tal
@tal@lemmy.today
- Comment on Slate, a no-nonsense EV pickup for $20k 23 hours ago:
I am quite sure they also don’t offer USB ports to charge the phone you run in lieu of a build in system
I definitely read an article somewhere where it says that they provide USB power for the tablet/phone.
kagis
This article has it (though I don’t know if it was the one I saw):
roadandtrack.com/…/slate-truck-ev-pickup-truck-su…
The Truck will come with a phone mount and convenient USB power to mount your phone or a tablet to the dash.
- Comment on Slate, a no-nonsense EV pickup for $20k 1 day ago:
The truck form is just one of the body options for it. I mean, you can’t get it in sedan form, but the website configurator thing has options for small SUV and fastback.
- Comment on Slate, a no-nonsense EV pickup for $20k 1 day ago:
They do say that they also offer a larger battery pack with a 240 mi range, but yeah, even so, it’s not gonna be a great vehicle for long-distance highway travel compared to a current ICE vehicle. Fine for a commuter, though.
- Comment on Slate, a no-nonsense EV pickup for $20k 1 day ago:
From my other link, I don’t think that the touch screen is an optional purchase. I don’t think that they’re selling any entertainment computer to have a screen on. It says that they come standard with a smartphone mounting point or optionally with a tablet mounting point. But the car computer is bring-your-own, and not built into the car. Which…is what I’ve wanted, because computers age out a lot more quickly than cars do.
I assume that there’ll be an OBD-II slot that one can hook up to to feed data about the car to the phone/tablet. There’s software that can make use of that. Dunno if there’s any other data typically exposed to car computers other than what that provides.
- Comment on Slate, a no-nonsense EV pickup for $20k 1 day ago:
I don’t think that it has a cell modem, either, because it sounds like it eschews a baked-in entertainment computer:
caranddriver.com/…/2027-slate-truck-revealed/
Roll-down windows come standard, as do manually adjustable rearview mirrors. An audio or infotainment system is noticeably missing, too. Instead, your cellphone or tablet serves these functions, with a dock for the former included and one for the latter available as an optional accessory. Better like the sound coming out from your phone or tablet’s speakers, too, because the Slate lacks speakers, though the brand’s accessory division will gladly hook you up with a set.
Honestly, if you took my last year of comments complaining about privacy-infringing cars and those complaining about changes to what a truck is, this does kind of look to be addressing both. Gotta see what the actual vehicle is like in real life, of course, but…
- Comment on Slate, a no-nonsense EV pickup for $20k 1 day ago:
Looks about right.
caranddriver.com/…/2027-slate-truck-revealed/
The Slate Truck is a bare-bones EV that’s expected to cost a little under $27,500, which can drop to less than $20,000 with the federal EV tax credit included.
- Comment on ‘You Can’t Lick a Badger Twice’: Google Failures Highlight a Fundamental AI Flaw 1 day ago:
newforestexplorersguide.co.uk/…/grooming.html
Mutual grooming between a mixture of adults and cubs serves the same function, but additionally is surely a sign of affection that strengthens the bond between the animals.
A variety of grooming postures are adopted by badgers but to onlookers, the one that is most likely to raise a smile involves the badger sitting or lying back on its haunches and, with seemingly not a care in the world (and with all hints of modesty forgotten), enjoying prolonged scratches and nibbles at its under-parts and nether regions.
That being said, that’s the European badger. Apparently the American badger isn’t very social:
a-z-animals.com/…/american-badger-vs-european-bad…
American badger: Nocturnal unless in remote areas; powerful digger and generally more solitary than other species. Frequently hunts with coyotes.
European badger: Digs complicated dens and burrows with their familial group; one of the most social badger species. Depending on location, hibernation may occur.
