Hapiversay!

If you can find someone who has been farting non-stop since before you were born, you’d also be able to find out how many times you’ve farted.

I’ll bite. “QALYs”?

No-one criticised Christianity in this thread.

Store it in the balls.

Spring 1998 vibes frfr no cap

Okay, well, maybe the people who aren’t expecting their watches to work both on the Moon and at the bottom of the ocean can be allowed to swap batteries without asking a corporation for permission.

…yes? I do. For… what I would have thought, up until a few seconds ago, were overwhelmingly obvious reasons including, but not limited to: reducing our dependence on major corporations whose only concern is maximising profit, respecting human dignity, reducing the amount of our ever-diminishing natural resources being squandered, saving a bit of money…

For once, I think The Onion has aimed for parody but hit reality instead. I know two people who study geology and they absolutely do have their favourite rocks.

There’s nothing special about us, about Earth, about our situation except that which is self-evident: we’re here, Earth supports us, and we can ponder the universe, but that really might be all there is to it. It’s dangerous to attribute any reason to it, because reason implies purpose and purpose implies oversight. Or, as Douglas Adams put it:

This is rather as if you imagine a puddle waking up one morning and thinking, ‘This is an interesting world I find myself in — an interesting hole I find myself in — fits me rather neatly, doesn’t it? In fact it fits me staggeringly well, must have been made to have me in it!’ This is such a powerful idea that as the sun rises in the sky and the air heats up and as, gradually, the puddle gets smaller and smaller, frantically hanging on to the notion that everything’s going to be alright, because this world was meant to have him in it, was built to have him in it; so the moment he disappears catches him rather by surprise. I think this may be something we need to be on the watch out for.

Well, to be pedantic, there is absolutely nothing fucked about what you described, but the fact that the latter is a contender at all is, verily, fucked.

Genuinely happy the Donkey lived.

Remember that documentary about them? https://youtu.be/6PY8C1KmNwM

The solution in my experience is to not bother with any kind of IP connection and try to find a serial port. If you can connect via serial odds are the protocol will have been reverse-engineered already. A cheap microcontroller can get it talking to Home Assistant and then you’ve got a well-maintained, self-hosted and open source way of controlling the system on your terms.

Well, no. It all works and even the shittiest no-brand Chinese tat can reliably run a whole home with an EV or two. The systems I’ve been involved with have either paid for themselves within a couple of years, or are on track to. The problems here are nothing to do with solar and everything to do with poor quality IoT.

I’ve set up a few solar systems (and, I agree, it’s a pretty ambiguous name). Generally speaking, they’re devices that include an MPPT charger (which regulates the power coming from the solar panels), battery charger, and inverter (which produces mains AC), often with a bridge rectifier that also allows the system to accept input from the grid, and a second inverter to supply power back to the grid. It a lot of kit in a compact package, so it’s unsurprising that they come with apps to allow them to be monitored and configured and, sometimes, support for automation in, say, Home Assistant.

And let me tell you: the majority of these things are fucking horrendous. I’ve lost count of the number of cheap Chinese units - with brands like LCERRZOPX and JRXYLNG, or provided whitebox so a fly-by-night European companies with a name like TotalCharge Voltacon Solutions can silkscreen their own logo on - which are guilty of every IoT sin imaginable: no local API or connectivity; plaintext communication to a data center in China; apps that force you to sign up and sends your credentials in clear text; apps that have not been updated since they were released in 2013 and crash constantly; no interface other than that fucking horrible app; and so on. This might seem like a minor thing, but if you’re depending on these things to run your entire house, you need access to that information, but I have to plead with people not to buy them because they’re €50 cheaper than the equivalent from a reputable brand. These devices are susceptible to anyone with a copy of Wireshark, let alone the manufacturers or Chinese government, and they’re just waiting to be exploited.

Incidentally, if anyone is looking at buying something like this, I can’t recommend Victron highly enough. Aside from their kit being high quality, you can access every feature using Bluetooth either from their own app, or a number of other apps that support their published protocols including, of course, Home Assistant.

Yeah, maybe you’ve never met an Apple Fanboi before but I promise the Apple logo is basically a religious symbol to them.

Amongst the general public, maybe.

Amongst scholars and experts, definitely.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical_rankings_of_presidents_of_the_United_States

Probably using it to filter out any chunks.

Idea for a sitcom: Persued by a Bear. A twink Park Ranger works from a ranger’s station next door to the world’s most remote YMCA. Hilarity ensues.