[-] endlessbeard@lemmy.ml 126 points 10 months ago

Folks, we are witnessing toxic masculinity live in this thread, look at the way this toxic male masterfully injects his internalized misogyny into a comment that sounds reasonable at first but quickly devolves into more gender stereotypes, portrayals of woman as unreasonable, impractical, and irrational. Look at how he tacitly emasculates any man who likes to cook for the joy of cooking or clean things beyond a bare minimum. What a rare opportunity to witness the toxic male engaging in such iconic behavior, while unaware of it's surroundings.

[-] endlessbeard@lemmy.ml 34 points 10 months ago

This is wild to me, not because the company acted like this, that was to be expected, but what they were arguing over: whether the guy who got his legs chopped off deserved workmans comp.

How is that even a question, even if he made some mistake or ignored some rule, the man got his legs chopped off on the job, he should get workmans comp regardless. Accidents happen no matter how safe you make an industrial environment, rules are often made to be impossible to fully follow, you shouldn't have to prove the company was at fault to be made whole for getting injured on the job.

[-] endlessbeard@lemmy.ml 19 points 11 months ago

Electrical engineer here. I love extra large batteries in my phones, kept my LG v20 way longer than I would have otherwise just because I didn't want to give up my extended battery. If you're seeing premature battery failure it's likely either poor quality battery cells, which wouldn't be unexpected in cheap offbrand batteries, or you're shortening the batteries lifespan with fast chargers and discharging to 0% frequently.

[-] endlessbeard@lemmy.ml 20 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

I've gotta chime in here with an opposing viewpoint. I got all laser lasik and while it mostly corrected my myopia (went from -5 to -0.5 sph), it gave me really bad astigmatism, to the point where night driving is much more dangerous for me. Glasses were a pain in the ass but at least they made things crystal clear. Post surgery everything except bright sunlight now has an annoying halo. I'm 3 years post surgery btw, and went back under the laser twice to try to get it corrected.

[-] endlessbeard@lemmy.ml 22 points 1 year ago

Assuming efficiency of ~4 miles per kWh (on the high end of current EV efficiency), that's a 200kWh battery. charging that in 10 minutes would require 1.2MW's of power, enough to power about 50-100 homes simultaneously. Now imagine a handful of vehicles charging simultaneously, consuming as much power as a small city.

[-] endlessbeard@lemmy.ml 7 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

As others have commented, the open source home assistant project can take voice commands and perform smart home functions like turning lights on and off, reading off the forecast, taking down notes, etc etc. But it does have limits, you will have to script any kind of complex commands, like pulling headlines from an RSS feed, or playing spotify playlists, or really anything that requires fetching info from an API, it won't do those kinds of things out of the box.

The other factor which others have called out is that it doesn't currently handle wake word functionality, though that's been on their road map this year and the Oct update might fix that. That being said, running a dedicated wake word app to fill in that gap is very much possible. See my thread here for more info: https://community.home-assistant.io/t/setting-up-a-100-local-smart-speaker-on-an-android-tablet-using-tasker-and-snowboy-to-handle-wake-word-detection/611435

[-] endlessbeard@lemmy.ml 12 points 1 year ago

Typical Buffalo PD, they probably finished off the night by concussing some old folks and beating the female officers.

[-] endlessbeard@lemmy.ml 6 points 1 year ago

Same, including an IR led is such a simple thing, why did this ever go away. Though I'm pretty sure most Chinese phones still have them, Xiaomi phones do for sure

[-] endlessbeard@lemmy.ml 37 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

I'm going to chime in here to plug the ulefone power armor 18t I just got. I was pretty nervous to get a chinese phone as I've only had samsung and lg phones before, but this thing legit blows me away. Not only does it fully support every band that my carrier uses (rare even for phones made for the US market), but it has:

  • Replaceable battery that lasts 3+ days between recharges

  • Extremely rugged, IP69 waterproof and designed for underwater photography (physical shutter button and diving camera app)

  • 3.5mm jack, sd card slot, FM radio (with built in antenna - no headphones need to be plugged in), and an RGB notification led

  • Dimensity 900 chipset that beats a lot of the snapdragon chips on the market.

  • 12 fucking GB of RAM... yes, 12...

  • Wifi 6(ax)

  • Wireless charging and reverse charging

  • A fucking 60x magnification microscope? (Why???)

