How to get TSA PreCheck while protecting privacy?
I'm in a bit of a bind. I have to get TSA PreCheck, but I really don't want to give up my biometric data to the government. I've read that TSA PreCheck requires my fingerprints and possibly my photo (it's unclear). Interesting, though, is that when you're enrolled in PreCheck you do not get fingerprinted when passing through the airport.
So, I plan to fill in my fingerprints with superglue when I sign up for PreCheck. Weak fingerprints are a condition that affect a lot of people -- construction and farm workers, chemo patients, or some people just have it genetically -- so I don't think it will be too weird if my fingerprints don't show up well in the scan. From what I've read (FlyerTalk, Washington Post) you can still get PreCheck even if you have weak fingerprints. And, since they don't check my fingerprints at the airport, I'm not worried about ever having to match this scan.
My face is effectively a lost cause at this point, so I'm not gonna sweat that one.
My questions.
- Is there any reason my fingerprint plan won't work?
- The PreCheck sign-up process is run by private companies (Idemia, Telos, Clear) and I can choose which one to use. I am going to rule out Clear. Is there any advantage between using Idemia or Telos?
- Is there anything else I should know before signing up?
EDIT:
Wow, these replies are so useless, I had to check to make sure I wasn't on reddit!
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Gaza: Top independent rights probe alleges Israel committed genocide
Senior independent rights investigators appointed by the Human Rights Council alleged on Tuesday that Israel’s actions in Gaza constitute genocide, a charge flatly rejected by Tel Aviv.UN News
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I think people can separate between people of a faith and a genocide government better than he thinks.
What I would hope to see of Jewish communities all over the world is some public separation from and critique of the Israeli governments actions.
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Intersex people face high levels of violence in Europe
cross-posted from: lemmy.zip/post/48936466
One in six intersex people was physically assaulted in the year 2022, an EU agency report said.
Intersex people face high levels of violence in Europe
One in six intersex people was physically assaulted in the year 2022, an EU agency report said. Intersex people are the only LGBTIQ group that has not experienced a drop in discrimination since an earlier survey in 2019.Hauwau Samaila Mohammed (Deutsche Welle)
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To be honest, I'm confused about this too.
How are 40% of respondents being harassed at work for being intersex? How do people even find out?
Only about 30% of the people surveyed identify as cis, and around 15% describe their orientation as heterosexual, so I'm sure that they definitely face many of the same struggles that the LGBTQIA+ community faces as a whole.
But why would discrimination at large be decreasing, except for intersex people? Maybe they're feeling more empowered to come out, and people don't know how to react?
I would even expect, if anything, that bigots would be more understanding of someone for whom Nature made life "visibly" harder, but maybe I'm just naive.
In any case, it doesn't seem like the study sheds enough light on this, hopefully more studies will follow so that we can find a way to do better.
discrimination against trans people is increasing in most of the world.
intersex people often look trans, and often are trans.
Lithuanian FM: European sanctions should not seek to punish Israel
cross-posted from: lemmy.zip/post/48941454
Lithuanian FM: European sanctions should not seek to punish Israel
Lithuanian FM: European sanctions should not seek to punish Israel
European Union measures on the war in Gaza should focus on changing the situation on the ground rather than punishing Israel, Lithuanian Foreign Minister Kęstutis Budrys said Wednesday.Vilmantas Venckūnas, BNS (lrt.lt)
Russia-linked group planned parcel bomb attacks in Europe
A Lithuanian investigation has determined Russia-linked suspects packed explosive devices in packages shipped by land and air to the UK, Poland and Germany. Authorities say more attacks were in the works.
Prosecutors in Lithuania said on Wednesday that it disrupted a Russian-led plot to use mail parcels for bomb attacks across Europe.
Several suspects with ties to Russian military intelligence were involved in the plot, a Lithuanian general prosecutor and criminal police said.
According to Lithuanian National Television (LNT), among the suspects charged are nationals of Russia, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia and Ukraine.
Homemade incendiary devices were to be concealed in massage cushions and cosmetic tubes. The suspects packed the parcels with thermite, a highly flammable substance used for industrial and military purposes.
Google misled users about their privacy and now owes them $425m, says court
A court ordered Google to pay $425 million after finding the company misled 98 million users about data collection through its "Web & App Activity" setting1. The case revealed Google continued gathering user data via Firebase, a monitoring database embedded in 97% of top Android apps and 54% of leading iOS apps, even after users disabled data collection1.
Google's internal communications showed the company was "intentionally vague" about its data collection practices because being transparent "could sound alarming to users," according to district judge Richard Seeborg1.
This ruling adds to Google's recent privacy settlements, including:
- $392 million paid to 40 states in 2023 for location tracking violations
- $40 million to Washington state for similar location tracking issues
- $1.38 billion to Texas in 2025 over location tracking and incognito mode claims1
Google plans to appeal the $425 million verdict, with spokesperson Jose Castaneda stating "This decision misunderstands how our products work" and asserting that Google honors user privacy choices1.
- Malwarebytes - Google misled users about their privacy and now owes them $425m, says court ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎
Google misled users about their privacy and now owes them $425m, says court | Malwarebytes
A court has ordered Google to pay $425m in a class action lawsuit after it was found to have misled users about their online privacy.Danny Bradbury (Malwarebytes)
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Out of 50 FOSS apps (F-Droid) i use, none use googleanalytics, google-tagmanager or any other tracking framework. Some of them display a send bugreport popup on crash, which redirects to E-Mail.
Out of 5 proprietary apps i use (Aurora store in shelter profile), i see Adobe Experience Cloud, Appdynamics, Google Admob/Crashlytics, AltBeacon and those are some of the more tame apps.
Tested with TrackerControl and confirmed via App Manager.
In short, your claim is false. Are you maybe confusing things with LineageOS optionally using analytics?
TrackerControl | F-Droid - Free and Open Source Android App Repository
TrackerControl allows to monitor and control hidden data collection in apps.f-droid.org
Why don't we treat them like other criminals.
You've done a crime, go to corpo prison for 20 years
Why are we treating corporation, which we "Limit Liability" of the operators already, nicer than we treat humans ?
Like, what happens if you're found to have done fraud ?
That's like 5 years in prison isn't it ?
Don't necessary put the C-suite in prison, just put the corporation in prison for 5 years. Everyone that works there can work somewhere else during the time out.
Other corporation can fill the vacuum while the criminal corporation is absent ?
Because if not, two things are going to happen.
Way more C-unts are going to get Luigi'd
and/or
I'm going to start a criminal corporation and we're going to mulch cop-babies for protein.
Ok, fork it the fuck over.
If we all started going in on all the privacy violation lawsuits and collecting on them it adds up.
Why am I supposed to clip coupons but not collect free money these giant corporations are hemorrhaging?
Edit: Actually just checked and it's about $4/user. I'll take $4 out of spite.
news.bloomberglaw.com/litigati…
Google Hit With $425 Million Jury Verdict in Privacy Trial (5)
Google LLC must pay $425.7 million in compensatory damages for violating the privacy rights of almost 100 million Google users who asked that their account data not be tracked, a jury decided Wednesday.Isaiah Poritz (news.bloomberglaw.com)
And it will be on a prepaid card and you'll need to sign up for a google account to get the card.
That's what Equifax did to people. Made them create an account and fork over personal details to get the settlement payout.
A settlement Equifax had to pay over stolen data. Oh the irony.
The case revealed Google continued gathering user data via Firebase, a monitoring database embedded in 97% of top Android apps and 54% of leading iOS apps, even after users disabled data collection
This is why we can't have nice things.
People were ever confused about Google's relationship with privacy?
I think if anyone is financially liable for misleading anyone, it's the Android community. I mean the fanboys, the anti-Apple guys, the ones who downplayed, omitted, or straight up lied about Android being a vehicle for data collection first and foremost. But they have no direct financial gain for doing so (they gain nothing if you buy a phone running Android, and they lose nothing if you buy an iPhone) so they can't be held liable.
Google has never been your friend if you care about privacy. You use Google tools because they're free and they're pretty good. You pay with your privacy. Always have. You use Android because it's more customisable than iOS, and because of the illusion of open source (iOS is based on macOS which was based on NeXTSTEP which was basically UNIX, so who cares if Android is Linux?). And because you can install custom firmware (e.g. GrapheneOS) which is Android with the tracking stuff stripped out. But you're still paying Google and paying into their business model, i.e. rewarding them for bad behaviour (or at least that which you profess to disapprove of).
(FWIW, I use both platforms. I like both platforms, and I can tell you what I like more about each one beyond what I've said, but it's apocryphal at best.)
I'm sure Google profited more than $425 million by doing so.
This is just part of the cost of doing business.
Great
So lawyers get half right off the bat. Leaves 212 ish million.
This affected how many, let's say 1 billion users. Your privacy is worth 25 cents.
Oh and let's not forget google gets to keep that data it illegally collected.
Bombshell ‘Wall Street Journal’ Investigation Finds Tyler Robinson Once Had Trans Uber Driver
ST. GEORGE, UT—As questions continue to swirl regarding the motive behind last week’s assassination of Charlie Kirk, The Wall Street Journal published a bombshell investigation Monday that suggests alleged gunman Tyler Robinson, 22, once had a transgender Uber driver.
“In its thorough examination of the suspect’s activities in the years leading up the shooting, the Journal found evidence that in March 2021, Robinson rode for nearly 12 minutes in the backseat of a Nissan Sentra driven by a transgender woman,” veteran investigative journalist James Kovacs wrote in the article, which reports that Robinson appeared to have been satisfied with the experience, having given the driver a perfect five-star rating and a $2 tip.
Bombshell ‘Wall Street Journal’ Investigation Finds Tyler Robinson Once Had Trans Uber Driver
ST. GEORGE, UT—As questions continue to swirl regarding the motive behind last week’s assassination of Charlie Kirk, The Wall Street Journal published a bombshell investigation Monday that suggests alleged gunman Tyler Robinson, 22, once had a transg…The Onion Staff (The Onion)
Yielding to External Coercion Will Only Make Mexico More Passive
cross-posted from: hexbear.net/post/6133209
The Mexican government has recently submitted a legislative proposal to Congress, seeking to impose tariffs of up to 50 percent on a wide range of imports from countries that do not have a free trade agreement with Mexico. Statistics show that the measure covers 19 sectors and 1,463 tariff fractions, accounting for about 8.6 percent of Mexico’s total imports. If enacted, this tariff adjustment would raise Mexico’s average tariff rate to 33.8 percent – more than double the current level. The move has drawn considerable international attention.It is clear to any keen observer that the real driver behind Mexico’s latest tariff adjustment is the heavy political pressure and geopolitical coercion coming from Washington. Many international media outlets have noted that the proposal was announced at a time when the US is exerting enormous pressure on Mexico. By leveraging the upcoming review of the US-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA) next year, Washington has thrust Mexico into the eye of the storm, attempting to force the Mexican government to sacrifice its own interests in order to serve US geopolitical strategies.
For an economy heavily dependent on foreign investment and exports, protectionism is not a shield, but the beginning of a domino effect. Mexico’s growth has long relied on the global division of labor in supply chains, especially foreign investment in manufacturing and access to export markets. Yet today, the Mexican government’s repeated resort to tariffs in response to external pressure sends a signal of regulatory volatility and policy uncertainty. This undermines Mexico’s reputation as a “reliable production base” and weakens investor expectations in the long-term allocation of capital, technology, and high-end capacity. Should investment shift toward more open and stable Latin American neighbors, Mexico would not only see its industrial foundation eroded, but also risk falling into passivity and marginalization in regional competition.
Yielding to External Coercion Will Only Make Mexico More Passive - Mexico Solidarity Media
Appeasing the US brings no benefit to Mexico itself. It makes Mexico appear susceptible to coercion, raises doubts about the independence of its policymaking, and encourages the pressuring side to demand even greater concessions.Mexico Solidarity (Mexico Solidarity Media)
Is there a difference in updating via an uppdate manager/discover vs using the terminal?
I have 3 machines I've switched to Linux: an old laptop with Mint, and my primary laptop and PC runing Ubuntu Studio. I use Protonvpn on all 3.
Today I had my app manager on Mint and Discover on Ubuntu showing new updates. I installed Mint's first, via the manager and Proton was an update. It mentioned it would uninstall a few proton things so I figured it had to uninstall them in order to install the new update. Protonvpn stopped working after, it looked uninstalled but my killswitch was still active (so no internet at all and no access to open the vpn app). I had to find out how to kill the network processes via ncmli (good new info to learn!) and do a roundabout uninstall through a process I found in an old Proton post as just uninstalling it with normal commands didn't work, restart the laptop then reinstall Protonvpn.
So on my laptop and PC, I updated via terminal instead, using sudo apt update/upgrade. All smooth and no issues.
Was my Mint problem a one-off glitch or is there a real difference when updating via update manager vs the terminal?
Edit: Thanks guys, seems the general consensus is yes, but some of ya's say no haha. I knew going into the question that having Mint screw up with manager and Ubuntu Studio work with terminal opens a lot of os possibilities beyond simply manager vs terminal.
Next Proton update, I'm going to try the terminal on Mint instead of manager, and the manager on my Ubuntu Studio laptop instead of terminal and see if anything screws up.
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dnf command. But after updating system packages via Discover, it prompts me to restart the PC to finish the update. What is it actually doing? Why does DNF not do that?
It's safer, and uses a systemd mechanism to update with most programs not running.
That said, I've never had a problem updating without restarting...
You can change the behavior in System Settings -> Software Update -> Apply System Updates
Pick either immediately or after rebooting
Some things only get applied once you restart. Take the kernel for example. It will be used once restarted. It is safe to restart at a later time but you would still be running a older kernel at that point.
So technically the update is done but not everything is using it yet. Dnf does tell you you should restart for some things to be applied. The choice is yours to do so.
On Ubuntu, I’m not sure about “Discover”, but I use the GUI called “Software Updater”. This is just a GUI on top of apt/apt-get which I can also use from the command line.
Not sure about Mint, but I would expect it to be very much similar.
on my manjaro machine updating via terminal doesn't cover some updates. Opening the software manager reveals missed updates. stuff like gear level and freedesktop.org. couldn't tell ya why.
on my fedora kde machine, it misses stuff from Discover. also not sure why.
on mint, terminal covers everything. same on debian.
The Linux Mint GUI updater is an interesting bit of code, or at least it was about 5 years ago. I looked at updating it a bit with a status bar for a stage I thought could use it.
I opened up the code....Python that just uses a shell call to apt. No muss, no library calls. Okay, that'll do.
It was a functional wrapper on the command line calls, exactly as you'd hope for a tool.
there is. if the updater gui integrates with packagekit and systemd, it can start an offline update that reboots your system and installs the updates while nothing else is running.
kind of like on windows, except that this is one of the things where windows made the right call. complex software does not handle it well if its program libraries and assets are being replaced by newer ones that the running version cannot understand.
its still kind of a new thing, not all distros make use of it yet, but Fedora does, and it's not a Fedora custom solution but something that most distros can have.
automatic filesystem snapshots and rollback can be integrated to this too, and then bye bye to updates breaking the whole system.
Spain cancels $825M 'Israeli' arms deal
Spain has moved to cancel nearly a billion euros’ worth of weapons contracts linked to 'Israeli' firms.
According to documents published on Spain’s official public contracts platform, Madrid has halted a 700 million euros (USD 825 million) agreement for 12 SILAM rocket launcher systems, which were based on the 'Israeli'-made PULS design from Elbit Systems. The deal, awarded to a consortium of Spanish companies, was struck down on September 9, following earlier media reports.
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Spain cancels $825M 'Israeli' arms deal
Spain has moved to cancel nearly a billion euros’ worth of weapons contracts linked to 'Israeli' firms.
According to documents published on Spain’s official public contracts platform, Madrid has halted a 700 million euros (USD 825 million) agreement for 12 SILAM rocket launcher systems, which were based on the 'Israeli'-made PULS design from Elbit Systems. The deal, awarded to a consortium of Spanish companies, was struck down on September 9, following earlier media reports.
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Corals Won’t Survive a Warmer Planet, a New Study Finds | Most corals in the Atlantic Ocean will soon stop growing. Many are already dying, leaving shorelines and marine ecosystems vulnerable.
Reduced Atlantic reef growth past 2 °C warming amplifies sea-level impacts - Nature
An analysis of coral reefs in the tropical western Atlantic suggests that nearly all will be eroding by 2100 if global warming exceeds 2 °C, which will worsen the effects of sea-level rise.Nature
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How big a solar battery do I need to store *all* my home's electricity? - Terence Eden
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they generate about 3,800kWh per year. We also use about 3,800kWh of electricity each yearObviously, we can't use all the power produced over summer and we need to buy power in winter. So here's my question: How big a battery would we need in order to be completely self-sufficient?
O, god, it's going to be huge. You really can't do the off-grid thing unless you have enough power production to satiate you over any given 3-day moving window. Trying to store power from summer until winter is going to be too expensive, instead buy more panel.
This isn't even going into the fact batteries lose charge slowly. So any power generated in summer will be much diminished by winter, even if you have big enough batteries.
