This post is inspired by my NAS HDD that has just spun its last spin. After 9.5y of 24/7 Service, the WD Red 4TB is off to the graveyard. It was clicking and whirring, the temperature 21c higher than the other three it shared a chassis with. It's done well, now rest in peace.

Then I looked at the 11yr old MacBook sitting underneath my 6yr old Lenovo laptop. Hmm, also aged but still working. A little bit of OpenCore Legacy Patcher and it's still grinding for test work, albeit a little slow even with a SSD. Then my home built PC running Debian. It is a 2018 built with a MSI motherboard and AM4 socket. The CPU was upgraded 6 months ago for the last time. No other changes though and it's still wicked fast. This box also runs a VM with all my sea sailing, Jellyfin, encodes all my media to AV1, and is also my daily driver. It's a wonderful box.

Hardware lasts a long time now in our world. There's no need for a 2 year bin off of phones, or a 3 year PC cycle that Dell would have believe. In heavy business, I understand the need for faster machines for business software, but for the average Joe, it's really not.

Anyway, what are your tech aged devices you still use, and why haven't you updated them?

I watched the video "Dirt-Cheap Solar Generator Setup - What Can It Power?" by Alex Beale yesterday. In the video, the presenter purchases a cheap solar panel and power bank for a total of $250 and tests household devices to see what kind of wattage it can take.

Turns out the cheap device can power most household objects. I'm curious if it's possible to try a similar setup to meaningfully cover my electricity usage on a day-to-day basis. Unlike the creator of this video, I don't have a yard. I'm exploring whether a solar solution could work with my constraints.

I wanted to share this idea with Tildes and hear any ideas/feedback/experiences from people who have tried something similar.

My goal

• Investigate whether it's feasible to save money with this setup
• If so, find a setup that I can use to power some or all of my household devices off-grid
• Pay less in electricity costs
• Be able to rely on my power bank when the building's power goes out

My current situation

• I live in an apartment in an urban area in the US northeast (southeastern Pennsylvania).
• I do NOT have a balcony (sadly).
• I have two south-facing windows and four west-facing windows (two of which get a LOT of light, two of which get a decent amount but not as much). However, my south-facing windows don't get direct sunlight most of the day since there is a building in the way (just a bit in the late afternoon).
• The dimensions of the windowsills are about 16 inches in depth and about 55 inches in width. That's enough for a small or medium-sized solar panel, but not most panels designed for outdoor use.
• I can open the windows all the way and it would be physically possible, in theory, to hang something outside rather than keeping it on the windowsill (we'll get into this...)
• I pay for all my electricity. The heat/air is central and inaccessible, as are a couple of the overhead lights (there are only a couple), but everything else could theoretically be replaced with energy from a power bank, I think.
• I already have a power purchase agreement with a renewable energy supplier. All my energy is "green" in the sense that I'm making it slightly more economically feasible to produce green energy.
• In a less expensive month, the bill might come to around $75. In an expensive month, it might come to around $350. If I heated the unit as much as I would like, it would be higher.
  • I'm pretty sure most of my electricity use is the heat/AC.
  • I'm pretty sure most of the remainder is the washer and dryer dishwasher, followed by the washer and dryer.
  • I spend some amount heating my water otherwise (shower, sinks), but I can't address that with a solar panel.
  • I wouldn't mind saving money on the rest if that's all that's feasible.

My power needs (I think)

• I don't know much power my oven uses. It's electric, which the internet says averages around 2500 W.
• My dishwasher runs at 120 V and 18.7 A. That is... uh... 2244 W. Also a lot.
• My dryer says 120 V on the machine, and if I look up the model number, it seems to be at 15 amps. So that's 1800 watts.
• My washing machine, uses....... IDK how many watts. No information on this thing exists. But it uses a 120 V outlet. The internet says an average washing machine could use up to 1400 W (sounds high, but okay).
• My computer has a 520 W power supply, but I doubt it ever uses that much. It's old and mostly runs Solitaire. Maybe one day I will get a fancy new machine that does like 1000 W.
• My fridge uses 115 V at 4.5 A. Let's pretend that's 120 V and say 540 W.
• I can't tell how many watts my TV uses, but the internet says it could be up to 200 W.

I would want a bit of breathing room with the rated wattage so that the power bank doesn't explode.

No way I can run all these devices simultaneously off the power bank, but perhaps I could time them. Even partial coverage could be adequate if it makes financial sense.

Possible spatial configurations

I see a few possibilities here:

1. Stick a bunch of solar panels in the windowsills, propped up at a suitable angle.
2. Stick the panel directly in the window like an air conditioner. In this case I would want to use a two-sided panel, since there would be some ambient light coming from the inside. This would inevitably reduce my home's energy efficiency, which I would have to account for.
3. Weld some sort of counterweight to a mounting system that I can use outside the window to perch the panel at an ideal angle. This would also reduce my home's energy efficiency, but maybe by less since the gap could be minimized. It is also probably illegal. And dangerous.
4. Just fill my living room with solar panels. I will need to have a conversation about that. But it could be done.

I think #1 is the only one that is actually reasonable. #2 would cost me too much in heating bills to make any sense. I think #3 would get me evicted or sued by the city. And #4 is unreasonable considering that I like to use my house to live in.

My budget

I would maybe spend $500-1000 on this if the payback period was a few years. Not more than 5 because panels by then will be a lot more efficient.

