers who travel a lot. I can’t take a tower into hotels easily, but most of my free gaming time is on the road. I know quite a few people with portable gaming systems.

My current laptop is rocking a 4080, with a water cooling loop. It has to fall back to internal graphics when on battery. The batteries just can’t provide the current required.

It’s absolutely gorgeous in VR. Unfortunately it’s almost unplayable for most people. The motion sickness is… impressive. I managed to work my way up to about 10 minutes of swimming, before I gave up trying to adapt.

It’s on my list to do, when the steam frame comes out.

FYI, the best VR game I’ve found is “super hot VR”.

He just really likes pressure.

Assuming 1MW of transfer, and a 10m diameter beam, your looking at 12.5kW/m^2 . Not instant vaporisation, but dangerous in seconds to humans. The penetration was also mean the energy is delivered internally, where it’s harder to deal with (short term).

Any viable power transfer beam also, inherently, makes a good anti personnel weapon.

While the maths is slightly better for short range transfers, like drones, it would still definitely not be something you want hitting your body.

Imagine you have a paper balloon setup. It randomly takes hits from a high powered rifle. In theory, you could harvest the energy. However, it’s delivered in such powerful, random bursts that capturing it is difficult.

Gamma rays punch straight through the structure of the craft. The actual energy is small (around 1/1,000,000 of a joule), but it’s so focused that it damages anything it hits. If it hits the atoms in a transistor, that transistor gets ripped up at an atomic level.

Plenty. Unfortunately it’s mostly the nasty damaging kind, rather than the sort that can be turned into power. It also doesn’t take much damage to add up, when you’re dealing with large millennia time scales.

I’d recommend foiling it, rather than clipping. A grounded (0V) metal wrapping will become a Faraday cage. It’s a bit more effort, but is reversible, if you so choose. E.g. when selling it. It is also less likely to trigger a fault sensor condition, and doesn’t void the warranty if the computer craps out.

A bit of a guess, but it might be related to software cafés. They are a lot more common in the east.

Since multiple people can log into the same computer, it might over count them. They are also likely exclusively windows machines.

Pis are excellent mini computers. Unfortunately, their long term reliability isn’t quite there. When I used one, I was getting a couple of lock up crashes a year. It doesn’t sound like much, but it’s just enough to be REALLY frustrating to the (less technical) wife. The tipping point is when it goes from “nice to have” to “expected”.

I acquired a 2nd hand NUC, and it’s been bomb proof for a few years now.

I find it a lot more palatable if you assume it’s viewed from penny, as an unreliable narrator. There’s actually a lot more geeky stuff going on under the obvious, but she doesn’t notice it.

It’s worth noting that this is talking about plug in solar, so would be at standard mains voltage.

1kw would be around 4A in Europe, but 8A in the USA. Also, since resistive losses scale with I^2 that’s 4x the heat dumped in the walls.

At least in the UK, they tend to run 3 phase to a road, but only a single phase goes into a given house. You need to get a special hook up to get 3 phase to a domestic premise, and they don’t like doing it.

I had a chat about this with a friend who works for the national grid (UK).

Apparently the problem is keeping the grid balanced and stable. Basically, the grid struggles to react fast, so they plan ahead. Things like large scale solar can provide predictions on output. Home solar can’t.

When clouds pass over an area it can cause slumps and surges in the local grid. The more home solar, the worse it gets. The current grid is designed to work top down, with predictable changes in demand. It needs upgrading to deal with large scale bidirectional flows.

The plug in units are (potentially) even more ropey. If used properly, they are no worse than normal home solar. Unfortunately, being cheaper, there are worries over the microinverters not shutting down. Either due to the manufacturer cheaping out, or turning on an “off grid” mode.

There are also worries about overloading household circuits. Back feeding bypasses the household circuit breakers and RCDs. They could overload wall wiring and cause fires, or stop an RCD tripping, allowing for a person to be shocked.

I don’t know how much this would apply to the American Grid, but I would imagine it would be worse. Your grid is older and larger. You also use 120VAC which makes the current overload issue a lot worse.

PhD level and up are notorious for over specialisation.

My university had a personal assistant, dedicated to 2 professors. Half their job was to make sure they made it to lectures on time. They still managed to be late sometimes.