activistPnk
@activistPnk@slrpnk.net
- Comment on California utilities scapegoat rooftop solar for high electricity rates 23 hours ago:
Indeed standards can’t be relied on and my comment doesn’t assume that.
What I would envision is a company that needs to install a battery swapping infrastructure for a car like this one (which I hear is common in Spain). People and businesses with extra solar power could have a 3rd-party drop off a vending machine which could be brand-specific.
- Comment on California utilities scapegoat rooftop solar for high electricity rates 1 day ago:
How about this as a fix:
The excess solar energy goes to a battery charging vending machine for EVs. Someone with a low battery for an e-bike/scooter or nanocar books a battery and pops by to swap their low battery for a full one. That would perhaps be a way to profit from selling the excess energy instead of getting ripped off by the grid.
- Comment on California utilities scapegoat rooftop solar for high electricity rates 2 days ago:
schools and farms cannot use their own solar energy production and must sell it to the grid at a low price and buy it back at a significantly higher price.
The thing is, they are feeding the grid when the sun is hitting hard (mid-day) which is the time of day when the grid needs the most help. So they are helping to flatten the consumption peaks. They should be getting the best sales price at that point. So it’s like they are getting boned for improving the grid.
- Comment on solar PV → heat pump → water heater; direct, no A/C or intermediate components. Practical? Feasible? 2 months ago:
Shit… sounds about right.
Although the /water is hot enough/ scenario could be addressed mechanically: bigger water tank, lower heating element raised and the heat pump heating the bottom exclusively where it could /always/ add heat because it would never be hot enough at the bottom.
- solar PV → heat pump → water heater; direct, no A/C or intermediate components. Practical? Feasible?Submitted 2 months ago to energy@slrpnk.net | 13 comments
- Comment on This Nightclub Turns Body Heat into Energy - YouTube 2 months ago:
Would the materials have much more of a footprint than geothermal installations? Because that slight 7° difference between below ground temp and above ground temps apparently justifies the labor and materials for harvesting geothermal energy. So this seems to be the same but adding a cherry on top – incorporating a heat pump to add to the energy of a geothermal system.
- Comment on This Nightclub Turns Body Heat into Energy - YouTube 2 months ago:
Because of Google’s DoS attack, those of us in the open free world cannot reach Youtube. So would someone please explain the concept in text?
Is this it? → utahforge.com/…/did-you-know-that-scottish-clubbe…
Seems like a great idea. Like using the body heat to boost geothermals.
- Comment on Oakland’s new school buses don’t just reduce pollution — they double as giant batteries 2 months ago:
To install batteries that are much heavier than what’s needed for the trip the bus makes the bus less efficient. Sure they need to store energy for to smooth out peak grid consumption but probably better if they do that with batteries that are not mobile – if they must use batteries. Another way to store energy: pump water to the top of a mountain. To get the energy back open a dam that turns a hydro turbine.
from the article:
Pollution from buses and other vehicles contributes to chronic asthma among students, which leads to chronic absenteeism.
Seems like a stretch.
- Submitted 2 months ago to energy@slrpnk.net | 8 comments
- Comment on Your future air conditioner might act like a battery 3 months ago:
Well that depends on how equipped you are. One cool thing about compressors is you can straight up connect a PV directly to a compressor with no voltage regulators or anything. So if you have a simple setup like that, I can see cost effectiveness in storing ice. But if you already have batteries, and thus voltage regulators and all the intermediate components to make that possible, then I would agree… I might rather store it in lead acid batteries as that would be more versatile.
- Comment on Your future air conditioner might act like a battery 3 months ago:
Sounds like they would do well in Arizona, where the air is dry. IIUC swamp coolers were very popular in Arizona until ~20 years ago when temps increased so much that swamp coolers could not make enough difference (this is largely because more and more land became concrete, which reduced the effect of evaporative cooling the land mass). So a/c became more popular in AZ IIUC. But the dry air would still be dry.
- Comment on Your future air conditioner might act like a battery 3 months ago:
It’s a great basic concept but I think I would benefit more for the stored cooling going toward ice cubes for mojitos. I don’t imagine that a single family dwelling would benefit from the extra complexity of adding cold water pipes in all the floors of the house.
- Comment on Your future air conditioner might act like a battery 3 months ago:
Consider this excerpt:
When the grid is extremely stressed, utility companies are sometimes forced to shut off electricity supply to some areas, leaving people there without power when they need it most. Technologies that can adjust to meet the grid’s needs could help reduce reliance on these rolling blackouts.
So grid-powered a/c can give the grid relief at peak times with this tech.
But indeed this tech on a PV-powered compressor seems sketchy. There are probably moments when the sun is hitting hard but the temp has not climbed up yet (sunrise) in which case it would be useful to store the energy. But I’m struggling to understand how the complexity of the system would be justified considering the overall efficiency is reduced as well.
- Comment on 10 Spices That Make Your Food Last Longer 9 months ago:
i wondered about that.
- Comment on 10 Spices That Make Your Food Last Longer 9 months ago:
thanks - i’ve updated the post.
- Submitted 9 months ago to food@slrpnk.net | 4 comments
- Comment on Most motorists want noise cameras installed to clamp down on loud cars 9 months ago:
There are countless ways to implement autoplay. You apparently got lucky with one particular toolchain in one situation. Tor Browser is FF based and should not be extended by plugins (as that changes fingerprints), and TB plays whatever junk is on that page.
