evranch @ evranch @lemmy.ca

Posts

2

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465

Joined

2 yr. ago

Because writing a knockoff book takes time and effort, and getting an AI to do it does not.

The same question applies to many fields. Why get AI to write a plagiarized tweet or Reddit comment? It's a lot less effort than a book, yet both platforms are plagued with bot comments.

I'm curious what the actual source is. CFCs are practically obsolete and there is no point in producing them when HCFCs are cheap and hydrocarbon refrigerants are practically free. You'd think China would be using R290 and R600a in any new builds since they're so cost sensitive. You can even straight swap R290 to replace R22 if they want to use old compressors or something.

I'm wondering if this is a pile of old refrigeration equipment that was dumped and shipped to China, and is now being scrapped in an irresponsible manner or just corroding and leaking. I'm sure there's loads of R11/12/22 out there, as R12 refrigerators are still regularly dropped off at our local scrap pile here in Canada.

I wonder if these high costs are due to it being passenger rail inside a major city. I'm curious if this cost applies to freight rail as well.

Out here in the countryside it seems that a mile of freight rail should be worth much less than a mile of highway. Everything from easement size to site prep, equipment needed and bill of materials seems a fraction of that required for highway construction.

As mentioned elsewhere the maintenance is minimal compared to a highway as well, with the trains plowing snow themselves and the rails being very hard-wearing. The only work we ever see them doing on the rail lines is occasionally replacing sleepers and fixing up the road crossings - and it's heavy trucks that ruin those, not the trains.

Lol indeed. Lack of basic math skills is part of the reason workers get the shaft every time.

Successive raises compound, they don't multiply.

100 * 1.0877 * 1.0877 * 1.0877 * 1.0877 = 140... There's your 40% raise.

Or as the math nerds like to put it, 1.0877^4

Not like lately lately, prices were so bad for so long. Got a supplier you could recommend?

I had hoped to start by building a pack for my small car using something like b-grade prismatics or good salvage cells from batteryhookup.com.

Currently running 8kWh of lead-acid which as we know might as well be around 3kWh usable. Going to lithium would really make a car out if it, but the car itself is a weird old thing and not worth much so I don't want to invest a ton into it.

You can't get any of the stuff Will uses in Canada unfortunately, nobody will ship it here. We have overly strict regulations on importing bare lithium cells.

Here in Canada prices have stayed stubbornly high. It's the Canadian way.

I have panels that I bought for under $0.50/watt that they were clearing out at the local wholesaler years ago. Haven't been able to find anything even near that price range since, and I'm an electrician with access to wholesale pricing.

I have found some decent prices recently but they're all on full pallet lots. So you need to be a business dedicated to solar installs to get a fair price, and those businesses obviously don't pass the savings on as that's not the Canadian way.

Batteries are an even worse situation! If you live here and want storage, I hope you like lead-acid.

It's usually permanent pasture grazing that's mixed with solar panels. Take low value land that doesn't support the use of large equipment, add value with panels and get free shade for livestock.

make a bloody mess of it

Personally I've been advocating for the "shitload of explosives" method. It doesn't get much more humane than being blown to a red mist in milliseconds, and the audience would love it.

Medicalized death sentences like the lethal injection seriously creep me out. Even a murderer deserves to face death with dignity, not strapped to a table and injected with poison.

Already did ages ago, no value to me. I farm and do many other things, mostly outdoors. I watch TV and movies during snowstorms or heat waves. Often I'll be gaming, programming, designing systems, soldering etc. instead when stuck inside.

As such I don't need a steady stream of entertainment and I can wait for everyone else to point out the exceptional content. And once I know what I'm looking for it's ⛵☠️ time

Thanks for your input, C# is a language I never really considered but it does sound like a good middle ground and possibility a good successor to Python for her. Very popular, powerful and a better approach to a "true OOP" language than Java IMO. Though as you state modern Java has come a long way from its origins.

overusing global/shared variables

I see you've been reviewing my Python code, lol. The structure of the language does lend itself to using globals as a shortcut when they shouldn't be... And as a primary embedded dev I will admit that I'm already a heavier user of globals than most. But I agree being able to declare global variables inside a function is pretty gross, as is the scoping/declaration issue where you can easily end up with global and local variables with the same name without even throwing a warning.

if you are trying to learn software engineering it is not a good language to start out with

Curious what options you would suggest instead? I'm an old C/++ embedded diehard, but I do use Python and have been considering it as the next step for my 9yo daughter after Scratch.

