SirEDCaLot

@SirEDCaLot@lemmy.today

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨British plugs⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  We used to be. The rules changed about 10 years ago.

  I’d rather have 120v wiring I can do myself than 240v wiring that I have to pay someone $hundreds just to replace a light switch.

  A lot of big appliances require higher power. Dishwashers, clothes dryers, fridges.

  Here in US dishwashers and fridges run on <1500w. A fridge should only use a few hundred watts tops unless it’s horribly inefficient. A dishwasher needs power for the heating element but ours do okay on 1500w, although yours probably heat up faster. We use a different plug for clothes dryers, usually a NEMA 10-30 or NEMA 14-30 (30A at 240v), sometimes NEMA 14-50 (50A at 240v) for really big stuff like EV chargers.
  Our power is split phase (two 120v legs, 180° out of phase, so either phase against neutral/ground is 120v, phase A against phase B is 240v). So with those plugs you either get both legs and ground or both legs plus neutral plus ground.

  Some powers tools, drill press, plainer

  Almost all US power tools run on 120v 15A.
  There’s a few really big ones, mostly designed for professional shops, that need some flavor of 240v, usually with a NEMA 6-15 outlet (like normal US outlet but pins are horizontal rather than vertical). These outlets are uncommon outside of wood shops.

  I never worry about load splitting,.

  The only time I’ve ever even considered this is a. charging my Tesla on 120v, or b. running a space heater and a hair dryer at the same time in the bathroom. :)

  Bottom line- yeah NZ system has higher power density but I don’t think the benefits outweigh the loss of ability to work on it yourself.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨British plugs⁩ ⁨⁨6⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  Okay but that’s more talking about the benefit of a 240v system. The question here was the benefit of the giant UK plug. Personally I would argue that 240v to every receptacle is not a major benefit, because very few devices require 3kw+. And in exchange you get a somewhat more hazardous system.
  I am curious if homeowners in NZ are allowed to work on their own wiring? Here in the US you are…

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨British plugs⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  Your understanding is correct. It’s actually a very simple calculation: volts x amps = watts. Watts is the amount of total work done. So to use a water pipe analogy, imagine you have a pressure washer. Volts is the pressure in PSI. Amps in the flow rate in gallons per minute. Watts is how quickly it cleans your sidewalk. Thus, the 500 PSI pressure washer that can put out 2 gallons per minute does about the same amount of cleaning as the 1,000 PSI pressure washer that puts out one gallon per minute. However, as long as the hose can withstand the pressure, pushing out 2 gallons per minute requires a larger diameter hose.

  It’s the same way with wiring. The capacity of a wire is measured in amps. So if a device needs say 1200 watts, feeding it was 240v instead of 120v means you can use thinner wires everywhere. Including in the transformer that powers it.

  However, this type of gain only really makes a big difference when you get into very high power consumption devices. An electric kettle that takes 1500 w, in the US you are almost maxing out a single 15 amp outlet. In the UK the same kettle is using less than half of the outlets capacity. (Of course they just make a kettle that has twice as much output, because the Brits don’t want to wait for their tea). Amusingly, that 3 kilowatt tea kettle is one of the only places where you get a real perceptible advantage from a 240v system.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨British plugs⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  … How is that the case? You’re multiple loads end up with a cubic foot of plugs and receptacles. Like imagine I want to plug in a computer, two monitors, a printer, a desk lamp, a cell phone charger, and a laptop plug. None of these devices use more than 100 watts. In UK you need seven of those ridiculous giant plugs for all this. Even with a power strip it would be physically huge.

  In the US the power strip that would run all that stuff is barely a foot long.

  I have used power strips all my life and never once has one caught fire.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨British plugs⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  American here. I may be in the minority, but I think this plug design is absolutely stupid. I get that it has safety features, that you can put a fuse in the plug, that the outlets have switches, etc etc etc. But it is absolutely fucking huge. Ridiculously huge. And anywhere that you have multiple devices you want to plug in, it is totally impractical because it is so fucking huge.

