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bentpins

303 karma · joined April 29, 2015

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bentpins··on A loophole used by Shein/Temu to ship packages to US tax-free (2024)
I live in New Zealand - until 2019 things used to work this way for us too. A law was introduced to require overseas sellers selling more than $60,000 NZD/year into New Zealand to collect pay our Goods and Services Tax. Now Amazon/Temu/AliExpress others all collect 15% NZ GST at the checkout. It's pretty seamless as a buyer, just that GST is not usually shown until checkout unlike domestic sites. https://www.ird.govt.nz/gst/gst-for-overseas-businesses/gst-...
bentpins··on Kowloon Walled City: Heterotopia in a Space of Disappearance (2013)
Before it was a settlement it was a military base. It did have walls protecting until 1940, where under WW2 Japanese occupation they were demolished. The name stuck even after. The south gate of the wall remains as part of Kowloon Walled City Park

You can see an illustration of the wall in the infographic here http://archive.today/2omPT

bentpins··on Should the Hawthorn Be Saved?
https://earthtoveg.com/chinese-hawthorn-candy-haw-leather/

The Chinese Hawthorn is used in a few snacks. I really like the fruit leather you can buy in Asian supermarkets. My math teacher from High School got me interested in both math and Chinese snacks, and it was really nice to see him get excited about sharing both with us. It'd probably work with American haw berries too - but the pitting would be a lot of extra work as they are smaller.

bentpins··on Meteor seen in Portugal
I was curious whether handling them directly is a good idea. There's some guidance here: https://ares.jsc.nasa.gov/meteorite-falls/how-to-handle-mete...

Try not to handle any freshly fallen meteorites with your bare hands! Oils and microbes from your skin will slowly degrade the surface of a meteorite, dulling the fusion crust, contaminating the meteorite, and promoting rust. The contamination aspect is especially important for carbonaceous meteorites and other uncommon types.

bentpins··on Flying kites deliver container-sized power generation
You're not wrong - they do that.

Have a look at https://thekitepower.com/products/ There's a diagram of the flight path and power generation over the cycles.

The flight path on the way out is much much longer going cross wind in figure 8s. On the pull back in it's a direct path back in, and it looks the kite shifts to point back at the base station more so there's a ton less resistance than on the way out.

bentpins··on Dick Smith’s Wizzard-ry 8 (Bit)
I have fond memories of Dick Smith. My dad bought my first soldering iron, along with some soldering projects (I remember the FM Wireless Microphone from here https://ia801002.us.archive.org/3/items/dicksmithsfunwayinto... ). You could tell the people creating the kits were really keen to share their love of electronics.

You could buy loose components out of trays, and it seemed like they had a bunch more unusual adapters and gadgets that wouldn't interest a typical consumer. But they gradually became just a retailer for big brand items.

bentpins··on Native American restaurants
HIAKAI in New Zealand has done really well taking indigenous (traditionally foraged) Māori ingredients and turning them into a fine dining experience. I'd love to see what a similar take could look like with Native Indian cuisine. https://www.hiakai.co.nz/food
bentpins··on Squirrel stores thousands of nuts inside man's parked truck
Can confirm. Went on a trip NZ->UK and was fascinated. They're so twitchy, fast and inquisitive, and so furry. They are legitimately as interesting to watch to me as almost any zoo animal.
bentpins··on Kid Pix as a JavaScript App
You can add the CSS rule "filter: grayscale(100)" to the body if it helps. I have no idea how black and white monitors worked though, I would guess they'd have less than 8 bits of brightness info?
bentpins··on Link shorteners: the long and short of why you shouldn’t use them
Oh absolutely. So many dead links scattered around the net. It's gotten so bad an independent group Archive Team are brute forcing URL shortners so these links aren't lost to time. Just look at how long the list of dead shorteners is https://wiki.archiveteam.org/index.php/URLTeam#Dead_or_Broke...