Python feels like the modern replacement for Basic that I grew up with as a kid. Interpreted, garbage collected, good library support, sane typing and not too wordy or confusing. Lots of options to do fun things with it from games to robots.

IMO for a young beginner the C-likes are too strict and segfault-y, Perl is too permissive and could breed sloppy habits, Basic is obsolete, all the web languages are way too application specific, I haven't had a chance to get into Rust yet, and fuck Java as a matter of principle lol.

I'm still trying to figure out how to use Docker with an unstable prefix (hey Docker, this is as much your problem as the ISPs, honestly) as any of the v6NAT solutions I've found that enable the same full containerization available on IPv4 all require you feed the Docker daemon a fixed prefix on startup. Frustrating.

I'm also tired of reading posts about v6NAT being irrelevant because half of the point of containers is the interchangeability, Docker containers aren't supposed to be routable unless you intentionally put them on the host network! Docker just needs to work the same on v4 and v6!

Tor as a hole puncher is an intriguing idea but I don't think I would use it for something customer facing... Too many moving parts. We like to use Wireguard and a tiny cloud VPS instance when someone needs to punch into an unreliable network around here.

Product placement has got to the point where if a YouTuber genuinely wants to recommend a product he's got to be like "seriously guys I didn't get paid for this and I even paid my own money for this welder, this is not a sponsorship, I just think it's really good and you should check it out"

Your last paragraph is why we've heavily used the cloud here in rural Canada for years.

Monitoring data is much easier to push into the cloud and read from there than it is hope for a reliable connection to a farm or rural plant.

Self-hosted services need to be cloud hosted for uptime and because it was getting ever harder to get a routed IPv4 address from any provider. IPv6 is nice to finally have, but Starlink is the only provider at all supporting it and it's only been a few months at that. Their prefixes change constantly too, come on guys get your shit together.

Even basic remote access systems require a VPS or VPN cloud service as you always need both ends to punch out through layers of CGNAT. Now we can finally have one end available through IPv6 but the remote user is often trying to use a IPv4 CGNAT network to connect... So you still need something in the cloud to punch holes.

Can't believe it's been over 20 years for the IPv6 rollout

The "reusable" bags sold at supermarkets in Canada at least are really shitty. You're lucky to get 5 uses before the handles rip off or groceries punch right through the flimsy plastic fabric.

If you're serious about reusing bags you buy your own well made bags, but if you forgot to bring them or made an impulse buy congratulations, you now own a set of overpriced, very low quality bags... At least you'll be rid of them in a week or two lol

I use them for tasks like giving away vegetables from my garden but honestly that was a fine use for the "non-reusable" bags, we reused them constantly. They even got recycled into deck boards, the new "reusable" ones just end up in the dump.

Possibly even more significant, those are some large cables and even larger contacts required. There's no way a 1MW disconnect is just a little plug you stick into your car.

In fact as an electrician I can't think of anything even near megawatt class that would be connected with a portable cord, or at a voltage that would be safe for consumers to handle.

Maybe someone in the mining industry or similar can chime in, but I currently run a pumping station that includes 3000HP motors (2.2MW). These are 4kV 3 phase units where each phase cable is as thick as your arm. All connections are bolted and taped to avoid corona discharge. Just dragging the cable to the car would be more than the average driver could handle.

I don't see a way to get these power levels into a car short of a standardized and semi-automated docking system. Or maybe go back to the idea of standard swappable batteries where the battery then is charged rapidly for the next customer.

As the other commenter said, it's all about depth of discharge. A 10kWh Lifepo4 bank gets you almost 10kWh every time while you should treat a 10kWh lead-acid bank as if it was a 2kWh bank for any sort of decent life, with deep discharges being limited to emergency situations.

All lithium chemistries are practically maintenance free while you are probably familiar with water level monitoring and equalization of lead acid.

Note that all site built lithium banks MUST have a balance mechanism as this is their "automated maintenance". Without balancing on every charge, lithium cells will be rapidly destroyed.

Clearly you aren't old enough to remember why Usenet faded away in the first place. It was the first platform to drown in an endless torrent of spam and low quality posts

"Deep cycle" batteries are the best of the lead-acids for the task. But they are still obsolete and you should source lithium if at all practical.

However if power interruptions are short, loads are low or you have an external power source like solar or wind, inferior batteries can do the job.

I use a bunch of old car batteries at my house for my battery bank. It's more of a big capacitor, but it's almost always sunny here and kW of solar are pouring in.

My critical equipment i.e. starlink, home and farm automation and monitoring, cell booster and HMI/SCADA only take a couple hundred watts, so no big deal. Most of the solar power goes to keeping the freezers cold.