I guess I could spend more than that if it makes sense. I have good credit and a high credit limit. I don't make that much money but I could save for a bit or carry a balance for a bit. I think I would draw a hard line around $3000.

The power doesn't go out here too often, so that isn't the main selling point, more of a nice-to-have.

My research

I'm just looking on Amazon. I know I could maybe get something a little cheaper elsewhere. I'm searching for "power bank with solar panel".

• 4000+ W range: OUPES Mega 5 for $3300+ with panels (I think?). That's a lot of money for something that might not even work. And I don't believe it would be $3300, most other models I'm seeing are closer to $5000.
• 2200 W range: Jackery Explorer 2000 for $2500 with the 2 panels. Maybe this could cover my energy-intensive appliances, one at a time. Still expensive. The solar panels will... maybe fit in the window with about 1/2 inch to spare? I could angle them slightly if needed?
• 1800 W range: (maybe) Anker SOLIX C1000 for $800 with 1 panel. It also says 2400 W so idk what it is really. Can't determine the width of the solar panel.
• 1000 W range: EF ECOFlow River 2 for $700 with 1 panel. I am also not sure how big the panel is.
• 600 W range: SinKeu Portable Power Station for $230 with 1 panel.
• 300 W range: Marbero Solar Generator for $230 with 1 panel.

I'm discovering that these companies never specify the dimensions of the solar panels because they assume no one would ever use them indoors. Probably for good reason. If they don't fit horizontally, I guess I could stand them up lengthwise.

I'm sure it would be possible to find a cheaper solar panel separate from the power bank. But as a ballpark, those are my initial numbers.

Math

Imagine I spend $2500 on the 2200 W Jackery model, with 2 panels. I could put them in the two bright west-facing windows. Let's just pretend they can get their maximum output and that charging time isn't an issue.

Let's say I use this every time I run my oven, dryer, washer, or dishwasher (not at the same time), and otherwise I connect it to my fridge and most other electronics. (I know I said my oven could be 2500 W, but I usually just use one burner, and I bet that's more like 1500 W.) Let's pretend the hassle of running all those cables has been solved somehow.

I really don't know exactly what my electricity breakdown is. If I have the heat/AC mostly off and am not in the unit a whole lot (e.g. traveling for some of the month), that's when I end up with a $75/mo bill. But if I'm out of the unit, that means I'm also not using my dryer/washer and other devices as much. I guess the fridge was still on. The $350 side of things is because it's hot and I'm running the AC more, and maybe slightly higher dryer usage for some laundry-related reason. So maybe I'll say the minimum I'm spending on non-heat/AC electricity per month is $50-100, and at most maybe something like $150.

So in this super optimistic scenario, the portion of my monthly electricity bill I suspect I'd be able to theoretically save would be $50-150. Let's just say $100. That means it would take 25 months to pay back if all goes well. Honestly that's not so bad.

If I instead bought the 1000 W ECOFlow setup for $700, I could cover all my non-intensive electrical uses. The main beneficiary would be the refrigerator, the computer, and maybe the television. I think the savings there would be like $25-50/mo at most, being pretty generous. If I say $35, that would be about a 20-month payoff. That's also pretty good, but if it'll take about the same amount of time to pay for itself, I'd rather get the higher-wattage one.

Numerous caveats:

• It's not always sunny in Philadelphia.
• The panels will not be at 100% efficiency because the window is cloaked in shadow half the day, and there is no way I get the angle perfect, and maybe the glass affects how much energy they can absorb or something (would it help? hurt?). This isn't inherently an issue, except...
• ...that the charging time for the power station might be long. Some of the reviews say 6 hours in maximum sunlight, so for my use-case there's no way it would be faster than 12 hours for a full charge, and probably more. I use my appliances kind of a lot. The fridge is always running, and either the washer, dryer, oven, or dishwasher are running a pretty good chunk of the time. I think that I could get by with this... but I probably wouldn't be able to use it as much as I'd like (there are often moments where more than one is running simultaneously), so...
• ...the payoff time wouldn't actually be 25 months. I suspect there are some factors I'm not thinking about that would reduce the realistic amount of energy I'd save here. Let's say it is half as effective in my setup as a normal person's, because the sun is half as visible or something, and the charging time is too slow to use often, or whatever. At a 50-month payoff (4 years), I would start to get skeptical. But not inherently opposed.
• I use my windowsill for other things that like sunlight, like plants. I would have to move the plants that really love the sun somewhere slightly dimmer. Is it worth it???????
• I also like to look out my window, and if I had a huge solar panel there (especially if I had to stand it up vertically for space reasons), that would be a bummer perhaps.
• Constantly charging and discharging this thing probably reduces its effective wattage output fast. I.D.K. by how much. But there might be a point where I can't use it for my high-wattage devices, which would largely defeat the purpose of buying an expensive model. Not clear to me what the timeline for that would be.
• I still can't figure out if the panels would actually fit in my windowsill.
• Since it wouldn't be able to run more than one energy-intensive device simultaneously, I'd have to be careful not to keep it plugged in to too much stuff at once. It would overall be a bit of a hassle to plug in the panels and the charger and everything. Maybe the panels could stay plugged in, but even so.
• Running extension cords all over the house and putting a giant solar panel in even just one or two of the windows would result in a catastrophic domestic state of affairs. I can just imagine the eye-popping that would happen if I set that up unilaterally.

Takeaway

There is almost definitely something I am not considering. My math is so napkin-based, so imaginary and so optimistic.