And depending on load profiles, you might not be able to load all of your excess solar power at once (depends on how many Watts the battery can be charged at) or fulfill your power requirement with battery alone (depends on how many Watts your battery can deliver).
Wind isn’t great small scale. You rarely can get high enough for constant wind energy. They are noisy. They don’t produce a lot. In many or even most cases solar will be better than wind.
I’d go so far as building both sun oriented and a solar “fence” line going north/south to get more non-peak solar before putting up small-scale wind.
What is also mentioned is the fact that battery prices are going down. Soon it seems they’ll be down to $10/kWh!
I have seen some wild priced on Ali, in your link the 75Ah and the 210Ah are priced the same, so I guess it's for the smaller one, 30€ for ~0.225kWh or 133€/kWh.
Could be wrong ofc, but it sort of fits what I thought it would roughly be.
I mean even ~133/kWh..
Whats an average, perhaps even gratuitous, level of consumption per household? 24kwh if you are running a clothes drier and an AC nonstop? Lets go nuts, say you are a DIY enthusiast and hosting your own servers, so 36kwh daily.
3192€-4788€ to be and you can be effectively energy independent with a small solar system.
Triple that and you are truly energy independent are any where south of the English channel. I mean obviously its money out of pocket, but its a fixed cost that you pay now, instead of a variable cost that continuously goes up. It just seems basic.
It is. Some of them are getting snapped up to help with powering factories.
I think this is car companies using the incoming battery packs from replacing worn out packs. Time to look it up...
autoblog.com/news/toyota-just-…
This is the article I was thinking of. It's more of an idea than a common use case to use old packs to help power factories.
Using half-worn car battery packs seems optimal for home use.
I'm not putting cobalt based (NMC or NCA) batteries bolted to the inside my house. Thats nearly exclusively what car battery packs are. Thermal runaway is too great a risk to bolt that much energy to a wall in the house. I am comfortable with LFP in the house though.
How big a battery would we need in order to be completely self-sufficient?
Exactly. Haven't read all details of the link,so I react your comment, and have immersed myself a bit in this earlier.
You need to change your way of thinking and energy usage. Start with your daily energy supply and then change your energy consumption pattern to day time use Then, with for example a dynamic energy contract or if you can spare solar energy, buy or store cheap electricity in your storage ( battery ). The energy management system ( charge / uncharge and which cells) is very important.
Also, realize that battery life is tied to charge cycles and need replacing like every 10 years when talking about the better quality Lithium battery . Sodium systems could and maybe should be used in parallel, if you want more storage, safety and longevity (20 years).
It is yet all quite expensive, though imo having a half day reserve like 5 - 10 kwh, battery, would already create more independence (at around € 3K to € 10 K in Europe) .
Seems to me his panel capacity is to small anyway.
We have 11 kWh panels, and yes in the summer we routinely produce 4 times more than we use, and we have a 7.5 kWh battery
But November December and January it's not even close to enough.
In the Winter you can easily have a week with near zero production:
Our Import / export from grid last year:
November 215 / 59 kWh
December 300 15 kWh
January 268 / 34 kWh
Despite we have almost 3 times the capacity, and produce more than twice what we use per year, and we have a decent battery and believe it or not, even the shortest day we can produce enough power for a whole 24 hour day if it's a clear day! But we can also have clouds for 14 days!
But for those months we imported 783 kWh and exported 108 that could have been used with bigger battery.
But the net import was still 675 kWh!! For those 3 months, and that's the minimum size battery we could have managed with, and then we even need 10% extra to compensate for charge/discharge losses.
TLDR:
Minimum 740 kWh battery in our case, and that's without heating, because we use wood pellets.
That means it would require at least the equivalent of 10 high end fully electric car batteries. But also a very hefty inverter, which AFAIK ads about 50% the price of the battery.
PS:
Already in February we exported more than we imported.
The reason to have a battery is that it lasts through the night, or even with a smaller system, it can handle dinner time, which is the most expensive time of day to buy electricity.
Now if you live in some remote area without a grid, a generator is a way better option than a huge battery.
Maybe if you live somewhere very sunny, like Spain and especially southern parts of USA you can probably do it with a modest battery that can handle a couple of days.
In the summer we can make enough electricity on by far the most cloudy days, but in the winter, the sun can't penetrate the clouds nearly as well.
Admittedly London is south of where I live, which is close to the most southern part of Denmark, but on the other hand London is infamous for grey weather with heavy clouds.
OK I didn't see that, that's bigger than I expected, we make about 12.5 MWh per year on our 11.2 kWh panels = 1.1 MWh per kWh capacity.
Your system is 5.1 kWh but you only make 3.8 MWh per year = 0.75 MWh per kWh capacity.
Meaning we have 50% higher yield per kWh rated capacity!
So our production remains 3.3 times higher than yours, despite we only have twice the capacity.
But our panels are pretty optimally placed towards the south.
Considering you are further south compared to us, I'm surprised your yield is so low, despite London is infamous for being cloudy.
they generate about 3,800kWh per year. We also use about 3,800kWh of electricity each year.
Holy shit. I think we used that much last month, which is higher than average but not that high for August around here.
glad I'm not the only one that noticed that.
last time I checked I was using around 4600-5800kwh from May to August. the rest of the year its 3300-4200.
I live in a dual zoned 5200sqft home and my average power bill is around $900.
I've had solar sales try to talk me into solar panels but once they see my consumption they stop answering my calls lol. could be because I told them I'll buy once I can get net zero.
that's an average btw. last months bill was $1100.
this month is already at $960 and we're only halfway through the month.
this year has been lower than previous. I had new insulation installed last November.
highest bill I have ever seen was around $2200 which is over my monthly mortgage.
no crypto farm. though it would probably be higher if I was.
I have personally never seen a bill of more than 60€ per month. I have some friends living in bigger houses, not apartments, and they tell they can get over 100 fairly frequently, the bigger ones more in the North can get over 200 in the winters, but even still, I’ve never even heard of anything reaching 300.
But I’m in my thirties and don’t really know anyone from beyond upper middle class. That might help explain my experience if it happens to be the outlier, but just reading the responses to this, I might not be the outlier here.
Anything four figures is just crazy surreal to me. I can not even imagine what it takes to reach that kind of electric usage. Or maybe it’s just extremely expensive, not the usage itself being crazy? I would think living in a place where sustaining one’s existence requires that kind of resource usage would be very hostile against settling and building in general?
But if it’s just personal usage rather than the regional climate or whatever, and an insane price of electricity isn’t the main reason, then I don’t even know what to say. That’s crazy.
it's kind of a mix of everything.
I grew up poor. like, "take a nap for dinner" poor. I was afforded great opportunities that allowed me to become comfortably wealthy, as in I can freely go to the store and just buy groceries without concern. This is important because I always promised myself that when I grew up I would live comfortably.
I keep my house between 68F-72F year round. I don't open my windows because I have terrible allergies (that my kids have also inherited). at least half of my bill is just heating and cooling. the other half is likely a mix of the servers and the regular appliances.
I have family ranging from 30-60 years old. when I told them how much I spend on power their eyes popped out. they don't run their hvacs as much as I do, and actually use their windows and attic fans. they also don't have the allergic reactions I have either so 🤷.
in my old home, 1600sqft, our highest bill was around $300, and that was still high for the area. our neighbors were average between $100-$150. they were in their 70s though, so likely they didn't use their hvac as much either, nor the technology I was running.
Fair enough, that’d explain it. I did expect air conditioning to be a big part of it, kind of makes a lot of sense that you do run servers as well.
Still, that’s a huge bill to eat each month.
could be because I told them I’ll buy once I can get net zero.
I'm not following your logic. You aren't willing to accept any savings unless you can completely zero out your power bill? Judging from your consumption I'm assuming a good chunk of that is for cooling your home? If so that means you're likely in a pretty great place to harvest solar power. You'd reach payback of your investment on your array much faster than most, and be saving money for probably 35 years or more with little to no additional investment.
Making some guesses for how much your electricity rates are, and how much you're consuming (assuming much from cooling), you might be a full payback in less than 7 years if you took advantage of the tax credit. Then, every month after that you'd be gaining money back.
my house is over 120 years old. it still has knob and tube in half the house. I have even found gas lines for the old sconces, that were "conveniently" used as grounds for said knob and tube in some places. the house is a nightmare, electrically speaking. the only new-ish electrical are the HVAC systems, the 200amp panel, and the basement (where the rack lives).
for me to get proper solar installed, it would cost more than the house cost to buy. For me to find it in any way cost effective, I would need my $900 a month power bill to pay for the $200k loan on top of my mortgage.
appreciate the sound advice. I've rewired plenty of houses that I'm comfortable with DIMS and know most of the NEC.
the problem is time and effort. I'm getting older and just don't have the drive I used to have 20 years ago. the biggest problem is the house is still mostly original plaster lathe which is a huge pita for running new electrical across four floors. add to that the other litany of projects I have to do plus daily life/work. it's a lot.
if I was 10 years younger I'd probably start one room at a time, but I'm old enough now that I look forward to taking my daily naps before bedtime.
I reserved myself to a modest retirement when I bought this house because I knew the risks going in.
Plaster Lathe. My old nemesis. Probably with reed or peat for stabilization, so it explodes everywhere once you touch it.. Wish you the best of Luck.
Also: napping is important at our age.
How ? Is it just AC ?
We oscillate between 300 and 800kwh per month and it's with an old water heater, an electric car charged at home, a dryer and electric oven.
Basically why the grid exists to begin with. You're not supposed to be solving these engineering problems on a household budget inside a single home.
You'd be better off simply reducing your consumption or finding alternative methods of power (nat gas or maybe wind or geothermal) during the longer winter nights.
If you really want to go crazy, you should consider investing in a bigger home with better insulation and roommates. An apartment/condo block can at least leverage economies of scale, if you're dead set on DIY. More people benefiting from the setup dilutes the cost per person.
Basically why the grid exists to begin with
Agreed this is the best option. Economy of scales and our consumers wishes should dictate the Grids plan to incorporate cheap energy ( and emergency) storages.
And, also like you said, change your energy life style and insulate your house wherever you can.
I'm very ignorant on this subject, but couldn't you just sell excess to grid and get it back for a minimal markup?
Sure, but it depends on the incentives in your country. Afaik, excess energy could be sold, but you'll have to checkout your local incentives and energy suppliers for specifics. In most parts of Europe, the are scaling down the prices for excess energy. Therefore, battery systems are being forwarded in some cases as sort of solution for solar panels maintaining like ca. 80% +? integrity efficiency over 20 to 30 years.
For example, I read that in The Netherlands the solar panel market has crashed completely or is crashing. Note here that saturation of the market ( many existing solar panels) can also cause that.
You need to find out;
- energy usage
- insulation options and materials
- costs /benefits
- energy contracts and energy incentives.
- check out current physical electricity wiring and fuses in the house
- DIY or professional?
- budget
etc
TLDR: dont buy solarpanels if you want to be rich. And buy them according and after you've done everything possible to insulate your house, whether in the colder or warmer climates. The efficiency, added value, and comfort reached by insulation outweighs everything else. Then , after doing that, check your kwh usage, and buy solars according to that.
Hope this is helpful, but seems you need to go outthere and do some exploration on the topic.
(Ed: layout)
And buy them according and after you’ve done everything possible to insulate your house, whether in the colder or warmer climates.
In the USA there are silly rules that you can only get 120% capacity of your last years worth grid consumption as solar installed. So if one were to follow your advice and do all the energy efficient improvement prior to solar, then you would be restricted to getting a much smaller array. I understand why they have the rule, but its easy to circumvent by just having artificially oversized consumption for a year in your house, and you can then get the larger array you want before then doing all the energy improvements post-array installation.
In the USA there are silly rules that you can only get 120% capacity of your last years worth grid consumption as solar installed.
Yes , I can see how that impacts the process.
indeed checking the rules and doing some prior info digging is essential.
It's also important to check whether solar overcacity is worthwhile in the UsA. Her3 it is not( anymore).
It’s also important to check whether solar overcacity is worthwhile in the UsA. Her3 it is not( anymore).
I'll say generally speaking in most places it isn't, however, once you go solar, you may increase your electricity usage as you move away from carbon based energy. Before solar we had natural gas furnace heating and two gasoline cars. Now we have two EVs and a cold climate heat pump with zero natural gas and zero gasoline consumption. So I wanted the larger solar capacity to cover the increases in electricity we knew we'd have.
Its worked out pretty well. We have fairly large electricity bills ($400ish) in Jan and Feb, a small bill in March, and usually a tiny bill (under $10) in April. Then no bills for the rest of the year. Also keep in mind that is TOTAL energy costs, no gas or gasoline bought anymore.
I recently got a solar system and came to the conclusion that if you can sell power back to the grid (not everyone can) for some reasonable percentage of what it costs to buy it, then it will always be worth it to be connected (assuming you already are).
Quite simply, if you have enough solar capacity to get you through the winter (no house is going to have months of battery storage), then you will always be creating far more than you need in the summer. Selling this excess will easily cover any costs associated to being on the grid.
Also at current prices batteries are good for backup power only, it's always cheaper to sell excess power to the grid in the day and buy it back at night than it is to have battery capacity to get through the night. I worked out it would take 40 years for our battery to pay for itself (assuming the battery kept a constant battery capacity for 40 years...) but less than 10 years for the rest of the system to pay for itself.
Net metering is great, much better than being paid for the surplus.
With net metering the grid is basically an free, infinite, 100% effective battery.
I disagree, but in not in your situation so I can be wrong.
Unless you are producing way, way more electricity than you can use I think net metering is a great arrangement for the customer. (Not so much for the utility company)
The electricity is usually bought by the utility company at a much lower cost than what the customer is paying. Because the generation cost is only a percentage of the cost, there is taxes, maintenance of the grid ...
For example in France we pay 0.1952€/kWh, but the utility is buying the solar electricity produced by household at 0.04€/kWh.
Meanwhile with net metering your electricity is virtually bought at the same price as what you are buying your electricity for.
What an odd pricing structure! I would normally expect higher usage to mean lower prices per unit.
I guess that gives you a large incentive to have at least a little solar, as there would be a big financial benefit.
Its pretty bad. They only show a couple of the tiers here. pge.com/assets/pge/docs/accoun…
This is an old pdf but the only one they have on the website. They haven't updated it in a while so its not counting the latest 2 rate increases.
Interesting! Your power seems super expensive.
We pay a daily lines maintenance charge of 60c, then 29c/kWh during the day and a little under 27c for off peak night time. Then add 15% tax to these. These are in NZD, so almost halve them to get USD (e.g. 60cNZD is 35cUSD)
We also get about 17.5c for each kWh sold to the grid. So to sell it in the day and buy back at night is a 10c additional cost. A 10kWh battery can save a max of $1 per night, meaning it's really hard to make your money back on a battery that's $10-15k NZD on it's own.
4 years ago it was 18c per kwh. Which was nice.
Yours is very good. and selling back to the grid would be nice! Making me jealous lol.
I'm feeling very lucky now!
We have a national grid that is shared by all power companies, and is open to all. Power companies just buy and sell power on the grid based on a spot pricing system. Because of this, we have very easy movement between power companies, and have dozens to choose from, leading to a lot of competition. Mine is a tiny company that specialises in solar, having sell to grid rates well above most companies.
The company that did our solar install had their top recommended companies, they worked out the best for us, and organised getting set up with them. Was I pretty nice experience to have everything taken care of like that!
battery and solar at the home level is what makes the most sense.
60% of the planet lives between the subtropics and tropics. There is way more than plenty of sunlight hitting our earth to support all of our energy demands, and any naysaying around battery technology is missing the forest for the trees.
I believe it would attribute to cheaper of free energy and to more peace. I am agreeing with you.
And I imagined a all encompassing " worldgrid" across all continents and islands. We did it with phone networks, now we should do energy.
What I want to do is find out what the maximum size battery I would need in order to store all of summer's electricity for use in winter.
I mean, I think that it's probably not a good idea for this guy to try to go fully off-grid if he has access to the grid, but for the sake of discussion, if one were honestly wanting to try it and one is in the UK, I'd think that one is probably rather better off adding a wind turbine, since some of the time that the sun isn't shining, the wind is blowing.
statista.com/statistics/322789…
Wind speed averages in the United Kingdom are generally highest in the first and fourth quarters of each calendar year – the winter months.
The UK is one of the worst places in the world in terms of solar potential:
But it's one of the best in terms of wind potential:
Quarterly average wind speed UK 2025| Statista
Is the UK getting windier? Wind speeds in the UK have been on a downward trend in recent years, with the first quarter of the year usually the being windiest.Statista
Sure, why not. But I was thinking a 4/5G router takes very little power, then a steam deck doesn't take that much either. If that is all you need, few hundred w solar panels and a decent sized camping battery will probably do just fine. You don't need to store a years worth of energy in one go if you can produce more than you use which helps during lower output times.
Then if your employer is mandating return to office, charge the battery there. Make the fuckers pay for it.