  The fact is, very very few devices need 240v 13A. Yes I get that it is useful to have this ridiculous amount of power so you can boil your tea kettle in 35 seconds, but other than that very few household appliances need anywhere near that amount of power.

  So the result is a cell phone charger, which at the very outside is pulling 20 or 30 watts, is plugged into this giant ridiculous monstrosity capable of supplying 3000+ watts. And in reality the only appliances that use anywhere near that much are cooking appliances and space heaters.

  Meanwhile the US NEMA 5-15 is good for 1800 watts, plenty to run almost every household appliance, with the longer ground pin and an appropriate outlet it supports tamper resistance shutters, the thin flat pins resist the insertion of foreign objects into the outlet, and you can fit many outlets in a small space.
  And it doesn’t destroy your foot when you step on it, as a nice bonus.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨How bad is it really to listen to music with headphones? My mother told me if I keep doing that I'd go deaf... Is that fearmongering?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  And if he’s flying at Mach 2, there’s probably a fuckton of wind noise against the helmet. Which means he’s probably listening way too loud. Same problem.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨How bad is it really to listen to music with headphones? My mother told me if I keep doing that I'd go deaf... Is that fearmongering?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  It’s a bunch of crap. In fact, modern headphones can if anything help protect your hearing.

  The thing that damages your hearing is sound level. Doesn’t matter if it’s from a speaker to inches away or 20 ft away, what matters is the sound pressure level that arrives at your eardrum.

  The problem with headphones is many people turn them up to drown out outside noise. To get it loud enough that you actually can’t hear the surrounding noise, it’s pretty loud. That is what causes hearing damage, not the fact that it is headphones. It would be no different if you put speakers and turned it up loud enough to drown out the noise.

  I say modern headphones can help because a lot of modern headphones have noise canceling. Thus, reducing the ambient noise level means you don’t feel a need to turn up the volume as high.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨How long do we have before PCs get locked bootloaders and corporations ban installation of "non-approved" software? (for context: Google is restricting sideloading worldwide on Android ETA 2027)⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  I was talking about secure boot. If the computer only runs Windows, enterprise doesn’t care. If the computer only runs Windows S, it’s an absolute nonstarter in enterprise tons of apps aren’t on the app store. But Windows S is never targeted to enterprise, only low end home users.

  Anything can support secure boot, the question is, are the keys included in the BIOS so it can run that particular OS without loading extra keys?

  I’ve also not personally encountered a computer where secure boot couldn’t be disabled or the list of keys modified, but I’ve definitely heard about them existing.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨How long do we have before PCs get locked bootloaders and corporations ban installation of "non-approved" software? (for context: Google is restricting sideloading worldwide on Android ETA 2027)⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  It’s been attempted in two ways.
  First is secure boot. There were a handful of computers sold that did not allow disabling of secure boot, or changing the loaded keys. So it was basically essentially a Windows only computer.
  More recently is there was Microsoft Windows S. This was a cheap version of Windows Home that ran on low end computers and was locked to only allow installing apps from the Microsoft store. It was possible to unlock it but as I recall it required an additional fee.

  Enterprises almost all run Windows anyway so they DGAF.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Public transit in Chengdu, China versus Toronto, Canada⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  All jokes aside, things like this are why China is beating us. I am absolutely not a fan of the Chinese government, but the simple fact is they get shit done.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨My ravioli bowl won't unstick. Took about an hour of prying, and still I couldn't unstick the plate.⁩ ⁨⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  This is the answer. Leave a hair dryer blowing at the thing for 5 or 10 minutes. It will heat the bowl, and also heat the air inside, which will expand.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Anon is waiting for Japan⁩ ⁨⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  The problem isn’t capitalism. US has always had capitalism and once we put good protections in it worked great, like post WWII up until like 1990ish. That golden arrow was mainly because there were strong protections for workers that were relevant to the time. A man working minimum wage could live decently and feed his family.

  The three factors of production are land, labor, and capital. All three are supposed to have equal seats at the table. But starting somewhere between the Reagan years and 1990s, we started to let capital run the table. Labor took a back seat. And what we have now is the result.