But even if the practical efficiency isn't great, I feel like this could maybe possibly actually work, and could save me a bit of money. I would just have to spend it all up front. I mean I don't have $2500 on hand. But I could scrounge up part of it and put the rest on credit. And it would make for living room conversation with guests?

Realistically this seems like an amusing but too-annoying to actually do sort of project. If you know anyone who's done something silly like this and had it work, let me know! I'd be curious what their experience was.

Solved

I was idiotically installing a legacy driver instead of the current driver. I installed the current one and it is now working.

Background on Tildes

For background I posted about distro recommendations a few weeks ago: https://tildes.net/~tech/1ji6/switching_to_linux_looking_for_distro_recommendations. I settled on Fedora KDE Plasma.

Steps taken before the problem

I installed Fedora onto an unallocated space on my SSD, alongside Windows 10. I have tested that Windows 10 is currently working, and that Fedora starts normally. I have also used the boot media to install onto my laptop with no issues. However, on my desktop before installing GPU drivers for my GTX 970, I found Fedora to be quite buggy. This would include the session freezing and needing to be restarted , or my screen would go black with text saying something along the lines "desktop session cannot be unlocked, press ctrl + alt + f3 and login and run a command (I cannot remember the command)" and then I could switch back to my previous session. Overall, it was a buggy mess. My thought process was that it may be a GPU driver issue, and so I started the process of installing RPM fusion and installing the driver from there. I have a GTX 970, so I followed the section titled "Legacy GeForce 8/9/200/300" on this page: https://rpmfusion.org/Howto/NVIDIA?highlight=%28%5CbCategoryHowto%5Cb%29. The commands I ran after installing RPM were: sudo dnf update -y and sudo dnf install xorg-x11-drv-nvidia-340xx akmod-nvidia-340xx and followed all the prompts provided as necessary. I would then leave my computer for about 30min, before returning and restarting (thinking that a restart may be necessary to be fully using the drivers).

Current Situation

After going through the process listed above, I turned my computer on and booted into Fedora. My screen would hang on a black screen with a flashing white underscore at the top left corner. The computer would not get past this point, no matter how long it was left. Hitting "ctrl + alt + f2" would give me a working terminal that I could interact with, showing the basic CLI of Linux working. I did not play around much with the commands, but I do know the basic shutdown now command was working.

Troubleshooting Steps Tried

I was thinking that it may be due to the driver being X11 and I am running Wayland. I searched online and results seemed to indicate that this would not cause an issue
(I will add more steps here when people recommend them)

Okay, so this is getting really long, I'll put the ask up front: I have a strategy, I think it is reasonable. Now is a point where I can easily change things, and it won't be so easily later. So I'm looking to see if anyone has trod this road before and can recommend any of:

1. a different build system that will be easier to manage for this use case
2. a different strategy for using cmake that will be easier to manage
3. any gotchas I should be aware of, even if you don't have better solutions.

Background

I have a project I'm working on where the ultimate deliverable will be a hardware device with 3-4 different microcontrollers coordinating with each other and interacting with a PC-ish platform. This is a clean rewrite of a C++ codebase. Due to the microcontroller (and some of the PC APIs) being C++, the language of choice for most of it is likely to remain C/C++.

I'm succeeded in setting up a build system for embedded code. The old code was arduino, so it relies a lot on those libraries, but I've managed to set up enough custom cmake to get off of the ardunio tools altogether, even if I am borrowing their libraries and some of the "smarts" built into the system about setting build flags, etc. So far, I have a dockerized toolchain (cmake + make + gcc-arm-none-eabi) that can successfully build ARM binaries for the target platform.

The thing that I'm up against now is that I'd like to have a robust off-target unit testing infrastructure. My ideal case is that everything in the embedded system will be broken down into libraries that have clear interfaces, then to use unit tests with mocks to get high coverage of test cases. I'll still need some HIL tests, but because those are harder to set up and run, I want to use those for integration and validation.

In terms of OSes available, we're mostly working on Windows systems using WSL for linux. I'd like things to be as linux-based as possible to support CI on github, etc.

Goals and Cmake limitations

I started out using cmake because I hate it least of the tools I've used, and I am at least pretty far up the learning curve with it. But a limitation I'm hitting is that you can't do a mixed compile with two different toolchains in one build. The reasons why cmake has this limitation seem reasonable to me, even if it is annoying. You can easily change the toolchain that your code is built with, but that seems to be largely targeted at cross-compiling the same binaries for different systems. What I want to do is:

• build my code libraries with embedded settings for linking to the embedded binaries and build those embedded binaries (the end product)
• build my code libraries with linux-ish tools and link them against unit tests to have a nice CI test process
• (eventually) also be able to build windows binaries for the PC components -- when I get to that point, I'd like to get away from the MSVC compilers, but will use them if I have to

Current strategy

My current plan is to configure a library build like this (pseudocode):

add_library(mylib sources)
if (BUILD_TYPE STREQUAL BUILD_TYPE_EMBEDDED)
<embedded config>
elseif (BUILD_TYPE STREQUAL BUILD_TYPE_LINUX)
<linux config, if any>
endif()

#unit tests are built for each library
if (BUILD_TYPE STREQUAL BUILD_TYPE_LINUX)
add_executable(mylib_test sources test_sources)
target_link_libraries(mylib gtest etc.)
endif()

For the rollup binaries, I make the whole target conditional

if (BUILD_TYPE STREQUAL BUILD_TYPE_EMBEDDED)
add_executable(myembedap sources)
target_link_libraries(mylib)
endif()

Then the build script (outside cmake) is something like

cd build/embedded
cmake <path to src> <set embedded toolchain> -DBUILD_TYPE=embedded
make
cd ../../build/linux
cmake <path to src> -DBUILD_TYPE=linux
make

Things I like about this strategy:

• It's relatively simple to do all the builds or just one of the builds (that control would go in the shell script)
• I have one source tree for the whole build
• It lets configuration be near code
• It lets tests be near code.
• I think it's extensible to cover the PC component builds in the future

Things that worry me:

• It feels like a hack
• Support for off-target tests feels like it should be solved problem and I'm worried I'm missing something

Thanks for reading. If you made it this far, you have my gratitude. Here's a video with funny out of office messages that I enjoyed.