Then if your employer is mandating return to office, charge the battery there. Make the fuckers pay for it.
based
"I'll go absolutely barebones on electricity usage. Just a router and my gaming console!"
I don't think it's a good idea to opt out of something like a fridge or lighting.
I lived without a fridge for several months before, it's not that difficult. Half the things I keep in a fridge don't really need it anyway, like chutney and jam would last a fairly long time without it. Eggs in the UK don't need the fridge either. IIRC the US wash off the protective layer on them so they do have to go in the fridge there.
LEDs use very little energy.
Sure it's possible to reduce it, but there is a limit where it becomes extremely inconvenient.
LEDs use very little power, with the cabin in the woods idea I would think its fairly safe to say a log fire is used for cooking, same thing to heat some water for cleaning. Fridge really doesn't use much power if you look for something energy efficient, or just don't have one. Its not like you can't live without it.
I would have thought saying cabin in the woods kinda implies not having some things and living a simpler lifestyle?
Here the problem is regulation that makes it impossible if you have neighbors within 500 m.
If it wasn't for regulation a wind turbine would be a clearly better investment than solar panels.
A huge advantage with turbines is also that it tend to generate power when you need it the most for heating your house.
Something very important that anti-nuclear but otherwise environmental minded people should realize is this sentence:
" There's no practical way to build domestic batteries with this capacity using the technology of 2025."
Also applies to grid storage. There does not exist a chemical energy storage solution that can substitute for "baseload" power. It's purely theoretical much like fusion power. Sure maybe in 50 years, but right now IT DOESN'T EXIST. Economically, practically, or even theoretically.
Why do I bring this up? Because I've seen too many people think that solar and wind can replace all traditional power plants. But if you are anti-nuclear, you are just advocating for more fossil fuels. Every megawatt of wind or solar, has a megawatt of coal or gas behind it and thus we are increasing our greenhouse gas emission everytime we build "green" generation unless we also build Nuclear power plants.
/soapbox
Another myth is that hydroelectric is "green." It's absolutely not. The huge amount of land required to build something like the hoover dam or the three-gorges dam is massively destructive to the existing ecology. It's often overlooked, but land use has to be part of any environmentally sound analysis.
I would say that while the Hoover Dam, or the Three-gorges dam by themselves are acceptable, they are wholly impossible solutions for grid level storage for the entire united states/China. How practical do you think it would be to build thousands of hoover dams?
Other options like kinetic batteries etc, all come down to energy density. The highest energy density options that humans can harness are nuclear Isotopes like Uranium 238, or Plutonium 239 (what powers the voyager probes) After that is lithium batteries at ~<1% density of a nuclear battery. Everything else is fractions of a percent as efficient. Sure there are some specific use cases where a huge fly-wheel makes sense to build (data centers for example) but those cases are highly specific, and cannot be scaled out to "grid-level." The amount of resources required per kilowatt is way too high, and you'd be better off just building some more power-plants.
Unclear if you’re misinformed or disingenuous.
Hoover Dam does generate power, but it’s not an energy storage project to time-shift intermittent clean energy generation to match grid consumption. That’s known as pumped hydroelectric energy storage, and it requires having paired reservoirs in close geographic proximity with a substantial elevation difference. It’s not an ideal technology for several reasons, but it’s the largest type of grid-scale storage currently deployed. Fundamentally it’s gravitational potential energy storage using water as the transport medium.
A higher-efficiency but not yet fully proven technology also uses gravity and elevation differences, but relies on train rails and massive cars. Here’s one company leading the charge, as it were.
Nuclear isn’t a good option to balance out the variability of wind and solar because it’s slow to ramp up and down. Nuclear is much better suited to baseline generation.
There are plenty of other wacky energy storage ideas out there, such as pumping compressed air into depleted natural gas mines, and letting it drive turbines on its way back out. That might also be riddled with problems, but it’s disingenuous to claim that chemical energy storage is the only (non-) option and therefore increasing wind and solar necessarily also increase fossil fuel scaling.
Again, i'm talking energy density. All those other wacky ideas aren't viable at all. Yes I know that the hoover dam is for generation, but the idea of pumped reserve power is literally identical to hydroelectric generation. The only difference is we would have a man-made solar/wind powered pump fill the resevoir, instead a natural source of solar power fill the resevoir. Either way, it's a huge amount of land use for it to be considered "green."
Additionally I never claimed nuclear power should be used as a peak generation, it should 100% used for baseload replacing all of our fossil fuel generators, with huge taxes being applied to carbon generators.
As an aside:
A higher-efficiency but not yet fully proven technology also uses gravity and elevation differences, but relies on train rails and massive cars. Here’s one company leading the charge, as it were.
This idea is trash and as far as I can tell the hypothetical existence of this is an oil industry fud campaign. The only viable version of this is pumped hydro, which has the land use problem I've already described.
Pumped hydroelectric storage obviously works with the same kind of turbines as dams located on rivers, but the land use is far from “literally identical”. For one, I agree with you that damming rivers is generally a bad thing. Large dam sites are chosen to min-max construction effort and reservoir capacity, and usually double as flood control. A grid storage project only needs to hold enough water for its daily power use, and it doesn’t need to be located directly on a water course. That’s not to say that there are unlimited suitable sites, but it’s more flexible.
Pumped hydro storage is quite green in its lack of carbon emissions and ability to time-shift green generation capacity to match grid demand timing. Land use is a consideration, but large anything requires land. You haven’t actually attacked the weakest part of pumped hydro, which is that there just aren’t very many geographically suitable locations for it.
You’ve also neglected to acknowledge the pesky spent nuclear fuel storage problem, which is unsolved and distinctly not eco-friendly. There are potentially better paths available such as the thorium fuel cycle, but they all either have no economic traction or are actively opposed by various governments (which don’t have any good solutions for existing spent fuel).
The solution to nuclear waste is recycling it, which was something France has done quite successfully. The US can't do it because of cold-war era treaties, but realistically it's because Nuclear power is the only thing that can threaten fossil fuel primacy in our society and obviously there are trillions of dollars in the fossil fuel status quo.
As an aside, the aftermath of Chernobyl shows exactly how eco-friendly massive radiation events are, Prypiat is a lush nature reserve now. Human activity is much worse for any given area then radiation is.
Non recycled radioactive waste could be incinerated like we do with Coal and no one seems to be upset about it. /s
nuclear power is the only thing that can threaten fossil fuel primacy
Solar and wind are cheap and easy to build now, and a huge threat to fossil fuel primacy, which in turn makes them a threat to the dominance of the petrodollar as the world’s reserve currency. That’s why the Trump administration has gone all-out to quash their momentum.
Spent nuclear fuel reprocessing is theoretically possible but not politically or economically viable at present. Neither is 100,000+ year storage that has been the concept of a plan of record in the US for decades. I’m not saying that nuclear is inherently unworkable, but your net viewpoint doesn’t seem to be based in reality.
The disaster response in Chernobyl was absolutely heroic but also incredibly lucky. If the melted core had reached the water underneath the concrete pad, the steam explosion would have spread the core atmospherically with devastating results. You’re making light of the disaster that was, and ignoring how close it came to being so much larger. Furthermore, the enormous irresponsibility of the Russian military’s damage to the sarcophagus cannot be overstated. If maintaining isolation for a few decades is difficult, there’s just no chance over 100,000+ years.
But I don’t think you’re arguing in good faith, so I’m done here. I hope you can find your way to more nuanced views in the future.
Hoover Dam does generate power, but it’s not an energy storage project to time-shift intermittent clean energy generation to match grid consumption
All hydro is automatically "time shifting storage" when new solar is added to power the daytime. Just turn on the turbines at evening peak full blast, and at night. Average global capacity factor of hydro is 45% because the water reservoir is not sufficient to go full blast 24/7/365. Obviously, hydro time shifting is also highly complementary to wind.
Hoover dam’s water release schedule is driven by requests from water rightsholders further downstream. Power generation is great, but the dam’s primary design purpose has always been facilitating agricultural irrigation.
That said, I bet you’re right that the water flow rate could be varied throughout each day to help balance electric grid needs. I assume that will likely come into play as we get further along the path to intermittent green power generation.
This is why you have HVDC lines.
The longest one is in Brazil, and is about 2400km long. With that kind of reach, solar in Arizona can power Chicago, wind in Nebraska can power New York, and every single existing hydro dam along the way can provide storage.
These problems are solved. We do not need new nuclear.
Building a dam causes massive amounts of ecological damage, plus unless you're building it in the middle of nowhere you're probably going to be turning people out of their homes, out of their entire towns. We could never build enough dams to be able to meet demand so even trying would be pointless. You would be destroying huge amounts of landscape for no reason.
Kinetic batteries can only store power up to a point, the more power you want them to store the larger they need to be. Again to compensate for base load you would have to have a either a lot of kinetic batteries or a few enormous ones. Plus they are maintenance intensive since they are giant spinning things, or great big heavy falling things.
Heat batteries are a good idea and have relatively little in the way of downsides, but they only work where it's hot, not just sunny but hot. So the number of places you can build them is limited.
If only we could get hold of some astrophage or something.
A country like France would need around 20 truly massive STEPs like Grand’Maison to provide for a single winter night (~60GW for ~14h). That’s 100-200km² to put under water, a massive ecological disaster, and a massive hazard.
And you must find a way to produce enough energy and find enough water to recharge your STEPs in the next 10h before the next night.
And that’s with the current France needs, having only 25-30% of its energy being decarbonized electricity, it’s getting even worse if we go to electrical heating and transports.
Powering an entire country without hydro, geo, nuclear or fossils is just plain science fiction. And hydro and geo cannot be built everywhere, so realistically, you either go fossils, or nuclear to have clean electricity.
And you can verify it empirically: even with trillion invested in solar and wind, the only countries which have decarbonized their electricity have massive hydro/geo/nuclear.
Interactive App | Electricity Maps
Track real-time and historical electricity data worldwide — see production mix, CO2 emissions, prices, cross-border exports, and much more.app.electricitymaps.com
I'm pro-nuclear energy in theory. But I've got to ask - where do you get them spicy rocks from? Do you have to dig them up from a mine? Do they regularly replenish themselves? Does the energy generation have to be constantly checked for pollution leaks?
OK, they may not literally be fossilised bio-matter - but the end result is pretty much the same. Scar the landscape as you dig, release pollutants as you refine, hope you don't run out of material, make sure someone else pays to clean up the mess.
Yes mining still exists. Unlike how Solar Panels and Wind Turbines grow like plants and replenish year over year with no other industrial process required right?
But again, you don't appreciate the energy density that is contained in a reactor fuel. The volume of material is minuscule compared to coal. While oil/gas are a lot better then coal energy density-wise, they have the significant downside of greenhouse gases and causing global warming.
It isn't so much limited by the geography but is made far more cost effective because of it. A long valley with a narrow exit means you don't need to build much dam and store a vast amount of water.
As far as distance from populated areas, I dunno, I live in the UK so its kinda close enough not to matter too much.
I guess if you don't understand units of water per area, then there is no reason to expect you to be able to do any kind of critical analysis about why "pumped hydro" is a problem.
That's a completely unnecessary way to do things. The mistake you're making is that this specific way must provide all power.
It doesn't. You combine methods for a reason. The wind blows at times when the sun isn't shining, and vice versa. We have weather data stretching back many decades to tell us how much a given region will give us of each. From there, you can calculate the maximum lull where neither is providing enough. Have enough storage to cover that lull, and double it as a safety factor.
Getting to 95% water/wind/solar with this method is relatively easy and would be an extraordinary change. Getting all the way to 100% is possible, just more difficult.
It's very infuriating talking to people about this because they never really accept that nuclear power is necessary. They spend all their time complaining about how it's dangerous (it isn't) and how it's very expensive, and how you don't have a lot of control over its output capacity. And yeah, all of those are true, but so what, the only other option is to burn some dead trees which obviously we don't want to do.
Just because nuclear has downsides doesn't mean you can ignore it, unless of course you want to invent fusion just to spite me, in which case I'll be fine with that.
There is absolutely nothing required about baseload power. It's there because the economics of generating power favored it in the past. You could build a baseload plant that spits out a GW or so all day, everyday for relatively cheap.
That economic advantage is no longer there, and no longer relevant.
What makes power when the sun isn’t out and the wind isn’t blowing? Nuclear, gas, or coal.
By being anti-nuclear, you force it to be gas or coal.
Honestly it's like talking to a conspiracy theorist.
What are you talking about, what's "an accounting thing" do you even know what base load is? Go look up brownouts, actually for that matter go look up the term baseload because I don't think you're using it right
You don't need baseload. You need to follow the duck curve of demand.
You had baseload because those plants used to be the cheapest one you could find. That's not true anymore, and the model needs to shift with it.
nrdc.org/bio/kevin-steinberger…
In the past, coal and nuclear were perceived to be the cheapest resources, and the prior electricity system structure relied upon large power plants without valuing flexibility. Today, low natural gas prices, declining renewables costs, flat electricity demand due to more efficient energy use, and stronger climate and public health protections are all driving an irreversible shift in the underlying economics of the electricity industry. As a result, the term “baseload”—which historically has been used to refer to coal and nuclear plants—is no longer useful.
Yes if you ignore all externalities the "economics" means that you can use Natural Gas "peaking" plants instead. But one of the main advantages of nuclear power is zero green-house gas emissions.
If fossil fuels were taxed appropriately, the economics of them wouldn't be viable anymore. A modest tax of a $million USD per ton of CO2 would fix up that price discrepancy.
Most of this is being driven by renewables. Natural gas gets mentioned because its price has dropped due to fracking, but it's not a strictly necessary part of this argument, either. Water/wind/solar solutions have undercut even the plummet in natural gas prices.
Nuclear has no place. Nobody is building it, and it's not because regulators are blocking it. It's also completely unnecessary.
Nobody is building it
France built the fuck out of it, 71% of their power is nuclear. Works darn well.
it’s not because regulators are blocking it
In the US, the over-regulation makes it horrifically expensive. Every plant is bespoke instead of mass produced, with exchangeable parts, personnel, and knowledge. Mass produce nuclear plants and the costs come way down.
Water/wind/solar solutions have undercut even the plummet in natural gas prices.
Wind and solar are paired with natural gas. People still want power in the winter and at night and right now that is natural gas. By opposing nuclear, you ensure it will continue to be natural gas paired with wind and solar.
This has been studied, and we don't need nuclear. All the solutions are sitting right there.
Almost like we can have many solutions where one of them is workable in any given situation.
Edit: also, as for "explody" batteries, that's a factor of certain lithium chemistries. It's not even all lithium chemistries. Sodium and flow batteries are usually better options for grid storage, anyway, and neither has particularly notable safety issues.
In US, and EU is having similar nightmare, nuclear was last built at $15/watt. Installing solar is under $1/watt, and for 20 equivalent hours of nuclear per day (less demand at night means not full production even if available) equivalent to $5/watt-day. $1/watt capital costs is 2c/kwh for solar, and for full day production needs 10c/kwh. All before financing. Nuclear is 30c/kwh. It adds 10 extra years of construction financing, requires political bribes to suppress alternative supply whenever they decide to begin operations, uranium purchases/disposal, expensive skilled operations staff, security, disaster insurance.
Solar does need batteries for time shifting its daily supply. At current LFP prices of $100/kwh, 1c/kwh full cycle is prefinancing cost. and so 3c/kwh if triple the charging/discharging daily capacity. 6 hours of storage is a very high number in power systems. It will capture all energy from a northern summer. It will rarely fully discharge with any time shifting incentives to daytime (much higher convenience to consumers and industry) providing resilience to rainy days. A 2c/kwh value (before financing which is apples to apples comparison to nucclear) means a 5gw solar + 30gwh (much lower if enough private EVs are available for time shifting needs) battery costs 12c/kwh or $8B vs a $15B equivalent 1GW nuclear solution. Both last 60 years due to low battery charge/discharge rates and capacity cycle use, with much lower maintenance costs/downtime for life extension costs for solar/battery system vs keeping a nuclear reactor operational. No/minimal operations costs.
It’s very infuriating talking to people about this
Yes. Nuclear shills are frauds who should be frustrated in their theft of the commons.
Well, unfortunately some people are using nuclear as an excuse to argue that we don't need any renewables at all and that they should be banned entirely. They do this because they know that nuclear faces extreme regulatory and societal challenges and it would allow coal, diesel and gas to continue unabated.
So it creates a backlash where renewable advocates feel they have to fight nuclear to survive.
See, that's a trap that keeps the argument within a frame where you can win. That's not how it works.
What you're doing is focusing on a singular solution, and then showing why it can't solve all the problems. Each individual solution is attacked on its own, and then nuclear ends up being the only option.
Except that's a dumb way of going about it.
Each of these solutions has pros and cons. You use the pros of one to cover the cons of another.
As one example I mentioned elsewhere in the thread, Brazil has an HDVC line 2400km long. With that kind of reach, solar in Arizona can power Chicago, wind in Nebraska can power New York, and every single existing hydro dam along the way can provide storage. What you end up with is the possibility of not needing to build a single MWh of new storage or hydro dams. If nothing else, you don't need very much. Long distance transmission is thus very important, but it tends to get left out of these discussions because it's boring.
