ytjohn

I love that guy, and you're right. So many of his projects is him trying find a different way to locomote a flame thrower.

In the US, you can ship using Greyhound bus lines. I wouldn't recommend it for this scenario, but I know people that ship auto parts around this way. Ship up to 100lbs for some incredibly cheap rates.

http://www.shipgreyhound.com/

I used a similar method when I wanted to improve my touch typing. I did learn typing in school, but I still found myself constantly looking at the keyboard. This was way back in the PS/2 keyboard days and I had one of the ubiquitous Model M keyboards. The caps were removable with a butter knife, but I didn't like typing on capless keys.

What I did was rearrange the letters. I left all the symbol and special keys alone, but moved the letters, leaving only the F/J index keys in place. Now looking at the keyboard became counterproductive. If I ended up forgetting where a letter was, I would have to watch the screen and try different finger movements till I found it.

Keybase doesn't do this explicitly, but would be in a good position to do so. It's all about identities, including PGP keys. The profile page currently only shows your identities elsewhere, but they do have a "public folder" which could host a bio. They would need to do something similiar to Github profile readmes so that a specific folder or files show up on your profile. They might even have that as a feature and I'm just not aware of it.

- profile page: https://keybase.io/ytjohn/

- public folder: https://keybase.pub/ytjohn/

- github profile readme: https://www.aboutmonica.com/blog/how-to-create-a-github-prof...

UPDATE: They do let you create a homepage with an index.md or index.html. (https://ytjohn.keybase.pub/). However, you would be on your own getting the information from your profile page onto your public webpage. You would just be hosting a static page and not benefiting from the verified identity portion on the profile page.

Keep in mind that at this point, the solar panels may be the cheapest and longest lasting component of your build. My 5Kw system has about $3k in inverter+charger controller+battery, $600 in solar panels (producing 2.6Kw peak), and I spent about $250 on angle iron and fasteners. Batteries will need replaced more often. Though in the article's case, if your pump can run across a wide range of voltage, you could skip quite a bit and just run your pump directly from solar during the day.

General life expectancy of a solar panel is 25-30 years. If they get damaged though (cracked glass), that will let water get into the cells and that will drastically reduce life expectancy. But otherwise, a nice long life. They'll also keep operating beyond that lifespan, however the cells do degrade and produce less power.

Where it gets interesting though is that the cost of solar keeps decreasing and the cells themselves become more efficient. I have some used solar panels that are 78" x 39" and produce 265W. I got 10 of them for $600 shipped (technically $400 for the panels and $200 for the shipping). So used, I'm about 23 cents/watt shipped; 15cents/watt basic. But obviously no warranty and these are less efficient. You can get a used 380W panel that fits in the same space, but around 59cents/watt. In a few years, those 380W panels will be even cheaper, and I could theoretically add an additional KW of power on the same footprint on my roof.

New panels will run about $2-$4/watt. Each generation of solar tends to be more efficient, packing more wattage into less space, and each generation often leads to some place deciding to replace or upgrade their 10-20yr old panels, which then end up on the used market benefitting people like me.

I've done similar. I used to use Quiver[1] for years. It's MacOS only. Then in October, I was forced onto a Windows machine for work. I tried Joplin as it was the closest in features, and it has built in encryption.

What I eventually ended up doing was moving to vscode. I use it my main IDE for the last couple years. I have a linux vm running for all my development, with vscode remote ssh.

- I keep a folder for each month - I have a file in each month called YYYYMM-dailies.md, level 2 headings for each day - Notes that grow too complex for the "dailies" get their own file in the folder. A number of these might get polished and copied into a document site somewhere. - Sometimes I'll make a subdirectory of "snips" with small scripts or pseudo-scripts (stuff to copy/paste) - The integrated shell lets me paste commands into my dev vm and copy the results back into my notes.

A feature of this is that while it's not really "synchronized", I can vscode-remote-ssh from multiple machines, or just ssh into the vm to get my notes. You can use rclone or keybase+rsync to backup the notes directory (or keybase's git if you want to check notes in).

Another

[1]: https://happenapps.com/

I have two of the Unicomp EnduraPro and it's been my favorite keyboard for years. I'm one of probably 8 people in the world that like the Thinkpad's Trackpoint, and this keyboard gives you that. During normal operations, I don't have to move my hands off the keyboard.

The company is also rather responsive. I once dumped a large cup of soda right onto the keyboard. It was out of warranty but they repaired it for a rather reasonable amount.

More recently, I picked up the Ultimate Hacking Keyboard[1]. It was a bit of a gamble because it's a smaller keyboard making use of layers (mod, mouse, and function). However I adapted to it in pretty short order. On a full keyboard, you do end up moving your hands to the arrow keys or the function keys. On this keyboard, you almost never move your hands. It's got a nice tacticle feel and it's quieter than the model M. With the mouse layer, I can keep my hands on the home row almost as much as with the EnduraPro. There is a bit of awkwardness with the default keymap in vim. The Mod layer's arrow keys almost, but not quite, match up with vim's cursor movement keys, so I sometimes confuse my muscle memory (and vim) when bouncing in and out of insert mode. I should probably remap the arrow keys, but that's really my only complaint about it so far.

