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Joined 10 months ago
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Cake day: February 1st, 2024

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  • My headcanon for The Matrix’s “humans are batteries” is that it’s the machines’ perverse interpretation of this — killing the humans is off the table, and for whatever reason letting them live with no purpose to serve the machines is also disallowed. But giving their lives “meaning” in the form of a shitty (and thermodynamically dubious) “battery” somehow satisfies the rules.

    It’s a very big stretch, I’ll admit…











  • My method:

    VPS with reverse proxy to my public facing services. This holds SSL certs, and communicates with home network through WireGuard link configured on my router.

    Local computer with reverse proxy for all services. This also has SSL certs, and handles the same services as the VPS, so I can have local/LAN speeds. Additionally, it serves as a reverse proxy for all my private services, such as my router/switches/access point config pages, Jellyfin, etc.

    No complaints, it mostly just works. I also have my router override DNS entries for my FQDN to resolve locally, so I use the same URL for accessing public services on my LAN.


  • We tend to use between 3kWh (vacation/idle power consumption) and around 8kWh per day. If we switched to electric stove, water heater, and heat pump, and add a hot tub, that’d increase substantially. But if we added solar (on our long Todo list…), the battery in the article (60kWh) would probably be able to handle all our storage needs, and it’d fit in he garage (bonus of it can be placed outside/under a deck!). I live in a major city, but I would absolutely love to effectively be off grid.

    Exciting stuff — it seems these are touted as being extremely robust/safe, which is of course important for me if it’s going to be in/near our house. Storage density not a huge concern, but price is somewhat important — let’s hope this sort of thing ticks all the boxes.




  • Isn’t this extremely genre dependent? And regardless, this has been going on for a long time.

    The Supremes? Good looking gals (and great music IMHO).

    Grateful Dead? