dillekant

@dillekant@slrpnk.net

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨'UK-first' intercity battery trial train outperforms diesel⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  There’s still a pay-off time. For inter-city travel where the distance is long or the usage is low, it might be worth doing this, if only in the short term.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨New data reveals thousands of Australians who own 10 rentals or more⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  They’re using “Mr Kumar” as an example here, but this story goes back a long way. Huge parts of the wealthy northern suburbs, and prime real estate near the most popular beaches in Sydney are held by a handful of people. They bought this property a long time ago, but the “newer” property investors are basically working off that template. You can actually walk around those suburbs and find a bunch of empty properties. They don’t care about the rent, they prefer to show as little income as possible. They just want the capital gains when they sell. Often these people are retired and can get significant tax concessions.

  The “newer” investors are doing this but with properties which are much cheaper. They do it like a job or a business. It’s not healthy for the country either, but it’s actually less of a rort than the institutional wealth in this country.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨ADF whistleblower David McBride moved to maximum security and "has no access to natural light & restricted contact with his daughters."⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  It’s important to recognise the mechanism is more important than the intent. If people cannot blow the whistle safely, then the “government” can freely keep secrets. “Government” is in air quotes here because often it’s the spooks or the military who get to keep secrets, often from the elected officials. This means that MPs are often kept in the dark (and sometimes on purpose, in a Berejiklian-style “I don’t need to know about that” sense) and this means that a bunch of people who we pay taxes for can do what they like with impunity.

  If the secrets are kept, then the people keeping the secrets are not accountable to anyone. This is a serious problem if they start to violate the rights of people on Australian soil. You might feel like it’s not going to be you, but it well could be. There is no safety on that gun. The only way around it is to make whistleblowing safe.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Julian Assange reunites with family as he arrives in Canberra⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  The prime minister has apparently been pushing to get him out, and has apparently been mentioning him at every meeting with the US. It is what it is.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Server as heating device - how do I do this?⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  I’m just using it as a space heater for my study, which is also where I work from. While using the computer in Winter I just switch on f@h for both CPU and GPU (AMD 5700x and 6700xt), and this heats up the room. It’s a good 300-400W. I have home assistant telling me the temperature in the room and it bugs me to turn it off if it’s too hot. That’s my “temperature control”. I didn’t build anything, the computer is just under my desk and it heats up my room.

  Originally my plan was to have F@H automatically turn on and off based on temperature, but it turns out the power is low enough and the lag is high enough that you switch it on in the morning, and then once the room is upto temperature you can just switch it off and the room will stay warm the rest of the day.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Server as heating device - how do I do this?⁩ ⁨⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  I do this. If you want to actually want to use or donate the processing power, this is kind of a good thing. However, there are a lot of downsides:

  • Computers are generally much lower power than a heater. This makes them very slow to “react” to heating needs. Heating a small room, even with a 500W PC, could take an hour or maybe more.
  • Heaters have a thermostat, which computers don’t, so even though they are very laggy, they also don’t stop heating when the temperature is right. This means they can overshoot and make the room uncomfortably hot.
  • You could set up an external thermostat but then you need a load which can be switched on and off.
  • I was using folding@home, but the work items take a long time, and switching them on and off will increase the time taken to resolve the work item, which in turn means the system could get annoyed and use someone else’s computer to resolve the work item faster, or worse, blacklist your computer.
  • Using your PC to generate heat will use up its maximum lifetime. The fans aren’t built to be running at max speed all the time, the CPU & GPU could wear out, and the power systems will also wear as time goes on. You sort of have to align that lifetime against usage. This is likely fine if you see the computation as a donation or if you have important stuff to compute, but it’s probably not worth just wasting the cycles.
• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Nick Powell [horticulturalist] speaks up about Bunnings⁩ ⁨⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  One thing which is irritating is just how ingrained Bunnings has becomes into our culture. Many people just go to Bunnings just for browsing. Unfortunately, they will also suck the air out of the room and basically force you to go to them. I have had to go to bunnings on occasion and have spent well more than I wanted to there.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨what do y'all actually host?⁩ ⁨⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Lol this is very similar to my setup. I also have an xmpp server (ejabberd), grocy, and fresh rss on digitalocean.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Scientists successfully replicate historic nuclear fusion breakthrough three times⁩ ⁨⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Yeah good point. The numbers are a bit closer for fission though. Like phase one we can do renewables but electrification needs way more power than available currently. E.g. green hydrogen. There are valid scale up scenarios where fission is part of the picture, but almost none of them make sense under capitalism.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Scientists successfully replicate historic nuclear fusion breakthrough three times⁩ ⁨⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Fusion has basically nothing to do with climate change. Even if Fusion were cracked tomorrow, the scale out would be such that you couldn’t meaningfully supply a lot of base load power before you’d need to be net neutral. My take is that fusion, when available, alongside solar, would be used for carbon dioxide removal.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Yes, ‘Australian sushi’ exists. Get over it, argues Adam Liaw⁩ ⁨⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Where is the line between inspiration and a knock-off?