Overview

When I swapped the motherboard on my computer, I lost my Windows license and Microsoft support was useless. So I am switching my desktop over to Linux. I am planning on setting up dual boot, so that I still have Windows 10 with the watermark for certain use cases, but hoping I can run primarily Linux.

Previous Linux Experience

I have swapped an old laptop to Linux (elementaryOS) before and was able to have it do the simple tasks I required of that computer. I also have an old desktop running proxmox, with various VMs, primarily a NAS running openmediavault. Also, I took a college class on Linux system admin, which focused on various tasks on ubuntu. So overall, I am pretty familiar with Debian-based Linux and doing stuff in the terminal, but I would prefer to not have to use the terminal often.

Workload

So I use my computer for fairly normal use cases that should not be too problematic for Linux. Things I plan to do are:

• Non-competitive gaming (Minecraft, Civilization V and VI, occassionally single player FPS games)
• Video editing via DaVinci Resolve
• General web browsing
• Libre Office is what I plan to switch to from MS Office

Plans for testing

I am going to setup a VM on my hypervisor to try out the basic interface of each distro, and try basic tasks. Testing will probably not involve running the heavier applications such as DaVinci Resolve or games. However, I will look into the install process of some of these. For games, I am just going to rely on the work Steam has done for Linux gaming recently.

Things I am looking for in a distro

The things I want in a distro are:

• Debian based preferable, but am considering others
• Simple tasks can be done graphically, instead of via terminal
• Upgrade in place is preferable (I believe similar to how ubuntu now allows for upgrades to the next LTS does not require a reinstall)
• Similar UI to Windows 10 is preferable

Planned distros to test

Distros I wanted to try before posting

• popOS
• Mint

Distros I am considering testing after being recommended them:

• Arch
• Fedora (I am strongly leaning towards this one, but want to do more testing)

I've copied the full tweet below (it's from August, I missed this news somehow):

We've been evaluating a number of C++ successor languages for @ladybirdbrowser , and the one best suited to our needs appears to be @SwiftLang 🪶

Over the last few months, I've asked a bunch of folks to pick some little part of our project and try rewriting it in the different languages we were evaluating. The feedback was very clear: everyone preferred Swift!

Why do we like Swift?

First off, Swift has both memory & data race safety (as of v6). It's also a modern language with solid ergonomics.

Something that matters to us a lot is OO. Web specs & browser internals tend to be highly object-oriented, and life is easier when you can model specs closely in your code. Swift has first-class OO support, in many ways even nicer than C++.

The Swift team is also investing heavily in C++ interop, which means there's a real path to incremental adoption, not just gigantic rewrites.

Strong ties to Apple?

Swift has historically been strongly tied to Apple and their platforms, but in the last year, there's been a push for "swiftlang" to become more independent. (It's now in a separate GitHub org, no longer in "apple", for example).

Support for non-Apple platforms is also improving, as is the support for other, LSP-based development environments.

What happens next?

We aren't able to start using it just yet, as the current release of Swift ships with a version of Clang that's too old to grok our existing C++ codebase. But when Swift 6 comes out of beta this fall, we will begin using it!

No language is perfect, and there are a lot of things here that we don't know yet. I'm not aware of anyone doing browser engine stuff in Swift before, so we'll probably end up with feedback for the Swift team as well.

I'm super excited about this! We must steer Ladybird towards memory safety, and the first step is selecting a successor language that we can begin adopting very soon. 🤓🐞

Nitter link:

https://nitter.poast.org/awesomekling/status/1822236888188498031

Original post:

https://x.com/awesomekling/status/1822236888188498031

Some of Kling's replies in that thread are also pretty interesting:

My general thoughts on Rust:
- Excellent for short-lived programs that transform input A to output B
- Clunky for long-lived programs that maintain large complex object graphs
- Really impressive ecosystem
- Toxic community

In the end it came down to Swift vs Rust, and Swift is strictly better in OO support and C++ interop.

The September monthly report for Ladybird released the day after I posted this. It provides basically the same information:

This Month in Ladybird September 2024

The section about Swift:

Successor language search progress

Over the past year, our core contributors have been exploring potential safe languages to complement or succeed C++. We evaluated several options, including Rust, Swift, Fil-C, and others. While some languages offered compelling features, many fell short in either C++ interoperability or providing the level of memory safety we needed.

After extensive testing and discussion, Swift emerged as the top choice among our core developers, thanks to the new Swift 6 interoperability features and its growing cross-platform support. As a result, we’ve decided to adopt Swift as our C++ successor language.

That said, this will be an incremental shift. The existing C++ codebase is deeply embedded in the project, and a complete rewrite would be impractical. Instead, we’ll be gradually introducing new components in Swift, carefully integrating them with our existing C++ code over time. Look forward to a dedicated blog post on the topic soon.

