I use PIA because they’re the only ones who support split tunnel and port forwarding on my OS. My torrent client and some chat apps run through the tunnel and everything else is bypassed. I’d use TOR on top of it if I wanted to do anything truly dodgy, which I don’t.

I actually have solar. The entirety of my south-facing roof is covered, but it’s only 7.6 kW clipped to 5.6 kW by the microinverters. It’s about 70% of my usage right now. I’m trying to get to 100% through efficiency upgrades.

I’d really like to get a heat-pump water heater but my current one is a lowboy, so I’d either need to excavate clay from underneath it or move the lines/power supply. The only lowboy heat-pump water heaters are incredibly expensive.

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Hyundai announced they don’t expect to release solid-state EVs until 2030, but their solid-state plant has been operational for a bit now and they’re filing full-scale solid-state production patents already. It’s going to be a real race to the finish.

Inverters and solar battery storage generally have some combination of wired and wireless communication. You need to communicate with the grid for real-time pricing and forecasts so the system knows when to charge and discharge. Also you want the system status of all the panels and batteries. If somebody slices through the wrong fiber line near your site, it’s important to still be able to get that information.

If you get a home PV system, they’ll often have the option of a cellular modem. The controller on my home system has Wi-Fi and Ethernet with the option of a cellular modem. It wouldn’t surprise me if the board comes populated with some of the components necessary for cellular functionality even if you don’t opt for it.

I’m just saying they need to divulge more details before one can conclude this is nefarious.

Over the past nine months, undocumented communication devices, including cellular radios, have also been found in some batteries from multiple Chinese suppliers, one of them said.

The two people declined to name the Chinese manufacturers of the inverters and batteries with extra communication devices, nor say how many they had found in total.

They’re very light on details. Sometimes it’s cheaper to make one PCB in huge numbers and only enable the cellular modem on the higher priced models or when a subscription fee is paid. Their mere existence without any additional information shouldn’t be particularly alarming.

There are two links to this slop site on /hot and both have a suspiciously high number of upvotes.

Last tine I went on there I got a 3 month ban for making fun of Roy Moore losing to Doug Jones. It’s as much an echo chamber as anywhere else, if not worse.

µLED doesn’t experience any burn in, lasts decades, has perfect blacks and can reach higher brightness than you would ever want to look directly at. If they can get them to where OLEDs are now in terms of price they’ll take over the market.

I don’t keep my phone on me for large parts of the day. The AW has just enough connectivity to get me the information I need without being a distraction. I’ve found it motivates me to do gardening, landscaping, etc. because I can track that as a workout. The weather alerts are also nice for that since it lets you know a few minutes before it starts/stops raining.

Mine is 7 years old now and the battery still lasts all day so I feel no need to replace it. I wonder if device longevity combined with lack of meaningful improvements might be slowing sales. They seem like the sort of device you wear until it stops working for a full day or you break it.

If you really want to make a successful utilitarian line of EV trucks you need a DC V2L standard capable of delivering 10 kW or more. Maybe something like USB-C PD with communication lines reduced in number and the power wires bumped up to 10 or 8 gauge wire. That would enable you to make BLDC-powered truck accessories that perform better and are cheaper than gas-powered alternatives.

For example, a BLDC powered wood chipper with a 5 kW motor could chip branches up to 5” or 6” and, due to the nearly flat torque curve, it wouldn’t stall out and need to be unclogged like a gas-powered version. Log-splitters, post-hole diggers, saw-mills, etc. that are powered by small gas engines would all be vastly inferior to their EV-powered BLDC counterparts - both in price and performance.

Also, a Supreme Court justice who has taken millions in bribes ruled that bribery is legal. It’s hard to have faith in the system when the nation’s highest court is rotten to the core.

He has been on house arrest since 2020 after 9 years in prison and only had 2 years of house arrest left. His sentence was commuted but he wasn’t part of the pardons, so there’s no change to his status as a felon. All this means is they are removing his ankle monitor less than 2 years earlier than scheduled.

There are lots of people out there who think that inflation means how much prices have risen in some recent period of their memory. If something that cost $3 in 2018 is now $6 and you tell them inflation is at 2%, they will be completely bewildered as to how this can be true. There are also tons of people who don’t understand why deflation is bad or undesirable. If you can’t tell who is lying to you because you have no idea how the economy works, you’re just going to choose the one you remember as being better.

Federal Reserve Economic Data shows debt:GDP holding at 120% since spiking during the pandemic.

They should trade China all the cigars and rum they want for enough cheap solar and batteries to power the island.

The photo the DPRK released showed a fairly small drone with a triangular shape. It doesn’t look sufficiently large to fly all the way from the ROK to Pyongyang, drop some leaflets and return to the south, meaning they should have been able to recover the crashed drone. Also, if it were a civilian group, they usually take credit for the balloons they send and none have said anything about sending a drone to the north. It really seems like something might be going on internally and the DPRK is trying to blame whatever is happening on outside agitation.

Have you checked your sacrificial anode? If it’s gone, this will keep happening.

If you have solar paired with proton exchange membrane electrolysis, you can generate hydrogen very economically. PEM electrolyzers are already around 80% efficient but supply is limited right now. Hydrogen is a pain to store, but if you feed that hydrogen into the Haber-Bosch process you can very efficiently produce ammonia. Ammonia fuel cells are very promising if you’re looking to decarbonize container shipping.