72,287,136,510 links scanned, 14,632,045,317 shortened URLs archived. If you are interested it's easy to run their docker image to help with this and other archival projects.

bentpins··on Neural networks emulate any guitar pedal for $120
How huge is the latency? It's using Elk Audio OS, claiming 1ms roundtrip. I doubt this usage gets that low but I wouldn't be surprised if it was doing alright
bentpins··on WHO List of Essential Medicines
If you're curious what categories they fit into here's Wikipedia's list https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WHO_Model_List_of_Essential_Me...
bentpins··on An update on Android's audio latency
Xiaomi has hit 480hz touch sampling with the Mi 11. It looks possible in hardware and in software, someone just has to manage to perfect both in the same phone
bentpins··on Dutch brewery burns iron as a clean, recyclable fuel
One nice thing is that in brewing it can be used to generate heat for boiling during brewing rather than converting to electricity first. They mention a furnace but not a generator. 81% of Dutch power is fossil fuel based, if you have an environmental concern about that and it's good press why not.
bentpins··on A Note about Spotify Transfers
Hm right. I am fairly sure it was on the homepage. It's still inside the app and I managed to do a transfer out no worries. I would guess they are in the process of removing it? https://soundiiz.com/tutorial/spotify-to-apple-music
bentpins··on A Note about Spotify Transfers
Another playlist migration service is https://soundiiz.com/

I've been really happy with it. They haven't implemented any restrictions around exporting from Spotify yet. Might be helpful if you'd like to jump ship

bentpins··on Teacher's low-tech laptop hack to display handwritten notes for online class
Some rainbow diffraction I guess. It has been a long time since I've used a CD https://www.google.com/search?tbm=isch&q=cd
bentpins··on Teacher's low-tech laptop hack to display handwritten notes for online class
Didn't mean to come across as a troll, this is how I remember CDs, with rainbow diffraction. https://www.google.com/search?tbm=isch&q=cd
bentpins··on Teacher's low-tech laptop hack to display handwritten notes for online class
Maybe I'm missing something but how is the image so clear? CDs don't have a mirror like surface, they reflect light in unusual ways
bentpins··on Snake in a QR Code
Nintendo back in 2001 came out with the e-Reader that would plug into a Gameboy Advance and read cards with data printed on them. You'd have to scan a few "stripes" of data, but it there were several NES games that you could run if you had the right cards. The cards held the data for the games, rather than them being already on the cartridge https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nintendo_e-Reader
bentpins··on Generating weird cooking recipes with TensorFlow
Reminds me of Chef Watson, the recipes and directions that generated were supposed to be plausible https://www.welcome.ai/tech/food/ibm-chef-watson
bentpins··on Elon Musk reopening Tesla factory despite Alameda County order
https://edition.cnn.com/2020/04/25/us/chickens-depopulated-d...

It's not really doable from what I've been seeing. The animals grow to big and living conditions worsen

bentpins··on Xiaomi Recording ‘Private’ Web and Phone Use
It's a little bit of an ordeal - you have to request a bootloader unlock and then wait two weeks. But doable.
bentpins··on Snowpack: Build a web application without a bundler
It does minify when using the --optomize flag https://www.snowpack.dev/#optimizing-for-production I am curious about SASS and other loaders too.
bentpins··on Smart TVs sending sensitive user data to Netflix and Facebook
That or it could be sending only a fingerprint (still a privacy issue, but less severe)
bentpins··on Smoke point of cooking oils
Maybe if you had the wood half be encased in a tungsten shell?
bentpins··on FAA Bans Recalled Apple Laptops from Flights
Is it possible to identify a laptop that has had the replacement?
bentpins··on How to Measure Indoor Air Quality with a Raspberry Pi, RuuviTags and PMS7003
$64 on AliExpress. Pandacheck is a good tool for price comparison although it doesn't help deal with listings with multiple prices https://www.aliexpress.com/item/32970668564.html https://en.pandacheck.com
bentpins··on Pineapple Day: How I Started a Global Holiday
I think this holiday would be an excellent candidate for Mondayization - it's unfortunate it lands on a Saturday next year https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Mondayize#English
bentpins··on Why Was Mini USB Deprecated in Favor of Micro USB?
A fair amount of phones the charging port as a modular component or on a replaceable charging board. Makes fixing this issue cheap/easy
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