  • A FLIR thermal camera (Just because, why the fuck not)

  • Runs mostly bloat free stock android

All that for under $600 (on aliexpress)

The only thing it's missing is an IR blaster, otherwise this is the best phone I've ever had, bar none. It is a chonky beast though, be warned.

This has really changed my view on Chinese electronics, especially at a time when phones for the western world are losing features and functionality all the time (including stuff from South Korean). Turns out capitalism isn't that great for innovation!

[-] endlessbeard@lemmy.ml 8 points 1 year ago

Could it be worse than giving them to power hungry octogenarians?

25
submitted 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) by endlessbeard@lemmy.ml to c/homeassistant@lemmy.world

While I eagerly await a built in wake word function, I decided to see what other options are out there and started looking into open source hotword detection projects, and found snowboy. Combining a snowboy plugin with tasker and an android tablet connected all the dots to run local wake word detection that drops seamlessly into the assist service.

The only downside is that recognition for custom phrases is fairly limited (custom wake words are based on only 3 audio samples from the intended speaker), though it seems possible to use them, maybe even to setup different access per speaker, but I haven't gone down that path yet.

Thankfully there is a small selection of "universal" built in wake words including:

Hey/Ok Google

Alexa

Jarvis

Computer

Snowboy

Smart Mirror

and a few other oddball ones that can be found here: https://github.com/Kitt-AI/snowboy/tree/master/resources/models

In short, using any android device (an old phone or tablet), install "Tasker" and "HotwordPlugin" which uses snowboy for the local wake word detection. Assuming you have the assist pipeline setup already and the home assistant app installed, have Tasker call the HA apps assist service whenever HotworkPlugin detects the wake word and triggers the routine. Set it to launch a new assist service with every trigger so it will take consecutive commands.

Depending on how the wake word functionality is implemented in HA eventually this may be just a temporary solution, but it's working well enough for the moment.

Tasker: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=net.dinglisch.android.taskerm (It's a paid app, but well worth it considering what you get for $3.50)

HotwordPlugin: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=nl.jolanrensen.hotwordPlugin (there is an ad supported free version as well)

Snowboy: https://github.com/seasalt-ai/snowboy

[-] endlessbeard@lemmy.ml 8 points 1 year ago

Everything you've suggested is equivalent to re-arranging the deck chairs on the titanic. Climate change is not driven by individual action and can't be solved by individuals changing their consumption habits. Over 70% of greenhouse gasses are produced by less than 100 companies, companies that have lobbied for public subsidies, socialized their losses with bailouts, outlawed or bought out any competition, laid waste to our countries natural resources, ripped up efficient public transit and infrastructure, and suppressed any change to their fossil fuel monopoly. Changing our course on climate change will mean taking back control from a powerful and entrenched class of people and corporations who control all the legal means you think can be used to hold them accountable.

[-] endlessbeard@lemmy.ml 26 points 1 year ago

I'm an electrical engineer who designs commercial and Utility Scale PV systems (i.e. Multi acre solar power plants), though I've done a couple dozen residential systems as well.

@evranch@lemmy.ca chimed in with some really good advice, but I wanted to add a few things.

If I were to do my own system I'd go with micro inverters, enphase IQ8 most likely, as they can be setup to operate during a grid outage, either with a battery backup, or with a load balancing panel.

Careful of the downfalls of going the DIY route, not sure how it is in your state, but in some states I've worked in you will forfeit incentives if you don't use a qualified installer.

Get familiar with your utilities net metering policies, if they don't net meter power at or near retail rates then you'll end up giving them your power for free/cheap whenever you overgenerate. Some utilities will also make it difficult if you're not going through a qualified installer.

Lastly, and this is coming from someone who understands the industry intimately, really take a look at the numbers and decide if this makes sense for you. Most residential solar will take 5-10 years to pay for itself (after incentives) and start to generate a profit. Compare that with the same sum invested in a general s&p500 index fund which would likely have doubled in value during that time.

Ultimately I decided not to install solar on my home, despite the ability to 100% DIY the whole thing and get parts at steep discounts, and instead installed a backup generator and signed up with a local community solar array (which is not something that all states/utilities allow).

Happy to answer any questions you may have!

view more: next ›

endlessbeard

joined 1 year ago