- Comment on A Toronto company is deliberately spreading hyperpartisan lies on Facebook. It owns a page called "Canada Proud" and has bought more than $250,000 in ads targeting voters 1 day ago:
At one point in time, when I went searching for “Canada patriotic image”, this is what I got:
- Comment on Even the U.S. Government Says AI Requires Massive Amounts of Water 1 day ago:
They can!
en.wikipedia.org/…/Palo_Verde_Nuclear_Generating_…
The Palo Verde Generating Station is a nuclear power plant located near Tonopah, Arizona[5] about 45 miles (72 km) west of downtown Phoenix. Palo Verde generates the most electricity of any power plant in the United States per year, and is the largest power plant by net generation as of 2021.[6] Palo Verde has the third-highest rated capacity of any U.S power plant. It is a critical asset to the Southwest, generating approximately 32 million megawatt-hours annually.
At its location in the Arizona desert, Palo Verde is the only nuclear generating facility in the world that is not located adjacent to a large body of above-ground water. The facility evaporates water from the treated sewage of several nearby municipalities to meet its cooling needs. Up to 26 billion US gallons (~100,000,000 m³) of treated water are evaporated each year.[12][13] This water represents about 25% of the annual overdraft of the Arizona Department of Water Resources Phoenix Active Management Area.[14] At the nuclear plant site, the wastewater is further treated and stored in an 85-acre (34 ha) reservoir and a 45-acre (18 ha) reservoir for use in the plant’s wet cooling towers.
- Comment on EU fines Apple $568m for deterring third-party payment methods on App Store 1 day ago:
Imagine if Microsoft required all software developers to give them 30% of their earning
…microsoft.com/…/why-distribute-through-store
Flexible revenue sharing options that let developers choose their own commerce platform and keep 100% of the revenue for non-gaming apps, or use Microsoft’s commerce platform and pay a competitive fee of 15% for apps and 12% for games.
I guess their rates are lower. Currently.
- Comment on You wouldn't steal a font 2 days ago:
- Comment on You wouldn't steal a font 2 days ago:
8h ago @Rib this may be apocryphal, but I remember hearing the backing track for it was also used without paying the creator royalties Nischay@thatloststudent@infosec.exchange
2h ago @bootblackcub@woof.group @Rib It’s not apocryphal, it actually happened: torrentfreak.com/rights-group-fined-for-not-payin…
- Comment on How your showerhead and fridge got roped into the culture wars 2 days ago:
because the real water savings never came from stupid showers:
Another factor is that your shower water is very probably — unless you have some sort of gray-water irrigation system going on or something — heading to a sewage treatment plant, and if we wanted to do so, we can purify the water there, make that closed loop and feed back into the water supply, recover basically all the water from treatment.
The UK does it:
washingtonpost.com/…/uk-drink-sewage-water-squeam…
California and some other states are doing it:
pbs.org/…/california-is-set-to-become-2nd-state-t…
California has been using recycled wastewater for decades. The Ontario Reign minor league hockey team has used it to make ice for its rink in Southern California. Soda Springs Ski Resort near Lake Tahoe has used it to make snow. And farmers in the Central Valley, where much of the nation’s vegetables, fruits and nuts are grown, use it to water their crops.
But it hasn’t been used directly for drinking water. Orange County operates a large water purification system that recycles wastewater and then uses it to refill underground aquifers. The water mingles with the groundwater for months before being pumped up and used for drinking water again.
California’s new rules would let — but not require — water agencies to take wastewater, treat it, and then put it right back into the drinking water system. California would be just the second state to allow this, following Colorado.
The new rules require the wastewater be treated for all pathogens and viruses, even if the pathogens and viruses aren’t in the wastewater. That’s different from regular water treatment rules, which only require treatment for known pathogens, said Darrin Polhemus, deputy director of the division of drinking water for the California Water Resources Control Board.
In fact, the treatment is so stringent it removes all of the minerals that make fresh drinking water taste good — meaning they have to be added back at the end of the process.
“It’s at the same drinking water quality, and probably better in many instances,” Polhemus said.
Plus, in California and a lot of other places, we can (and do) desalinate water.
www.sdcwa.org/…/seawater-desalination/
In November 2012, the Water Authority approved a 30-year Water Purchase Agreement with Poseidon Water for the purchase of up to 56,000 acre-feet of desalinated seawater per year, approximately 10 percent of the San Diego region’s water demand.