I'll leave you with an excerpt from "No Miracles Needed", written by Mark Z Jacobson, a professor of civil and environmental engineering:
On July 11, 2011, I was invited to a dinner at the Axis Café and Gallery in San Francisco to discuss the potential of renewable energy as an alternative to natural gas hydrofracking in New York State. Little did I know it at the time, but that dinner would set off a chain reaction of events that turned a scientific theory, that the world has the technical and economic ability to run on 100 percent clean, renewable energy and storage for all purposes, into a mass popular movement to do just that. The movement catalyzed an explosion of worldwide country, state, and city laws and proposed laws, including the Green New Deal, and business commitments. Ten years after that meeting, critics were no longer mocking our ideas as pie-in-the-sky and tooth-fairy-esque. They were no longer claiming that transitioning to more than 20 percent renewables would cripple power grids. Instead, the discussion had changed to what is the cost of 100 percent renewables, how fast can we get there, and should we leave a few percent for non-renewables?
This was from the first edition of the book published in 2023. So quite contrary to your claim that "there’s no practical way to build domestic batteries with this capacity using the technology of 2025", the technology has existed for over a decade. We just need to build it. And we are building it, just not as fast as we need to.
Meanwhile, the NRC continues to stamp permits for new nuclear, but nobody is building. There's a reason for that, too.
I can dismiss the the other solutions that are worse then pumped hydro because pumped hydro is actually the best case scenario for grid-level storage and it requires A LOT of space. Anything else, batteries, pneumatic mines etc etc are going to be worse in terms of space by orders of magnitude, not to mention the actual costs. Hand waving the need for grid-level storage by saying we would us hydro shows you don't understand the scale of the problem.
That excerpt from that engineer is great, but WHERE IS THE STORAGE? Show it to me on a map. You can't because it does not exist. New Nuclear plants are being built, finally, but there is a reason that no grid-level storage exists. It's literally not possible today. There exists a pilot battery plant in Australia, and there exists a few megawatts of storage in Scotland, but these are few and far between and none of them are suitable for massive deployment.
I can dismiss the the other solutions that are worse then pumped hydro because pumped hydro is actually the best case scenario for grid-level storage and it requires A LOT of space.
It's like you didn't even read the bit about how HVDC makes this a non-issue.
. . . but WHERE IS THE STORAGE? Show it to me on a map. You can’t because it does not exist.
It's in every hydro dam that's already built in between Arizona and New York. If we even do need more, there is plenty of land to use.
How about this: I throw out everything I said about synergizing different solutions. We just have solar and storage. No long distance transmission or wind. How much does that cost to power a city?
That study has been done. Going by Lazard's levelized cost of energy 2025 report, the most optimistic cost to build new nuclear is $141/MWh--and keep in mind that I'm giving nuclear the best case scenario here. A solar+storage solution that would provide 97% of the power needed for Las Vegas would cost $104/MWh. "But that's sunny desert with lots of empty land around it", I hear you say. The bigger deal is that Washington DC could have 81% of power done at $124/MWh. Northern city where it snows a lot, and it's still more viable than nuclear.
"But 81% isn't 100%". No, please stop. You get to 81% before you get to 100%. This isn't even the best way to get to 100%.
This study has a comprehensive wind/water/solar solution fighting with two arms tied behind its back, and it's still kicking nuclear's ass.
. . . New Nuclear plants are being built, finally
Nope, not in the US, they aren't.
Here's a map of NRC licenses. The green pips are the ones where licenses are already approved. Here's the list and where they are at:
- William States - Licensed to go ahead in 2016. Canceled in 2017 with a contributing factor being the bankruptcy of Westinghouse (which itself happened because of cost overruns at the Vogtle nuclear plant build)
- Turkey Point - Licensed new builds in 2018. No news on actually going forward.
- North Anna - Licensed new builds in 2017. No news on actually going forward.
- PSEG - Issued an early site permit, but not the full license. The ESP was set in 2016 with no movement noted since then.
- Fermi - This was licensed just in the past few months. They want to have it in operation by 2032, which, lol, no it isn't.
That's not a list of success stories. Add the Vogtle debacle to the list and it's all a bucket of failure.
The AP1000 design at Vogtle was supposed to prevent the need for botique engineering that had been a problem with reactors in the past. You could use one design everywhere. That was hoped to prevent all these cost and schedule overruns. It didn't. In addition to Vogtle, it was also built in China at the Sanmen and Haiyang plants. Like Vogtle, Sanmen went over budget and over schedule, but managed in the end. There's less information about what happened at Haiyang, but the timeline of beginning construction and reaching first criticality is roughly the same as Sanmen; we can assume it went about the same.
There's a very clear reason why this is happening, and it comes down to this chart:
energyskeptic.com/wp-content/u…
This is a list of megaprojects and their tendency to go overbudget. Everything from rail to mining to airports. The third worst budgetary offender is nuclear power at a mean cost overrun of 120%. It managed to be better than Olympic Games, at least. The very worst is the related issue of nuclear storage at a whopping 238% mean budget overrun.
Way down at the bottom, you will find solar, power transmission, and wind. Solar projects have a mean overrun of 1%, energy transmission 8%, and wind 13%.
That should make it very clear why the list above has approved licenses with no actual movement. Who the hell would want to put their money into that? You can invest in wind or solar, have a very good chance of it staying within budget, and it will be making revenue within 6-12 months. You put that in nuclear, and you better hope that other investors will pitch in when the budget doubles, or else you have to do it if you hope to see your money again. In the very best case scenario, you're not going to see a cent of revenue for at least 5 years, but probably more like 10.
Meanwhile, old nuclear is being taken offline because it's too expensive. If it's not even worthwhile to keep what we have, what hope is there for building new?
It's not a matter of regulation, either. The industry would really like it to be, but they've been putting their thumb on that scale for a while now. Even with that, nobody wants to finance this shit.
It's not just that nuclear is expensive. It's a boneheaded thing to drop money into at all.
Biden can rescue the Nuclear Regulatory Commission from industry capture - Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists
Over the past two decades, the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) has been captured by the nuclear power companies it is supposed to regulate.John Mecklin (Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists)
It’s in every hydro dam that’s already built in between Arizona and New York. If we even do need more, there is plenty of land to use.
This is the key factor I'm talking about. There is not "plenty of land" for hydro storage, and flooding the amount of land required to provide grid level storage is an ecological disaster. Plus your analysis of mega-project like nuclear plants going over budget and over-time absolutely applies to any grid-level storage project you would need to go 100% solar/wind.
But just for fun, how much space would the grid level storage projects take up? I'll let you use Hydro because it's the best case scenario that exists today as far as energy density.
But beyond that what is your point, that humans shouldn't build big projects, and any attempt to do so is "boneheaded?" Capitalism can't build big projects I agree, but the problem isn't the projects themselves it's the profit-motive.
There is not “plenty of land” for hydro storage, and flooding the amount of land required to provide grid level storage is an ecological disaster.
We already built it. Good bye.
Author's diagram is about summer. Fall, winter, spring is about heating-degree days. If you're heating your home with electricity, you'll not get there with batteries.
So, working towards a solution, there are other ways to store excess energy than in batteries. One example is sand, which can be heated to very high temperatures. Insulate a sand container well and its storage can do a lot of home-heating.
Example: livescience.com/technology/eng…
We'll need to put a lot of different methods into use. There are many practical ideas out there, and they'll need to be tried.
The sand storage is used for district heating. It's not much of a substitute for single homes that have electrical heating or are off-grid.
It's a great way to balance both the electrical and the heating grids so that more electricity from renewables can be used to offset other means of heat production, but it needs to be done by the district heating supplier. I doubt it makes sense for individual houses.
Right, you really need scale for sand batteries to work. It would be difficult for individual people to do, especially in suburban London.
District heating also works better in denser housing. In other words, not suburban London.
Dunno what heat pumps are available in England, but that's probably the best option here.
Suburbs are fine for district heating, but it's a massive long term investment.
For UK in particular, I also think proper insulation and triple/quadruple window panes are much needed to curb with the increasingly scorching summers and freezing winters. I was surprised to see soo many houses with single paned windows in London.
Oof. If they're running around with single pane windows, yeah, that's pretty bad, but also the easiest thing to fix.
IMO, triple pane and onward provide only marginal benefits over double pane. But the jump from single to double is a big one.
you really need scale for sand batteries to work
Not at all. First, (hot) water batteries are excellent for home heat storage. Sand/dirt is even more storage per volume required, and completely complimentary in sending hot water through it (pipes) to make it hotter. No combustion heat means less air exchanges, and a 300C rock/dirt/sand pit has losses that radiate through house.
When I was a kid my parents had electric resistance heat with some very effective thermal storage.
Each room had a unit about the size of a typical radiator. The unit was basically an insulated box with a small circulation fan. I’m not sure what was inside but always assumed some form of brick - they weren’t expensive so it couldn’t be anything exotic. At night when electric rates were low, whatever was inside the units was heated up. During the day, the only power usage was a small circulation fan controlled by the thermostat.
I just got a heat pump installed and thought thermal storage would be worth considering since I was also looking into solar, but contractors acted like they never heard of it, and there really didn’t seem to be any consumer units available.
The solar panels are another story. I don’t see how such a scammy (in the us) industry even exists. They make it really hard to give them my money
Not that old, plus I don’t see it.
Asbestos is great at insulating really hot things so was used on boilers , especially ships and industrial to insulate the hot pipes and improve efficiency. However in this case we need something with thermal mass: any sand or rock might do, or water, or oil, or a modern phase change material. That material next to the heater will get hot but the entire mass won’t, so can be insulated with standard materials. There’s no point in something like asbestos
An important part of my point was also that what I assume were cheap materials was enough to take advantage of nightly time of use metering. In upstate NY, a standard “radiator” per room was sufficient, similar to hot water or steam heat
Storage Heaters
Storage heaters can help those on time-of-use tariffs (such as Economy 7 and Economy 10) to save money with cheaper off-peak electricity. Find out how storage heaters work, and what type of storage heater is right for your home.Sarah Ingrams (Which?)
It's practical for someone with limited space for panels on a small room, but I ran these calculations by moving almost all loads to daytime, sizing the panel array to the (minimum daily usage + efficiency losses) * buffer factor for days long storms or equipment failure.
Start with the comparitively cheap panels if you have the space, move electrical loads to the daytime and design the house for thermal momentum, and size storage to the minimum inclusive efficiency losses times buffer. If you have the roof space the panels are the cheapest part and you should usually way, way over panel.
The most important thing is having thermal mass enough or living in a climate that allows your home to not need thermal input or extraction at night. Heat is expensive and exponentially moreso if you need to produce it from conventional storage.
It is possible that, not too long in the future, every home could also have a 1 MegaWatt-hour battery. They would be able to capture all the excess solar power generated in a year.
Braindead strategy, that most likely is discrete fossil fuel shilling, for purposes of making decision inpractical.
The cost of storage as a baselines is how much you can charge/discharge per day. Bonus for smaller (= cheaper) that can have more discharge/charge than its capacity per day. Plus the resilience/reserve capacity value which is a convenience factor. Resilience alternatives include fire places or gas generators (that are not expected to be used often) which tend to be cheap per kw. But noise, smell, variable costs, and startup effort are all inconveniences. Driving an EV to a public charger can be a similar inconvenience level to a generator for resilience value. If a 1mwh battery is used 10kwh/day it costs 100 times more per kwh than a 10kwh battery.
OP gives an example of 12kwh summer use (no AC?) which is very high for most people, but can include cooking and floodlights.
The braindead analysis parts are "because 100 days of 10kwh surpluses happen, I need 1mwh battery". Actual battery storage requirements are the lowest theoretical winter solar production over 1-2 weeks, together with running pumps for heat (stored mostly in fall) distribution. A 10kwh/day maximum deficit for 1 week straight, with 60 day average deficit of 5kwh/day (without requiring additional heat input), means that any consideration for a large static battery should stop at 70kwh. This is sharply reduced with 1 or 2 EVs where summer surpluses are free fuel, and EV provides backcharging at 3kw whenever needed. 30kwh battery is plenty to charge an EV overnight (300km range for small car) before next day's sunlight exceeds needs. Even less battery with 2nd lightly used EV, but 30kwh will be cheaper than un-needed EV.
Instead of relying on batteries for heat generation, which is where $100k 1mwh delusion proposition comes, heat generated from solar stored in under $1/kwh hot water and dirt storage. Outside of winter, this also provides completely unlimited showers and hot tub use, and a $10-20k heat pump and heating system (fossil fuel systems often cost the same) and insulation improvements is the the unquestionable non-distracting path.
Do you like our hot sand?
euronews.com/green/2025/06/15/…
‘A very Finnish thing’: Big sand battery starts storing wind and solar energy in crushed soapstone
The 15 metres wide battery can store a month's heat demand in summer - how does it work?Lottie Limb (Euronews.com)
hot water to everywhere in a home is efficient, quiet
Have you never lived in an apartment building?
I don't know why we haven't come up with better solutions for piping. Or maybe it's just because this building was built very cheaply. But anyway... the pipes make quite a loud banging sound if you shut them fast enough. And a lot of whoooshing in the walls just when using hot water.
High rise apartment buildings have a challenge with pumping water up more than 3-5 floors. This can be solved with intermediate storage on floors, but for high rises, forced air is the usual solution. Heat storage still works well enough with forced air, but water is much better due to internal piping through heat source, where air volume is harder to do there, and if gaining heat from outer shell, then insulation meant to keep heat in is not as good at heat transfer. Water is most perfect heat fluid in world. Air not so much.
And a lot of whoooshing in the walls just when using hot water.
This doesn't apply for heat delivery. Tends to be continuous. A faucet is different.
This doesn’t apply for heat delivery.
Pegging your pardon, mister.
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I did math for Toronto, Canada. 2000l of hot water was enough (2m^3^). Winters here have gotten cloudier from great lakes warming. Instead of more water as a buffer, dirt is much more space efficient, and just needs the hot water routed through it to get heat transfer.
The volume looks more like a room than a box, unless you can somehow make it molten that is
If hydronic heating system was already being directed towards outer walls instead of straight up from water storage, then a tall "hot dirt" storage, and dual cold water mixing valves (pre and post dirt flow) next to each other, it's less in additional storage costs per heat unit than water, though it does use more electricity to input heat compared to heat pump.
No need for temperatures higher than melting/softening point of copper to get useful heat storage for a home. Just water can be enough if you have the room.
I looked into one of these thermal systems for my own place but the outlay is just massive for the 11 weeks a year I really need heat, and the rest of the year it's just a stupidly oversized hot water heater that is cooking my glycol and DC pumps.
I ended up paneling up and putting a dumb 9kw resistive boiler for my hydronic floors. The house slab is the battery and although inefficient in terms of strict energy use, winter sun on my cheap pallet of panels dumps plenty into the slab all day. I do have to light the stove if we get a snow storm for a day or two though
Yes. Hydronic flooring is cheap at construction time. Complicated if drilling into finished ceilings/floor with thicker under floor space making. But instead of 9kw of winter electricity you are forced to import, it is free fall surplus generation. 100w of pump circulation.
But you are saying, a resistive boiler made more sense than a heat pump, with the hydronic floor conversion. At first I thought you were just saying resistive heating electric floor. The latter, to me, would be the cheapest capital outlay conversion, and then a heat pump would beat a resistive boiler on operation costs if hydronic.
Did you investigate all of these alternatives?
Yeah I already had the hydronic floors and ran numbers on heating the floors off thermal solar panels, propane, heat pump, and the resistive boiler. The thermal panels made the least sense because they are useless eight months of the year.
The heat pump might have worked but when I really needed it my semi-outdoor closet would be in single digits and full of water supply pipes so the heat pump would be least efficient when I needed it most, and would not help keep the closet warm.
The resistive boiler meant I could add a bunch of panels to run it during the day and get the floors up to 85F, then run all electric appliances with no worries during the day the rest of the year with the extra capacity. So instead of being net positive generation from 10am to 4pm in summer, its now 8 am to 6pm with way more than I can use at peak.
(OP here) Sorry mate, are you accusing me of being in the pocket of Big Oil? Here's everything I've written about solar over the last decade - shkspr.mobi/blog/tag/solar/ - feel free to point out where I've said "yay fossil fuels!"
I didn't include AC because that's not a thing in the UK.
Oh, and I don't use electricity for primary heating. Solar thermal is pretty useless in my part of the world because you don't need much hot water in summer (mmmm! Cold showers!)
As I said in my post, this is a purely theoretical discussion about what future technology might look like. Your argument is like someone from 2001 going "a recordable CD can hold 650MB - so you only need two for a really long car trip. There's no way people in the future will have 1TB hard drives! For anything else, just use AM radio."
Basically, one of us is braindead - and I'm not so sure it is me!
I'm sorry you didn't read my article. If you had, you would have seen me say…
Remember, this is just a bit of fun. There's no practical way to build domestic batteries with this capacity using the technology of 2025.
And
Is this sensible? Probably not, no.
