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frezik

@frezik@midwest.social

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frezik ,

About 20% of that US land is in Alaska, which is not a place to put solar panels. Not if you want them to produce for half the year at a stretch, anyway.

frezik ,

As in the definition of a cult, special language is used to divide us further and cut us off from one another.

Which definition of a cult is that? Because there is no scientific definition. There are models for high-control organizations (a term used specifically because "cult" has too much baggage for scientific methods), and language is only one aspect of information control. Every single organization on Earth will create its own language for things. That alone doesn't mean they're high-control.

I've been in a high-control organization. It doesn't work like that, and I think diluting the term to cover such broad categories is insulting to people who have been there.

frezik ,

I work primarily in a Long Tail language (languages don't die, but they have a long tail where usage slowly creeps away). I tell the business that we could ultimately solve all the problems with the platform except for one: finding new programmers to hire for it. That's what will ultimately force us to migrate. Doesn't have anything to do with cost or ability to take on new features or handle new ways of doing things.

frezik ,

It can be viewed as a success. A bridge or building that only lasts five years wouldn't be considered successful, especially if it took monumental effort to make it in the first place. For some reason, we don't value that in software.

frezik ,

As an outside observation, Germans seem to make things better than they need to be in a detrimental way. For example, we redid one of our bathroom showers using the Schluter Kerdi waterpoofing system. They have very specific instructions on how to space the screws, how to seal the screws, how to seal the edges, how to mix the thinset, and probably some other things I can't remember off the top of my head. They put it through a battery of tests, including going under 100' of water. Who needs that? Don't worry about it.

This stuff replaces cement board, which isn't strictly waterproof, at least not on its own. It's also significantly more expensive.

I do think it's worthwhile for a home DIYer to get. The instructions are clear and it's less likely you'll screw something up that could result in disaster. That said, this thing is just waiting for a Japanese company to come along and make something 90% as good for 50% of the price. That's basically what happened in the German vs Japanese car market, and there's already some products on this market like that.

frezik ,

It probably could. The trouble is getting training data for it. If you get that and one company becomes wildly successful off it, stockholders will demand everyone do it.

frezik ,

Looks like a classic sunk cost fallacy to me. They pay that money no matter if the offices are filled or not.

frezik ,

The implication is that when those leases come up over the next few years, office space will be cleared out, and we'll see companies give up on return to office mandates. We'll have a glut of commercial real estate to rezone and convert into residential apartments (either total rebuild or remodeling the existing space, depending on the building). Work from home should settle into a constant rate, perhaps even slowly growing as more workers come to expect it.

frezik ,

It's parroted because it's correct. It doesn't matter if companies own the building or not, because leases are often on 7 or 10 year terms--sometimes more. They're stuck paying that and associated baseline heating, electrical, etc. costs.

That's exactly how the Sunk Cost fallacy works. CEO's don't let it slip because nobody wants to admit they've fallen for a fallacy; that's assuming they recognize where they've gone wrong in the first place.

Conversely, look at what evidence they're providing that return to office mandates are better. Lots of vague statements about "ideas coming out of random encounters in the hallway" with no actual evidence to back it up. It's certainly none of the reasons they provide, so we should go looking for others. Sunk Cost of real estate fits their behavior pretty well.

frezik ,

How about we drop copyright terms to 30 years?

frezik ,

I was thinking Saturday morning cartoon that lasted 5 episodes.

frezik ,

The real monsters were airline executives the entire time.

frezik ,

I've setup a Ubiquiti system. There are two things to know:

  • For the cost of local storage, you are going to spend several years worth of subscription fees
  • The login is still controlled by Ubiquiti's cloud system, which has had its own problems in the recent past

Now, I think those are acceptable tradeoffs, but I think we should be clear about its limitations.

frezik ,

Lucas seems to grasp for that interpretation, but he's not politically savvy enough or a good enough writer to pull it off. Clone Wars fixes it.

Alaska Airlines CEO: We found “many” loose bolts on our Max 9 planes following near-disaster — “My demand on Boeing is what are they going to do to improve their quality programs in-house.” (www.nbcnews.com)

Alaska Airlines CEO: We found “many” loose bolts on our Max 9 planes following near-disaster — “My demand on Boeing is what are they going to do to improve their quality programs in-house.”::The CEO of Alaska Airlines said new inspections of the carrier's Boeing 737 Max 9 planes revealed that “many” of the aircraft...

frezik ,

Maybe build high speed rail instead of planes, and forget about Boeing? Yes, trains need quality control, too, but not to the same level as planes.

