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Recommendations for cheap hardware upgrade
  • I don't think modern Raspberry pi's make much sense unless you are using GPIOs or really need the low power consumption. The 3 and the 4 were OK price wise but the pi 5 is quite close to all these N100 mini computers and they are a lot more performance and expansion compared to a raspberry pi 5 and still quite low power.

    Either a Topton or similar N100 based machine or a mini PC second hand is the way to go at the ~$100 mark. The mini PC will be faster and probably more expandable and cheaper but also more power consumption.

  • Tariffs on China aren't the way to win the EV arms race – getting serious on EVs is
  • There are mid Sodium Ion based EVs that do 150 miles and they are maybe $10k. Sodium Ion wont be able to get to the 300+ mile mark as they are heavier and bulkier and longer ranges will be dominated by li-ion and the upcoming almost solid state li-ion but that 150 miles covers a lot of peoples usual daily scenarios. The extra topping is the batteries last a lot more cycles too (6000) so after your car has long fallen apart you can use it in your home to buy cheaper night power or for solar storage.

  • Lithium-free sodium batteries exit the lab and enter US production
  • Late last year they were talking about $40 for a KWH which compared very favourably to LifePO4 that was more like $130 at the time and Li-ion that was more like $200. However right now on alibaba you can get a 200Ah battery for about $60 and the LifePO4 300Ah are now down in the $50 range which is an incredible drop in the space of 6 months. So in practice they are less dense and more expensive but I think its new technology introduction pricing and at some point it should be about a third cheaper than LifePO4 for the same capacity, all be it a bit bigger and heavier and quite considerably cheaper than Li-ion for the same capacity.

    The small 18650 and other small sized cells have started appearing on aliexpress as well so its possible to get those too butt they are a lot more expensive than a basic Li-ion 18650 at the moment for a lot less capacity. I think its mostly the bigger cells that most people interested in Sodium Ion will be wanting (home battery and grid storage solutions and some of the low/mid range cars) more than small cells since typically the smaller stuff you want to maximise capacity even if it costs a bit more and most will want li-ion and ideally the newer nearly solid state li-ion that doubles capacity per KG.

  • Exporting YouTube Subscriptions to OPML and Watching via RSS
    www.wezm.net Exporting YouTube Subscriptions to OPML and Watching via RSS

    This post describes how I exported my 500+ YouTube subscriptions to an OPML file so that I could import them into my RSS reader. I go into fine detail about the scripts and tools I used. If you just want to see the end result the code is in this repository, which describes the steps needed to run it...

    This used to be a lot easier, Youtube had an export function to OPML and you could just import it.

    Its quite useful being able to follow all your Youtube channels with your RSS reader if you want to pick which you want to watch then also Metube and the browser plug-in makes it a right click and select to send it for download.

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    Pentium 4 – the CPU Intel got SO wrong
  • These early days of processors I was constantly upgrading between the companies. A Pentium to K6 to a PIII celeron to a Duron and then an Athlon XP and then a Pentium HT before finally the stable era arrived with the Core 2 duo and all the subsequent CPUs largely being small incremental upgrades at more or less the same clockspeed peak and lots of the performance coming from more cores. There was a lot of back and forth in price/performance and absolute performance as various innovations and pipline length increases and clockspeed were release. Things changed drastically in the 8 years we went from 100Mhz Pentiums through to the Core 2 Duos where both companies lead and trailed and you needed to upgrade your machine most years to keep up with modern games.

  • Mass graves of Palestinians point to "serious violations" of international law, UN official says
  • Its been obvious since the first few weeks that a genocide was occurring. We truly live in a post truth era where no public institutions will simply say what is happening and have to be dragged with ridiculous levels of evidence to the conclusion that has been obvious for half a year.

  • First known test dogfight between AI and human pilot carried out, US military says
  • Not so much f16s but the more modern planes can do 16G where the pilot can't really do more than 9G. But once unshackled from a pilot a lot of instrument weight and pilot survival can be stripped from a plane design and the airframe built to withstand much more, with titanium airframes I see no reason we can't make planes do sustained unstable turns in excess of 20G.

