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activistPnk

@ activistPnk @slrpnk.net

Posts

85
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173
Joined

2 yr. ago

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7mo ago

We need a piracy exception written into law for service manuals and wiring diagrams -- and we need repair pros to share the docs. How can local govs make this happen?
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activistPnk @slrpnk.net 7mo ago

I don’t think that is true. I never heard of a creativity test or measurement as a precondition to copyright protection. As I understand it, anything you write (regardless of artistic creativity) is automatically protected under an all rights reserved copyright unless you explicitly state otherwise.

7mo ago

wisdom of button batteries -- anyone think they are a good idea?

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activistPnk @slrpnk.net 7mo ago

Seems like a good approach for the scale. It’s quite thin but I’ll see if I can add a mechanical switch.

7mo ago

wisdom of button batteries -- anyone think they are a good idea?

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activistPnk @slrpnk.net 7mo ago

i might try this for the calipers. But the battery cover for the scale uses a screw.. so i might opt to hack that to use external power of some kind.

7mo ago

Why email is worse for the environment than fax & paper letter — and why I have abandoned email.

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activistPnk @slrpnk.net 7mo ago

So email is actually fine, but some companies which offer email services are highly problematic and should be avoided.

“some companies” includes MS and Google, which likely covers at least 75% of the world’s email recipients. While most of the other ESPs pull the same shit as MS and Google.

So no, email is not fine in any general sense. You can carve out an exceptional case where it’s fine if you can twist your correspondent’s arm to use a rare non-problematic service, but that’s unsurmountable in most situations. You cannot demand that your gov switch to Disroot email to contact you using non-problematic email.

I don’t want to imagine using fax and paper for distributed software development.

I don’t want to imagine a world where everyone is forced to share sensitive information with an ecologically harmful surveillance advertiser.

9mo ago

Solar panels are gratis in my region (to borrow). But 10× normal prices to buy. What’s going on here?

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activistPnk @slrpnk.net 9mo ago

What if you want to sell the house

I’ve not read the contract yet. Considering they include removal an reinstallation labor for free if someone renovates their roof, they theoretically might as well relocate them to another house when moving within their service area (which is constrained as well by the region of the green certificates).

What happens when you want to exit the contract within the 30 years?

Certainly you can buy the gear. And if you buy all the panels you are out of the contract. Price per panel as they age is something like this:

years 0-5: €850
years 5-10: €750
years 10-15: €650
…
year 30: €0

If you want to exit the contract and return the panels, I have no idea. But since these prices seem to be heavily inflated to cover their labor, I imagine it’s quite uninteresting to return the panels because they likely factor in the labor.

When the sun is shining at peak brightness, what’s the guarantee that you get to use all of it?

All the boxes have LCDs. The 1st box shows the power generation. Then another box shows what of that you are consuming. I don’t recall what the 3rd box shows but I can only imagine it’s the energy fed to the grid. I assume the original electric meter is still installed, in which case it might be possible to check the math.

There could still be shenanigans because it’s probably hard to verify. I think as a low consumer I might be better off buying the panels and getting an i/o meter (not sure what the correct term is but something that compensates me for what is fed back to the grid).

Anyway, I appreciate the reply. I’ll have to mirror some of those questions to the supplier.

9mo ago

Solar panels are gratis in my region (to borrow). But 10× normal prices to buy. What’s going on here?

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activistPnk @slrpnk.net 9mo ago

I can only guess. I don’t think that could even be in contract. My guess:

another company buys it: the buyer takes over the contracts
liquidation: normally assets go to the creditors. But every homeowner is a creditor for the property in the future. So I think a reasonable court would just turn ownership over to the homeowner. OTOH, the energy company is also a party to the deal because the energy supplier gets the unused power. Perhaps the panels would be taken over by the energy supplier until the 30 year mark.

9mo ago

Solar panels are gratis in my region (to borrow). But 10× normal prices to buy. What’s going on here?

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activistPnk @slrpnk.net 9mo ago

The cost of installation, wiring and transformers is more than the cost of panels.

They likely factor all those costs into the panel costs. But would labor and parts overhead represent 9/10ths of €8500, for example? Looks like they install 3 boxes in the basement plus panels for around €7500.

That may be where the fat is. So I’m tempted to say this is only a good deal for someone who really wants hands-off on-grid solar power for 30 yrs. And perhaps a bad deal if someone foresees going off grid and doing their own labor.

After the 30 years of “borrowing” the panels, who pays for their removal and recycling?

I assume that’s the homeowner because the supplier simply makes it all the homeowner’s property after 30 years.. likely so they don’t have to deal with it.

10mo ago

Trans-Europe-Planner for train connections

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activistPnk @slrpnk.net 10mo ago

I just get a white screen, even after enabling JS. I have images disabled. Is the whole page just an image?

10mo ago

Could the airship be the answer to sustainable air travel – or is it all a load of hot air?