Former CEO of Google has been quietly working on a military startup for “suicide” attack drones. (www.forbes.com)

Former CEO of Google has been quietly working on a military startup for “suicide” attack drones.::The former Google CEO has been quietly working on a military startup called White Stork with plans to design “kamikaze” attack drones.

frezik ,

Yes, but more expensive.

'Our long-term objective is to make printing a subscription' says HP CEO gunning for 2024's Worst Person of the Year award | Not satisfied with merely bricking printers, HP now wants to own them al... (www.pcgamer.com)

'Our long-term objective is to make printing a subscription' says HP CEO gunning for 2024's Worst Person of the Year award | Not satisfied with merely bricking printers, HP now wants to own them al...::It was only the other day we reported how HP has been slapped with a lawsuit in response to measures that disable its printers...

frezik ,

For when I need to run off a new character sheet right now.

frezik ,

Keep waiting on open source printers. They are not easy. Even 300dpi monochrome takes a lot of precision, and that's not particularly impressive. Get even smaller and add color mixing? No.

Open source plotter, OTOH, could happen. I think there are some projects out there already.

frezik ,

Dust it out? Or is it one of those that isn't possible to open and maintain at all?

I've had old laptops perform almost like new when I remove the mat of hair on their heat sinks.

frezik ,

I played MP3s on a 486DX4 100MHz. Barely. If anything else happened in the background, it would stutter.

What do you guys do when you want to run unmaintained programs? (lemmy.world)

I recently wanted to run tegaki, and my experience is pretty much summed up by the meme. I consider myself fairly tech-savvy, but I just couldn't figure out how to compile it. So I just gave up, downloaded the .exe and put it into a fresh wine prefix. After installing CJK fonts, everything ran fine. Now I'm trying to get gpaint...

frezik ,

A lot of DirectX titles from that time period won't run. It's the biggest reason Wine on Windows makes sense.

frezik ,

I wish that 20 years ago, we had a serious discussion about emissions requirements. Catalytic converters increase CO2 output through a variety of direct and indirect means, but they reduce all other types of emissions. It would have been nice if we could have had an adult discussion about letting off some of those requirements in order to reduce CO2.

Not much point now.

frezik ,

Microsoft is actually looking at dedicated SMRs to run AI server farms, but could we fucking not?

frezik ,

There is growing scientific consensus that 100% renewables is the most cost effective option.

Grid storage doesn't have the same weight limitations that EVs do, which opens up a lot more paths. Flow batteries, for one, might be all we need. They're already gearing those up for mass production, so we don't need any further breakthroughs (though they're always nice if they come).

Getting to 95% is surprisingly easy; there are non-linear factors at work to getting that last 5%, but you wouldn't need to use other sources very much at all. The wind often blows when the sun doesn't shine. We have tons of historical weather data about how these two combine in a given region, which means we can calculate the maximum expected lull between the two. Double that amount and put in enough storage to cover it. This basic plan was simulated in Australia, and it gets there for an affordable cost.

Then we can worry about that last 5%.

Nuclear advocates have been using the same talking points since the 90s, and have missed how the economics have been swept out from underneath them.

frezik ,

Check the second link again. They were calculating how demand was met over time.

frezik ,

Nooooo, people keep telling me IPv6 will be insecure because of no longer having NAT.

Mostly people who don't know what a subnet is, but people.

frezik ,

There's a microbe that eats silicon and is a bitch for CPU factories. At some point, it had a conversation just like this.

frezik ,

Probably not even the tenth time.

frezik ,

https://insideevs.com/news/705075/uber-lyft-rideshare-electrify-america-charging-ev-disaster-chicago/

It was partially a failure in the charging networks to plan, and also rideshares where people were unfamiliar with EVs not knowing how to plan.

frezik ,

For 90% of driving, EVs are great in the winter. Even if it only had 100mi range, and it's so cold that it loses 40% of that, it's still better. You can get to work, do errands, and make it home to charge just fine.

Its going to warm up the cabin faster than an ICE. Not only that, but if you know when you're going to leave, you can set them to warm up ahead of time while still attached to the charger. You'll pop right in to a toasty warm cabin. Once you have that, you don't want to go back.