Have a look at how long Google has been unable to disable autoplay (2009).
- Comment on Does the USPS, FedEx and UPS give a crap about weed shipments since Hemp sprayed with th same terpenes and looks the same as weed has been shipped legally for 9 years now? 10 months ago:
Interesting lesson in this story:
Pkg with contraband was intercepted, documented, all needed warrants secured. Pkg is delivered while the house is staked out by LEOs. Sometime after delivery (a day later, iirc) they bust in, find the pkg, and arrest. The pkg was sitting just inside by the door, unopened. Defense argued “my client knows nothing about this unexpected package. Who’s to say the sender wasn’t framing the recipient?” So he obviously got vindicated.
So there’s a game of timing. Recipients need to be given the chance to open the pkg and react by calling the police. Not sure how it goes if you consume it immediately after opening and burn the box.
- Comment on Does the USPS, FedEx and UPS give a crap about weed shipments since Hemp sprayed with th same terpenes and looks the same as weed has been shipped legally for 9 years now? 10 months ago:
To be clear, the spores are perfectly legal. You can mail order spores that come in saline solution in a syringe without trouble. The businesses selling that are smart enough to not use media mail, which of course crosses a line.
The nuance here is you said “kit”, which suggests everything you need for growth and thus intent. Maybe you’re right on that bit. Buying everything separately would require surveillance to put all that together that you have a kit, in effect.
- Submitted 10 months ago to fixing@slrpnk.net | 0 comments
- Comment on Most motorists want noise cameras installed to clamp down on loud cars 10 months ago:
I think not. But then I’m not living in a wealthy part of town. It only takes one of those little fuckers to wake up 10,000 people.
- Comment on Most motorists want noise cameras installed to clamp down on loud cars 10 months ago:
I’d far rather deal with the noise than having yet more surveillance.
My cognitive dissonance triggers on this point because one of the reasons I cycle is privacy. I am also firmly in the #fuckCars camp (noise, pollution, death, selfishness of people putting their convenience above lives of other people & animals). It’s hard to give a shit about car drivers having privacy. And also realize that car drivers inherently sign up to give up privacy in order to use a personal car anyway (registration, insurance, banking transactions tied to those activities and their fuel purchases, etc). The fuel purchases of car drivers feed the oil industry, which in the US feeds the war chests of republican candidates who disrespect both privacy and the environment.
Yet people making the wise pro-privacy considerate decision to cycle are still exposed to breath car fumes, noise, and life-threatening physics (e=mc²). Hard to have sympathy for car drivers.
- Comment on Most motorists want noise cameras installed to clamp down on loud cars 10 months ago:
Electrics cars will make it a non issue
I do not see EVs replacing scooters (which are driven by lower budget commuters). A single unmuffled scooter driving through #Paris at 3am can wake up 10,000 people according to Bruitparif. And don’t forget horns. Assholes will used their horns at 3am on my street. The only thing they give a fuck about is their own convenience.
The idea of harsh punishments works if a vehicle is continuously loud because it will eventually cross paths with a cop. So that position is fair enough. But what about horns? There’s never a cop around when horns are misused.
- Comment on Most motorists want noise cameras installed to clamp down on loud cars 10 months ago:
⚠ That article is a bit enshitified and autoplays video. Just a warning to anyone on a limited internet connection.
- Comment on €45,000 for a heat pump installation in Germany -- really? 11 months ago:
And btw: you don’t need to reach 60°C with a heat pump. That would be pretty inefficient.
Thanks for the feedback.
My boiler gives me control of the temp of the water running through the radiators which is independent of the room air temp thermostat. I set the water to ~55°C which seems to reasonably get the air to 17° without running continuously. I mentioned 60° because I figured that temp would enable someone to heat their room up quickly. I wonder why you say a heat pump would not need 60°. I would think the radiators need to reach a high temp like ~50—60° regardless of the kind of furnace. Maybe I’m doing something inefficient. Should I use a lower temp? I could lower the water temp but then there would be a point where the furnace has to run continuously which i would think is inefficient.
- Submitted 11 months ago to energy@slrpnk.net | 20 comments
- Submitted 11 months ago to diy@slrpnk.net | 3 comments
- Comment on Step-by-step instructions to build a smartphone that is open-source, upgradeable, repairable, and Big Tech free 11 months ago:
There’s a long history of people saying you can never have an open source phone because GSM radios and baseband stack or whatever need costly FCC approval. I also thought it was in the GSM spec that carriers had to be able to update some part of the baseband OS spontaneously. So I wonder how they got around that.
- Comment on I fixed my toothbrush (fuck you, Philips Sonicare!) 1 year ago:
So your original batteries lasted 14 years? I suppose it’s possible. I have some AA batteries that are probably nearly 20 years old but they can only be used in low-load situations (couldn’t drive a motor).
My Sonicare original batteries lasted ~8¾ years. I suppose that’s decent but still unacceptable that they can’t be replaced. We have to wonder if sometime between 2007 & 2015 Philips decided to switch to batteries that last half as long in order to sell double the number of devices.
- Comment on I fixed my toothbrush (fuck you, Philips Sonicare!) 1 year ago:
You know it would be cool to take a Beastie Boys music video, replace the heads with that of old bearded cheap bastards and dub in “repair” over “party”, and add Philips products as a prop. If done well, it’d go viral and Philips would be offering money to take it down… just as United Airlines did when a folk singer wrote a song about the airline destroying his guitar.