  So firstly, just like critical race theory, cultural appropriation is meant to be analysis. Fixing it doesn’t just mean “OK guys don’t do a cultural appropriation”, it’s meant to explain why cultures can lose their identity, and how they struggle.

  A big part of the analysis is the power differential. One of the problems is that the culture is more associated with the trope than the real culture. It’s a very large and powerful community (or individual) taking art from a small community. It’s Taylor Swift using a drawing to promote her songs, not paying for it, and asking the artist to be glad she gave her the attention. It’s Britney Spears (IIRC) making a pop song using ideas from an online subgenre and not crediting it, causing the subgenre to implode.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Yes, ‘Australian sushi’ exists. Get over it, argues Adam Liaw⁩ ⁨⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Cultural Appropriation is real, but it usually refers to entire nations or massive artists or corporations adopting a caricature of smaller cultures, to the extent that people start associating it with that nation or artist rather than the culture. An example here is Picasso using African imagery, or pop stars copying underground music genres and effectively killing them off.

  The problem is that people use it to talk about regular people starting a Sushi restaurant or whatever. They do not have the power to do this sort of thing.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Exposing War Crimes Riskier Than Doing War Crimes, Australian Man Finds⁩ ⁨⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  I think this is how secrets are kept. If they even let a single whistleblower go, then all the secrets of the state are “up for grabs”. Courage is contagious, so to speak, so they have to punish it harshly whenever it is seen.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Government rushes to patch up laws for stripping terrorists of citizenship⁩ ⁨⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Redefining someone as a terrorist is a way to pull them out of the regular judicial system. This video goes into a lot of detail with how secrecy in governments started. The final lines are chilling. This is a nightmare.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨I'm no longer five years old in Lismore — but I am shocked by the power racism still has over me⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago⁩:

  To reiterate, I do have respect for the view, but you actually stated the bit I find unrealistic:

  There is the possibility that voting for a voice now means a treaty would lack political capital or public approval for decades to come because we already voted for a voice

  I don’t think this is an insufficient response to delay a sufficient one, and I do know what the insufficient response looks like. The reason is:

  • This is driven from the statement from the heart. Having a voice is a driving force for the treaty, not a delay. It’s also not a white person’s consolation prize. The statement is softly spoken and expects slow and steady progress, which I believe is consistent with indigenous values.
  • A no vote on a referendum is far more likely to stall out any progress on a treaty because it looks like a conservative no. This discussion isn’t whether to hold a referendum (which is far greyer). It’s what to vote for. To be even clearer regarding the unrealistic idea here imagine 80% of people were progressive no voters. In that state a no vote looks like a call for a treaty. But there aren’t that many. Very generously progressive no maybe a bit above 10%. That just gets lost in the conservative no and will absolutely be used say Australia does not want a treaty.
  • In no world is a voice worse than no voice. I agree with you that this sort of thing is often used to bait out a raw deal but that is not what’s happening. You can kind of see it in the desperation from the conservative no. The total fabrications and language used. They do not want it because it’s not a consolation prize.
• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨I'm no longer five years old in Lismore — but I am shocked by the power racism still has over me⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago⁩:

  More realistically, I think he’s just betting that you can just reason down a no vote to a racist fact. IIUC the line of thinking from this video. I’m yet to hear a non-racist view of a (conservative) no vote.

  The “progressive” no vote, I have some respect for, but I also don’t think it’s a mainstream view, nor is it actually reasonable. It expects some sort of magical thinking that not having a voice will somehow get us closer to a treaty.

  Not every indigenous person needs to come to a consensus. The vast majority of community leaders have come up with a plan. Focusing on the minority of voices is really just rhetoric in place of an argument.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Opinion: Why it’s time to raise the speed limit in Australia to 130km/h⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago⁩:

  The 80 kph rule of thumb is actually part of the design parameters of most regular cars. They are built to be most fuel efficient at 80 (or probably more accurately aerodynamic designed for 80).

  I was using exponential colloquially (and fair cop given its usage during Covid), but I think you’re just using cubic as a rough guide also due to air resistance. I’d note there are no extra gears at the higher speeds, so you’re probably less efficient on the tyres etc.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Opinion: Why it’s time to raise the speed limit in Australia to 130km/h⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago⁩:

  The faster you go above 80 you use exponentially more energy. Invest in public transport you knobs.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Sandilands' latest gross stunt should worry the watchdog | Media Watch⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago⁩:

  There are plenty of dickheads you don’t know, and Kyle would have been one of them, if it wasn’t for all the other dickheads who went and crowned him king.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Sandilands' latest gross stunt should worry the watchdog | Media Watch⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago⁩:

  You don’t hate Sandilands, you hate the people who listen to him.