Hey all,

We're working on a press-freedom / anti-censorship project and we're testing a variety of scenarios in which a journalist's internet traffic is being monitored by a hostile state. We'd like to simulate an ISP's access to the journalist's traffic so we can run some packet collection and other tests to see what it looks like.

What's the best way to do this? Put a few routers in series and collect on the last one?

There's a lot of information I could share about this. But I do want to remain semi-private, so I'll try to stick to the highlights and answer questions as needed. Instead of stating hard numbers, I'll compare against the value of my car according to Kelly Blue Book.

I'm reaching out here because I'm not a "car person" and I haven't gone through anything like this before. I figured if there's any other angles or strategies I'm missing then you all will probably fill in my blind spots. I want this to be over ASAP, but I also don't want to pay for the damage they've caused since it's thousands of dollars.

What happened:

• In May my car started having acceleration issues. I brought it in for repair at a dealership I've gone to for 2 years who has an in-house service department. The dealership's name includes the name of my car's manufacturer, so they're a specialized licensed dealer.
• At first they thought my catalytic converter was the issue, so they ran a bunch of tests. After extensive troubleshooting, they ended up taking it off and confirmed there was no damage or clogs. I received written updates, so this is well-documented.
• There is a known defect with engines in cars like mine. Therefore they put in a request for a free engine replacement, which was approved. They also reexamined my car after the approval was granted and recommended replacing another part at the same time. I approved and paid for that myself.
• When they gave me back my car, it was making a lot of weird sounds. I commented on it during pickup, and they told me not to drive too fast. Turns out it wasn't able to go on the highway at all and the check engine light quickly came on. I notified them and they asked me to return it. I put 100 miles on it during that period. For reference, driving on a highway has never been an issue for me.
• Upon examination, they informed me my catalytic converter was fully clogged and that it needed to be replaced. The sent me a quote for half the value of my car, a major expense.
• At first they tried arguing that it passed their test drive. But after I pointed out that I only drove 100 miles, they said it must have been clogged the whole time and they missed it repeatedly. They also said the new engine could in theory cause the issue, but stopped short of recommending it be replaced yet again. They also told me I could take my car somewhere else to get the repair done for cheaper. I have this conversation recorded.
• So I haven't had a working car for 100+ days now. It's still at the dealership and they've been trying to pressure me into taking it away, even though it's not save to drive and driving it could cause more damage.
• I've asked for a loaner vehicle repeatedly, and I'm always told none are available and that I'm on the wait list.

Here's what I've done so far.

• I have a support case with the manufacturer's national customer support system. I don't have my case managers direct line, but I call the regular line every day asking for updates. I also ask for it to be escalated and expedited. Sometimes the person tries to go above and beyond to give me the latest updates, but ultimately I don't think this is helping much. A request for a "good will" repair has been submitted and is awaiting review. Both my case manager and the dealership have told me it can take months to be reviewed. The person reviewing it is a regional manager. I've asked for their contact information but so far they've refused to disclose that.
• I've spoken to a lawyer briefly. They seemed to think it wouldn't be worth hiring them for this. They advised filing a claim against the dealership's insurer. As a backup, file a claim with my insurer and have them go after the dealership's insurer to cover the cost. I'm nervous about going this route because if they're not able to recoup then that claim would stay on my record which does have financial implications.
• I've asked the dealership directly for their insurance to file a claim. They refused to give it to me, saying only they file claims against their insurance. I don't know how else to try extracting this information. Cold calling as a prospective customer? Is it hanging on one of their walls maybe?
• I've spoken with the dealership's manager who oversees used cars. They made me an insultingly low offer yesterday, about 10% of its value. For reference, my car is less than 10 years old. Part of the reason it's so low is because they're budgeting in the repair. The manager doesn't seem to care that they damaged my car. But it does seem like they want the car off the lot, so maybe if I hold the line on this front the offer will increase. Unless they tow it, which I do slightly fear.
• I made some phone calls to governmental entities in my state. I've narrowed in on one entity that I'm told should have records of the dealership's insurance and also allow me to file a complaint. I got a voicemail today, but fingers crossed I can connect with them tomorrow.
• I sent an email to an executive last week. If I don't hear back I plan on doing this weekly with different executives. I'll add the names of each executive I've contacted to the bottom so the person has that additional context.
• I've reached out a local TV station who investigates things in the community. If I don't hear back I plan on contacting another one next week. I live in big city so I'm not confident this avenue will be fruitful.
• I've looked briefly into small claims court, but even a positive outcome requires me to collect. So that doesn't seem particularly helpful.
• I've looked briefly into leaving a BBB review, but I'm not sure that will accomplish much.

#This is a "shower thought" more than a properly empirically researched idea, so it is presented without any citations. This lack of resources is also a reference to many modernist philosophers, whom I dearly appreciate.

Modernist theories famously tried to get at "the truth behind eveything". For example, majority of both pro- and anti-capitalists thought that history was progressing in a linear tract, and that there was such a thing as end of history. So, they tried to find the drive of history. Famously, Marx claimed to have found it in historical materialism. Similarly, many pro-capitalists have declared The End of History when USSR fell.

Both of these claims were made on the idea that a single mechanism was behind the progress of history, therefore almost everything.

It is my thesis that this was and is an extension of essentialist thinking. Such a way of thinking looked for "the essence" of the object of study, because it assumed an (singular) essence drove the object to behave the way it did. There were no multiple causes, only a single cause—if you could find it, you could explain the object in its entirety.

