surfaceofthesun

I wish these machines would just stay slightly open when off. I leave mine open when it's not in use and haven't had an issue. If it makes you feel any better, our cats have never gone inside the washer. They're much more interested in sneaking behind the machine.

I will note that when I forget and leave clothes after a wash for more than a day, they do get a slight mildew smell. The same thing happens with the top loader at my in-laws. Another wash gets rid of it in both cases.

Given the choice between a front loader or top loader without an agitator, the front loader wins easily. They use less water and do a much better job cleaning.

I will note that the locking mechanism on my LG is quite strong. I tried to get past the safety lock (for high-temp washes) but couldn't get in. And in the case of catastrophic failure, you'll have much less water (and weight) to deal with vs the top load.

Yes. Solar thermal heaters on the roof are common in Florida and other parts of the south. Some people also use heat recovery devices attached to the AC condenser. Further north I've only seen natural gas heating (e.g. in very rich NYC exurbs). The amount of shade over the pool has a big effect.

That may require retrofitting the plants to use open loop cooling instead of closed loop. That would increase water consumption.

What's the benefit of using sha256 for a repository?

I’m in a similar boat. The USB to SATA adapter has kept my 5.25” drive going for quite a few years.

Some of my discs are hitting a decade and I am about to create a new set of backups. The market is smaller but the portable blu ray drives are becoming the default now.

So far I’ve just kept extra discs on hand plus a backup portable drive. Hopefully blu ray discs will manage to stick around as long as writable dvds.

I recall being surprised that 2.4 GHz was completely unusable in an upper west side apartment. <56k throughput and >1000 ms latency.

You can't discount Baumol's cost disease. While it's true that government regulation is some part of it, like real declines in home building productivity in the previous decade or two, that certainly is not the root of the problem. Beyond limits to theoretical growth in productivity for these areas, there absolutely are perverse incentives in all of those industries.

For example, 40% of corn in the US goes towards <10% of of gas via ethanol. Even without subsidies, refiners would likely use some ethanol because it's a cheap octane booster. Insurers weren't regulating healthcare prices before the ACA and now face a profit limit tied to payouts -- which creates another perverse incentive. Doctors are incentivized to specialize instead of entering family medicine. They're also incentivized to run more tests defensively because they charge more and it reduces liability for malpractice.

Even in areas that are more builder-friendly, there is still incentive to build denser housing (which is more efficient) that maximizes return per sq ft. So you get studios, 1 bedroom, and 2 bedroom homes. And larger homes (built outside of onerous zoning areas) that more amenable to raising families end up creating unsustainable costs for local municipalities through sprawl.

Some of these areas can be addressed by a free market but maintaining a healthy market that minimizes perverse incentives requires significant tweaking (i.e. regulations)

This completely ignores Friedman's concept of the velocity of money (MV = PY). If that $15k is being saved by someone versus immediately spent, that has a different effect. A transfer isn’t neutral if the two parties have different propensities to consume (marginal propensity to consume). Similarly how quickly and what the money is being spent on will have an effect. Most money (M2) is not created directly by the treasury but rather indirectly from large banks lending against fractional deposits. This is money created on the balance sheets of banks but has real effect on the economy.

I posted about this above [1]. But the gist is that the most significant subsidies for private car ownership are indirect like parking minimums.

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[1] -- https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43988252

It's likely correct that mass transit is directly subsidized at a greater percentage than any specific aspect of private car ownership. However, there are significant indirect subsidies due to the centrality of private cars that not only dwarf transit subsidies, but simultaneously make transit less economical.

A simple example is minimum requirements for parking. Almost every home and business is paying more for additional space that cars take up. This means less people in catchment areas for different types of transit.

Transit agencies are also capable of demand response. For example, you'll see more articulated busses at peak times in Austin. Also, large transit stops are used as queues to maintain consistent headways.

A great example of this in action happens each year for the Austin City Limits Festival [1]. A few routes have substantially more busses during those two weekends to deal with a couple hundred thousand extra passengers.

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[1] -- https://support.aclfestival.com/hc/en-us/articles/4405461498...

I'm not sure if that applies to Fiber connections. I had my own fun with a firmware update causing latency issues with ATT Fiber's gateways that was fixed several months later [1]. I was using the combo ONT + Router originally and had to switch to dedicated ONT.

I ended up extracting 802.1x certificates with this[2] or a similar tool and interfacing directly with the ONT using OPNSense [3]. I was so angry I filed an FTC complaint because I had to do this bypass to do my job (the latency was so bad).

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[1] -- Linking to Reddit due to DSLReports going Down. https://www.reddit.com/r/ATTFiber/comments/1dwwh61/comment/l...

[2] -- https://github.com/0x888e/certs

[3] -- https://forum.opnsense.org/index.php?PHPSESSID=t6vvukft2ahga...

This is a perfectly reasonable response during normal presidential administrations. However, this administration is credibly[1] accused of avoiding due process via the current deportation process.

I'll include a quote from the (9-0!) April 10th Supreme Court ruling[1] concerning the removal of Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia from the United States to El Salvador.

> The Government’s argument, moreover, implies that it could deport and incarcerate any person, including U. S. citizens, without legal consequence, so long as it does so before a court can intervene.