  • We're not sick, we're a social phenomenon
  • Bed rotting has always struck me as the term the press and government have decided to apply to all the Long Covid patients to cover up the enormous damage that has been done to peoples health. Now Long Covid ME/CFS outnumbers ME/CFS from all other sources about 5 to 1, possibly a lot more. The level of suffering out there in the world now is astounding and this is how our press and governments are responding to a growing crisis.

  • A 605 MW PV plant in Germany is now Europe's largest solar farm
  • Its a major design consideration and they do survive hailstorms. There are always going to be freak events with very big hail that they don't survive but if you have one of those its not just the solar panels its everyones cars and windows and anything else remotely breakable in the area as well.

  • How three European human rights cases could shape climate litigation
  • Its a pretty reasonable argument. The entire point of human rights is that states can't break them and they are risking the lives of billions with every bit of increase in CO2 they allow to occur. Given they have signed up to treaties to not do so and are still carrying on suggests that they are performative in saying they will act while not doing so. The crack downs on protests around climate change have been shameful but I guess after 4 decades of inaction politicians just don't want to hear people screaming at them since they never intend to act.

  • Whooping cough’s back — and it’s Covid’s fault
  • "While the the Covid-19 pandemic officially ended last year"

    It actually didn't, the WHO still has it as a pandemic https://www.who.int/europe/emergencies/situations/covid-19. They declared the emergency over because people had accepted the consequences of the disease, but its still a pandemic.

    Everything is up especially strokes and heart attacks but especially infections of diseases. The vaccination percentage hasn't dropped much. TB is on the rise for example and its due to immune system damage that Covid causes in a lot of people. It can take a year or more to recover from the immune disturbances that Covid causes, its driving a lot of increased infection. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41590-021-01113-x

  • Anyone else considering spoiling their ballot in the next election?
  • When they are reading out the results they do say how many spoiled ballots there were, the problem is the BBC et el usually cut off just as that is being read and they don't count it across the country or keep the results and as the results start coming in faster you don't hear it. The spoiled ballots doesn't seem to make it into any of the official stats for an election that I can see. So unfortunately its one of those acts that ought to be better than not voting but in practice turns out to be basically the same.

    I certainly wont be voting for the Conservatives or Labour but as far as protests go I am better off voting for another party that wont win as a protest than spoiling the ballot as it will be more visible and included in all the stats.

  • Cropped out, banned, airbrushed: the school photos that show the ugly face of Britain today
  • People don't realise how common this is in our society unless you are a minority. Its everywhere. The state abuses disabled people via the DWP, the doctors do the same to disabled people by refusing to treat or put secretly DNRs on their records. Access is awful everywhere and people with wheelchairs fail to get on buses because the spot is taken by a pram which its not allowed to be used for, then there is the removal of accessible bridges for the train network replaced with ones that aren't accessible, the lifts barely work when they are installed. Then there is all the attacks and verbal abuse on the streets from random people and so much more besides. Its everywhere in every place a minority would go.

    Despite whatever self reported level of discrimination the UK gets as one of the best in the world any minority in this country can tell you how many times a day they are abused by someone else. Its every single day. The Police, NHS and other state functions all do it and there are no consequences for any of it. It is so common infact its not news and rarely makes the news, this one is odd for making it into the press because this happens in schools across the country every year and it certainly happened at my school photos.

    It is hard to accept this basic reality as someone who isn't a constant victim of our society but if you listen to the people who are the victims of this stuff its relentless.

  • Person is diagnosed with bird flu after being in contact with cows in Texas
  • It's only got a 56% fatality rate, some of you will die but the economy must have it's workers pronto. I expect the COVID playbook will be used again, tell you it's droplets when it's airborne, push the vaccine as the solution and shove you back to work.

  • Invidious - Can't Subscribe
  • I used Invidious for about a year and it was a constant string of bugs. Every release was a risk and quite often updates would get lost or the database would explode in size and consume all the drive space. Its not a project I currently use or recommend until it stabilises.

  • Public satisfaction with NHS falls to lowest level on record
  • Its notable its not listing Long Covid at all. The 1.9 million long haulers in the UK have all been treated atrociously by the NHS so far, most have been misdiagnosed and gaslighted and the rest have been abused with graded exercise therapy that has worsened their disease. But then this was a poll by the NHS so it likely wasn't one of the answers available.