  Housing and health care became investments rather than services. Minimum wage didn’t track inflation, didn’t track CPI, and sure as hell didn’t track worker productivity. The federal minimum wage has less buying power today than at any point since the minimum wage was implemented. And there is a very real trickle down effect, in that if the lowest worker is making $7.25, all other wages adjust based on that. IE, the slightly higher end worker makes $15 or $20 because that’s double or triple the minimum wage. If the lowest worker was making $20, the slightly higher end worker would be making $40 or $60.

  The result is that the American people have less buying power at their disposal than they have in a very long time. Significantly less than during those golden years of the latter 1900s. And that is why shit sucks.

  Capitalism is not the problem. Unchecked unregulated capitalism is the problem. Regulatory capture is part of that problem. And that’s what we have now in many industries.

  Fix that, raise the minimum wage, and stop letting corporations exploit not just workers but the nation as a whole. Then you have some capitalism that works for everybody.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Anon is waiting for Japan⁩ ⁨⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Sadly Japan may be a culture in decline.
  Their culture is basically work yourself to the bone even more than the US. Young people study their ass off and get a job working long hours while still living at home because they still can’t afford their own place. And you have stuff like if the subway is a minute late they hand out apology slips to workers so they don’t get in trouble with their bosses for being 30 seconds late. Meanwhile there is a very strong ‘defer to elder authority’ note in their culture. And in many industries people are expected to work a 10-hour day and then go drinking with the bus until 2:00 a.m. only to be back at work the next day at 8:00 a.m.
  The end result is young people have neither the time nor the money to have kids. So they don’t.

  Their population is literally aging and shrinking. They are facing a very serious problem in wondering who is going to take care of their elderly. Their birth to death ratio is 0.44, meaning that for every baby born in a year more than two people die. In a nation of about 125 million, the population is shrinking by just under a million every year. That’s not good.

  And while the Japanese people are highly educated and very capable, the ‘defer to authority’ culture prevents the sort of entrepreneurship you see in the US. An example of this, Japanese companies have a stamp called the hanko, when a paper memo is circulated around the office each employee stamps it with their personal hanko stamp to signify that they have read it. Many Japanese companies stayed in person during COVID simply because there was no digital equivalent to the hanko and managers refused to give it up.

  If you wants an example, look at Toyota Motors. It’s been obvious to everyone with eyes that electric vehicles are the future, and it has been obvious for probably 8 or 10 years. Every major automaker is investing in EV technology. Except Toyota, which up until recently was still betting the farm on hybrids and hydrogen. But that’s because the good Mr Toyoda didn’t like EVs, and unlike in an American company no one would dare challenge him on that.

  It is really too bad. Japan is a wonderful place with an amazing culture and rich history. But if they are going to survive they need to make very serious changes to their society and they need to do it soon. That is going to involve dumping most of what currently qualifies as Japanese business culture, an instituting some real work-life balance laws with teeth. I don’t know if they’re going to do it.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨"You should probably just throw it away"⁩ ⁨⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Oh of course. For them and their OEM partners too. Nobody else benefits from throwing 2-5 generations of perfectly functional hardware in the fucking trash.

  That all said though, Microsoft has been one of the biggest pushes behind replacing passwords with more secure authentication. And TPM does play a role in that. Certainly not the driving factor for throwing away millions of perfectly good computers though.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨"You should probably just throw it away"⁩ ⁨⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  I really wish there was something regulatory that could be done about this. There are millions of perfectly good fully working computers that are going to go in the fucking trash because of this. I understand the desire for a TPM on every machine. It makes sense in a way. But the pure environmental impact is just indefensible. All of those computers had a significant environmental footprint to build them and ship them and again to dispose of them plus building and shipping their replacements.
  If Microsoft had such a hard-on for TPM, they should have worked with computer manufacturers to make some sort of retrofit system or way of easily determining if a TPM can be added to an existing computer

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Anon is smarter than a genius⁩ ⁨⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  I remember reading a story a while back about the documentary they were making on him. He had his special diet of juices and supplements and whatnot, which he claimed helped him while his liver was failing. The actor who portrayed him started following the same diet to better get in character. Only then he collapsed on set with liver problems. They did a full medical work up and basically told him whatever you’re doing stop doing it because it’s killing you. He went back to his normal diet and he was fine. Raising the serious question, did Steve Jobs outsmart himself to death? If he had given up all the diets and supplements and whatnot might he have lived?

