evranch @ evranch @lemmy.ca

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465

Joined

2 yr. ago

Not here with hard well water unfortunately... Hardened scale is quite robust against vinegar unless soaked. But either muriatic or phosphoric acid will do it, or hot citric acid. In descending order of effectiveness, as well as risk of giving yourself severe acid burns.

Sinks almost always look like this here as a thin layer of iron scale forms very fast.

At this point at least, LLMs require vast amounts of GPU time, and the GPUs used likely need to be fairly close coupled to run at decent speeds, and as such one couldn't spread itself over the vast network of consumer computers. At least not in a way that would still allow it to learn.

Any near-term AGI or similar would be based on a similar approach, making it fairly "safe" in that respect at least. Only a million other disruptive ways it can affect society...

In the event of such a worm/virus, we forget actually do have a very effective nuclear option: switch off the computers and re-image them. Painful as it might be, we could even shut off or partition the global IP network temporarily if faced with such an existential threat.

We don't live in a sci-fi novel after all, and this distributed AI wouldn't be able to hide in a single machine, plotting against us. It would only be able to "think" as a giant networked cluster, something easy to detect and disrupt.

On the other side, MicMac which is by far the best free photogrammetry package, is developed by France's IGN and it's loaded with French comments, function and variable names etc...

However the English wiki has come a LONG way since I first had to try to figure it out, and while it's still much more of a box of tools and parts than a single click app, it's likely gone from "set of blueprints and sack of unsorted bolts" to "kit car with rolling chassis"

Always nice to meet another electrician on Lemmy!

Though we would consider that a pretty moderate position around here, as we often question whether plumbers even count as people.

code regarding time difference variables

Ugh, I HATE the pointless code required by the stupid time locales, DST, and how many languages force you to play along with it all when all you really wanted was an emulated hardware RTC so you could schedule a task to run 10 minutes from now.

Except when you lived in that zone you'd instinctively know the local hours within a week of the change. So you just need to tell the other guy "I'm working from 0300 to 1100 tomorrow, when are you free?" Without worrying which time zone to reference.

It also would give a path to abolishing DST, since the main reason it still exists is "because other places so it". Using a global time would allow local areas to implement DST or not based on their own preference, without affecting anyone else. I believe this would quickly lead to most places abolishing it.

Note that I live in Saskatchewan, one of the few DST-free zones in the world (well actually permanent DST, as we joined the time zone to our west) and it's annoying that the rest of the world is always goofing around with their clocks. It's one of those literally pointless traditions from the days of gas lamps.

Right? Maybe you've been inspired to do so by my rambling comment style. Which itself may be inspired by the fact that I'm drinking beer in the bath.

Monoxide is incredibly cheap to produce with a crappy farm truck or old tractor. You doing need to distill or concentrate anything, just a hose and the exhaust pipe and a couple hours of fuel for idling.

We used it to gas a nest of rats that had settled in under a grain bin floor. Only a couple rats popped out and they were dazed, the dogs quickly snacked them up. The rest expired rapidly.

A chicken barn is big and drafty but you could just use multiple tractors or detune them on purpose. Any engine running rich produces a lot of CO.

I got the exact same reply from someone last week, not exactly a discussion starter. So I was curious and sure enough it's the same guy!

However you did edit in some context here and indeed that's the problem with trying to filter out a single letter keyword... Though I doubt Elon had the sense to do it intentionally.

Oh shit, I replied to this guy again lol

Blockchain is yesterday's buzzword, it would just take up space where you could mention AI again. AI, the future of business! Powered by AI!

Starship launch tomorrow though, wouldn't want to miss out on hype because of something titled "Elon Musk's Starship Rocket" etc... I'm a big space nerd and while Elon is a dork this rocket will be a massive leap for everything space related if it works out.

Fuck X/Twitter though, sick of hearing about it for sure. I've heard rumours that SpaceX only does as well as they do because they have Shotwell running the show and they have Elon wranglers to keep him away from anything important...

Fuck them instant oats bro, they taste like glop, I made the change to overnight slow oats a month ago and that's both lazier and tastier. Never going back.

Put all the stuff in the bowl at night and put it in the the fridge. Leave that spoon in there too. In the morning just chow it down!

I use rolled oats, milk, dried cranberries, chia seeds and honey. I have bees out here on the farm and that wildflower honey is both effectively free and just exploding with flavour.

I'm not a morning person even slightly and will gladly take any opportunity to save 5 minutes and spend them in bed.

In Canada ain't nothing for cheap. Except the light bulb.

Jokes aside until Amazon started bringing us cheap crap there was no practical low cost alternative, aside from gutting a coffee pot or something. I fixed an old water trough once that was heated by a 240v stove element brazed to the stubs of the old 120v one that had burned out. 2kW / 4 = 500W which is about the right power level for this job.

Stove element from the dump $0, Canarm watering bowl element $70

Hex could even be A tier except...

• 10 million metric sizes
• 10 million imperial sizes
• heads get full of rust or dirt
• note that this makes it even harder to tell which damn size they are
• usually mild steel so they strip, especially when it turns out you're using imperial in metric and vice versa

Too many years of wrenching on old equipment has soured me on all except for the good old fashioned hex bolt (S tier) and Robertson (A tier).

Even slotted beats most of these if the steel is decent, scrape out the rust and whack it with an impact screwdriver. I've turned many torx and hex in particular into slotted over the years.

I've driven nothing but beaters and beater-adjacent vehicles all my life. Even though I can afford a nice vehicle now, I don't waste my money. Good test driving and mechanical skill goes a long way.

Oil in the coolant? Coolant in the oil? White smoke? Run away.

Knock? Walk away. Lifter tick? Ask to knock the price down, flush oil. You won't throw a rod bearing on a modern car because it was low on oil a year ago. If it somehow does, you bought a car for less than a car payment. If it lasted 2 months you're still ahead and now you have a parts car, get another.

Always head straight to the scrappers and grab an alternator and starter, put them in the trunk for when one of them eats shit.

Learn to spoon tires or make a friend with a tire machine. Tires are a huge expense and used ones / takeoffs are nearly free. Haven't bought a new tire in many years. Get a plug kit too.

Learn to recharge AC and identify a working compressor with no charge. Then hard ball on the price. "Broken" AC devalues the car terribly and is a $10 fix.

Standard transmission cars go for a song, especially with slipping clutch they are worthless, learn to change a clutch and you can have one for decades. My favorite beater was a 1985 Corolla I owned from the age of 16 to 26, bought for $400 sold for $600.

I saw a guy waving a sign to spread awareness, "God Hates Figs"

Or something like that

Windfall taxes are reactive and bad policy in general.

What we need is a return to pre-Reagan tax policy. Higher upper tax brackets, corporate taxes, and the closing of loopholes that allow the rich to hide their wealth offshore.

They are part of the 20%

Big lol. Doing unattended trades work is practically the definition of general AI, something we don't see happening any time soon.

Build prefab RTMs in a factory? Today, if the desire was there. Design the house around the line and build it like a car.

Run a new circuit from the basement to an upstairs bedroom, in an old house with weird idiosyncrasies? Not in our lifetimes. The combination of mapping, movement, intuition and the fact that something is guaranteed to go wrong and likely require rethinking the whole job makes this a very hard problem™.

Believe me if someone can invent a robot that can navigate a lumpy, rat infested crawlspace and install pipe/wires/insulation the apprentices of the world will be eternally grateful