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cynar

@ cynar @lemmy.world

Posts
2
Comments
457
Joined
3 yr. ago

  • If you could become a character and enter any universe and that becomes your permanent life what universe would you pick?

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  • It's a book series. It's a semi utopia based sci-fi. The culture is an amalgam of species (including human). It's run by "minds" hyper powerful AIs. Humanity is akin to pet dogs. A mix of pampered and useful.

    Basically, humans live in a life of luxury and choice. Changing genders, or even species is very common. Immortality is mostly a logistics and boredom issue.

  • Steam On Linux Use Skyrocketed In March - More Than Double The macOS Gaming Marketshare

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  • 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.

  • Cloudless Smart Home: Thread, Zigbee, ...

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  • 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.

  • 'No Kings!' 8 Million Rally Against Trump in Largest Single-Day Protest in US History | Common Dreams

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  • It needs a trifecta. Protests, Politics, and "Persuasion".

    The protests give weight to the political group. They also give cover and a place to organise for harder actions.

    The political elements act to focus the will of the protestors, and provide guidance to the agitators.

    The "Persuasion" group add teeth to the political demands. They also act to defend the protestors, when the government gets aggressive.

    The 3 need to work together to achieve major changes. "The Troubles", in northern island are a good example. The IRA didn't achieve much/anything practical. What they did was force the UK government to sit down and negotiate in (vaguely) good faith. The protests and marches acted to show large scale support for the changes.

    Against an intelligent, aware government, the need for violence is implicit, rather than explicit. It's a lot better to engage early and diffuse political hot potatoes. Unfortunately, the US government doesn't seem like they will take the hints.

    The marches should be used to crystallise the other 2 requirements. A political agency, to act as a voice. As well as those willing to go further, to act as the muscle.

  • What is something that desperately needs to be standardized?

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  • A lot of vehicles have a beam dip adjuster in the cab. Mine pops out when I press the center of the light control selector.

    Officially, they are to correct for a heavy load in the back. Unofficially, if you tweak them, you can flip between longer range, and polite as required.

    If you watch your lights, there should be a fairly sharp cut-off at the top of their coverage. If that line ever hits a window or mirror, it will look like you are flashing them. If it's too high, either fix it yourself (generally quite easy) or get it fixed.

  • What is something that desperately needs to be standardized?

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  • I'll just be happy when we phase out imperial and other weird thread types. Metric standardisation is a godsend over what came before.

    The heads are a lost cause. They serve too many different purposes, with differing, competing, requirements.

  • Hamster IT

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  • Mice used to have a mechanical ball in the bottom. You needed to remove it periodically to clean out the gunk that formed on the rollers. When optical mice appeared, they steadily replaced the old style. It became an IT joke. Mice with balls were male. Optical mice were female.

  • Looking for a printer. Whats your opinion?

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  • It was a mountain out of a molehill situation. Basically, brother toner cartridges can do an internal calibration to fix minor alignment issues. For off brand toner, it needs to be done manually. It had been that way for a while. The original author just got some particularly misaligned cartridges and "discovered" this.

    Other than that, I've seen no signs of enshitifcation from Brother. I ended up buying a brother colour laser not long afterwards, and have been quite happy so far.

  • Hamster IT

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  • Old stock, or is someone still making them?

  • [Trump] Administration to Convene ‘God Squad’ With Power to Override Environmental Law | The meeting, planned for this month, will focus on oil and gas drilling in the Gulf of Mexico.

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  • Hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy had it right. The Galactic President did all the PR events, but had no actual powers. The real decisions were made by a guy, living in a shed, who didn't believe the rest of the universe existed, when he couldn't see it.

  • Hamster IT

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  • Computer mice is an area where females have completely displaced males.

    I've not seen a male mouse at work in a long time.

  • send thoughts and peer review

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  • There's some evidence that mammals never lost the ability. Unfortunately, our scarring response is massively faster and locks wounds down.

    A few years back, they engineered mice to lack a gene, to find out what it did. Initially, someone got in trouble for not properly marking the modified mice (via holes in their ears). They later discovered the holes healed completely, including regenerating fur etc.

    Unfortunately, it also makes recovery from larger wounds difficult, since without a scarring response they don't close quickly.

  • Lmao

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  • 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.

  • Do you feel that use of generative AI and LLMs is ever justifiable? If so, when and where? If not, why not?

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  • That's how AI systems should be used. A "heads up, something weird here" system.

    I could also see it being used well like this for patient history analysis. Often a doctor is treating 1 symptom of something larger. They can't see the wood for the trees. An LLM could pick out oddities and flag them. The doctor can then filter out the mistakes and hallucinations, but be alerted to rare or unusual conditions that match the patient's symptoms and history.

  • Innovation

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  • If you figure it out, let me know. That sounds fun to play with.

  • Easy-to-use solar panels are coming, but utilities are trying to delay them

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  • 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.

  • Easy-to-use solar panels are coming, but utilities are trying to delay them

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  • 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.

  • "Modern" problems require modern solutions

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  • Older PCs couldn't always boot from CD. In those cases, you needed a boot disk. It had just enough OS to get the cd drive working and allow for a full install. They also allowed for basic repair or maintenance tasks e.g. resizing the windows partition.

    Veterans kept a couple about at home. Nothing like the catch 22. "I need a boot disk to fix my PC/I need my PC to make a boot disk."

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  • Combustion engines will likely have a place for a long time. Large equipment just doesn't do well on battery power. They can't get the required runtime. Also, in places where they are used, electrical power is often limited.

    Hydrocarbons are an excellent way of storing energy. We will also need to overproduce renewables, to keep grids stable. Synthetic hydrocarbons could be a good solution to both issues. Currently, they are nowhere close to competing with fossil fuels, but that will change in time.