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Jon Stewart lacerates hand on air, for the second time.⁩ ⁨⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  His old electrician is correct. Paper towel wrapped around the wound, wrap it with one layer of duct tape or gaffers tape and you’re good to keep working. This is one of those ‘everybody who’s ever worked a trade knows it’ type things.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Anon lives with his sister⁩ ⁨⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Answer is simple. Invite him to come over some Saturday. Go find something else to do when he arrives. He can go take your sister out on a date and they can hook up. Then you get back and play RDR with him. Everybody wins :-)

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Google is now forcing gemini in their gmail app⁩ ⁨⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  I’m in the same boat. Keep getting android popups like IMPORTANT ACCOUNT NOTIFICATION YOU HAVE TO ADD YOUR BIRTHDAY no I don’t fuck you swipe away.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Anon goes on a first date⁩ ⁨⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  You’re missing the point.
  It sounds like you took my post as ‘anime fans aren’t all losers’. I didn’t say that.

  I was trying to say that it’s okay she rejected him for that and he should be happy that he won’t waste any more dates on a person who considers his hobbies a turn-off.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Anon goes on a first date⁩ ⁨⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  This is why people fail at dating and relationships. They look at it like fishing- that your goal is to tempt a big fish into biting. That is wrong. Dating is a SEARCH. In your area there is somewhere between a few thousand and a million potential partners of your desired gender and age and other characteristics. You aren’t trying to persuade the first one you see to like you, you’re trying to find the one who already likes you but doesn’t know it yet because they haven’t met you. The person you are compatible with will like you for who you are. So when this girl rejects him because she doesn’t like anime, he should not take that as a personal failing. He should smile and say okay on to the next one.

  And if you’re into stuff like anime put that shit in your profile. That will attract the right people and screen out the wrong ones. That’s not ‘making a bad impression’, the people for whom anime is a turn off are people who you wouldn’t want anyway if you are an anime fan.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Help me out: which looks better for the Duck - the neck tie or the bow tie?⁩ ⁨⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Bow tie for sure. I suggest raise the hat a little bit so you can see the eyes a bit better.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Will pilots-less airplanes happens first, or driver-less cars? Why?⁩ ⁨⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Lol Just because the automation exists doesn’t mean it’s always used. In big planes, the system is called cat III autoland and it only works at some airports. It also produces a notoriously rough landing. In little planes, it’s an emergency assistance feature that gives you a ‘emergency land’ button in the cockpit. Not something that you use everyday.

  You can still get a private pilot license if you have 20/40 vision or your eyes can be corrected to 20/40 with glasses or whatever. Even without that, if you can drive you can fly a light sport aircraft. That’s a different category that has more limitations. But those limitations are rapidly going away, FAA is working on something called MOSAIC which will expand the definition of light sport to cover an awful lot of single engine airplanes. And with that you only need a driver’s license.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Will pilots-less airplanes happens first, or driver-less cars? Why?⁩ ⁨⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Pilot here.
  There’s already a huge amount of automation available for airplanes large and small. The current top of the line will allow the airplane to connect every phase of flight except for the takeoff, coming all the way down to landing on the runway. In your average airline flight, probably 80 to 95% of the flight is flown by computer. The pilots are managing the aircraft, talking to ATC, etc. So you could argue that that is already there.