It costs more than pulling from a river, and that’s economically-difficult for agriculture…but it’s just not prohibitive for residential use, and there’s a whole ocean of water out there.
www.sdcwa.org/wp-content/…/desal-carlsbad-fs.pdf
Based on current electricity cost estimates, the Water Purchase Agreement sets the price of water at about $3,400/ acre-feet for fiscal year 2024.
An acre-foot of water will, depending upon where in the country you are — usage levels vary by area — supply about one to four households for a year at average usage. And that price is in California; electricity is a major input to desalination, and California has some of the highest electricity prices in the US, generally second only to Hawaii and something like double most of the country.
- Comment on How your showerhead and fridge got roped into the culture wars 2 days ago:
I’m fine with putting more insulation on refrigerators, but low-flow showerheads are a serious disappointment in showering experience. I want to be hammered by that water, not misted.
- Comment on Republican space officials criticize “mindless” NASA science cuts 3 days ago:
They probably didn’t, seeing as they’re figures from past administrations.
- Comment on How Tariffs Will Skyrocket Electronics Prices - IEEE Spectrum 3 days ago:
But seriously, how does Linux save you money on laptop tariffs?
An issue for a number of people is that Windows 10 is EOLing this year, and Windows 11 doesn’t support hardware without TPM 2.0 support, which a fair bit of in-use hardware doesn’t have (Kaby Lake and earlier).
- Comment on How Tariffs Will Skyrocket Electronics Prices - IEEE Spectrum 3 days ago:
It’s also quite unusual in that, as typically acronyms with four-or-more letters are spoken as a word.
- Comment on Steam will soon start making it easier for players to search for games based on accessibility features 3 days ago:
Yeah, that’s also an issue. It should be easier to get to the “advanced Store search”. Most websites have some kind of “advanced search” or “more options” dropdown or something. On Steam, none of that is accessible for the Store search until you’ve actually done a search, and then it’s exposed with the results. So basically, put your cursor in the “search” field, whack enter, and you’ll get a list of all Steam games in the Store along with all the options to do tag searches and whatnot in the right sidebar.
- Comment on Steam will soon start making it easier for players to search for games based on accessibility features 3 days ago:
I wish that Steam would just unify all their damn search UIs. Like, take every criteria that they let a user search by all across their client and different parts of their website, and then make one unified UI for it and let a user search using that UI everywhere Steam permits for searches. Steam’s got the most-insanely-fragmented set of search UIs I’ve ever seen on an online service, which all have overlapping sets of functionality.
Among other things:
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Sometimes permitting searching by a Boolean value — but only for one of the values. For example, searching the Store in the Web UI lets you exclude games in your library, but not include only games in your library. This is despite the fact that for tags, there’s a tri-state (Yes, No, Ignore) checkbox.
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It’s easy to pull up a list of games by a particular developer or publisher by clicking on their name in a game’s store page, but then one can’t use the Store search criteria to filter that down, nor can one search by developer or publisher in the Store.
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Just today, I wanted to sort my games in the left-hand Library sidebar of the client by release date. The Steam client can’t do that…but you can create a shelf, another sort of search visible in the Library, sorted by Release Date.
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I can sort by User Rating in the Store, but not in my Library.
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I can sort by Release Date in the Store, but not search by it.
I want to have exactly the same set of search functionality in all locations that I can search. I want to be able to sort by all of those fields, search by all of those fields, and search for any value that a field might have.
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- Comment on I'm bored and desperately search for a proper game 3 days ago:
In 2024 almost 19.000 games were released on Steam. I have yet to find a single title from 2024 worth playing.
looks at my own Steam library, adds a shelf sorted by Release Date, looks for notable games
Satisfactory was released in 2024. It was in Early Access for some time before that.
Ditto for Caves of Qud and Nova Drift all games that I’ve played quite a bit — 2024 release following time in Early Access.
Dominions 6 is a pretty involved fantasy strategy game. I haven’t played 6 much, but I’ve played the series a lot in the past, and each game is a pretty direct expansion of prior games. Not sure if that’s up your alley, though. The game turns can get pretty long late-game, as there’s a lot going on.
I liked Balatro, a roguelike deckbuilder, quite a bit.
