Yeah, my first thought on reading the article was that it didn’t detail his fire control systems..
They keep the power pack in a shed away from anything too flammable. They could lose the shed, but it would be unlikely to take the house with it.
Readit Newsextrapickles commented on Glubux's Powerwall (2016) secondlifestorage.com/ind... · Posted by u/bentobean
extrapickles commented on Going Nuts over NIST’s Standard Reference Peanut Butter (2016) nist.gov/blogs/taking-mea... · Posted by u/rbanffy
How is there going to be a lawsuit if there is no independent test?
In some industries companies regularly test their biggest competitors for compliance, then complain to the government if they don’t meet requirements.
extrapickles commented on What happened to the US machine tool industry? construction-physics.com/... · Posted by u/jseliger
Do lathes actually wear out? Machine tools are built like tanks and could probably last until the end of time, you just need to replace the bearings and motors occasionally.
The lathe ways (the guides/support for each axis) do wear out, but you can re-grind them to be flat again.
Usually you sell the machine at this point to someone who doesn’t need the precision and get a new machine.
extrapickles commented on IKEA sensors for doors and windows, motion, water leaks theverge.com/2023/11/28/2... · Posted by u/Terretta
You're braver than I am. I won't use Hue bulbs because I require that my automation setup fail gracefully back to plain old 'just works the way it used to' functionality. It'd be just my luck that the server, hub, or Internet would fail right when I needed the lights to work and I'd be stuck in the dark.
Hue bulbs by default emulate a dumb led bulb. This is configurable so you can have them be “dumb” in a way that you prefer, eg: customize color, brightness or do whatever you told them last.
I have several that some of the time I use a regular light switch to turn on/off and you wouldn’t know they weren’t standard led bulbs.
extrapickles commented on Brother have gotten to where they are now by not innovating retro.social/@ifixcoinops... · Posted by u/anotherevan
May I ask how the cartridge replacement works with Brother, and Laser printers in General?
I am quite annoyed after "breaking" two Inkjet printers in 5-6 years and want to buy a laser one this time, but am not sure how is the cartridge issue different between laser and inkjet. Do laser cartridges last longer? Is it less problematic to use non-original cartridges?
Toner cartridges generally last a few thousand pages and are much more tolerant of infrequent use than ink cartridges. Unlike Ink cartridges, laser cartridges don’t dry out or need to waste ink priming. The image drum does need to be occasionally replaced (not often, 10k+ pages), though if you tolerate defects in prints it can last longer.
How well non-original cartridges work is highly dependent on the printer model. Some have more complex authentication of the cartridges and others it’s a simple page counter.
The main downside is color is a significant increase in cost of the printer as fairly expensive pieces need to be duplicated for each color.
Just curious as to why a Mobius strip type arrangement is better than a toroid? Is it anything to do with the turbulence in the plasma flow being easier to control?
It primarily has to do with the physical construction of the magnets, in a toroid the inside of the toroid effectively has more windings per meter of circumference than the outside causing uneven containment.
With mobius strip you regularly flip between inside and outside, so the plasma particles get more even force applied.
From what I understand of this, the danger comes from charge stored in large capacitors. So what is the longest that these capacitors can hold a significant charge if the crt is left disconnected from mains power? Hours/days/weeks? Is simply waiting long enough a reliable way to render a crt safe to work on?
(Irrespective of the answer to this, there is no chance at all that I would ever mess with crt circuitry. But I am curious.)
If the discharge circuit is not present/functional, it can be months[1], even if the capacitor was discharged at one point.
When working with high voltage/power equipment, its best practice to keep the capacitors shorted while you are working to keep dielectric absorption from “recharging” the capacitor to 1-15% of its rated voltage.
[1]: https://academic-accelerator.com/encyclopedia/dielectric-abs...
extrapickles commented on Tuition costs have risen 710% since 1983 statecraft.beehiiv.com/p/... · Posted by u/armanhq
I generally see charts like this in relation to Baumol's cost disease, I'm surprised the linked article never mentions Baumol, but goes on to talk about government regulation and foreign competition.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baumol_effect (See also section on education https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baumol_effect#Education)
Basically as scalable goods and services get cheaper, non-scalable goods and services become relatively more expensive. In terms of hospital services and college tuition, this is a much more intuitive explanation than government regulation, although I'm open to more informed opinions.
If Baumol was solely the reason for increased prices, I expect the increase to be more in line with the increase in prices for hiring tradespeople or other professional services.
I can put an airtag in my suitcase and track it all over the world but railroad operators can't pit bearing temperature sensors on their tank cars full of methlamine?
They don’t need to even do that, just occasionally send the train past a thermal camera and look for wheels that are warmer than average.
extrapickles commented on The cold hard truth about electric vehicles in winter axios.com/2022/03/04/the-... · Posted by u/hhs
I'm curious, is 220V (or 230V) more than twice as fast/twice as good as 110V? The discussion here makes it sound like it. All I know is that you'll need higher amperage with lower voltage, but it can compensate proportionally. I guess heat losses and other problems are significant, if it's a problem at 110V?
It’s more than twice as losses are lower boosting 220v to the 400v or 800v the pack actually needs.
As an example, a charger in some EVs is 87% efficient when charging from 120v and the same charger is 94% efficient when charging from 240v.