zbrozek

75 ms·

961.
by zbrozek 6y ago
During a heat wave last weekend my power cut out and I started shopping for natural gas generators. At the rate that electricity prices have been increasing lately, it's not even insane to think about running off of the generator full
962.
by zbrozek 6y ago
Bingo. Already happened on the street behind my house. AT&T has copper where most of the pairs have been damaged over the decades and they just shrug about it.
963.
by zbrozek 6y ago
Or better yet, nobody.
964.
by zbrozek 6y ago
Downsides: - Very nonstandard - Limited client density (could be fine in a house) - Beam-forming probably out of the question It would probably work OK though. But why is it better than making 802.11r work? From my perspective as a user (no
965.
by zbrozek 6y ago
It is. But how? Where'd you buy a dumb TV?
966.
by zbrozek 6y ago
Around here? Price tag. That's all.
967.
by zbrozek 6y ago
I take total bill and total consumption and divide. It's a surprisingly high number.
968.
by zbrozek 6y ago
Making everything hopelessly complicated isn't really great either. Should water rates and gas rates do the same? Tolls already do this. It's a growing cognitive burden. I don't look forward to surge pricing for data usage. I
969.
by zbrozek 6y ago
As far as I can tell it's a cost-plus model. If PG&E wants to grow its revenue, it has to do something that costs more. They have a perverse incentive to make everything as expensive as possible. https://www.pge.com&#x2F
970.
by zbrozek 6y ago
The justification is that there's a particularly high density and quantity of wiring around that fire station (one of two for LAH, IIRC) and that Moody is a major access route for emergency services and evacuation. A giant bundle of wi
971.
by zbrozek 6y ago
My rule of thumb is to budget 3 mbps for every "real computer" to keep itself up to date. By my count, in my home, that's 15. Here that's phones, traditional computers, VMs, and Raspberry Pis. And about 1 mbps for every
972.
by zbrozek 6y ago
I know someone on that tablet plan (which, BTW, you can no longer get - go check ebay) who lost it by consistently hitting 1TB every month. What's the Sprint plan?
973.
by zbrozek 6y ago
Personally I think mobile is tolerably (but not ideally) competitive. I think the costs are driven by the high costs of spectrum and marketing/customer acquisition. And the product is reasonably high-value, so prices _can_ be high. A u
974.
by zbrozek 6y ago
I have no use for a boat. But my parents have one from the early 90s and would love to get an electric replacement. I think $100k is probably the upper limit though... And I've often thought about how easy (compared to cars) it would b
975.
by zbrozek 6y ago
This doesn't really make sense to me. The big difference I see is the cost to buy spectrum and the inherent geographic monopoly of owning it. Transformers and switchcraft are heavy-iron things which cost a lot because they're safe
976.
by zbrozek 6y ago
The sun is not a monochromatic source. It's an incoherent, broadband source. The power spectrum distribution of those wavelengths pretty-closely follows the black body radiation curve. If you had a monochromatic source at that peak it
977.
by zbrozek 6y ago
I will almost certainly remain grid-tied for quite some years to come, so excess will go elsewhere. But I want to pull in fairly close to zero. Also, I'm in the Bay Area and my electricity needs will track sun pretty well. Heating is c
978.
by zbrozek 6y ago
My neighborhood (14 homes) is working towards building a fiber island with wireless backhaul elsewhere. We're the houses right around the Rhus Ridge trailhead. But there are even-closer-to-urbanization neighborhoods without access, e.g
979.
by zbrozek 6y ago
I'm working towards solar+battery mostly because I feel that my electric energy costs are unreasonably high and I scored a residential battery for free. Had I not gotten it for free, I would probably have bought one anyway just to give
980.
by zbrozek 6y ago
I moved from Sunnyvale to Los Altos Hills and lost access to broadband. Comcast even told me they offered service at the address, then reneged when I moved in and asked to set it up. More options would be great, and underserved areas aren&#
981.
by zbrozek 6y ago
Mars's atmosphere is very low density, so the balloon would have to be unreasonably enormous to fly anything useful. Venus, on the other hand, has an extraordinarily dense atmosphere. So dense that folks have hypothesized floating enti
982.
by zbrozek 6y ago
Defaults matter. I have a lot of devices and I can't be bothered to make every app less awful on every one of them every few months. It's far easier to opt out of the app entirely.
983.
by zbrozek 6y ago
I'm often curious what makes someone feel safe or not. I've never felt unsafe wandering around (including in lots of "sketchy" places), but I suspect a lot of that is an accident of my genetics. I just don't look
984.
by zbrozek 6y ago
I drove a first-gen Volt shortly after they were released. I hated it because of the cap-touch UI, the poor rear visibility, and the poor brake/regen blending. A couple of friends have later generations and love them, but that initial
985.
by zbrozek 6y ago
I think this app caters to a different set of needs. Personally I find the official YouTube app noisy and pushy and offensive. Autoplay and PIP are anti-features I want to avoid. Recommendations are also unwanted. This alternative looks gre
986.
by zbrozek 6y ago
WISP options in my area (SF Bay Area) are extremely weak. I've opted for AT&T LTE instead. $99 for 15/3 mbps, or $139 if you want broadband: https://ethericnetworks.com/residential-service-plans/ $50 for
987.
by zbrozek 6y ago
Noise is a complicated thing. If you're in a neighborhood that's got low-speed traffic and the occasional car engine is what's disrupting your peace, more penetration of EVs will be great. But EVs are also heavy, and cars are
988.
by zbrozek 6y ago
Did you misread latency and throughput?
989.
by zbrozek 6y ago
All the manufacturing engineers I've talked to hate doing fluid dispense. Glue is in a class all its own because if you take the line down it tends to cure in the dispenser or nozzle.
990.
by zbrozek 6y ago
My guess is that they have flex cables (and not so much ribbons) and tape. Other electronic devices - including modern ones - that I've taken apart lately include quite a lot of both. There are three flexes in just this one iFixit ph

More ›