- Comment on A 19-year-old girl just received the world’s first wireless bionic hands controlled by thoughts 3 days ago:
Okay, the part where they show her detaching her bionic hand from her bionic arm and then communicating it with it wirelessly to do things some distance away is pretty neat. I mean, there has been telerobotics for stuff like remote surgery, but she’s just naturally using it.
- Comment on I'm bored and desperately search for a proper game 3 days ago:
So, I’ve spent over 2 hours on Steam searching for a nice game to play. But it’s all junk, as far as I’m fed with Steam recommendations.
Steam does many things well, but its recommendations system is one thing that, in my experience, really falls flat on its face (which surprises me, because they have enough information to do what I would think would be fantastic recommendations).
For finding games on Steam, I’ve had the most luck simply sorting by user rating (which is a pretty darn good metric of what I’ll like, in my experience), and then using the tags to look for games in a genre. Sometimes I’ve had luck with looking at “similar games” to a game.
- Comment on I'm bored and desperately search for a proper game 3 days ago:
Stellaris, in particular, might be up your alley.
I like Stellaris quite a bit, but I should note that OP mentioned how he didn’t like spending money on DLC. Stellaris follows the typical Paradox approach of creating a lot of DLC to expand and extend the game as long as people are interested in buying it, and winding up with a large game that’ll cost you a lot if you want all the DLC. It may be worthwhile, but if one wants to get all the DLC, it’s gonna add a fair bit to the price.
(checks Steam)
The base game is $40. Buying every available piece of DLC is another $429.
- Comment on I'm bored and desperately search for a proper game 3 days ago:
Always gonna recommend Project Zomboid.
It does have a sandbox aspect, but much as I want to like the game, I always find myself dropping it and playing Cataclysm: Dark Days Ahead instead, which is a similar “zombie survival” genre, but has vastly more stuff and game mechanics. The big selling point for Project Zomboid, in my book, is the far gentler learning curve and lower barrier to entry; it’s got an adorable tutorial racoon, and doesn’t hit you with too much at once, but…
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The combat in Project Zomboid frustrates me. It’s very simple, not a lot going on, but because a zombie infection is incurable, a single mistake in timing can have catastrophic effects, so it requires no errors.
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The character builds. Project Zomboid has a lot of perks and such. Cataclysm’s got vastly more, plus mutations, bionics, all that stuff.
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I prefer the Cataclysm turn-based play to the Project Zomboid real-time play. I don’t have to wait in the real world for actions to complete, and I can stop and think about what my next move is.
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To try to illustrate the game complexity difference, take firearms as an example. Project Zomboid has six handguns, four shotguns, and four rifles. Each has one type of ammunition. There are ten weapon mods, each of which can be placed on some of those weapons. There is a firearms skill.
Cataclysm has, to look at just one firearm class and caliber category, 41 rifle-class weapons chambered in .223 (and that’s by default, as chambering can be modified). Each of these can take something like six different classes of weapon mods (replacing the stock, sticking things on the barrel, adding secondary weapons like underbarrel grenade launchers or flamethrowers, etc), multiple fire modes. There are 18 sight mods alone, and it’s possible to have multiple sights on a weapon. Recoil is modeled. Firearms can fit in various types of back/ankle/hip holsters, and draw time and encumbrance is a factor; these also have volume and longest-dimension characteristics, so that a large revolver can’t fit in a small holdout holster. For those .223-caliber rifles alone, there are 13 types of ammunition, including handloads, tracer rounds, armor-piercing rounds, etc. There are 63 different calibers of weapons. Energy weapons, flamethrower/incendiary weapons, chemical weapons, explosive projectile weapons, flechette weapons, illumination rounds, EMP weapons. There are multiple-barrel weapons, including some in different calibers. You can load specialized ammunition in a specified order. Different types of reloading mechanisms (revolver, magazine, belt) are modeled. Some weapons use compatible magazines, and high-capacity and drum magazines exist. Speedloaders for revolvers exist. Weapons can be installed mounted on vehicles (fired manually from a mount position, or with an automated weapons targeting system installed, set up to fire automatically). NPCs (friendly, and hostile) can be armed with them. Bore fouling is modeled. When you fire a weapon without hearing protection, you’re temporarily deafened to some degree. There are multiple stances one can take when firing those weapons. Some of the game’s martial arts forms permit use of firearms. There are firearm melee modifications, like bayonets. There are skills for different types of weapons. The game has all sorts of exotic real-world firearms (e.g. to pick a random one, the American-180, a submachine gun firing .22 rounds with a 180-round pan magazine); the game probably has more real-world firearms than any other video game out there; my current source tree says that there are 555 in total.
