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.

The rule of thumb with servers is

• Performance
• Reliability
• Power usage
• Noise
• Size

The trick is to remember you don’t actually need much performance. A home server isn’t generally a powerful machine. What matters is that it is always there.

A raspberry pi would actually make a wonderful server. It’s power efficient, small and quiet, with enough grunt to do most jobs. Unfortunately, it falls down on reliability. Arm servers seem more prone to issues than x64 servers. Pis also seems particularly crash prone. Crashing every 3-6 months isn’t an issue for most pi usages. When it’s running your smart home, it’s a pain in the arse.

I eventually settled on a intel NUC system. It’s a proper computer (no HDD on usb etc), with a very low power draw. It also seems particularly stable. Mine has done several years at this point, without a crash.

Bigger servers are only needed when you have too much demand for a low powered option, or need specialist capabilities 24/7. Very few home labbers will need one, in practice.

It’s also worth noting that you can slave a powerful, but power hungry system, to a smaller, efficient one. Only power it on when a highly demanding task requires sorting.

Fully agreed that it needs to be done right. I’m definitely not the best person to try and write it.

It also needs to be area specific. A predominantly republican area would need a different message to a predominantly black community.

Has Amazon ever actually said it wouldn’t sell the results of face tracking to data brokers? I can easily see it happening. It’s a lot of tasty data to them.

A better option might be a leafleting campaign.

It would need to bypass the “I’ve nothing to hide” effect. E.g. “Does your friend have an ex they don’t want to know where they are? Facial recognition would easily put them on your doorstep. Would you like a visit from them?”

Leaning on the ICE issues right now would also work in some areas.

If someone mocked up a few variants for different demographics, that could actually help.

Also, does anyone know an easy layman alternative to ring, that is more ethical?

They are excellent in the hobby world. It’s generally when you need to do a bit of quick logic, an ESP32 can be dropped in to do it. E.g. change the colour of an led depending on a sensor.

They also form the core of a lot of IoT devices. Simple sensors and relays that can connect to WiFi and throw up a simple web interface. ESPhome, tasmota and WLED exist to make this extremely easy.

They are basically the hobbiest electronic multi tool. Powerful enough to do most jobs without bothering with code optimisation. Cheap enough to throw in and leave there.

It’s niche, but it lets them get the best of both worlds. Even when a company does early access right, a lot of people would rather wait for the complete game.

This would let them refine and build up with early access, then get a significant boost at their proper release.

It’s still a bit behind on voice control, but home assistant can deal with both. Without all the spying.

I thought that only applied to steam keys?

You can sell your game for whatever you want elsewhere, but if you want them to be able to install via steam, you can’t undercut steam itself.

There’s an interesting argument that honey can be vegan, by that criteria.

A bee colony is not generally trapped in a hive. They are capable of leaving, if it’s not to their standards, or they find somewhere between. The catch is that artificial bee hives are amazing for bees, compared to natural locations. The only catch is the “rent” taken by the eldritch creatures. They never take too much however, only taking excess the hive doesn’t need.

Basically bees could be argued to be paying rent, in honey, for high quality accommodation.

I’ve not tried reflashing, but the os seems mostly vanilla android. I’ve had a couple of OS updates since I got my phone, so it’s not just fire and forget. I’m not sure about long term however. You might also have issues with the thermal camera, if you reflash. I don’t know how it’s wired internally, and whether a non custom app will play nice.

They seem to be aiming at builders/workmen as a rugged phone with long battery life. They also seem to be trying to build a proper brand, not just a throw away one. Hopefully that means they will at least do security updates for quite a while. But that’s speculation.

Oh, and it’s a brick, weight wise. I personally like that, but it’s quite polarising when people try it.

I got fed up with this and ran across ulefone. Some of their phones are downright ridiculous but I’m happy with mine.

It’s a waterproof brick with good grip and a 10,000mAh battery. Good for up to 4 days. It’s also got rubberised grips and takes a beating. Oh, it also has a headphone port, and thermal imaging.

It does have a pci-e socket… 😁

Steam’s main thing is that they have recognised that killing the golden goose is a bad thing for everybody. They have consistently played for long term growth and profits, over purely short term gains.

Steam has made mistakes, but their demonstrated values have been shown to be mostly compatible with mine. I can work with that.

Also, them being privately owned means that they are less have seagull investors swooping in and demanding short term gains now now now.

Adopting a rescue dog has various home checks and interviews and welfare checks. Leaving hospital with a baby: “Do you have a car seat for them?”, “Yes…”, “You’re all good to go then!”, “…”