Modernist philosophers updated this idea a bit. They didn't look for a Platonic idea, for example, but they looked for "the drive behind the object". While they were more materialist, it was also a quasi-metaphysical endeavor.

I'm going to quote Marx's historical materialism again, because it's one modernist narrative I'm familiar with—simply put, it was such an attempt. While the historical materialist narrative touched on many great things about humanity (e.g. the plasticity of "human nature", the dependence of culture on material conditions), it overreached and overreduced history to a single mechanism. It seemingly recognized the role of other mechanisms, but decidedly explained away their importance in contrast to what Marx saw as "productive forces".

This was an extension of Hegelian dialectics, but reversed. Hegel assumed thought drove materialist changes. Marx flipped this over. However, both of these were still highly metaphysical, highly essentialist.

Essentialism's mistake, in this context, is not only that it is metaphysical, it's also that it reduces the object of study to a monocausal explanation. It looks for only one cause. However, as the advance of scientific and most specifically statistical knowledge shows, there are always multiple causes to complex phenomena.

This revolution in thinking was a great attack on modernist and all the preceding grand narratives. Statistics especially was important in this. The more an explanation -any explanation- was tested in scientific contexts the more it was apparent that no single cause was able to explain everything. Nevermind that, as both natural and social scientists became aware, most of the time a single cause wasn't able to explain most (>50%) of the variation seen in a study.

Another result of statistical thinking, if one is willing to consider all its implications, is that uncertainty is an inherent part of everything we do and explain. There is no epistemic certainty, nothing we can know for certain. So, everything is always, at some level, a working hypothesis. This doesn't mean that everything is equally plausible, but that we can never be 100% certain about our explanations, neither in science nor in anything.

Why is this so? Because inferential statistics is structured to give an idea about the uncertainty of the inference we are doing, based on our observations. In short, it always assumes there are "error bars" or something of equivalent function.

This is the second implication of this revolution—we should be aware of uncertainty and embrace it.

In summary, there were two important results of this revolution in thinking.

1. Monocausality bias hinders thinking. In complex phenomena, natural or social, there are most likely multiple important drives (causes).
2. Rejecting the inherent epistemic uncertainty of our explanations and embracing the psychological certainty of monocausal explanations would be a folly.

Again, and I cannot stress this enough, this doesn't mean everything is equally plausible (doing so is also counter to statistical thinking!). But realizing the value in this approach provides a great deal of flexibility of the mind, and it makes it much less likely that a person would seek comfort in psychologically certain, essentialist or quasi-essentialist narratives. It makes it less likely so that you fall victim to overly reductive but confident-sounding explanations.

It also allows one to critically examine modernist and previous explanations, both in positive and negative ways. Grand narratives, I think, touch on many great topics and have insight, but they fall victim to overreductive monocausality bias. If you can separate them from that, then you find a source of rich thinking styles. It seems that sociology does this with thinkers such as Marx, Weber, and more.

This, I think, is one of the greater revolutions in the "post-modern" era. Post-modern thinking is often associated with extreme skepticism, to the point of declaring everything unknowable, however, this would be reductive. In the way I described, being skeptical of such grand explanations and embracing multicausality and uncertainty is an extremely productive approach.

This, however, does not mean essentialist, monocausal, modernist, etc. thinking is defeated and gone. "Lightning and thunder require time; the light of the stars requires time; deeds, though done, still require time to be seen and heard."

Of course, despite the quote, there is nothing sure about the eventual victory of this better way of thinking. However, even in the case that it could become the dominant mode of thought, it will take a great deal of time and active struggle against the old ideas and powers-that-be.

This topic is for the Three Cheers for Tildes mobile app.

I'll summarize the major updates at the start of each similar topic, so people can read the updates and then hit Ignore if they don't care about more frequent updates and user feedback.

Recently:

Three Cheers version 1.1 is out for Android and iOS! (Sep 14, 2024)

• Added an in-app YouTube player
• Added 2 settings related to YouTube and autoplay
• Tweaked the labels dialog UI
• (Android) Fixed Back button navigation in the WebView
• (iOS) Fixed UI bug commenting on a deeply nested comment

Android version 1.1.2 (Oct 4, 2024): Fixed YouTube player setting, should take priority over Browser type setting. Fixed a UI bug with ignored topics appearing unignored.

Some technical details: The YouTube player uses the YouTube IFrame Player API using the Android and iOS wrapper libraries. They are both open source and I was able to submit some improvement patches to them.

Regarding release schedule: Prior to version 1.0 of the app, I was working (a little too) hard on the app and putting out monthly megathreads. These days I'm allocating my time differently, so topics won't be monthly. Please continue to feel free to reach out, whether posting in the megathread even if months old, or emailing me using the contact info on the app store pages, or using iOS TestFlight feedback functionality.

Huge thank you to the few people who have set up a recurring donation in the app. From a worker perspective, it's still a tiny tiny amount if comparing with an actual wage developing apps, but luckily for my users, I'm not trying to make a wage from this app, and plan to continue developing it at my own pace. That does mean that updates will be somewhat unpredictable though.

Previous topic: May 2024

Where to get it

Android version on Google Play Store: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.talklittle.android.tildes

Or sideloadable APK at https://www.talklittle.com/three-cheers/

iOS version on the App Store: https://apps.apple.com/app/three-cheers-for-tildes/id6470950557

Join TestFlight for iOS beta testing: https://testflight.apple.com/join/mpVk1qIy

Anniversary

The Dreamcast is now 25 years old in the US, after its memorable release date of 9/9/99!