And
remember, this is an exercise in wishful thinking.
At no point did I say it was a reasonable idea. I went out of my way to demonstrate how impractical it was.
I accept your admission that you didn't read my post means you are stupid rather than evil etc.
The energy math doesn't make sense for grid scale applications with solid objects.
However if you can get water between two places it can work quite well. You need to live close to a big change in altitude and do a bit of geoengineering to create the upper and lower reservoirs, which can be destructive to local ecology, but not as much as a dam.
en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pumped…
You can also use pumped air underwater with higher energy losses than pumped storage hydro because of compatibility of air.
electricalindustry.ca/changing…
World’s First Utility-Scale Underwater Compressed Air Energy Storage System Activated in Lake Ontario -
Located 2.5 km offshore from Toronto, the Hydrostor Corp. underwater compressed air energy storage systemis designed to store electricity during off-peak hours when demand is low and electricity is cheapest, and return the stored electricity during t…GravityStack Marketing (Electrical Industry Newsweek)
1 Watt is the equivalent of moving 1Kg 1 metre in 1 second.
If you want a kilowatt - you need to move 1,000Kg 1 metre in 1 second. Or, I guess, 1Kg a Km.
Plug the numbers together and you'll see that you need a massive physical load and a huge distance in order to store a useful amount of energy.
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Potential energy (in joules) is mass (in g) times height (in meters) times 9.8 m/s^2 .
So in order to store the 30 kWh per day that the typical American house uses, you'd need to convert the 30 kWh into 108,000,000 joules, and divide by 9.8, to determine how you'd want to store that energy. You'd need the height times mass to be about 11 million. ~~So do you take a 1500 kg weight (about the weight of a Toyota Camry) and raise it about 7.3 meters (about 2 stories in a typical residential home)?~~ (this is wrong, it's only 0.001 as much as the energy needed, see edit below)
And if that's only one day's worth of energy, how would you store a month's worth? Or the 3800kwh (13.68 x 10^9 joules) discussed in the article?
At that point, we're talking about raising 10 Camrys 93 meters into the air, just for one household. Without accounting for the lost energy and inefficiencies in the charging/discharging cycle.
Chemical energy is way easier to store.
Edit: whoops I was off by using grams instead of kg. It actually needs to be 1000 times the weight or 1000 the height. The two story Camry is around a tablet battery's worth of storage, not very much at all.
Actually, yes. Lifting the weight of a Toyota Camry 2 stories seems reasonable for a day's worth of energy storage for a house.
I'm not sure how expensive the lift and generator will be, but the weight itself can be anything that's sufficiently heavy.
You say chemical energy is way easier to store, but is it really easier and cheaper to store the energy needed for a home in a chemical battery?
So do you take a 1500 kg weight (about the weight of a Toyota Camry) and raise it about 7.3 meters (about 2 stories in a typical residential home)?
Honestly that is way, way more reasonable than I was expecting. This isn't half as bad of an idea as I thought it would be
- Is HVAC excluded?
- Do you have an EV?
With an EV you can have 80%-90% of days covered, and top up with EV. You also get to dump daily surpluses into EV, and you can think of covering winter heating with solar and a heat pump. Easier if you have a fireplace for extreme cold possibility.
Storing heat with fall surpluses is path to get winter heating covered. Heat pump can make hot water very efficiently, and resistance heating can make a pile of dirt 300+C. Radiant floor heating is most efficient because water is distributed around 30C. This means your 90C water volume is 60C effective heat storage that is generated at 600% efficiency in fall, and 300% efficiency in typical UK winter, and your dirt heat storage can be 5x more dense.
A 2nd EV even if not frequently used during the day can be an attractive option, especially if used, and tax credits will go away soon, or have gone away (makes used prices lower) can be much easier than home batteries, and much cheaper if it remains uninsured/unused, and resale value doesn't go down much because of few miles driven. Where utility service includes a high fixed monthly charge, ($50/month in Toronto), $12000 over 20 years savings creates high incentive to remove electric utility. Gas utility has similar fixed vs variable equation, but for Toronto, heat is somewhat reasonable from high supply on our continent.
(OP here) Typically, UK homes don't use HVAC.
I've had a few EVs, but moved somewhere with electric buses instead.
Most homes here are heated with gas - ours is.
So electricity doesn't factor in to heating (other than a tiny amount for controlling the boiler and thermostat).
To be completely off grid you would ideally want to be able to go at least a week with minimal to no power generation. Personally that would mean I would need at least 100kWh of batteries.
I would also then want/need a petrol generator powerful enough to power everything that would usually run in a normal day, so that meant be a 15000W one which would be very expensive.
Anyone using "Speech Note" (speech to text) with good results?
I've been using Speech Note (github link) for months, but it often gets things wildly wrong.
I thought it was my mic, so I got one that's crystal clear. I also tried a ton of different models, and other than being slow (or fast), their accuracy is usually pretty similar.
But I'm still needing to take a lot of time to edit the results, and I wonder if there's something I should be doing to get better results.
On other speech-to-text platforms (like Futo keyboard on Android), the results are fast and very accurate. I have a hard time believing that Speech Note can't be as good.
Can any other users share their experience?
UPDATE: Ok, the best model that I've found for Speech Note is the WhisterCpp FUTO English-244, which, funny enough, is the model I use on Futo Keyboard for Android. It's not the fastest, but fast enough. It is quite accurate, and that means less time editing text.
GitHub - mkiol/dsnote: Speech Note Linux app. Note taking, reading and translating with offline Speech to Text, Text to Speech and Machine translation.
Speech Note Linux app. Note taking, reading and translating with offline Speech to Text, Text to Speech and Machine translation. - mkiol/dsnoteGitHub
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I really wanted to use it, because on my Android phone I use voice input all the time.
That's why I'm thinking it's a problem with Speech Note and not my mic, or how I'm speaking to it.
That's a real shame. I can type quite fast, but my hand joints called it quite a while ago. 😵
GitHub - openai/whisper: Robust Speech Recognition via Large-Scale Weak Supervision
Robust Speech Recognition via Large-Scale Weak Supervision - openai/whisperGitHub
I've used it for a short while to test it out. Accuracy was pretty good, as was correct punctuation. Response time also good.
It's using my Nvidia GPU to do the LLM thing, so that may be the difference.
It’s using my Nvidia GPU to do the LLM thing, so that may be the difference.
This could be!
Interestingly enough, I was playing around with LLama, as they have speech to text to interact with their chat bot, and it converts in near real-time with very good accuracy. So I do know that things can be fast and accurate, but I wish it was in Speech Note. LOL
For now, I may just to STT through my phone on a shared document with my laptop.
Chairman Comer Invites CEOs of Discord, Steam, Twitch, and Reddit to Testify on Radicalization of Online Forum Users - United States House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform
Chairman Comer Invites CEOs of Discord, Steam, Twitch, and Reddit to Testify on Radicalization of Online Forum Users - United States House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform
United States House Committee on Oversight and Government ReformOversight Committee Republicans Verified account
As long as its on the internet, there will be strange people saying strange things.
Also good more censorship! /s
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I hope they all say the same thing:
Shit rolls down hill. You're the hill DC. Fox news and the media are the hill. We're the ditch where the people congregate in and drown in your shit.
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Truth and "Truth social" are different things.
Truth is good.
Truth social is an orwellian social network that is at war with the truth.
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~~Oracle~~ TikTok isn't on there either.
Oh, that's because they already have a government overseer. And owned by a Party loyalist.
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Like everything else, the same laws and rules they have hidden behind to justify and protect their absolute dogshit behavior will be the first things the regime will get rid of for protecting anyone other than their in-group.
Conservatism consists of exactly one proposition, to wit: There must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect.
Well, it’ll be a difficult transition. But in the long run, maybe not?
As long as the Fourth Estate gets their shit together.
Ah, good point. I guess things would rapidly re-form in the favor of the fediverse if this law was overturned…
Sounds like a monkey paw situation to me!
probably james comer runs onto fox news and whines for an hour and then moves onto the next outrage since his hearings mean dick.
and if it's a subpoena it means even less considering james comer ignored his own subpoena during the jan 6th hearings.
Most people aren’t celebrating the killing of Kirk
I've never wished a man dead, but I have read some obituaries with great pleasure
Elon sieg heilling twice and then signal boosting facists and illegally cutting democratically approved and institutionally valid spending, that hasn't radicalized anyone.
Totally normal behavior.
It's gotta be the video games and the dark web. What's dark web? It is any web space I don't know about. Duh.
I am not a fan of a few billionaires locking up every freedom we used to have so they can keep trucking toward the world's first trillionaire.
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Right wing extremism and radicalization?
Nooo problem
A right wing radicalizer gets shot?
We need to investigate radicalization of the online left!
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Right wing influencers and pundits are calling for war and killings as we speak.
We'll see how they will be investigated.
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Something is preventing shutdown...
Does anyone how how I can diagnose and fix this problem:
Sometimes, but not always, when shutting down the process does not actually complete and the computer does not turn off.
The screen turns off but the keyboard backlight is still responsive, the fan is still going and the power-on LED is lit. Because the screen is turned off I can't interact graphically with the computer and have to just hold down the power button and do a hard reboot.
I haven't tested it properly but I get the feeling it happens more often if I have been doing audio work.
Debian 13
GNOME 48
Intel Core Ultra 7 Laptop
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Have you updated the firmware recently? us.starlabs.systems/blogs/news…
They've fixed a lot of ACPI and power issues with various models, including the mk7: github.com/StarLabsLtd/firmwar…
[Starbook MkVI - Intel][coreboot] Don't wake-up from suspend on lid close
Closing the lid when the laptop is in suspend will wake it up. I've observed this on Coreboot 8.99 and ITE 1.21 This sequence reproduces the issue: With the lid open, put the machine in suspend blu...divico (GitHub)
Try running sudo shutdown -h now and see if it still does the same thing.
If so, try forcing ACPI actions like so and see what happens: askubuntu.com/questions/125844…
I know this an ACPI tables issue, but there's a wide variety of debug steps to figure out which one.
Shutdown does not power off computer
I recently upgraded from Ubuntu 11.10 to 12.04. If it makes any difference, my system is a Dell Inspiron 1520. I encounter a problem whenever I shutdown or restart; it kills all running processes...Ask Ubuntu
I'm not familiar with using logs but looking at them now and filtering for the word 'failed', most of the entries around shutdown contain "dbus-daemon[1248]: [system] Activation via systemd failed for unit 'dbus-org.freedesktop.nm-dispatcher.service': Refusing activation, D-Bus is shutting down."
There are also a couple of "fwupd[2375]: 17:22:25.596 FuPluginUpower failed to query lid state"
And one of these: "NetworkManager[1332]: [1757956947.0782] dispatcher: (51) failed (after 0.004 sec): Refusing activation, D-Bus is shutting down."
Does any of that shed light on the problem?
That's just saying that things are tripping each other up whilst trying to shutdown.
Try sudo journalctl -b-1 --reverse
That will show the last system log in reverse order, and might help see what's going on.
There's an old bug report (notice I say report, as it's locked and not solved - & I don't have the link to hand) with several people saying that systemd causes this, but, it might be applications or services that have user accounts open, etc, etc...
but... try shutting down services and unmounting any shares / filesystems that might be causing this to see if you can isolate something.
As mentioned in the other thread, try shutting down from the command line on a new TTY (text-only screen) and see if that shows anything else.
journalctl -b -1 but to make it easier maybe this one should be more helpful journalctl -b -1 | grep -i shutdown
I was also experiencing your same issue, just tried @muhyb@programming.dev's recommendation, and my computer shut off completely as desired.
Edit: I also opened a terminal and "sudo poweroff" and "sudo shutdown now" both work, so for me, I didn't need to switch to a TTY console.
I was also experiencing your same issue, just tried @muhyb@programming.dev’s recommendation, and my computer shut off completely as desired.
Which recommendation?
Alt + SysRq(/PrtSc) + o. If that turns off your computer, then the kernel is still running and something is preventing shutdown; if it doesn't, either SysRq is disabled, or ACPI is broken.
Spanish PM calls for Israel to be barred from international sport
Spanish PM calls for Israel to be barred from international sport
Pedro Sánchez says Israel should be treated in the same way as Russia over its war in Ukraine.Guy Hedgecoe (BBC News)
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Ousted CDC Director Susan Monarez testifies on RFK Jr., predicts U.S. won't be ready for next pandemic
Ousted CDC Director Susan Monarez testifies about RFK Jr., says she's "very nervous" about vaccine recommendations
Former CDC Director Susan Monarez and Chief Medical Officer Debra Houry testified before a Senate panel weeks after departing in a dramatic shakeup at the health agency.Sara Moniuszko (CBS News)
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Bessent made mortgage claims similar to ones Trump cited to try to fire Fed's Cook: Report
Bessent made mortgage claims similar to ones Trump cited to try to fire Fed's Cook: Report
Bessent has suggested that Fed Governor Lisa Cook should be removed over allegations that she committed mortgage fraud, which she denies.Kevin Breuninger (CNBC)
The ~~Federal Reserve~~ Treasury has tremendous responsibility for ~~setting interest rates and regulating reserve and member banks~~ managing the nation's finances by collecting taxes, paying the government's bills, producing currency and coinage, and managing the public debt. The American people must be able to have full confidence in the honesty of the members entrusted with setting policy and overseeing the ~~Federal Reserve~~ Treasury. In light of your deceitful and potentially criminal conduct in a financial matter, they cannot and I do not have such confidence in your integrity. At a minimum, the conduct at issue exhibits the sort of gross negligence in financial transactions that calls into question your competence and trustworthiness as a financial regulator.The executive power of the United States is vested in me as President and, as President, I have a solemn duty to ensure that the laws of the United States are faithfully executed. I have determined that faithfully executing the law requires your immediate removal from office.
-@RealDonaldTrump
Surely this will happen....right?.....right?
[Solved] Can I upgrade my server directly from Debian 11 to 13 without problems?
Or should I go 11 > 12 > 13?
Edit: Thanks for all the replies. I asked this out of laziness and apparently trying this is not a lazy thing to do. I'm not Bilbo Baggins seeking an adventure. Will go with 11 > 12 > 13 way, though might stay at 12 for a while at this point. You know, lazy. 😀
Edit 2: Updated to 12. Haven't checked all the configs yet but so far so good, at least every function I expect works. If I finish this checking sequence, I might go for 13 soon too.
Edit 3: Updated to 13 as well. It actually took shorter than updating from 11 to 12. Though for some reason Jellyfin is marked as obsolete, however it works and I couldn't care less. My things are working and hopefully I won't see problems. If I do, I'll check them one by one at this point since it's a small home server.
Gotta add this: I had 325 packages on Debian 11, and now I have 450 packages on Debian 13. Some of them are marked as obsolete but must review them one by one. I feel like this upgrade process brake my minimalism and introduced some bloat but gotta care about that later.
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11-12 should be well tested. 12-13 should be well tested. 11-13 may work, but you may be the tester.
I'd step through one at a time.
Major version changes for any software from the OS right down to a simple notepad app should update as sequentially as possible (11>12>13>etc). Skipping over versions is just asking for trouble, as it's rarely tested throughly.
It might work, but why risk it.
An example: if 12 makes a big database change but you skip over that version, 13 may not recognize the databases left by 11 because 12 had the code to recognize and reformat the old database while that code was seen as unnecessary and removed from 13.
Stuff like this is also why you can't always revert to an older version while keeping the data/databases from the newer software.
It seems nobody really tested 11 to 13, or maybe any kind of major-version-skipping and you won't find direct experiences here.
Your best bet is to follow the official procedure, so 11 -> 12 -> 13. I'll leave you with the official upgrade guide for 11 to 12 and 12 to 13.
It seems longer than it is, as not every step is actually required for every system. When upgrading VMs, a snapshot pre-upgrade can also help you skip backup-steps in the guides.
No.
By itself, apt will give you headaches.
Debian migrated to new paths for security non-free firmware in repositories from 11 to 12, and apt goes to v3 in 12 to 13, which changes the format of sources. There is a new apt modernize-sources command, but it assumes your paths are correct.
If you know what you're doing, you can do this by correcting the repo paths and do the without-new-packages upgrade, but be prepared to fix apt.
If you're a casual user, maybe stick with 11>12>13.
Honestly, there were so many fundamental changes in the 13 upgrade for certain packages that I had to fix on a couple of machines that I'd be hesitant to try no-scoping the 11 > 13 upgrade.
I flew by the seat of my pants and managed to pull off 10 directly to 12, but I wouldn't do it for this one.
Well, if there are issues like even in normal upgrade, it's better not to jump on a thing like this.
Still, it's good to know that this is technically possible, though it's not for a lazy person who just wants to update his server. Gotta check Debian changelog.
For fixed-release distros (Debian/Ubuntu), the upgrade path is usually sequential.
The main implication: if you skip, you’re outside the tested upgrade path. That can mean broken packages, orphaned configs, security regressions, or a system that simply won’t boot. Sometimes you can force it and it’ll work, but it’s a gamble...