[1]: https://ultimatehackingkeyboard.com/

I do have UHK's trackpoint and key cluster addons on preorder, just waiting on them to ship.

They probably didn't come home and sit in it for hours on end each day.

Myself, I've been WFH for 6 years and have a nice setup in a detached garage/office. But once schools shut down, I had to migrate back into the house, sitting the dining room table in order to also take care of the kid during the workday. After a month, the old 2nd-hand kitchen chair I was sitting on actually broke, so I brought in my desk chair. By the end of the second month I accepted that this was going to be much more permanent and I ended up purchasing a new desk and chair for inside the house, much smaller than what's out in my office, but usable.

I get the point is to show a problem solving technique, but I'm either missing something, or they are missing a constraint.

In several solutions, a nurse works shift 2 one day, then shift 0 the next. In fact, Nurse 3 keeps getting stuck with the back to back shifts.

I was trying to figure out why, if money was no object, they chose 4GB of RAM vs the 16GB they said the board supported. Then I remembered about the 32-bit OS 4GB limit. While XP 64-bit came out in 2001, it was only for Itanium 64-bit processors. It wasn't until 2005 that XP and Server 2003 would have supported 64-bit, and therefore anything over 4GB.

Kind of a difficult time to plan your system build, here 64-bit processors are out, motherboards capable of supporting vast quantities of ram, but unable to utilize that outside of Linux. However, this "God Box" would have been excellent for 2004. Then in 2005, you could upgrade to XP Pro 64-bit, and go ahead and spend your unlimited funds to quadruple your RAM.

I used to use mp3search.ru (project closed now). Tracks were like $0.10.

> Is it really me who is coding if I can't get forward without searching the web and without IDE pleasantries? The programmer as an individual is an outdated idea.

https://twitter.com/andrestaltz/status/1195388056855031814

I have a permanent standing desk, it's actually a 3x11 desk surface built into the wall. I basically have two stations on it and I move back and forth between them depending on what I'm doing. I alternate between standing and sitting. For sitting, I got a drafting stool (with a back). These go up high enough. They do have a metal ring, but I found it more useful to keep a small footstool near where my feet will rest. I prefer having a flat surface to rest my feet on.

I got a Flash Furniture drafting stool originally in 2014. It works great, but I didn't like the armrests. In fact, the right hand one started to bend outwards a bit for some unknown reason.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000SMTJNO/

Last year, I replaced it with "Staples Cabal Mesh Armless". This one has been working great and has much nicer padding than the prior one. If padding is important, I would recommend this one over the Flash Furniture one. But the first one did last me 4 years, and I still have it for if someone comes over to the office.

https://www.staples.com/Staples-Cabal-Mesh-Armless-Mesh-and-...

I'm setup pretty much the same way. I actually have a home phone (in addition to a cell phone). We used to get robocalls all the time, so it was really just something that would ring at annoying times till the answering machine picked up. We just replaced it with a new phone that has call blocking. Callers in your caller id are allowed to ring through. Everyone else has to say a name and press a button before they can ring through. While I'm sure some robocallers can press buttons, none of ours do. We put family phone numbers and some of the medical/vet office numbers in. Our phone has been blissfully quiet since.

It is the future. Us old-timers (you know, in our late 30s/early 40s) keep thinking that a big screen tv is great, while the cool young kids each just want their own small screen. Most are happy with a 4-5" screen, others like a 7" - 10" screen, and the rich kids have the 12.9" ipad pro, though even that is "a bit too big".

I see your point and it does make sense. But from an IRC perspective, most people/groups only care about a handful of channels. So you might have the #community or #support channel, and someone starts acting up. A channel operator can ban them from that channel directly. Alternatively, a lot of IRC "teams" maintain a bot to manage the channel. The bot can give someone a temporary channel ban (a timeout) based on keywords, or a mod in the channel might type something like "!ban userx because of rule 12" and that bot might ban that user from a list of managed channels.

That user is then still on the server, they can make their own channels or message admins directly. There might be an #ops channel where they can go and plead their case. If they annoy the admins or someone else that reports them to the admins, then they might get a server-wide ban.

A lot of this comes behavior from public irc servers. Channel operators can manage their channel however they desire, and if the users don't like it, they can start their own channel. But for an organization ran IRC server, a server wide ban is more possible. But in the case of say, Mozilla, there are all sorts of different groups running their own channel. So a group working on a mozilla labs project might just start a channel for that project, but not actually have server-ban privileges. So they can moderate their channel and perhaps request a server ban on someone, but that server ban might take hours to approve, or the bad actor might just go away.