Without a chance to demonstrate that someone is in the US legally (i.e., Due Process), the defense of this action can be that it's necessary to prevent the rendition of US citizens to El Salvador or elsewhere. That might sound crazy, but we already have an example of a US citizen being held in custody per an ICE request, despite having proof of being born in the US[2]. If both practices continue, we'll ultimately see the intersection at some point.

--- [1] -- https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/24pdf/24a949_lkhn.pdf

[2] -- https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/a-u-s-citizen-was-held...

I’m pretty sure the conventional wisdom suggests inflation happens when countries don’t pay down their debt.

Increased money supply isn’t the only cause of inflation (e.g., stagflation). Uncertainty about how to price goods—especially for goods in the middle of supply chains—could cause supply disruptions. It’s a self-inflicted version of the Covid supply disruptions.

I believe that's what this project aims to do: https://github.com/TecharoHQ/anubis

I was able to run Age of Empires 2 on Windows 11. It didn't like running on an ultrawide, but it worked well enough at smaller resolutions.

This feels true for other Microsoft products, but not VSCode. Besides, they embedded Python into Excel (for 365 users) over Typescript or C#.

It's not that the US will respond to every crisis, but that it's much easier to do so when you have resources nearby. Flashy rescue missions help justify the infrastructure and logistics networks that support such a sprawling military footprint. Also, humans are notoriously poor at thinking about low-probability, high-impact events.

Thank you for collecting these.

I think the better framing is that ByteDance refused to comply with US regulations and spin off TikTok.

If the EU decided WhatsApp should be spun off from Meta (for any number of legitimate reasons) to continue operating there, we wouldn’t claim that the EU banned the app.

I disagree with the hypocrisy argument. The US government tried to clamp down on Covid misinformation during a pandemic, with a declared emergency and there was pushback that was adjudicated by the Supreme Court [1].

The US does plenty of sketchy shit, but it has nothing on the surveillance state imposed by the CCP, nor is it empowered to suppress information in the same manner.

The CCP’s censorship is so heavy handed that others have tried to weaponize it, as discussed recently here:

Tokyo University Used "Tiananmen Square" Keyword to Block Chinese Admissions [2].

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[1] - https://hms.harvard.edu/news/whats-stake-us-supreme-court-ca...

[2] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42355586

The US government forcing spinoffs is a core tenant of antitrust enforcement. We’ve seen similar enforcement applied to other applications like Grindr [1].

The fundamental issue is ByteDance ownership. Forced divestiture due to legitimate concern for potential abuses is perfectly acceptable whether by a financial or national security rationale.

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1 - https://www.axios.com/2024/04/27/biden-tiktok-sale-grindr

In the US we allow significantly more spying on foreigners than US citizens. That’s not as controversial as domestic spying.

Look at the backlash against the US government trying to clamp down on Covid misinformation with a national emergency declaration [1]. There’s exactly zero reason to expect the CCP has an incentive to behave differently, especially when there’s effectively no way for companies to push back in China.

And no that doesn’t excuse the nonsense some US administrations get up to. Like undermining the effectiveness of the Chinese covid vaccine [2].

There is already evidence of pressure being applied to ByteDance by the CCP for data on Hong Kong citizens [3].

So it would be silly to think that: 1) data for different TikTok users is more or less difficult for the CCP to access based on their specific locations (technically or practically) And 2) the CCP has more respect for foreigners than Western governments do.

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1 - https://hms.harvard.edu/news/whats-stake-us-supreme-court-ca...

2 - https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/usa-covi...

3 - https://apnews.com/article/tiktok-china-bytedance-user-data-...

Just to add on:

I don’t imagine discussion of what’s happening to the Uyghurs is getting much traction in TikTok either.

Movement against TikTok started started with the Trump admin well before Oct 7, 2023 [1].

I think this is less Israel / Palestine and a better explanation lies elsewhere. Namely, that anti-China sentiment has been growing for a while now and Meta has plenty of money to burn (on the Metaverse, Lobbyists, etc.)

The actual law was passed after accounts of spying on Hong Kong citizens were made public [2].

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1 — https://trumpwhitehouse.archives.gov/presidential-actions/ex...

2 — https://apnews.com/article/tiktok-china-bytedance-user-data-...

Note that you can still downgrade an existing gateway, extract certs[0], then bypass the device [1]. I had to do this with OPNsense to avoid the latency buildup issue, which has been ongoing for months[2].

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0 -- https://www.dupuis.xyz/bgw210-700-root-and-certs/

1 -- https://github.com/MonkWho/pfatt

2 -- https://www.reddit.com/r/ATTFiber/comments/1eqfouo/psa_att_n...

I think a miles traveled tax that accounts for vehicle weight would probably less regressive than the current gas tax.

EVs save substantially in running costs. I’d imagine it would charge those using 3/4 and 1-ton pickups as family cars the most.

Interestingly enough, some of the advancements in fusion research and lasers may help with fission waste fuel recycling. [1] Though breeder reactors might end up being more economical.

https://nap.nationalacademies.org/read/4912/chapter/20

Yes. I simply meant a relative comparison between the two. Agreed otherwise

It seems that congress is much quicker and more willing to correct overreach by the executive branch through legislation compared to overreach by the judiciary — especially at the Supreme Court level.