Hey. I'm going through this right now. My server was 11, and I wanted to go to 13. I definitely didn't want to get into a situation where the server required hours and hours of repair.
I'm halfway there. The upgrade to 12 went smoothly. The biggest headache was glances, first from the lack of web interface (which I was ready for), and the lack of RAID support (not ready). I might do the switch to 13 next week.
I feel like 13 introduced more changes than 12. By the way, I finally took the leap and upgraded to 13. Kinda YOLO'd though and it needs some fixing in configs but currently everything I expect works, so this will be a very slow fixing process I reckon. 😀
Good luck with the upgrade!
When I upgraded the desktop and laptop machines, I didn't run into many issues. Had to reinstall the Nvidia drivers on the game machine. And deal with glances, but I mentioned that before.
I'll probably update the server to 13 next week.
I had to rewrite part of my php-based photo management system, as it relied on a library that was originally written for php 4 or 5 and hasn't been updated. Fortunately that wasn't too hard. There might be other things lurking like that, but they aren't critical problems - I can deal with them at leisure.
Global Samud Flotilla Boat Tracker
An interactive map of the progress of the flotilla fleet headed to Gaza to challenge the unlawful Israeli siege on aid to Gaza.
Their safety and success relies on public pressure and alertness. Demand from your country that your citizens be protected and that those around you are made aware. We must break Israel’s policy of systematic starvation.
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As the world recognizes a Palestinian state, Israel’s E1 plan moves to bury it
https://www.972mag.com/palestinian-state-israel-e1-plan-west-bank/
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Any plans to support Piefed?
Peter Thiel Antichrist lecture: We asked guests what the hell it is
cross-posted from: sh.itjust.works/post/46219073
Lecture attendees started trickling out around 8:30 p.m., carrying mousses, cookies, and various other desserts to their awaiting Ubers. Most of the audience members were hesitant to provide their thoughts on the record, for fear of being disinvited from future events, but a few shared their opinions on condition of anonymity.The consensus was that the talk largely repeated the points Thiel had made in previous interviews on the subject — namely, that the Antichrist would use the threat of Armageddon, or some looming crisis, in order to consolidate control and create a “one-world government.”
One attendee recalled Thiel specifying that this figure could not be a state figurehead like Chinese President Xi Jinping, because it needs to be more global. He couldn’t recall if Thiel suggested Thunberg would make the cut.
One attendee recalled that Thiel’s discussion of the Antichrist was more about a scenario than an individual. Thiel’s Antichrist scenario is one in which a unified government suppresses technology to impose order, or armageddon, wherein AI takes over and ushers in the end of the world.
"We’ll either have the one government that destroys technology and takes over, or you have the AI that destroys everything,” he said.
Another guest, when asked about the talk, shot back a single word: “Mid.”
A group of three French men, all living in SF and working in tech, gave the talk a 7 out of 10 because of its repetitiveness. But they did appreciate some of Thiel’s jokes — including, apparently, saying it would be a travesty for Elon Musk to go to therapy because it would make him less productive.
"He was really anti-introspection,” one recalled. “[He said] we are very selfish and we care a lot about ourselves as individuals, and that therapy and yoga and stuff like that is not good for the world. We should not care so much about ourselves and care more about the world.”
Another attendee said the talk revealed a less well-known, more scholarly side of Thiel. He noted that Thiel is different from his expectations of a tech investor, pointing to the billionaire’s “cynical” view of technology’s impact on the world.
What the hell happened at Peter Thiel’s Antichrist talk? We asked the guests
We didn’t get a ticket, but we did speak with attendees — and protesters.Garrett Leahy (The San Francisco Standard)
Thiel's so high on his own supply that his brain is failing him. Any of the more recent videos of his public speaking show a many who is less and less cognizant of the world around him and more up his own asshole than any human has a right to be.
The guy was always a libertarian-flavored fascist, going back to his early Paypal days. But now that he's fully enmeshed in the national security state with his Palantir project, he's getting the weapon's grade Reagan Era anti-communism directly from the firehose. That, plus the drugs and the orgies and the crazy sleepless jet-setting schedule all topped off with his flirtations in digital immortality. Dude's brain is cooked like hamburger.
I mean a lot of old people are like this. They slowly lose their minds are start believing in all sorts of crazy shit. My grandmother kept telling us how people were plotting to break into her home and steal her precious china. (It was worthless shit).
The issue is that this guy is super rich and people want to listen to his crazy old person nonsense.
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[He said] we are very selfish and we care a lot about ourselves as individuals, and that therapy and yoga and stuff like that is not good for the world. We should not care so much about ourselves and care more about the world.”
This guy has such a massive ego that he fears introspection. So much of his shit is projection that he'll never realise.
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themadcodger likes this.
Hes saying that caring for oneself is the only thing that matters, that others should fend for themselves.
Thiel is a pure randian. Hes not advocating for building strength to help build up a community. Hes advocating for communities where only the strong can afford to buy into, while everyone else dies.
Another attendee said the talk revealed a less well-known, more scholarly side of Thiel.
I call bullshit. How can it be that we went from people like Currie and Einstein to fucktards like this, and people actually nearly worship them?
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I'm curious, has anybody ever just asked Thiel why it would make a difference if the globe was ruled by one corporation instead of one government?
the Antichrist would use the threat of Armageddon, or some looming crisis, in order to consolidate control and create a “one-world government.”
So to avoid this, we need one corporation to rule them all instead? You literally have a single corporation building global access to everyone's data. It's like you're creating little nodes of authoritarian easy buttons, but ultimately it will be you with consolidated control of all these nodes. So consolidated control of all the authoritarian easy buttons.
Thiel’s Antichrist scenario is one in which a unified government suppresses technology to impose order, or armageddon, wherein AI takes over and ushers in the end of the world.
So as long as you, Peter Thiel, are the only one controlling it, we should believe that this won't happen?
I wonder if Thiel's ultimate scapegoat is progress/technology itself? He builds these fears while also making these claims about regulations and stagnation, so that he is allowed to build and control the technology that he knows will result in this scenario.
When everything goes to shit because he was allowed to knock down so many regulations and speed bumps, he will claim it's not his fault, it's just the inevitable progress of technology. As though this is the only way it ever could have been.
Because in his mind, this is the only possible outcome if technology progresses. So even though he's the one that builds it, it's not really his fault if it goes off the rails because it was going to happen one way or another. Oh well, at least he tried to save humanity.
This has all been making me think about mapping the human genome, and how people feared all the potential for a society like Gattaca where genetic discrimination determines your entire future.
It definitely wasn't an unfounded fear, and that was why we created laws and regulations. Most (ethical) scientists would agree that genetics as a field did not stagnate as result of these regulations.
If anything, we thankfully learned a lot about unintentional side effects of cloning, and the impact of epigenetics and telomeres on longevity via Dolly the sheep. But what if we had said, we figured it out, no need for regulations and stagnation let's make some human copies!
There was a doctor in China that ignored the rules and regulations, and jumped ahead and created a set of human twins with CRISPR technology. I think he is in prison now, and I don't think there has been any updates about the twins due to privacy concerns.
What that guy did wasn't just unethical bc it ignored the agreement about not wanting to live in a real life Gattaca. It was extremely dangerous bc even with CRISPR there is the possibility of off target effects, which can emerge immediately or even decades later in development.
Once again, digging a new hole to fill an old one. You fixed one problem, but you may have inadvertently caused an exponential number of new problems. That is straight up Nazi human experimentation, and the humans you created had zero consent.
Imagine what the world would look like today if somebody like Thiel had taken control of human genome research. Imagine Peter Thiel being allowed to just go full speed ahead with cloning and CRISPR technology in humans without any kind of knowledge or consideration of off target effects or downstream consequences. Where every educated or knowledgeable individual that tried to slow him down or warn him is completely ignored and dismissed.
Maybe the world would look like his fantasy where only a race with superior genetics exists. Everybody thrives and everybody is immortal, happy, and healthy as can be.
More likely it would be a world full of horrific genetic mutations and diseases with no treatment or cure. A world where everyone with money keeps cloning humans to bring them back to life, unable to understand or explain why they all seem to be falling apart more rapidly with each additional clone.
This guy has no fucking chill. His ego does not allow for the time to stop and think about all the unforeseen consequences that develop with progress. In his mind it's just inevitable, and the way he fantasizes about it working out is the only possible outcome.
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We should not care so much about ourselves and care more about the world
Jackass has a private bunker in New Zealand for when shit hits the fan
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Could American Evangelicals Spot the Antichrist? Here Are the Biblical Predictions: - Benjamin L. Corey
I've reviewed every prophecy on the Antichrist, and what I read blew my mind. (Updated with new signs, 6/10/2020)Benjamin L. Corey
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I don't know.
The fact that someone wants to listen to this man gives me a mix of respect and fear.
techies worship other techies. It's a cult of personality.
I've never met a techie who didn't have a weird fetishization thing going on for one or another of the tech oligarchs or their crazy nonsense theories about the world. a lot of them think code sprinting and doing drugs is some form of enlightenment that elevates them above the 'normies' who don't code and do drugs.
This is not just about tech or drugs, these people has deeper problems (thinking about Musk or Thiel). Narcissism? Inferiority complex? Probably both.
They always been on the wrong side of the history, they made plenty of money and still they look akward.
"We’ll either have the one government that destroys technology and takes over, or you have the AI that destroys everything,” he said.
He's literally calling himself the Antichrist and no-one is calling it out.
Unpopular opinion: he is onto something…
However, he is also projecting (and yes, both can be true simultaneously). This leaves me with another question: since Thiel is not a genius AND is a son of a bitch, there must be others that have a very similar idea; creating chaos to bring “order”. Who are they?
The thing is, he seems to be setting up a future where technology and progress becomes his ultimate scapegoat.
The future he describes is where we're headed if we continue down the path he's leading us.
Once he becomes the centralized figure controlling all the nodes of authoritarian easy buttons he created across the globe, he will just claim that he tried to prevent it, but ultimately it's just the inevitable result of progress. Like it was going to happen one way or another.
I wrote a very long comment about this, but essentially, dystopia is not an inevitable result of progress. That is why regulations exist. Look at the fears of dystopia following mapping of the human genome and the regulations that were created that have kept modern society from becoming Gattaca (although I know Thiel actually believes this too has led to "stagnation").
Basically, there is the reality of what can and will happen when you cut the brake lines in a speeding car, and the fantasy of people like Thiel who believe that cutting the brakes will allow you to go much faster, and as long as he's steering, his fantasy where the car suddenly flies instead of crashing might come true.
When it inevitably crashes he can claim it would have happened one way or the other, but at least he tried.
“I’m personally ready for horns to grow out of his head in the middle of talking,” said one attendee, who identified himself as Dick Gay. “That would be great.”Mr. Gay, who had flown in for the event from Los Angeles and said he was one of the investors of Sperm Racing (which is an actual thing wherein men compete to see whose sperm is “fastest” under a microscope), said he attended the University of Austin, or UATX, an “anti-woke” college reportedly partially funded by Thiel, and built his career around the principles outlined in Thiel’s book “Zero to One.”
I don't think "Dick Gay" is this man's real name.
Thiel’s Antichrist scenario is one in which a unified government suppresses technology to impose order, or armageddon, wherein AI takes over and ushers in the end of the world.Another attendee said the talk revealed a less well-known, more scholarly side of Thiel.
Scholarly, lol. What is it that makes people think that billionaires are more intelligent than they really are, while those billionaires are actually going off the deep end?
Isn't the first part what's going on in the US? I assume the AI part isn't part of the government here.
Also isn't Vance funded by Theil?
Now comic books are kinda out of date, they used to assume you couldn't be that evil and say you are while no one stops you from your plan while you talk about it non stop.
Now comic books are kinda out of date, they used to assume you couldn’t be that evil and say you are while no one stops you from your plan while you talk about it non stop.
I don't have an answer for your first two questions, but I hear you on your comic book take.
How trustworthy is Hostinger?
Private company - but can they be trusted to maintain user privacy?
Hostinger is a (German?) company that provides web hosting, vps and other services.
Hostinger - Bring Your Idea Online With a Website
Choose Hostinger and make the perfect site. From Shared Hosting and Domains to VPS and Cloud plans. We have all you need for online success.Hostinger
Yes but Hostinger's prices/offering looked better tbh
Do Gandi have a better rep?
Well they are EU so I'd expect GDPR compliance at the very least.
Not sure about auditing. I'll investigate.
That really depends on what you mean by privacy. They probably won‘t sell your data or even look at the stuff you‘re doing with your server, if you‘re not disrupting their service. But they definitely will cooperate with law enforcement if your server is used for illegal stuff and someone reports it.
In the end, you’ll always have to trust your server host to some degree. Some other hosts, like Hetzner, allow you to install your own operating systems on their dedicated servers, so you can set up full disk encryption. But even though this is definitely better than unencrypted disks, it‘s still not a reliable way of preventing access while your server is running.
So if you’re just wondering if you can host a Nextcloud instance at hostinger without your files being sold by them: Almost certainly, yes.
If you, on the other hand, plan to host manuals for building bombs or, even worse, offer downloads of old Nintendo games, they‘re probably not going to respect your privacy for long.
If you, on the other hand, plan to host manuals for building bombs or, even worse, offer downloads of old Nintendo games
Ha. Damn, was really hoping to rip off Nintendo.
A GooD but BoooriNG AlternaTive to BeReal
Good because:
1) Can click images with both cameras
2) Daily notifications
3) Privacy focussed
3) If you want any new feature in the app, just email the devs and they will build and ship it in 15days or less
4) FREE, No Ads even
5) Can write long Journal entries
Boring bcoz:
1) Cant chat with friends
2) cant create gifs (videos)
3) cant see friends pics. Which is a deal breaker for me
So i have currently started using DD-DigitalDiary and clicking pics with DD-DigitalDiary everytime i get a BeReal notification.
Also i have kept BeReal in order to chat with girls & stuff. And see their pics since thats the only way you can see and catch up with their daily life's
I mostly post black bereals. Downloaded all my 2yr old BeReal pics and put it in my HardDisk
(i suggest you guys to do the same btw)
Have any of you guys switched from BeReal to DD-DigitalDiary or any other such application?
Is there any other better alternatives (than DD-DigitalDiary)?
NOTE: I use Android but for the community link ios, mac, linux alternatives as well if a better is available
I know many of u wont even know about DD-DigitalDiary coz it only has like 500 downloads or something, so here goes the link. DD-DigitalDiary
DD-DigitalDiary: Photo Journal - Apps on Google Play
Click 1 Image Everyday To REMEMBER your LIFE Foreverplay.google.com
European Commission proposes ending preferential treatment for Israeli trade
cross-posted from: feddit.org/post/18956969
The proposal would suspend the central plank of a decades-old free trade deal that removed tariffs on imports of goods between Europe and Israel.However, suspension of the agreement requires the backing of a weighted majority of EU capitals, meaning Germany or Italy would first need to lift their opposition to the 27-state union sanctioning Israel.
European Commission proposes ending preferential treatment for Israeli trade
If approved, EU move would represent major economic and diplomatic blow for IsraelJack Power (The Irish Times)
And that's only because they are defended by the US.
Orherwise, there should be a wide coalition of countries cooperating in a military intervention inside Israel to stop the genocide.
Courage™️
At this rate, only a few hundred thousand more Palestinian civilians will have to die for us to have a concept of a plan, for potentially having a meeting about doing something to talk about the possibility of sending a sternly worded letter to end the genocide.
Update: I did it! Old: Help! Installing Linux with no external media.
Edit: holy shit, I did it! The install media is booting off a little SSD partition! It was ultimately quite simple. Will update with instructions once done, for posterity.
Edit 2: I did it...and you can too! Here's what I did to install Linux from a disk partition on a gen 1 Surface Go with no functioning USB ports. I don't know if it's the ideal process, but it worked for me. Suggestions for refinements are gratefully accepted.
Prep Step: Make enough room for your partition and empty space for Linux by shrinking your Windows system partition. I made a 6 GB partition and left 30 GB free for Linux. If diskmgmt is being an asshole about it, turn off your page file and hibernate, then reboot to clear both files. Windows is now struggling along with a ~22 GB partition, 4 GB of free space, all visual enhancements turned off, and no page file. Tough shit, Windows: you exist to install Linux now.
Hot tip: you may have rebooted Windows a bajillion times already. If you're logged into a microsoft account, those jackanapes will lock your system down for two hours for excessive booting. It happened to me twice. Just select "forgot my password/pin", reset it, and you should get back in. Fuck you, Bill Gates!
- Download the install ISO for your desired Linux (or whatever, you're an adult) distro.
- Create a FAT32 partition with enough size for the contents of your install media.
2.1 Optional: Name it something silly to blow off steam. - Copy contents of ISO to new partition.
- Turn off secure boot in UEFI settngs since Grub2Win is NOT "secure" in the eyes of UEFI.
- Download and install Grub2Win.
- In Grub2Win, click "view partition list". Save the UUID of the partition you made for the install files for later use. It'll say it's not a legitimate EFI. Just ignore it - you don't need its validation.