  If you mean the ability to conduct a trip without an operator, IE little girl jumps in the back of the car and says ‘Tessie take me to school!’ and the car drives her to school, that will absolutely happen in cars before airplanes. The simple reason is edge cases and emergencies. In a car, if something goes wrong, you simply pull over. Or, worst case scenario, just slow down and stop. It’s not great but it’s not terrible. If something goes wrong in an airplane, you need to keep operating the airplane for anywhere between 10 minutes and 4 hours including a landing. A lot of what pilots do in emergencies is figure out exactly how their airplane has been damaged and strategize around that. A lot of that is intuition, the rest is deduction based on understanding of how the airplane works. Since the computer can’t see out the window or feel things like buffets and sound, a computer won’t necessarily be as good at that. So the pilots aren’t going anywhere.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Anon hates smartphones⁩ ⁨⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  No but if I’m going to watch porn in the bathroom I’m going to use a laptop or tablet not a little postage stamp phone screen

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Anon hates smartphones⁩ ⁨⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Add in ruined music to that. Shitty speakers, super lossy codecs to preserve cellular bandwidth, even shittier Bluetooth compression, listening to music on a phone is convenient but it sounds like shit. And we’ve got generations of people who think that’s what music is supposed to sound like.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Anon hates smartphones⁩ ⁨⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Shitty for porn. Tiny screen.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Why does it seem most people, mainly conservatives, against Trans people? Unless I am wrong I never heard of one shooting up a school church or whatever. The ones I have met have been pretty cool.⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago⁩:

  create an out-group so they can control the in-group

  That’s not just the media. It’s basically everyone in power. Media, politics, government, corporations… Everyone.

  It applies to the Democrats too. Especially in the 2016 election, they managed to successfully make Republicans the out-group. But I believe that was hugely damaging to the country, it created a lot more division when what is really needed is unity to focus on the issues that most people can agree on.

  Because here’s the cold truth- there is a body of policies that probably 80% of Americans would agree on. Things like efficient government, ending government corruption, reducing corporate control over government and elections, reducing income inequality, etc.
  To quote Dylan Ratigan’s famous rant, the United States is being extracted. And I think most people would like to stop that extraction.
  But no major candidate stands for that. Bernie did, but the DNC iced him out because their wealthy corporate donors didn’t want Bernie.

  And that in my opinion is why Trump won. Harris certainly didn’t push any major message of radical reform, just a bunch of the usual ‘help the middle class’ talk. Trump may be terrifying, but he does push a message of radical reform and changing the system.
  To write that off and say half the country is racist or misogynist is to avoid learning from this situation.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Why does it seem most people, mainly conservatives, against Trans people? Unless I am wrong I never heard of one shooting up a school church or whatever. The ones I have met have been pretty cool.⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago⁩:

  I think most commenters here are missing the point.

  There is a more extreme reaction to transgender people as opposed to gay or lesbian people, because of issues like sports and bathrooms. And that hits at people’s sense of injustice. For example if you have a young daughter, a lot of people will hate the idea of a person with a penis going into the women’s room and being around there little girl. Or if that daughter grows up and joins a sports team, the idea of somebody who is hormonally male and thus naturally more muscular competing against your daughter is unpleasant.

  Put differently, I think a lot of people we now classify as ‘transphobic’ Don’t actually have much problem with trans people themselves. Rather, with how the efforts to ensure trans people receive the full treatment of their chosen gender can affect the rest of society.

  For me personally, I don’t know what the answer is. I generally don’t care which bathroom you use as long as you wash your hands. I have no problem with anyone presenting themselves to the world as whatever they wish, if it makes you happier than by all means. At the same time though, I don’t think it’s transphobic to point out that somebody who is largely or entirely biologically male will have a natural competitive advantage in the field of sports.
  So while I certainly don’t want to exclude anybody, I think there is at least a little justification for restricting some women’s sports to those who are genetically female.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨'My personal failure was being stumped': Gabe Newell says finishing Half-Life 2: Episode 3 just to conclude the story would've been 'copping out of [Valve's] obligation to gamers'⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago⁩:

  I. Do. Not. Care. About. The. Tech.

  Exactly. The tech doesn’t matter. Tech only exists in service of the gameplay, and (introduced with HL1), the story (previous to HL1 the ‘story’ of most games was just a quick blurb on why there’s monsters and why you have to shoot them).

  Gamers DGAF about new tech. Gamers wanted to be told a story. We LOVED the story.

  Valve could’ve used the existing engine, built NOTHING AT ALL NEW, and just finished the story with existing assets and we’d all have been over the moon happy.