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Tired of Jeff Bezos controlling your doorbell cam? I made a privacy focused one that's based on an ESP32 with local Home Assistant integration.
  • I think a mobile phone camera is vastly superior to these, although might not be great at night vision for the reasons you said, but is it entirely crazy to not just use a spare phone? It has built in backup power, can store videos locally if there is an internet outage, and can use its own data connection if wifi is not available.

  • Superconductor breakthrough replicated twice on preliminary testing
  • You can use superconductors to create Josephson junctions, which can be used for standard logic operations (but also useful in quantum computers). These junctions are much more efficient and much faster than transistors.

    This particular superconductor will not be useful for transmitting power because the effect breaks down at very low current limits in this material, but it will be very useful for studying superconductors.

    So contrary to what you said, this will in fact not be useful for power transmission, but could be useful for CPUs and GPUs, and could lead to computers that are hundreds or thousands of times faster and more efficient than what we have today.

    To be fair this material may never see a practical use though.

  • Lemmy users who feel the heaviness of depression, what issue in your life weighs you down the most?
  • One of the things that weighs me down is posts making me dwell on the things that weigh me down.

  • Gulf Stream current could collapse in 2025, plunging Earth into climate chaos: 'We were actually bewildered'
  • "Despite being so common in English as to be known as the "Chinese curse", the saying is apocryphal, and no actual Chinese source has ever been produced." - Wikipedia

  • What is your internet service plan?
  • I'm located in a van in New Zealand so I only use mobile data. I pay NZ$40 (US$25) per month for "unlimited" data, which is all I can eat but capped at 1Mbps. I can stream 720p barely, but I mostly torrent. I typically use about 60-80GB a month.

  • google maps alt?
  • OruxMaps (android) supports several navigation methods, kml overlays, offline maps, various online and custom maps, good tracking, routes, gps, etc, etc. Waaay better than Google maps - although it can also happily use Google maps.

  • Scientists invent double-sided solar panel that generates vastly more electricity
  • They say the second layer retains 93% of the performance of the first using reflected light, making it 20% efficient, so, yes they are added in that case.

  • Scientists invent double-sided solar panel that generates vastly more electricity
  • TLDR; the front side is 23% efficient, and the rear side 20% efficient.

    They don't actually give an overall efficiency but it implies a total of 43%. They compare this to typical panels also at 23% efficient, so it's really remarkable if true. Other emerging solar tech is up to about 32% but if that could also benefit from multiple layers then total efficiency could become insane.

    Seems a little too good to be true, really, but great if so.

    Edit: Yeah, I don't think these efficiencies can be added like that. I guess the overall efficiency will depend on how reflective the ground under the panels is, and they will extract 20% of that. Maybe that's why they don't give an overall rating.

  • ChatGPT can now remember who you are and what you want
  • I think it's intellectually lazy to stick with the stochastic parrot line of thinking now. There's a number of emergent properties that are appearing as LLMs scale that give them abilities beyond that paradigm. Check out the "Sparks of AGI" paper from Microsoft research - or more realistically one of the youtube summaries of it since its quite a big read... Here's one from the horse's mouth: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=qbIk7-JPB2c

  • 'Breakthrough' geothermal tech produces 3.5 megawatts of carbon-free power | Engadget
  • Yes, I don't think people realise the scale of production involved. We're currently producing about 8500 TWh of power with renewables annually (nuclear is about 2600 TWh), and adding about 585 TWh of renewables per year (this is steadily increasing). A typical nuke plant generates about 8.5 TWh annually, so we would need to be building 68 new nukes every year to keep up with renewables (at current renewable numbers). The cost and construction time is massively prohibitive for nuclear, uranium mining is pretty dirty and there's some downsides of nuclear waste at present. Yes, there's some emerging tech but we won't be building many of those for some time to come.

    It seems unlikely nukes are a practical path to any significant contribution to new generation required and they will continue to fall behind. They can help but they're not the magic bullet many people seem to think. Solar, wind and hydro will dominate in the medium term. I think they will ultimately make way for geothermal to dominate, maybe via plasma deep drilling like Quaise or PLASMABit utilise to potentially make bores up to 20 km deep, which opens much of the world up to being suitable.

    Fusion may become practical in the next 20 years or so, but that will also be ludicrously expensive, so also unlikely to make a meaningful contribution in the medium term either.

  • GPT4All is a free-to-use, locally running, privacy-aware large language model that is a 3GB - 8GB file that you can download and query. No GPU or internet required
  • Worth noting that if you want a local LLM on android MLCChat can run Vicuna-7B, RedPajama and several other models from huggingface on fairly average hardware. The interface is still basic but it's functional.

  • What are some useful or just cool stuff to memorize?
  • Anyone who isn't at least mildly interested that you know Morse code isn't someone you want to know :-)

    Good filter technique.

  • Do you use an antivirus? Why, or why not?
  • No. I only use Android as my PC via AR glasses. Is there even any antivirus software for Android? Probably, but I don't care I guess. Never had a problem.

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  • I'm just using a Samsung S20+. You need a Samsung if you want Dex.

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  • My phone is my sole PC and has been for about 7 months now. I use it for everything. I'm using nreal AR glasses for a massive virtual 80" screen via Dex. I use a Bluetooth mouse and mechanical keyboard. I use libre office for real work, I do development work right on the phone. I also use andronix on the phone for when I need a more full blown Linux desktop for gimp, IDEs, GIS, etc.

  • New research puts age of universe at 26.7 billion years, nearly twice as old as previously believed
  • That sounds much like the "just asking questions" excuse. As a writer you should know the power of words and how the nuances of their meaning affect the message. Dismissing the meaning of your words with the excuse of just "throwing words around" is dangerous and frankly shameful for any writer who isn't a hack.

    Edit: maybe I got out of the wrong side of the bed this morning. You're good, but that did not resonate well with me.

  • New research puts age of universe at 26.7 billion years, nearly twice as old as previously believed
  • It seems likely, even highly likely, but not "definitely". Making absolute claims without supporting evidence is the sort of thing that antivaxers do.

  • The man in your mind's eye.

    Imagine a stick man standing on top of a building and jumping off. In your mind's eye, what colour was he drawn in and what colour was the background colour?

    I see him drawn in white on a black background and I wonder if that's because blackboards were used in school in my day.

    I am interested to know what your colours are and whether that relates to what you used at school, or other thoughts.

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    LeopardsAteMyFace @kbin.social tinwhiskers @kbin.social
    The party that staunchly defended the outdated "Alienation of Affection" laws to uphold family values now finds its very own NC House Speaker tangled up in those same laws, following his extramarital
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    LeopardsAteMyFace @kbin.social tinwhiskers @kbin.social
    British Man who lives in Spain, votes for Brexit, now in danger of losing his house and residency
    newseu.cgtn.com 'Harming me and my future': How Brexit is crushing UK pensioners' dreams of retiring abroad

    In 2016, Joe thought Brexit was a great idea. But he soon realized his dream of retiring in Spain was going be limited by his new status as a non-EU citizen.

    'Harming me and my future': How Brexit is crushing UK pensioners' dreams of retiring abroad

    In 2016, Joe thought Brexit was a great idea. But he soon realized his dream of retiring in Spain was going be limited by his new status as a non-EU citizen.

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    tinwhiskers tinwhiskers @kbin.social
    Posts 4
    Comments 41