Europe has another month to go (it released on 14 October 1999), and Japan already beat the world to the anniversary by almost a year (27 November 1998).

Share your thoughts, memories, favorite games, or anything else related to the Dreamcast here. You can reminisce about how cool Sonic Adventure was, how groundbreaking Shenmue was, or how unsettling Seaman was.

Play Along

I am taking a month out of my regular gaming habits (mostly smaller indie Steam stuff) to play different Dreamcast games through September in honor of the anniversary. If anyone wants to join me in that, I’d love the company!

Every so often I’ll post a comment to this topic with thoughts on what I’m playing. Feel free to post yours as well!

If anyone needs a place to get started, we have a topic with some game recommendations.

I’ll be emulating them on my Steam Deck through RetroDECK (which uses the Flycast core for RetroArch). I’ve already tested out a bunch of games, and performance and compatibility seem to be really good.

There are no points for this (it’s purely for fun), but if there were, anyone playing on original hardware would get bonus ones!

My dog is really important to me. Without going into much detail, he and I have been through a lot and I’m committed to making his life as good as possible. a couple of years ago we lived in San Francisco and we were happy. Then I moved to the East Coast, spent a year with my parents before starting a PhD. That was not the best experience, it was at the last stage of his adulthood before being elderly, and he got attacked by my mom‘s dog several times and we were in a shitty concrete hell suburbia that had no good places to walk him. I am very sympathetic to how difficult the transition has been.

Finally we have a place to ourselves again, and it sucks. I feel like he’s ruining my life. It’s been upsetting me to the point that I want to scream.

• he will not leave me alone. He needs to be where I am at all times. We live in a modest one bedroom apartment, and you can see every room from any other room. if I go into the bedroom and he’s in the living room, he has to hop off the couch and follow me 15 feet. If I go to the bathroom, he’s laying down outside the door. Because of his arthritis, I wish he would just stay and not walk unnecessarily.

• I take him on one good size walk and two or three small walks per day. these are the most frustrating times of my day. He lags behind me no matter how slowly I go. I have to keep the leash very short so that I don’t have him fearing off left and right. He wants to smell every single thing. He used to, be a good walker and he would stay at my side and come to that position if I signal him to. But in his old age, he just doesn’t listen to me, it’s not a matter of hearing. He completely ignores me.

• if he is not eating, out on a walk, or tearing up a stuffy, he is unhappy. He lays and will now and then sneezes or sighs.

• he has always had this problem where, a sudden loud noise will deeply disturb him. He will shake uncontrollably, and any attempt to soothe him, by talking to him or touching him, just makes him shake worse.

• he hounds me for food. The moment I touched something in the kitchen, he comes.

• I have gotten him several bowls to try slowing down his eating, but he eats like he’s starving. So I have to feed him in small bits, and if the bits are spread apart too far, he starts shaking like he’s being neglected. I have had him tested for diabetes or other issues, his blood work comes back normal.

• he always wants to sleep in my bed, but he does not want me to touch him. If we are sleeping back to back and our hips touch, he gets off the bed. And then he gets back on as soon as he sees a decent opportunity. we used to share the bed, because I have had a California king size bed by myself, and it was fine. But in the last year, it’s just like he hates it.

I have come to hate the sound of his collar jingling. I have nasty thoughts like waiting for the relief of him passing away. Sometime I have an aggressive voice, but I really do always try to keep my voice light and keep his tailwagging in my interactions with him. I’m sure he can sense my agitation though. It has become overwhelming. I don’t enjoy a single moment of our life together.

And I have to work and he needs to be walked several times a day and he will shake if he feels like he’s being neglected in that aspect, so when I have to go run errands, I take him with me, but I can never get anywhere because not only is he naturally slow. He has developed this instinct of lagging behind and he wants to stop and smell everything and it’s just annoying to have to constantly crouch down and Argue with him to get him to move his body. I don’t feel comfortable, forcing him to move, especially because of his arthritis.

Like I said, he used to have good training, but it has all fallen by the wayside and he is old and stubborn.

But this cannot continue. I Don’t believe either of us are happy. I would like some advice on how to effectively train him in the time that I have, I do not have the money to hire a trainer. I also ask that you handle your responses gently; I am extremely upset by this and I am aware of how shitty it sounds of me to speak of him so poorly, but my mental health is falling apart because of the lack of freedom and relaxation that I can find living with him.

I have no intention of rehoming him, and have always been committed to his safety, and comfort and mental and physical happiness. if I rehomed him, it would haunt me, it would devastate me. But I would do it if I believed he would be happier. But I don’t believe he would be, I have left him with my parents and other people in the past, and he just waits vigilantly for me to return.

Edit: I also want to say that I am open to advice on how I can manage myself and my feelings about this

Update:
I found the issue!

Stupidly, I had listened to the advice of YouTubers and Amazon reviews. In my sand filter, I had used the woolen balls. Even though I had been performing the cycle and flush, dumping the water, the woolen balls were not clean, they were green and completely swamped in algae.

I took them out, rinsed, sat them in some diluted bleach and rinsed again. I cleaned the filter thoroughly. Upon putting it all back together, throwing in some shock and giving it a few hours, along with a 1/5 pool water dump and replace, it's looking clear again.

