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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: July 10th, 2023

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  • Without compromised hardware even igniting a battery is pretty implausible (unless the phone was on charge, and obviously these weren’t) as you’d need to basically short it out and this would be hard even with full bare metal access.

    Pagers are famously hard to hack as well since all they do is display strings. And they aren’t on the public net, they don’t even have IP addresses as they communicate hub and spoke with a big slow RF transceiver.

    Much more likely triggered by a message or long time fuse.





  • Liftoff is fun, I’ve always recommended FPVFreerider for serious training, it’s more stripped down and focuses on absolute core flight functionality. Less tuning, more flying.

    The graphics are basic but that means you’ll never drop a frame even on a potato at 165Hz, the flight controls are insanely tight. Likewise this was the software I paired my radio with and learned to fly.

    It’s also only a couple bucks and there’s a freeware/demo version floating around out there too.


  • Correct, but often the actions of CEOs are performative and don’t actually support the goal of bringing money in. They like to put on a show of being ruthless, and often behave more psychopathic than an “optimal” business AI would.

    For example, it’s been proven that employee retention is one of the #1 ways to boost productivity. Costco is one of the few companies with a CEO which truly believes in this and despite paying higher wages than any other grocer they are one of the top performers in my investment portfolio.

    Remote work? Totally profitable and AI would maximize it instead of forcing workers back to the office to “put them in their place”

    4-day week? Also proven to be a net gain as workers are rested and motivated.

    A “cold and calculating” AI would be far more likely to make reforms that benefit both the company and the employees, as it isn’t motivated by power structures or the need to look ruthless. Cutting pay is a losing move as it loses talent more than it saves money, and deep learning algorithms would realize this easily.

    Also the “person who owns the AI” would actually be the shareholders, who are often ordinary investors. Rather than funneling money to bloated C-suites, the money would be more likely to circulate in the economy through dividends.






  • So as a farmer here in Canada, it depends where you live and what you farm. We use a lot of trailers, but they are all pulled by truck. The most common hookup methods for large trailers are gooseneck or 5th wheel, both of which require a truck as the connection point is right above the rear axle to improve towing capacity and handling.

    My farm’s heavy truck is a 1-ton flatbed with tilt deck and gooseneck hitch as well as a pintle hitch. This truck allows me to pull livestock trailers, hay wagons and farm equipment, and haul pallets, tanks and bagged goods, a very versatile truck.

    It also drinks fuel like you wouldn’t believe, so if I’m not hauling I drive an efficient diesel car when I go to the city (~200km)





  • I love the term “write-only code”, it’s perfect. I used to love Perl as it felt like it flowed straight from my brain into the keyboard. What a free and magical language.

    So it turned out I had ADHD. Took meds, went back to C/++ with renewed appreciation, haven’t touched Perl since as it horrifies me to look at it. What a nightmare of dangling references and questionable typing. Any language that allows you to cast a string to a function and call it really needs to sit down and think about what it’s doing.


  • True survivalist/libertarian types have always loved solar power.

    I don’t know how solar lost its space age coolness, though, aside from active lobbying from the fossil fuel industry to try to kill it. For awhile solar was undoubtedly the power source of the future, the same thing that was on our space probes and satellites.

    I have old oil-crisis era books and magazines on my shelf which absolutely loved solar power and billed it as the cheap energy solution for the common man. Somewhere we went wrong, and I think it was Reagan (in many ways…)



  • Charging at home is what makes this specific situation chicken and egg. Since the gas station is the only thing close to our homes, a charger there is useless to us. It only services people who would come from the city, people who wouldn’t be able to make it home without charging, much like how it currently works for us making trips to the city. Without a charger though, they can’t even think of making that trip or they will be stuck.

    I’m not really making a point about my little car, except that I love it and I wish used lithium batteries were more available in Canada so that I could install a set that would get it to town and back for the mail. It’s one of the first street-legal electrics ever produced and I’d love to keep it going. 1978!

    I guess if there is a point it’s kind of a microscale version of the Canadian issue - in rural Canada, every trip is a long trip. I can’t think of many places that I go that wouldn’t require fast charging to complete the round trip, especially in winter.


  • Chargers are starting to show up on the major highways and in the cities and large towns, but it’ll be awhile before they show up in the countryside (if ever) thanks to the chicken and egg issue. It’s a waste of money installing one, because nobody ever brings an electric car out here. And nobody brings an electric car, because without a charger, they don’t have the capacity for a round trip.

    I actually went the opposite way and bought a diesel Mercedes for my city trips. Reliable, comfortable, and so efficient that you can go for 1000km without stopping for fuel.

    I even have an electric car, a little runabout I use at the farm with lead acid cells. I could make it to town, but without being able to charge it there, I couldn’t get home (30 km lol lead acid sucks).


  • Yup here in Canada the gas station or “co-op” is the hub of a small town. It’s where you get your mail, groceries, snacks, smokes, pizza and sandwiches, farm supplies, and lean up against the counter and drink coffee and chat with the neighbours and staff. Oh yeah and they have gas, but you’d better move your truck before you pour your coffee or the next guy who needs gas is gonna be pissed at you.

    I have spent far more time socializing at gas stations than bars. See the example “Corner Gas”

    Note that aside from the “park” which you could call “everywhere around here”, I am 2 hours of highway travel away from everything on the list. Except the gas station, which is a half-hour drive on gravel/dirt roads.

    Needless to say I can see how fuckcars appeals to city folk, but there is no other practical transportation system for us farmers who live way out here. Without a vehicle, you will actually die. I like to go visit my city friends and walk to the bar, though :D