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activistPnk @slrpnk.net 10mo ago

They’re slow

Okay but that’s not the real deterrant. It’s the cost you mention. I would like to take a transatlantic cargo ship despite the extra long journey, but the cost blows it.

I don’t think cargo ships do much better on GHG than jets. But an airship would be vastly more eco responsible than ships or jets. Cost is really the issue though and that can be solved. People taking jets could be forced to subsidize those traveling more responsibly.

Today human hibernation is widely thought to be crazy talk but it’s not far off. We will see it in our lifetime. People in hibernation eat less, need less space, and need less customer service.

10mo ago

Looking for some (re-)use cases for older Android smartphones

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activistPnk @slrpnk.net 10mo ago

external GPS server

GPS → old phone (calculates position) → bluetooth → current phone

This relieves your current phone of the workload of tracking and calculating a fix, which costs energy. Bluetooth uses much less energy so your current phone only burns energy keeping the LCD lit. It would increase navigation range on a charge because effectively you would be using two batteries. Also avoiding the battery performance hit due to heat because the processing is distributed. The problem is I think no FOSS nav apps support external GPS. There are FOSS apps and drivers to feed and read the mock gps but the nav apps don’t use it.

bluetooth radio receiver:

Old phone has bluetooth enabled and pairs with whoever at the party wants to be the DJ. The headphone output goes to a channel on the (otherwise bluetooth-incapable) mixer or amp.

fake hotspot:

Setup a hotspot with no internet uplink. Use the SSID as a bumper sticker (e.g. “ImpeachTrump_optout_nomap!”). You could theoretically run a web server on the phone which redirects all access attempts to a captive portal that broadcasts whatever msg you want (e.g. anti-Trump memes or announcements for neighbors). It need not give WAN access.

Maybe incorporate Rumble: https://f-droid.org/en/packages/org.disrupted.rumble/

cryptocurrency:

It could serve as an offline/airgapped cryptocurrency wallet.

car telemetry:

Keep the old phone permanently in the car and attached to the OBD.

11mo ago

Progressive tax regimes are conducive to anti-work philosophy, right up until you take a year or more off.

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activistPnk @slrpnk.net 11mo ago

You’re basically complaining that Roth 409s/IRAs exist

You’re basically saying “fuck Europe” (to use your technique of building a man made of straw). This is not a US-only forum. Roths are a US invention and they are US-specific. Canada has something somewhat like it but not quite (no conversion option IIRC, which blows it), and at least parts of Europe (if not all of Europe) have nothing at all like it.

Apart from that, it’s bizarre that you think I would have any problem with Roths. Where do you think you read that? Roths are a great tool that actually supports my goals -- though in one country only. And only for as long as conversions are allowed, to the extent they are allowed, and to the extent of 401k limits and conversion limits.

I might have ignored this post without all the anti-NEET, anti … landlords? company owners? contractors? … all the tears of people who seem to me to be in the wrong place, in the comments.

Ah, so anti-work is an elitist movement that excludes some demographics of people you hate? Nonsense. Middle class people can (and should) practice anti-work philosophies. Please fuck off with the: this is for poor people only exclusivity. The geocentrism can fuck off too, particularly when simultaneously coupled with pretentious ass-hattery. Uber Eats contractors would be appalled with the prejudiced grouping you have stuffed them into. The poor people you want to restrict the anti-work movement to don’t have the 401ks needed for the Roth conversion approach to work for them.

11mo ago

Progressive tax regimes are conducive to anti-work philosophy, right up until you take a year or more off.

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activistPnk @slrpnk.net 11mo ago

There are some models for sabaticals, like lower pay and then basically a year of paid vacation. It also includes insurance policies, as there is an obvious incentive to just fire you before you take the time off.

None of my employers have offered that. Colleagues would take a sabatical but I think it must have been uncompensated -- just an understanding that the gig was held for them. Is there a particular region where this arrangement is common? If it’s just 1 year off every 7 years, that’d be useful but doesn’t match up to my pattern of working about ½ time on avg (1yr on, 1yr off, 1yr on, 1yr off, 6 on, 6 off, etc).

11mo ago

Progressive tax regimes are conducive to anti-work philosophy, right up until you take a year or more off.

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activistPnk @slrpnk.net 11mo ago

That paying a little extra when you made more money is how a progressive tax system is meant to work.

You think the progressive tax system deliberately punishes people with unstable or fluxuating income? That’s foolish.

Whether that’s by design or not, no self-respecting anti-work proponent endorses it.

BTW, different countries have different tax tables, but 5% is ~100 hours. Would you like to work an extra ~1—2½ weeks per year for free? If yes, what are you doing in the anti-work community?

by coming up with a sophisticated tax avoidance scheme

The intellectual dishonesty here is atrocious. We’re talking about working less/minimally by leveling income across fiscal years (or achieving that effect) to avoid penalties for anti-work practices.