Thank you for all of the advice. I'll move to sand in the near future so the rinse and dump cycles actually work.

Original message:
I wasn't sure which group to shove this in, I went for home improvement as this needs serious improvement.

To be honest, with how green it is, maybe enviro would have been even better.

I have an above ground 5800l pool, which I put up during the summer for the kids. This year I decided to go with Bromine in a float. I'm using the standard slow disjsolve capsules from Everclear. I chose Bromine as one of the kids has quite sensitive skin. I started out with the winder float, 6 tabs slowly dissolving. I gave it a couple of days and realised I didn't have strips to test, so I ordered some.

In this time, with lots of abuse, a very warm season for England and probably half a metric ton of sun cream, the water was looking a bit cloudy. No biggy, the great Flow Clear 800Gal/h sand filter would be helping... It didn't seem to be. The water went from cloudy to slightly green at the bottom. The algae was arriving.

I dipped a stick: bromine didn't even register. Hmmm. I ordered a second float and some algaecide to attack the issue. Two days later, we have 12 tabs in two floats, enough algaecide to clear the Amazon river (I jest), and I leave it to clear. The following day, it's less cloudy, still green tinted and bromine still does not register on the sticks.

Over today's use, it's gotten worse. I've ordered chlorine tabs instead because the bromine is not working. It should have worked. Does anyone know where I went wrong?

Tomorrow, I'll dump half the water (over 2000l down the drain), change the tablets over to chlorine, throw in some more algaecide and let the pump keep on pumping. Hopefully, as it refills, I should get some nice clear water that doesn't have a pH of near 9.

https://protesilaos.com/emacs/ef-themes-pictures

HODL

Adapted using @tomf's tildes-stylus-template. No tweaks, minor updates to the CSS:

body .btn-post-action {
  color: var(--foreground); }
  body .btn-post-action:hover {
    color: var(--fg-dark); }

body .chip {
  background-color: var(--border);

Test 1

Test 2

Test 3

Test 4

Test 5

Test 6

Emphasis

Bold

Bold-Emph

~group

@username

Strikethrough

Code

This is my cry for help.

I'm a newer programmer who just got hired for my first actual programming job a few months ago. Before now the only things I really made were simple python scripts that handled database operations at my last job. I live in an area with no opportunities, and so this new job I got is my saving grace at this point. For the first time in my life I can have actual savings and can actually work on moving to an area with opportunities. However...

Everything is falling apart. I have no idea how this place has survived this long. There is no senior dev for me to go to. There are no code reviews. There is no QA. There is a spiderweb of pipelines with zero error handling or data-checking. Bugs are frequent and go undetected. The database has no keys or constraints, and was designed by a madman (so it's definitely not normalized whatsoever). I already have made a bunch of little scripts handling data-parsing tasks that are used in prod, and I've had to learn proper logging and notifications on errors along the way, and have still yet to learn how to do real tests (I ordered a book on pytest that I plan on going through). I am so paranoid that at any moment something I made does something unexpected and destroys things (which... kinda actually happened already).

We're in the long and arduous process of moving away from this terrible system to a newer, better-designed one but I'm already just so lost and... lonely? There's a few separate dev "teams" but one is outsourced and the other is infamously unapproachable and works on a completely different domain. There's no one there to catch me if/when I make mistakes except myself. The paranoia I have over my programs is really getting to me and already affecting my health.

I guess I just want advice on what I should do in this situation. Is this a normal first experience? I care deeply about making sure the things I make are good and functional but I also don't have the experience to forsee potential issues that may come up due to how I'm designing things. And how can I cope with the paranoia I'm feeling?

EDIT: It takes me a while to write responses, but I want everyone to know that I really appreciate all your advice and kind words. It does mean a lot to me! I'm doing my best to take in what everyone has said and am working on making the best of an atypical situation. I'm chronically hard on myself, but I'm gonna try to give myself a bit more grace here. Again, thanks so much for all the thoughtful replies from everyone. :)

My apologies if this kind of content is not allowed here. Mod(s) please feel free to delete it if it is not without any butthurt on my part.

I'm new to React Testing, so I am taking an Udemy course on it. The Udemy course uses yarn, so I would like to stick with that though I do know yarn isn't the top accepted tool in the React community.

I've posted this question elsewhere, I haven't gotten any responses, so I am posting it here ( costs nothing ).

I am getting this error when executing yarn build:

$ yarn build
yarn run v1.22.22
$ react-scripts build
Creating an optimized production build...
Failed to compile.

TS2305: Module '"web-vitals"' has no exported member 'ReportHandler'.
  > 1 | import { ReportHandler } from 'web-vitals';
      |          ^^^^^^^^^^^^^
    2 |
    3 | const reportWebVitals = (onPerfEntry?: ReportHandler) => {   
    4 |   if (onPerfEntry && onPerfEntry instanceof Function) {      


error Command failed with exit code 1.

I've tried installing web-vitals over what is already in the modules section, but that hasn't helped.

Any clues appreciated!

Update: the tip about ReportHandler being deprecated helped. I ran create react app in a new folder, did NOT run yarn update as the instructor called for,moved my work over, and now everything runs fine.

Need to apply lacquer on a mild steel product that is zinc plated and has some vibratory surface polishing on top of it, which wears the zinc down a bit.

Need to pass 500 hours on a British Standard salt spray test (BS EN ISO 9227: 2017)

If anyone has any sources on a good lacquer supplier please let me know. Tried one by LVH coatings but it didn't pass more than 300 hours.