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- Comment on I'm bored and desperately search for a proper game 3 days ago:
I liked ksp2
If you’re saying that you liked the (unfinished, abandoned, poorly-rated) Kerbal Space Program 2, you might play the original, which is better-regarded.
On the “factory” side, maybe some colony simulators? Someone else mentioned Rimworld. That’s got a bit of DLC, but I think that even the base game has pretty good value for money. Oxygen Not Included is another colony sim that focuses more on the building/automation side; I think that you’ll get a lot of hours out of that.
Dwarf Fortress is another colony sim, has a freely-available classic version or a commercial graphical build on Steam. Big learning curve, but lots to explore.
I like Cataclysm: Dark Days Ahead, though it has a pretty punishing learning curve. Open-world roguelike. It touches on both the RPG (well, not much by way of plot, but in terms of building a character) and the factory (build buildings, faction camps with NPCs, and vehicles) side. You aren’t going to run out of gameplay complexity to explore any time soon on that. Open source and freely-available, though there’s also a commercial build on Steam.
I have not played Elin, the successor to Elona, but it might be worth a look too if you are looking for both a sandbox aspect and RPG aspect.
- Comment on An Alarming Number of Gen Z Ai Users Think It's Conscious 3 days ago:
At some point in the mid-late 1990s, I recall having a (technically-inclined) friend who dialed up to a BBS and spent a considerable amount of time pinging and then chatting with Lisa, the “sysadmin’s sister”. When I heard about it, I spent quite some time arguing with him that Lisa was a bot.
- Comment on Synology Lost the Plot with Hard Drive Locking Move - ServeTheHome 4 days ago:
That’s a website that was never intended to be viewed by anyone other than a 30+ year old sysadmin who owns at least one beard grooming product.
Somewhere, a !unixsocks@lemmy.blahaj.zone denizen looks offended.
- Comment on Synology Lost the Plot with Hard Drive Locking Move - ServeTheHome 4 days ago:
Yeah, sucks. :-/
For anyone else in the same boat, let me go see what that enclosure is with a physical power button that I wound up ultimately getting.
goes to look
This:
Probably others one can find — just an 8-bay JBOD enclosure with a variable speed fan and physical power switch.
But unlike the non-powering-on-after-power-loss enclosures, I haven’t had problems with it.
I have a ton of USB devices, and drive enclosures — the one thing that I really do not want to stay offline — are the only thing I’ve ever seen that doesn’t power up again on power loss. Maybe there are some USB displays might also do so, but I don’t care about that if I’m not physically present.
- Comment on [deleted] 4 days ago:
If what you’re asking is “could the US hypothetically cut off the Internet in a worst case scenario”, like a war or something, the answer is “sure”. If the US were bent on destroying Internet infrastructure – submarine cable interchange stations, satellite uplink stations, major international cables, whatever, all of those are not hardened not realistically protectable targets and could be physically destroyed. Taking out communications infrastructure was our first target in the Gulf War.
That’s probably also be true of a number of major military powers, but I’d be particularly confident of the US’s ability to knock out communications.
I was reading an article from a retired Navy officer a while back where he was talking about how submarine cables were vulnerable, and he pointed out that in past wars, we’ve destroyed them, and should also assume that an opponent would do the same.
- Comment on Synology Lost the Plot with Hard Drive Locking Move - ServeTheHome 4 days ago:
One point: if it matters to you, you might want to confirm your enclosure’s behavior under power-loss conditions. I had one that did not come back to a powered on state or have an option to do so when power was restored. Not something I’d thought of, since I’d assumed this behavior. Eventually, after some looking, found an enclosure with a mechanical-toggle power switch that did restore prior state.