If the positions were swapped and ICE was a new thing, people would be writing op-eds about how cold they are for most of the drive to work.

frezik ,

All chemical reactions slow down in cold weather, including lead-acid cells. In extreme cold, everything is going to have issues. At least EVs have internal heaters that let you warm them up.

frezik ,

Only goes so far. The interface between the garage door and the frame of the house is difficult to seal perfectly. Always going to be drafty. Also, you can't put particularly thick insulation on the garage door.

frezik ,

They do. A garage with a closed door acts like an air gap, meaning you get some extra insulation for free. It's far from perfect, as the garage door itself can't have particularly thick insulation, and the interface between the door and the frame is difficult to seal completely. Still, even an uninsulated garage with a closed door will typically be a bit warmer than the outside in the winter.

frezik ,

Besides diesels, they're almost unheard of in the US. At least in the continental states; they might have them in the nastier parts of Alaska. Even there, a lot of the places where people actually live don't get that cold. Anchorage has an average low of -10C in January, which is cold, but not crazy cold.

frezik ,

Uhh, yes. You generally have it plugged in when it's in the garage. And there are lots of programs for getting a 240V circuit to your garage by either manufacutuers or your local power utility.

frezik ,

"But sometimes . . . "

90% of what 90% of people do can be served fine with an EV with everything as it exists right now. In fact, I find it's better. Maybe it can't be your only car. Your personal issues with the technology for your case is no reason to hold back the rest of society.

frezik ,

How many cars have them? They come by default in EVs, and to use it, you'd plug it in like you do all the time.

frezik ,

Yup. It was something like 90% of their revenue, but 25% of their profit.

frezik ,

They do seem to be winding down operations as a whole, though. It's a deliberate choice on the owner's part.

frezik ,

It sorta did, but pulled back. DaVinci tried selling printers that had chips in the filament spools and used the same razer blade business model as low end inkjets. Anet also sold printers that cut too many corners and they often caught fire.

Then Creality made the Ender 3. I unironically think it's a brilliant design. It cuts corners just enough to be cheap, but not so much that it's useless garbage. They had two issues early on: lack of thermal runaway protection in the firmware, and a bad connector to the power supply. Both were fixable by end users, and both have long been fixed in shipping models.

At the same time, companies like Prusa refused to join in that race to the bottom. Good for them. If you're an established player like that and already have a reputation for quality, never get involved in a race to the bottom. That's how you become what HP is now.

frezik ,

I had someone a while back arguing that FDM printers were hopelessly toxic and resin printers would be the only ones on the market within a year. Naturally, this was well over a year ago.

Resin printers have their uses, but man, they are a mess to use.

frezik ,

Rpi stock issues are well behind us. You can buy them straight up now. Even the 1GB RPi4.

Esp32 may not have enough RAM to buffer large prints, especially if there's a lot of graphics. It is possible to give it up to 4MB of external RAM, but that's still not much.

Pi Pico can do a 16MB external RAM chip. That's starting to be adaqute.

I had an HP 5si for a while with 20MB of internal RAM. It struggled with Postscript printing--could only buffer and print one page at a time. Did fine with HP's own PDL drivers, though.

frezik ,

Right. There isn't a printer under $150 that anyone should even consider. If you can't afford the upfront cost, then you won't be able to afford the ink of the "cheap" end of the market.

More people should consider not owning a printer at all and using a FedEx print shop or some such. I get the convenience argument for having one, but consider it.

frezik ,

It's really hard to break into it. Being accurate enough to print at 300dpi is very difficult, and that's not particularly impressive. If it's color, then the problems are multiplied. You have to precisely align four different print heads (minimum), and the ink needs to be mixed just right for accurate colors.

This is also why you don't see open source 2d printers like you do for 3d printers. On the surface, adding a third dimension seems like it'd make things more complicated, but 3d printers don't need the level of accuracy that 2d printers do.

frezik ,

Yeah, I used to think that way, but the first Trump term convinced me otherwise. There's clearly people in his orbit that are straight up evil and do not care.

frezik ,

Kissinger wasn't as smart as he wanted you to think. There were many instances where he'd just agree with whichever side was convenient to him at the time, but did it in a way that made him look smart. He didn't have any real beliefs beyond wanting to put Kissinger in charge of things.

frezik ,

They already have Jensen doing his own sound effects at conference presentations. Do we expect him to sell his leather jacket to keep the company afloat, too?

frezik ,

End user experience is mostly fine. The issues are in how they interact with kernel developers. Or, like, anyone else who doesn't work inside the company. They sniff their own bullshit and expect you to agree that it's a rose.

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