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perilunar
Joined 2,556 karma
Web Developer, Sydney, Australia.

https://timepasses.net/

https://sunclock.net/

https://degreeswhat.com/

https://bigclock.app/

_


  1. For social there's Mastadon. Plenty of EU servers.
  2. > nobody goes in the southern ocean! (Why would they?...)

    For the fish — plenty of trawlers in the Southern Ocean.

  3. Just use polymer fibre for consumer gear. Cheaper and more robust.
  4. And one of the oldest. It dates back to the 1870s. Older even than the Edison Screw.
  5. I think it would be practical with glass fibre. Two wires/rings for power, and fibre for data. Something like a Mini-TOSLINK, but even smaller. Ideally the plug would be barely thicker than the cable.
  6. USB-C is better than A in that it works in two orientations instead of one, but the correct answer for connectors should be any orientation — the best connectors are cylindrical connectors: barrel plugs, RCA, BNC, banana, phono, TRS, TRRS, etc. Just make them round.
  7. > Elon Musk is a smart salesman but that's about it. He has little deep knowledge in a lot of what he does.

    No, I think it's the opposite — he's extremely knowledgeable about engineering and science [1], but quite hopeless at social things. If he was ignorant of technical stuff then SpaceX and Tesla would not have succeeded, and conversely if he was a good salesman he would have foreseen how badly his political actions would hurt Twitter and Tesla.

    It's quite foolish to think someone is stupid or ignorant just because you don't agree with their politics.

    1. see these quotes: https://x.com/yatharthmaan/status/2001313180644266478

  8. "Since SVGs are essentially code, they can embed JavaScript"

    Odd thing to say. Everything on a computer is "essentially code", executable or not.

  9. Never really understood buying pre-recorded cassettes. It was better to buy the vinyl and make your own tapes.
  10. If you think of 'tech' as computers and the internet, then yeah, it's hard to be optimistic. It's no longer the shiny new thing and has become boring. But it's an overly limited view of tech.

    I think one of the reasons people are drawn to Elon Musk (despite his political views) is that he's an optimist, with big goals and vision. Self-driving cars, reusable rockets and cheap space travel, cities on Mars, etc. Even if only some of it becomes real it will be amazing. So no, not a pessimist.

  11. I noticed that when my kids were little they could use cassette players well before they could read. They would choose music based on the pictures on the cassettes and the covers. We had a (clickwheel) iPod for our own music, but they couldn't work it because they couldn't read the text-only interface.
  12. That's just stupid. Why send them all that way just to put them on a rock, in orbit around a planet, when you could leave them in a free solar orbit? Not only that, but put them on opposite sides of the sun FFS, so you don't have to wait half an orbit (15 years, in Saturn's case) to get the other half of a measurement.
  13. "designed by the government" got us the SLS.

    The "whiny trillionaire" gave us Falcon 9 and Starship/Superheavy.

    Not the flex you think it is.

  14. I don't get it. Nobody blinked twice about getting into a car with a total stranger before Uber either — taxis have been around for well over a hundred years. It's not exactly a huge cultural change, just more efficient and convenient.
  15. Just saw this tweet, so i guess not:

    https://x.com/samhogan/status/1988448512137457767

    "Due to an unforeseen naming conflict, we are renaming Project AELLA to Project OSSAS (Open Source Summaries At Scale)"

  16. Americans do that all the time though. E.g. Celsius vs Fahrenheit, Metric vs US Customary units, getting rid of copper coins, 230 vs 110 V electricity, etc.

    The fact that large parts of the world do something without any problems is no guarantee that people in the U.S. won't argue about it endlessly.

  17. You would think pants manufacturers would cotton on and start making decent phone pockets.

    I wear jeans a lot and the back pockets are dangerous for phones, and the front pockets are uncomfortable when sitting if there's a phone in them. I want a phone pocket on the outside of the leg that's big enough for a phone but not too bulky/puffy.

  18. Well it can carry 225 cars, so I imagine you could load a couple of generators and some diesel tankers. Or you could just tow it.
  19. According to the article, both the reservoirs are sealed — the brine won't affect salinity in the surrounding water.
  20. > You can now get the full App Store experience right in your browser

    Full? It will be better than full. I find native apps much worse than the web when it comes to browsing stuff online.

    Apple Music, Podcasts, Apple TV, Apple Maps — would all be better as web sites.

  21. TFA frames it as an economic problem, but it’s much worse than that: it’s slow cultural suicide.
  22. Why do trenches need to be dug across the countryside? Put them alongside existing roads and rail lines. Same with above-ground power lines. It might make them a bit longer, but the ‘eyesore’ is already there, and we can avoid making new ones.

    (Re rail lines — if you build power lines over existing rail lines you could also electrify the rail route at the same time, and get rid of the diesel locomotives).

  23. Why “surely”?

    Most things that are harmless or even necessary at one level are deadly at another: heat, light, water, food, air… pretty much everything really.

    “Dosis sola facit venenum” (only the dose makes the poison)

  24. Yes. Australian diesel subs have also done this in exercises.
  25. And for animals. I’ve seen plenty of discussion about grazing sheep around panels. They keep the grass down and enjoy the shade.
  26. 5 years? More like 20–30 years.
  27. “100 Percent Clean Energy” and “running its power grid entirely on renewable energy” are not the same — the article says nothing about fuel for transport, which is about 40% of all energy use in Aus, and mostly sourced from oil.
  28. CDs are digital.

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