- Click "Manage Boot Menu", then add a boot entry. I selected the template for Linux Mint, the distro I was installing, and used the example code to start. Don't save it yet, you need to fill in more info.
- Examine the boot.cfg file present in the distro install media for required parameters, then find the location of the linux kernel (vmlinuz) and initial ramdisk image (often initrd.lz or initrd.img) files. I literally just copied the "linux /casper/vmlinuz..." line to get my parameters.
- Update your code in the boot entry. Here's what mine ended up looking like:
set rootuuid=9889-99F1
getpartition uuid $rootuuid root
g2wsetprefix
linux /casper/vmlinuz root=UUID=$rootuuid persistent boot=casper username=mint hostname=mint iso-scan/filename=${iso_path} quiet splash --
initrd /casper/initrd.lz
if [ $? -ne 0 ] ; then g2werror Linux load error ; fi- Save the boot entry. Reboot your system, then select your shiny new boot entry. Linux should start. Be patient, it's slow AF. Select the installation shortcut to get started. Everything proceeded smoothly for me.
Note: I left my Windows install as ANY perturbations to UEFI settings end up with it reverting to the Windows boot manager, which points at the Windows install only. If I didn't have Windows to run Grub2Win, I'd be out of luck. - After installation, I found the boot manager went back to the default Windows one and updating through Grub2Win did exactly nothing. I ended up uninstalling, then reinstalling Grub2Win, then it was fixed. Mostly. It still didn't have a Linux boot entry.
- Manually add your Linux boot entry. Similar to the install media, you need to tack on some paramaters. Here's what I ended up with, with the UUID being that of the new Linux install partition:
set rootuuid=4d23295b-03db-49d4-858b-e7403d983269
getpartition uuid $rootuuid root
g2wsetprefix
echo Boot disk address is $root
echo The boot mode is Partition UUID
linux $pathprefix/vmlinuz root=UUID=$rootuuid verbose
initrd $pathprefix/initrd.img
if [ $? -ne 0 ] ; then g2werror Linux load error ; fiAnd that should do it! Secure boot remains off as Win2Grub's EFI isn't signed by Microsoft, so turning it back on will revert the system to the Windows boot manager. Just to tie things up: Fuck you, Bill Gates!
Hope that helps, and good luck!
Original:
This is a weird one. My partner was gifted a Surface Go model 1824 (gen 1) by their best friend, who unexpectedly died a couple of weeks back. It's nearing the Windows 10 end of support date, so my plan was to install Mint, but there's a hitch: the only goddamned USB port on the system is shot. It's the USB controller, which I've given up on trying to fix as it looks like a hardware issue.
I still want to install Linux because this thing now has super sentimental value. I've freed up 16 gb on the SSD, so I have some space to work with. There's a micro SD slot that still functions, but the stupid system doesn't support booting from it (although a Reddit post suggested you can still do so if you set it up in Grub, which I don't know how to do properly at all). The only thing I can think of is installing something on a partition or partitions that acts as install media, but I have no idea how to do that.
Ive tried using Grub2Win's ISOboot function with the Mint install ISO and I can get it to start, but it stalls out waiting ad nauseum for DHCP. I think it thinks it's a PXE install. Maybe my parameters are set wrong? Actual PXE is a no-go because no network adapter. I tried intently staring at the Mint ISO, then staring at the tablet; no data was transferred, but I did develop a headache.
I'm so, so stumped. Any ideas, anyone?___*___**___*-
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Ive personally had a surface and i think mint and ubunto did absolutely not work to install. (7Pro)
But arch worked (some kind nerds in the area helped me install it) and at least to me it was surprisingly easy
But you probably should use a backup in case you manage to break arch
This repo is your friend: github.com/linux-surface/linux…
GitHub - linux-surface/linux-surface: Linux Kernel for Surface Devices
Linux Kernel for Surface Devices. Contribute to linux-surface/linux-surface development by creating an account on GitHub.GitHub
Does the Surface Go have a SSD in it? And/or can you install a SSD into it? The specs do imply that it supports SSD so you should at least have a port in there for that. If so, as long as you have a spare machine you can install the Surface's SSD into another system, then install Linux Mint normally there, then re-install the SSD back into the Surface Go.
I've never done that but it's been mentioned a few times in the Linux Mint forums so apparently that is a roundabout way of installing on a machine without working USB ports. e.g.
forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic…
forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic…
Not sure how well Mint works specifically on Surface Go but it's worth a try, most likely you'd use the same steps to install other distros on there.
EDIT: Without a spare system you might be able to download then write the Mint ISO onto a second partition inside Windows and boot from the Mint installer partition afterwards. Not sure how well that would work but someone else in the forums mentioned it forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic…
Surface Go (1st Gen) specs and features - Microsoft Support
Get an overview of Microsoft Surface Go features, including available configurations and accessories, ports and connectors, and included software.support.microsoft.com
This
You can use an external ssd adapter too, or clone an existing install with Clonezilla (but should be resizable)
Depending on the specific model it is either an SSD or eMMC storage but you won't be able to get to it without major disassembly of the device which includes removing the glued-on screen.
This surface is an absolute bitch to repair
Yikes! Yeah if the SSD storage isn't easily accessible then it's not worth the disassembly headache.
If that is the case then OP's only option is to try writing the bootable ISO onto a second partition on the current drive while in Windows and boot off that partition.. assuming getting the USB port repaired is a no-go.
Random idea that might work:
Try to install ReFind from windows, it should work and allow you to boot from random thing more easily. Then try using it to boot from the SD card. Don't forget to turn off secure boot.
If that doesn't work, the right idea is indeed to "burn" the media on a partition, however you will also encounter some amount of headache with this option: an installer is not a single partition, but multiple ones. You could try only having the "main" partition on disk, and use refind to boot it too.
TL;DR: ReFind could help you. Turn off secure boot.
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Install Ventoy on internal hdd.
ventoy.net/en/doc_non_destruct…
I have a folder called ISO on my hdd. I just drop an iso there and reboot into ventoy.
I also added ventoy to my grub, but it was pretty hacky, something like adding the uuids of ventoy and my data partition.
You can even boot some isos directly from grub without ventoy.
Ventoy
Ventoy is an open source tool to create bootable USB drive for ISO files. With ventoy, you don't need to format the disk again and again, you just need to copy the iso file to the USB drive and boot it.www.ventoy.net
I think we can safely rule out anything on the hardware side since accessing any internal component of the Surface Go is tantamount to destroying it.
Assuming Microsoft's UEFI implementation is somewhat standard, Grub2Win should set you on the right path. Have you inspected the underlying grub.cfg? Make sure the entry for the ISO doesn't make any attempt to boot from network.
Yeah, this thing is super inaccessible. Damn you, Gates!
You nailed it: I inspected the grub.cfg on the install media, which gave me the required parameters to get my hacked together install partition working. After that, it was really easy!
Using USB Headphones on Linux
Hi! I have an Audeze Maxwell. My wireless USB adapter broke. I tried bluetooth, but it only works well with my phone. I tried both a PCI-E bluetooth/wifi adapter and a USB bluetooth/wifi adapter on my desktop, and neither give a good connection. It's ok for listening to music, but like they share on Audeze's website -- although it may kind of work, the quality will be unpleasant.
I'm trying to instead plug a USB cable from my headphones to my computer, and I'm not sure how to get my ARCH LINUX install to recognize the USB.
When I plug in the computer, I got a couple popups. One saying
"USB Device Connected MediaTek Inc. MT6227 phone has been plugged in."
Then another notification that says
"USB Device Removed MediaTek Inc. MT6227 phone has been unplugged."
Bluetooth protocol support for audio is a bit of a mess, and many Bluetooth devices (especially knock off or no-name budget brand headphones/headsets) skimp on applying the standard properly.
Absent the absolute latest Bluetooth standard support (5.3 or better), you're usually limited by the protocol to very poor quality audio. It gets even worse of your device shows up as a headset inst4ad of heaphones/speaker since it has a mic return channel crammed into the very restricted bandwidth too.
The way (mostly quality) vendors have worked around this prior to the latest Bluetooth protocol versions was to use raw data channels with negotiated compression formats and a special "escape hatch" protocol supported by Bluetooth (A2DP). Both sides had to negotiate a shared compression algorithm and implement it for sending the compressed audio so it could be decided at the destination. Poorer quality or older headphones, and older Bluetooth Linix stacks didn't do this very well.
Not sure if any of that is applicable, but in general Bluetooth is always worse quality than wired because of bandwidth restrictions. And until Bluetooth 5.3 that added LE Audio and a related very efficient audio compression algorithm, it was a compatibility crap shoot.
It will depend on the drivers that Audeze Maxwell supply? I can't see any USB drivers for Linux beyond the dongle but they may exist.
However if they have a 3.5mm port then I'd use that. I have a Sony headset and while I don't have any issues with Bluetooth, I do like to use 3.5mm analogue conenctions to save battery (even with noise cancelling on the battery lasts way longer off Bluetooth). I bought a long 3.5mm cable online and plug it into the front of my PC. No USB or Bluetooth faff, it just works, and at high quality.
However note that if you want the mic to work too it will depend on whether the headset's 3.5mm jack is set up for both audio and mic (if it's good quality it should be), plus you will need a 4pin 3.5mm plug and cable to pick up the mic from the headset and cable instead of the common 3pin audio only plug. At the other end if your pc has separate 3.5mm audio and mic jacks you will need an adaptor that splits the audio/mic into two cables to plug in to both jacks. If it's a desktop there will be separate jacks around the back although sometimes the front jack may be a combined mic/audio jack, or you may also have one joint jack if it's a laptop. If you do need to split the audio and mic then you can find these adaptors and also 4pin 3.5mm cables on ebay or amazon.
Edit: Just in case you're not aware - an audio only 3.5mm cable has 2 coloured bands on the plug (splitting it into 3 metal rings or pins). An audio + mic 3.5mm cable has 3 coloured bands on the plug (splitting it into 4 metal rings or pins).
Edit 2: sorry look for 4 pole 3.5mm rather than 4 pin; you'll see the better quality stuff when searching as pole is the correct term!
This should just be working if it’s standard USB audio; I’d recommend just researching issues with USB headphones in general. Maybe also try another cable.
If nothing works, it looks like you can use a double 3.5mm cable on this model, which pretty much every large retailer with an electronics section should have.
Possibly a stupid question, but are you using the wireless dongle that came with the headphones? I have the same headphones and run arch as well, and my pc recognizes the dongle as “Audeze Maxwell usb” or something like that.
I’m running pipewire for my audio system and iirc it worked out of the gate with these headphones, though I did some modifications to get digital surround sound working too.
It works great but only with the wireless dongle. It works poorly with Bluetooth, and doesn't work at all with direct USB connection. My original question was hoping to see if I could quickly resolve direct USB connection with the headphones since that seems like it may be the easier to get a great connection.
I'm also on ArchLinux!
Big Tech Walkout 2025
In case anyone is interested in a digital exodus:
mastodon.social/@patrickleavy/…
ETA a link with more details: rebeltechalliance.org/collecti…
Patrick Leavy (@patrickleavy@mastodon.social)
@watchfulcitizen@goingdark.social @Em0nM4stodon@infosec.exchange a small resistance step you can take is to starve #bigtech of data.Patrick Leavy (Mastodon)
Interesting timing to read this :
Earlier today, I left to do errands and pick up groceries and managed to forget my cellphone. First thing I thought I was "oh no, can't play my music" but then I just kinda drove and did my errands.
It was kinda nice not to have my cellphone during the car ride. Had a feeling of being "untethered".
I just listen to public radio or local FM music stations.
But then I'm an elderly millennial, so. Until recently, the fanciest feature in my car was a CD player.
Hi there, fair enough that's true for now, but we tried to future proof it by putting Freemium based on what they say here
simplex.chat/faq/#how-are-you-…
"What will be the business model?
We are focusing on product-market fit, and as such the business model is still a work in progress. However, the app will have a freemium model with extra features or capabilities for paid users (taking into consideration a potential formula like 5% paying $5/month is $3/user/year - ~90% gross profit margin)."
I'm afraid that the crowd that cares about BigTech meddling in our world has already done all of those. It's the other majority that we somehow need to convince
Personally, I'm done with preaching. I just use the better services when I can, so when the eyes open, I will be ready to be a guide
BTW, wasn't Signal so-so? I don't remember what the critique was but I remember making mental note that it's also not a solution
But Signal is a solution (if you can't self-host nor convince your friends to use something whatsapp-y).
funded by three-letter agencies
That for sure can feel iffy but if the code is sound and the keys are stored on client only, that does not have to mean they can snoop. Leveraging access might be a vector, though.
The agencies do need something that is a. really secure and b. present in global population, so it's not a dead giveaway "that guy is a spy"
using your phone number
They haven't dropped that yet?
Freedom Flotilla departs Tunisia for Gaza after attacks, weather delays
An international activist flotilla seeking to break the Israeli blockade of Gaza left Tunisia on Saturday, after a stopover in the North African country marked by weather delays and suspected drone attacks.
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Before his death: Charlie Kirk rejects Netanyahu offer, faces pro-'Israel' backlash
cross-posted from: thelemmy.club/post/34808375
In the months leading up to his death, Charlie Kirk rejected a funding offer from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and grew increasingly concerned about pressure from pro-"Israel" figures, according to a longtime friend who spoke to The Grayzone.While no evidence links "Israel" to the assassination, speculation continues to spread rapidly.
Before his death: Charlie Kirk rejects Netanyahu offer, faces pro-'Israel' backlash
In the months leading up to his death, Charlie Kirk rejected a funding offer from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and grew increasingly concerned a...YouTube
Kirk was devoted Zionist, full stop.
However, a large portion of his audience was Gen Z, and their negative views on Israel are more in line with their generation as a whole, then with the standard Republican platform.
So occasionally he had to give them a bone to make it look like he's wasn't who he actually was.
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Exactly, and I'm assuming you disliked Charlie Kirk .
So if his token gestures were enough to make you question his devotion to Israel, how do you think they were interpreted and received by his Gen Z audience, those already predisposed to liking him?
Conspiracy theorists on X are saying Israel is behind it and that Tyler Robinson is a patsy/fall guy.
Motive is that Kirk had criticized Israel in recent months. There is a clip too where he expresses frustration at being called anti-Semitic just for having some daylight between his view and Israel’s current actions.
Do we have a good solution for public survaillence cams and Facial Recognition yet?
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I've never seen an explanation as to why the guy thought that the lemon juice would work. Did someone tell it to him that or did he come up with it himself.
Younger me recalls (incorrectly) that they used lemon juice on the film in the first Star Wars movie, as a special effect to blur the base of the land speeder so it appeared to be hovering. They actually used vaseline, smeared on the lens, not the film, plus had mirrors under the vehicle too. I had told this lemon juice 'fact' to several people before someone finally corrected me.
My memory was wrong and I wonder how I came to that conclusion. Maybe I watched a 'behind the scenes' show on how they did the special effects, and they said it wrong. Maybe it was a show that presented the use of lemon juice in some other tangentially related special effect and I mixed the two up. Maybe I had read an article about using lemon juice to distort picture film in the developing process.
I wonder if that bank robber did the same mistake but with far worse consequences. The time frame of the robbers mistake was around the same time as my confusion as well.
I mixed the two up
How did that go? Was it useful for anything? It sounds like some old practical advice:
Thoroughly mix 2 tablespoons of vaseline with 1 teaspoon of lemon juice and smear it on your penis just before sunset. That will keep the mosquitoes at a distance throughout the night.
Yeah, a high-res image giving the position of ears, eyes, and nose is damning.
ears and eyes alone give you a shocking amount of identifyability. We're getting real fucking close to the CSI levels of facial identification.
Walk on the front of your foot, the process require you to intentionally concentrate on your gait which causes it to change
Not that you can do it all of the time, but it is a way to defeat gait fingerprinting.
Just as normal sunglasse don't fool facial recognition systems, modern gait recognition systems can't be defeated by "just altering how you walk". You can read more about it on The Hitchhikers Guide to Online Anonymity. There is this research paper.
They link a specific device which can fool some systems, but a bit easier (although more inefficient) is just wearing very loose clothes that cover the movement of your muscles.
You can read more about it on The Hitchhikers Guide to Online Anonymity.
Which I highly recommend everyone read at least 10 times. LOL There is a vast amount of information to digest.
Thing is, none of the suggestions in this thread would be used singularly against you. For instance, your gait, unless you genuinely are a member of The Ministry Of Silly Walks. LOL They will use these profiles as complimentary evidence. When all the cards line up, DING! you're selected as a person of interest.
Tell him what he's won Johnny!
For surveillance cams:
Cover them up and destroy them with drones.
Freak Masks, Bizarre Custom Ski Masks That Let You Wear Your Own Face or the Face of Someone Else
Freak Masks from Firebox are bizarre, custom ski masks that allow you to wear your own face, the face of someone else, an animal, food, or anything atJustin Page (Laughing Squid)
IR blocking sunglasses are the simplest and most practical solution.
Facial recognition systems compare the distance ratios between your eyes and nose primarily. Hiding your eyes is very effective towards fucking that up. A mask alone is typically not enough.