On the other hand, when I receive a valid credit/debit card, it's a plain envelope and the sender name is not there. There is a return address, but no name. But when I receive a pre-selected offer to apply offer with a fake card, always a name.

You might like Waking Mars. It would be a shorter game, probably finish in a week of evenings, and I could see doing it in an otherwise non-productive weekend. The gameplay really sucks you in. Here's the review that got me into it.

https://jayisgames.com/review/waking-mars.php

Yep, I ran into this. It really soured me on signal, I definitely disabled it as my default SMS. I have a history of combined SMS and signal messages trapped on one phone. I can read them in the signal app, make backups, but not import them on a new phone.

Even if the backup works, the process is rather tricky. You have to get the backup file into a specific directory on the new phone BEFORE you open signal. There's no "import from backup option". If you mess up, you have to uninstall, then do the file copy.

There are issues like this going back years.

Naomi Wu (@realsexycyborg) recently demo'd a "downskirt" cam for similar purposes. It basically shows the back of the legs and functions like a back-up camera on a vehicle.

https://twitter.com/RealSexyCyborg/status/103896197816802918... (slightly nsfw)

It's not even an article really. It's a blog post and it seems targeted as a reference for other admins with chargen.one. Not sure why it got posted to HN.

A coworker of mine originated from NYC. They didn't have any space for a washing machine or dryer in their apartment. No one did. According to him, there were several dozen laundry services that they could use, super cheap. All they had to do was put the bag of laundry outside the door in the morning, and next morning would be bag of folded laundry. To me, this sounded like heaven, but it was just common for him.

For less populated areas, this seems like an extension of housecleaning services. I've known a few people that have someone come in, maybe just once a week to clean. Some have laundry done then, others just want the cleaning. Granted, since they would be using your washer/dryer, there is a limit as to how much laundry they can do in a day. Manageable with 1-2 people, but 3 or more, each with their week's worth of laundry could really add up the dryer time.

Wire does E2E and sync. Each device has its own key though.

https://wire.com/en/blog/key-verification-secure-conversatio...

That looks cool. It would be neat if it provided a time range, basically a list of upcoming events. Clicking day after day for a week and not seeing anything is no fun. If there is a way to specify "upcoming" or "next 7 days", it's not obvious.

I remember buying an LS-120 drive. To be fair, the drive was backwards compatible with 720/1.44MB floppies. But the 120MB 3.5 floppy could only be used in another LS-120 drive, oh which, I was the only one in my area with one. As the point of the floppies was to allow me to take my work with me, the larger disk capacity became essentially useless (except as a general backup).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SuperDisk

One of them that will, or at least should be able to continue, is scuttlebutt. Scuttlebutt clients on an isolated LAN can share messages with each other. To go beyond the LAN, you point at a "pub server", which anyone can host anywhere. Yes, only russian-based pub servers will be available, and that assumes they are using russian based DNS to point to them (or have a known static IP). However, for the test of communicating within your region, scuttlebutt will hold up.

The protocol, clients, and pub servers (which are really just automated clients) are designed with an offline-first approach, then local, then regional, then global. Messages are copied between clients as they come into contact with each other. One way to visualize it is by picturing islands of people gossiping locally, and then having ships carry that scuttlebutt from island to island.

https://www.scuttlebutt.nz/

Wow, have you looked up the price of that book now? I don't know what it originally sold at, but today it's $248 and up. You can get the PDF for free, but if you want a hardcopy to keep on your desk, it's not cheap.

Also, you have to open each email in gmail to use the unsubscribe link. It's not in the message list view or available as a bulk action.

Depends on the city I guess, but I'm pretty sure privately owned is the norm. Someone owns the building and land including the sidewalk. Most cities and towns have rules regarding the sidewalk that applies to the property owner. These would be rules for things like snow and ice removal, proper maintenance, and even keeping it clean.

Now.. one company may own the building + sidewalk and the businesses inside the building are just leasing space. In that case, they would probably need the building owner to call the towing company, or have some sort of agreement to do so. For instance, the owner may delegate some sidewalk responsibilities to the round-level tenant in the lease. I have a rental property and I delegate snow removal and lawn maintenance to the tenants. (Though legally, if the tenants don't keep up with it, it would ultimately come back on me).

This exactly. I own a house and a sidewalk, though the township has a requirement that I clear snow and ice off of it within 24 hours of the end of the storm. I am almost certain that there is a requirement to keep it unobstructed (though I'd have to look the wording up).

I've never had to think about it, but I'm now trying to figure out my options if people left large objects on my sidewalk. I throw away litter. But if there was a bunch of bicycles or scooters, I'd probably ignore them for a bit and hope the owner came back to retrieve them. If it was blocking my driveway or causing a problem, I'd move them off the sidewalk and onto the adjoining grass. If they are left there long enough, I might put a sign to the affect of "this litter will be picked up on __" for the next trash day.

But if I lived in a scooter rental place and this was an ongoing issue, I would definitely be fine with using a service like this.