My headcanon for The Matrix’s “humans are batteries” is that it’s the machines’ perverse interpretation of this — killing the humans is off the table, and for whatever reason letting them live with no purpose to serve the machines is also disallowed. But giving their lives “meaning” in the form of a shitty (and thermodynamically dubious) “battery” somehow satisfies the rules.
It’s a very big stretch, I’ll admit…
I’m guessing it’s because the developers either have a different speciality that they focus on, are employed to support specific hardware, or both.
Just stick to elements lighter than iron and you’ll be fine.
Just use your $200+ Fluke to check the batteries, problem solved.
You can also take a fairly selfish view and come to the same conclusion. Like, I don’t want to see homeless encampments, or really sick and untreated people, or panhandlers, or (…) while I’m walking around in my city. I can solve this problem by 1) moving to a nice suburb, or 2) having my tax dollars go to fix a problem that affects me. 1) is off the table because I want to live in the city, and 2) — while it helps the greater good — also helps me directly. (2 can also be addressed in a draconian fashion, which is not what I’m advocating at all.)
I think one problem is looking at things as zero sum. It’s not. If you are healthy and housed and fed then you’re not — to be very crass — an eyesore, you’re adding to the fabric of the city. I want street musicians who are playing for fun, not because they’re trying to make enough to afford dinner.
Handy back-of-the-envelope is that a year is about pi*10^7 seconds.
Also…hate to be the guy to mention leap years but…
If you have a TV, you likely already have the receiving device. Antenna can cost, or you can play around with wire length and orientation.
It’s mostly so that I can have SSL handled by nginx (and not per-service), and also for ease of hosting multiple services accessible via subdomains. So every service is its own subdomain.
Additionally, my internal network (as in, my physical LAN) does not have any port forwarding enabled — everything is over WireGuard to my VPS.
I am devastated that I got rid of my 2000s HP LaserJet (with Ethernet). Only flaw it had was that it didn’t have a duplexer.
My method:
VPS with reverse proxy to my public facing services. This holds SSL certs, and communicates with home network through WireGuard link configured on my router.
Local computer with reverse proxy for all services. This also has SSL certs, and handles the same services as the VPS, so I can have local/LAN speeds. Additionally, it serves as a reverse proxy for all my private services, such as my router/switches/access point config pages, Jellyfin, etc.
No complaints, it mostly just works. I also have my router override DNS entries for my FQDN to resolve locally, so I use the same URL for accessing public services on my LAN.
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.
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.
The one I’ve heard replaces “brains” with “money.”
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.
Nah, no hard feelings towards the retail folks, they’re doing what they’re supposed to. It’s just that I wish the corporate incentives were different so it felt more like the staff were trying to help.
My only complaint with microcenter is that the commission in incentives come off as extreme. Like I will be walking around with something in my hand and a rando will come up to me, say “hey there boss, lemme just slap this on that for you,” and proceed to put a sticker on it with their ID. Not a big deal, but palpable, and makes it harder to just browse.
Yeah, I get that people feel like they have so little control over their lives that they feel the need to generally be passive aggressive assholes to people they deem unworthy, but this is just an overall dick move. Having working public/municipal plumbing is a good thing.
Getting TLS certs will be complicated
I just use Let’s Encrypt with a wildcard domain — same certs for public and private facing domains. I’m sure this isn’t best practice, but it’s mostly just for me so I’m not too worried :)
Remote backup server would be my suggestion.
Configure it with a VPN to talk to your home network and set it up at a trusted friend’s or family’s place.
I do this with a raspberry pi and an external HDD that takes daily/weekly/monthly snapshots, with daily rsync. Works nicely for me.