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Got any further info about these more advanced methods?
I haven't seen anything beyond the feature distance models. I have seen the models that essentially recreate you entire anatomy in 3D, place it in a database, then use that profile to match to in the future--almost like a 3D match move artist would do for visual effects. Not sure if this is just a proof of concept though.
I wouldn't be surprised if the millimeter wave scanners at airports have been collecting 3D models of us for this database over the last decades.
You need to own a few copies of face recog software, and practice with face restructuring latex makeup which gives you a new realistic face with a new bone structure.
Change walking gate. Get shoes with small platforms to change height, learn to walk naturally on those.
Change mannerisms.
It's doable, but a major pain to pull it off.
Like imagine quickly applying the latex makeup, walking in front of your own identical face recognition camera at home, take everything off, rest, repeat, 10 times a day, 300 days a year, for 10 years. Until it is second nature. Now you can rely on this to do serious work.
You have to create a new person, basically. Assuming you practiced well and tested everything against real software, you can now be a different person for some hours in a reliable way. Once your secondary identity is exposed you'll need a new tertiary identity. Never do anythiny fishy as your base identity.
The real solution is political, like everyone else has said. Because you won't be able to fool the system casually without a massive effort and practice, practice, practice on your own property first, before you rely on this for real work in the wild.
It depends on the surveillance coverage. If it’s widespread enough, they can track you between your departure and arrival locations. You’d also need two more disguises for both entering and exiting.
And of course, if you have a cell phone on you that pings anything, the jig is up.
Basically laser-clean the sensor out of existence
5 to 50 watts
And blinding everyone around you too!
ai weiwei: surveillance camera blocker
ai weiwei proposes 'surveillance camera blocker' to extend the reach of cans of spraypaint, making it easier to block out security devices.andy butler I designboom (Designboom)
Or just use a red laser, they're even cheaper, if less discrete.
You can 3d print a geared lens barrel for small M12 lens quite easily.
Just map the values to real gear position and bingo's your uncle !
Here is an article about using a pulse laser to blind a camera sensor
frontiersin.org/journals/physi…
Laser-induced damages to charge coupled devices with combined nanosecond/picosecond short-pulse lasers
The research on laser induced breakdown mechanism of charge coupled devices (CCDs) brings new insights into photoelectric countermeasures. So far combined la...He Cao (Frontiers)
Whole home audio and AES67 in Pipewire
Is anyone using Pipewire's AES67 support? I'm looking to implement some form of whole home audio for an MPD or some other music server. I've played with a combined airplay sink and a couple Sonos speakers, but it's problematic and cuts out intermittently for a split second.
I'm only really able to use wifi at this point though, and don't want to run cables until I buy a house in the next few months. Though I will run some wired tests over coming months before that, and develop a plan. I've also looked into Snapcast, which is probably preferable to a combined Airplay sink.
And that's because I'm wary of planning to use an open source implementation to a very proprietary protocol long term. When I bought some Genelec speakers for my desk earlier this year, I stumbled across their networked speakers that support POE and AES67. I see Pipewire has AES67 support in the RTP sink, but there's not much out there about people trying to use this.
Has anyone around here gotten a chance to play around with it? How does it work? Any pain points?
How trusted is TorGuard?
Then Proton seems to be the only usable VPN for anyone who Torrents and gives a shit about seeding. (Only scumbags don't seed)
At least out of the three privacy oriented ones you mentioned that at least has OSS clients IIRC
I have a limited data plan and I never seed. Also I prefer companies that don't endorse fascists.
Cry me a river.
I had TorGuard for years, but the service just got more and more questionable over time. I stopped using it a handful of years back.
I've more recently looked at them again, and their VPN-router product is just a whitelabeled device you can buy elsewhere that they did the trivial install of their VPN software on.
Their actual VPN speeds are fine, certainly better than I've heard AirVPNs are, but you either get thrown in the pool of exit points that are all very well identified as malicious VPN exit points (so everyone blocks you), or you pay to upgrade to an individual "residential IP" exit point. That gives you a completely unique exit point so the minimal VPN "blend into the exit point crowd" simply won't exist anymore, and it's questionable what reputation those "residential IPs" might have (I've gotten blacklisted IPs from my direct ISP before, IP reputation is everything).
The service claims it has no/minimal logs, but they also have a privacy policy that seems to allow a good bit of data collection now (if I remember correctly).
If you're trying to use it for geo-unblocking, a residential IP option might work for you. If you're trying to use it to keep your privacy from your ISP, you might very well be trading one bad actor for another. If you're trying to use it for hiding P2P activities it will probably function well,, but I can't speak about how well they'll actually protect your privacy from DMCA requests (if that might be relevant to you).
If you click on the "History" column link in particular, you can see they have a pretty sketchy history.
VPN Comparison Tool | Techlore VPN Toolkit
Compare VPN providers with Techlore's open-source toolkit. Analyze privacy practices, security features, jurisdictions, and technical specifications to find ...Techlore
I left them years ago, but their VPN software has (had?) a critical bug - the killswitch treats "connecting" the same as "connected".
Meaning that if the connection drops for any reason and is not immediately reestablished, you not only lose all protection, but you have a false sense of security.
Following U.S. request, Japan won’t recognize Palestinian state
Japan is finalizing plans not to recognize Palestine as a sovereign state for the time being, following the lead of the United States, a staunch ally of Israel, government sources said.The move is believed to stem from concerns that such recognition could negatively affect the situation in the Middle East, as well as Japan’s relationship with the United States, the sources said.
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First things first: this should come as no surprise to anyone familiar with Japanese politics. It's been a far right genocide denying shit show for roughly ever.
Secondly, "finalizing plans not to recognize Palestine for the time being" sounds like the epitome of bureaucratic time wasting 😄
"Can't talk, too busy! I'm hard at work planning for not doing a thing right now!"
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Good.
Japan has been the bitch of the United States ever since they had those bombs dropped on them.
It's important everyone knows who wears the pants in that relationship.
Reminder: kowtowing to fascists does not make life better. They are nothing but tiny dick bullies and insecure cowards, do not let their loud diarrhea mouths detract from that fact.
Consider them like terrorists, don't negotiate.
Thousands rally across Slovakia against economic and pro-Russian policies
Thousands rallied across Slovakia on Tuesday in a nationwide mass protest against the economic and pro-Russian policies of populist Prime Minister Robert Fico.The rallies took place in 16 major cities and towns, including the capital of Bratislava.
They latest wave of protests has been fueled by a trip by Fico to China where he met Russian President Vladimir Putin for the third time since the Russian all-out invasion of Ukraine. A package of austerity measures recently approved by the government further angered the protesters.
Thousands rally across Slovakia against economic and pro-Russian policies
Thousands of Slovaks rallied on Tuesday in 16 cities, including in the capital Bratislava, to protest the economic and pro-Russian policies of populist Prime Minister Robert Fico.FRANCE 24
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[Solved] [OpenSUSE Tumbleweed] Can't install Nvidia drivers
Yesterday, I did a fresh install of OpenSUSE Tumbleweed on my NVidia-powered machine (GeForce GTX 1060 6gb). When installing, I enabled Secure Boot.
By default, the distribution comes with nouveau drivers, and the process of installing official NVidia drivers is outlined here:
en.opensuse.org/SDB:NVIDIA_dri…
I successfully added openSUSE-repos-Tumbleweed-NVIDIA as per the guide; first oddity is that by default it shipped with openSUSE-repos-MicroOS-NVIDIA, which got uninstalled as a conflicting package, despite this being Tumbleweed. (I later tried to rollback and do these steps with openSUSE-repos-MicroOS-NVIDIA installed instead, to no avail)
Next, as per the guide, I tried to do zypper install-new-recommends. After installation, I rebooted the machine. Upon login, resolution was forced to low.
inxi -G has shown N/A in the driver field.
I've rolled back via snapper rollback, confirmed that nouveau drivers are back in place (resolution was back to normal, inxi -G has shown nouveau), and tried to install nvidia-video-G6 using YaST. It has automatically installed all dependencies as well.
Upon login, I faced the same issue - resolution degradation and N/A in the driver field.
Troubleshooting for this issue has shown that secure boot may not allow these drivers to be launched without importing the respective key, as listed in the same Nvidia drivers article. However, the file that needs to be imported is not at the suggested location (/usr/share/nvidia-pubkeys/); in fact, /usr/share only had nvidia folder, which didn't seem to contain any keys.
As a workaround, I attempted to disable secure boot by entering:mokutil --disable-validation. A menu appeared on reboot, through which I disabled secure boot. Further launches had "launching in insecure mode" notice.mokutil --sb-state output is SecureBoot disabled.
Then, I tried to install the driver again, as described above. Still no luck, and same issue.
So, what else could be the issue and what do I do about it next? Thank you in advance for any replies!
Solution that worked: instead of going for install-new-recommends, install the following package:
nvidia-driver-G06-kmp-meta
It should be available by default, but if not, add the respective repository by using this command:
zypper addrepo https://download.nvidia.com/opensuse/tumbleweed/
Thanks to Björn Tantau! The comment with the solution: swg-empire.de/comment/7201260
Update
Bug solved, fix should roll out in a few days:
bugzilla.opensuse.org/show_bug…
nvidia-driver-G06-kmp-metashould be the package to install. It should pull in the gl and video packages.
lsmod | grep nvidiaIf not, try to load it.
sudo modprobe nvidiaIf it's still not loaded after that check
dmesg for errors.
sudo modprobe nvidia gives the following output: modprobe: ERROR: could not insert 'nvidia': No such device
dmesg gives the following:
[ 56.697148] [ T2989] NVRM: The NVIDIA GPU 0000:27:00.0 (PCI ID: 10de:1c03)
NVRM: installed in this system is not supported by open
NVRM: nvidia.ko because it does not include the required GPU
NVRM: System Processor (GSP).
NVRM: Please see the 'Open Linux Kernel Modules' and 'GSP
NVRM: Firmware' sections in the driver README, available on
NVRM: the Linux graphics driver download page at
NVRM: www.nvidia.com.
[ 56.702043] [ T2989] nvidia 0000:27:00.0: probe with driver nvidia failed with error -1
[ 56.702102] [ T2989] NVRM: The NVIDIA probe routine failed for 1 device(s).
[ 56.702104] [ T2989] NVRM: None of the NVIDIA devices were initialized.
[ 56.702837] [ T2989] nvidia-nvlink: Unregistered Nvlink Core, major device number 238Guess it won't work with my card? Gonna read through that (quite massive) readme, it seems...
P.S. Looks like everything pre-Turing does not support open drivers, and OpenSUSE did not communicate it well. Looking into ways to install proprietary driver.
P.P.S. Wait, it gets worse! The main way to install the proprietary driver is through install-new-recommends, BUT this installs open drivers on unsupported cards! This may be a good reason for a bug report once I figure the rest out.
nvidia-driver-G06-kmp-meta should be the package to install. It should pull in the gl and video packages.
It worked!
Thank you a lot. Now it works properly, and inxi outputs nvidia driver.
Marking as solved.
Trying to install an Nvidia video card in Linux is the 10th ring of hell
It’s worse than having a Roland sound card in the 90s. Every game says they “Support” it, but getting to actually work was always a fucking nightmare.
Really, the best of luck to you.
Thank you for awakening a forgotten trauma.
Then, Nvidia drivers lags behind new releases on this distribution. It’s not helping, I went from tumbleweed to mint because of that 🥲
Look, SUSE is world renowned for decades for being one of the most reliable and stable distro to exist. It’s, basically, the “other” red hat. And it has better Nvidia support than most other distro.
I have nothing but the fullest confidence that you’ll figure this problem out. As i like to say to friends of mine: Linux is a learning experience.
With many distributions, it's plug&play now, but some still make trouble out of it.
In the case of SUSE, this seems to stem from heavy open-source advocacy and EU laws coming on top of it, which is respectable, but adds to the complexity of solving issues here and there.
I mean, I get that, but I’m not sure that is the source of your present issues. Like, it’s a thing that that’s worth consideration. We don’t get to just use products anymore. We have to consider where they come from and who makes them. And I’m pretty cool with SUSE and how the Germans do their Linux. It was the first distribution I used after red hat back in, like, 1997. I have a deep love for that distribution. I don’t use it because it doesn’t happen to be the correct distribution for my needs. But I often would like to. It’s it’s a nice distribution, very smooth and professional. OpenSUSE basically the “other” fedora.
Thing: I fucking hate YAST with a goddamn passion. I FUCKING HATE IT. Why do I hate it? Because of everything I just hate it. I’m much prefer to use a APT, despite the fact that it’s incredibly antiquated.
Maybe YAST has gotten better in the last 10 years or so since I’ve tried it, but my God was it terrible the last time I tried
Nah, YaST is still a piece of crap imo, both antique and impractical for most purposes. They should either make it modern and user-friendly, or phase it out.
That said, it kinda helped me to locate the correct system package this time.
In any case, OpenSUSE Slowroll is already my daily driver on laptop, which doesn't have an NVidia GPU, and it's part of the reason why I decided to give it a spin on desktop. At the end of the day, the issue got resolved, and now I can keep it, hopefully, in here too.
Yeah, like I said, SUSE isn’t the distro I use, but it is frequently at the top of the list when considering what distrit to use when I create a new server or anything like that. Even for my own personal uses, it was like number #2 on my list.
Thing is, as it happens with a lot of Linux, it all comes down to what you’re used to, what you’re comfortable with. And I am very used to and well trained in Debian-based distributions. Currently, I’m running Pop!_OS on a couple of servers.
Pop!_OS is quite an unorthodox choice for a server OS, ain't it? I'm genuinely interested in why you chose it specifically over, say, Debian or Ubuntu.
I ran Debian and derivatives (Ubuntu, Mint), Arch and derivatives (EndeavourOS, Manjaro), Fedora and OpenSUSE, although each one on a very "user" level; I'm no IT guy, I just value what Linux gives me and am forced to learn to use it well.
Each has their merits. Currently, I go with OpenSUSE because it gives reasonable stability while not going ancient. When set up right, you can rely on it to keep doing things the same way, without needing to intervene manually. It also features correctly set snapper by default, which ensures I, as a generally non-technical user, won't shoot myself in the foot.
Ideally, I would go with OpenSUSE Slowroll, as I love the concept, but it is still experimental and I don't want both my machines to rely on beta builds. Still, my laptop has it installed and it works like a charm. The idea of "nearly bleeding-edge, but behind the most adventurous users" is why I chose Manjaro as my first distribution back in the day. Sadly, it is poorly managed, and issues arising with AUR only make things worse. OpenSUSE Slowroll feels to me like Manjaro done right.
As per other distributions I tried:
* Debian gets very ancient very quickly (and even if you rely on flatpaks, system packages are, like, OLD)
* Ubuntu is poorly managed and filled with controversies, I don't feel like I own my computer
* Mint is nearly a single distribution that doesn't officially ship with KDE (likely because most of its userbase would ditch Cinnamon immediately, huh) and has caused issues on my machines specifically
* Arch/EndeavourOS is "move fast and break things", and things DO break unless you manually intervene on numerous occasions based on whatever forums tell you. Also, on all Arch-based systems, I face insane lags and RAM hogging when moving large files. I don't know why.
* Manjaro, as I said, is well-intentioned, but poorly executed. It breaks from so many things, which makes it lose its novice appeal. Still, it's cozy and not scary to enter, so this is where I started, and then learning to fight the bugs taught me a lot about Linux
* Fedora needs some work out of the box, but is generally stable and nice. However, the community is too fast to make breaking decisions (like when they ditched X11, which broke my gf's work because her tools don't work with Wayland, and she went with Fedora). Also, I'm not thrilled by its association with Red Hat, which turns increasingly...Canonical.
So, OpenSUSE it is. I never knew I would end up here, but here I am. Slowroll on my laptop for the last half a year or so convinced me to ditch EndeavourOS on my desktop and go OpenSUSE as well. Up to a rough start, but hoping it will go well after that.
I tried my 1060 with Debian, Ubuntu and Mint. Didn’t get it to run (stable) with the Nvidia drivers. And it will only get worse from here (especially with wayland) because the driver version for these cards is no longer maintained.
If found an article* about arch and Nvidia with a few things I haven’t tried. I’ll give it another try. But I have no hopes on getting it to run stable.
NVIDIA + Wayland on Arch: A Comprehensive Setup Guide
Unlock the secrets to a flawless NVIDIA and Wayland setup on Arch. Follow our step-by-step guide for a hassle-free desktop experience.Bobby Borisov (Linuxiac)
jesta
in reply to lens0021 • • •Starfighter
in reply to jesta • • •Not just on the web. I've previously used it to embed a short clip in a presentation.
The nice thing is that it doesn't do a massive screencap but only captures the text. This way the replay will be freshly rendered at native resolution.
Ⓜ3️⃣3️⃣ 🌌
in reply to lens0021 • • •trevor (he/they)
in reply to Ⓜ3️⃣3️⃣ 🌌 • • •--streamfunctionality looks very useful as well. Super cool!