  • Pupil behaviour 'getting worse' at schools in England, say teachers
  • This is almost certainly Covid. We already know it damages the brain and attacks the executive as well as behavioural centres of the brain and children are out sick for twice as long from school directly due to sickness. We are also busy trying to force children with Long Covid, of which there are 68,000 in the UK now, into school and unfortunately that will make them very unwell. Most schools are having to use a lot of substitute teachers due to doubling of sickness and teachers are the second hardest hit profession with Long Covid (behind medical staff).

    It will keep getting worse as more and more suffer from Long Covid impacts.

  • Is Intel gatekeeping WiFi 7? A very quick look at the Intel BE200.
  • I recently bought a BE200 for upgrading a very old laptop that came with N wifi with a 4500U CPU. That is pretty old these days! After a driver install both the wifi adapter and bluetooth work as expected. I don't know if I get wifi 7 speeds and throughput yet as this got upgraded before the network and router did but I think it was worth sharing that it does work on old laptops.

  • Leaked Task Manager image suggests Intel killing Windows XP-era hyperthreading on next gen
    www.neowin.net Leaked Task Manager image suggests Intel killing Windows XP-era hyperthreading on next gen

    Intel could be on the verge of bringing another major shift in its architectural design after going big.LITTLE hybrid route. The company is seemingly looking to Hyper-threading on the next-gen.

    Leaked Task Manager image suggests Intel killing Windows XP-era hyperthreading on next gen

    Task Manager of prototype Intel CPU shows Core and Logical processor count are the same at 8.

    This is still a relatively low end chip if its just 8 cores and a 13500 has 6 + 8 = 14 total so this is maybe a laptop processor. Hyperthreading probably doesn't make sense anymore.

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    Job titles of the future: Chief heat officer
    www.technologyreview.com Job titles of the future: Chief heat officer

    Miami’s public official is the first of her kind.

    Job titles of the future: Chief heat officer

    Florida’s Miami-Dade County hired a chief heat officer, Jane Gilbert—the first position of its kind in the world.

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    Ofgem energy price cap predicted to fall to £1,823 a year
    www.theguardian.com Ofgem energy price cap predicted to fall to £1,823 a year

    Bills likely to rise again from January and consumer groups say energy costs remain ‘dangerously high’

    Ofgem energy price cap predicted to fall to £1,823 a year

    I don't know if people are aware of the fact that you can see the wholesale price of energy but there are is a website that tracks it.

    https://energy-stats.uk/wholesale-energy-pricing/

    This clearly shows that wholesale energy prices this year have been lower than they were in 2021. Yet the price of electricity charged to people is much higher now than it was then.

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    Reddit undeleting comments and hiding them

    I came across today one of my own comments on Reddit with a search on duckduckgo. It was still intact. The problem is I used shreddit to randomise and delete the entire contents of my account. My account comments and posts all show empty on my account pages on reddit so there should be nothing.

    I did a site:reddit.com search using my username and found ~50 comments that Reddit has undeleted but also hide from my own account. I could still edit and delete them. Its curious that they don't appear on my accounts content on Reddit and yet a search engine can find them and they are still served by Reddit. Ex Reddit users who deleted their account contents should be aware this is happening and report it as a GDPR breach to their respective agencies if they are in the EU if they too find this has occurred.

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    Television @lemmy.world BrightCandle @lemmy.world
    Extrapolations - A gem of a single season series on the climate crisis

    Odds are many missed this one season show (a sort of mini series) looking at the progression of climate change and how it will impact peoples lives. Its a sci-fi show of sorts but also a science reality based on known consequences. It is not prematurely ended it is a coherent series telling a story which builds to a proper end with no intention to make it multiple seasons.

    I thought it was well done and worth a watch, its on Apple TV+.

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    Too many coffee creamera : A taste test

    Turns out all the creamers are kind of bad!

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    InitialsDiceBearhttps://github.com/dicebear/dicebearhttps://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/„Initials” (https://github.com/dicebear/dicebear) by „DiceBear”, licensed under „CC0 1.0” (https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/)BR
    BrightCandle @lemmy.world
    Posts 7
    Comments 109