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joined 9 months ago
[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 month ago

Concentrated solar and wind are a bit different though?

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 month ago

Afaik photovoltaics are fine running open circuit, i.e., disconnecting them. Thermal solar, and wind, are (I think) much trickier (but covering things for solar thermal, like you suggest, is perhaps feasible).

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 month ago (2 children)

No, unfortunately, you can't.

Ground doesn't typically dissipate power, rather, power is dissipated in the circuit/load


so if you just hook a wire to ground, you're dumping gobs of power into the wire. If you do this in your home (DON'T), best case it will trip the breaker, worst case it will melt and catch something on fire.

It's easy enough to burn a kilowatt


just boil some water. But it's entirely something else to burn megawatt, or yikes, gigawatt scale power.

[–] [email protected] 26 points 1 month ago (6 children)

We tend to use between 3kWh (vacation/idle power consumption) and around 8kWh per day. If we switched to electric stove, water heater, and heat pump, and add a hot tub, that'd increase substantially. But if we added solar (on our long Todo list...), the battery in the article (60kWh) would probably be able to handle all our storage needs, and it'd fit in he garage (bonus of it can be placed outside/under a deck!). I live in a major city, but I would absolutely love to effectively be off grid.

Exciting stuff


it seems these are touted as being extremely robust/safe, which is of course important for me if it's going to be in/near our house. Storage density not a huge concern, but price is somewhat important


let's hope this sort of thing ticks all the boxes.

[–] [email protected] 72 points 1 month ago (7 children)

Guy buying condoms? He's hoping to get some.

Guy buying tampons? He's definitely getting some.

[–] [email protected] 44 points 1 month ago

the fact is

Well there's your problem...

[–] [email protected] 14 points 1 month ago

And your VPN connection to work knows your endpoint...

Interestingly, there's another way of finding out if your coworker is in the office


just walk over to their desk.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 month ago (1 children)

The one I've heard replaces "brains" with "money."

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 month ago (1 children)

"Boston Elites"? I can't believe Tom Scholz and Brad Delp would do this :(

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Isn't this extremely genre dependent? And regardless, this has been going on for a long time.

The Supremes? Good looking gals (and great music IMHO).

Grateful Dead? Sure, rough around the edges.

The Doors? Um...ever seen a picture of Jim Morrison? Dude would make Derek Zoolander blush.

Out of curiosity, I asked Spotify for modern metal music, and I got The Black Dahlia Murder


frontman looks like a regular dude who I'd grab a beer with.

Yeah, modern pop places a ton of emphasis on looks, sure. But I think this has been pretty prominent in music for a very long time, be it the airbrushed R&B of the sixties, the androgynous glam of the eighties, or the metro sexual (guy)/model-esque looks of modern pop.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

It can be daunting to get into the hobby, there are a ton of niches.

To start: where are you? I'm in the USA, so that's where my experience is.

License: required to transmit on the ham bands; you can listen without a license.

Range: are you looking to talk to people in your city/region? If so, a cheap "walkie-talkie" style (called "HT" in the biz


best avoid "walkie-talkie") is a good place to start. These VHF/UHF (very/ultra high frequency) radios are affordable


something from Baofeng(~$30) or similar will work just fine, though they are often looked down on (I have one


for the price, it's great). You will have the most luck if there is an active ham scene in your area, in large part because they may have a repeater, which can greatly extend your range. Many regions will have scheduled "nets" where you just go around and chat.

If you're looking for the ability to chat with folks on the other side of the world, you'll want to look into HF (high frequency). This is much lower frequency, thus longer wavelength, than the handheld VHF/UHF HTs. So...the antennas take up a lot of space. Mine is 52 feet long, in the attic. And the radios are much more expensive (more like $1k new). ICOM 7300, Yaesu FT710 are popular entry level units (but you also need power supply, cables, and antenna).

That said: if you just want to listen to HF, the antenna doesn't matter as much at all, and you can use an SDR (RTL-SDR probably works?) for listening. You can probably also find a used shortwave radio that covers some of the HF ham bands.

[–] [email protected] 27 points 1 month ago (2 children)

As a long-time Debian user, I'd have to throw my vote behind Slackware for the title of most UNIX-y, which is I guess a bit different from most Linux-y.

Debian got me through grad school, but Slack got me through undergrad on a hopelessly underpowered old ThinkPad


Volkerding is a legend, and Slack will always be dear to my heart.

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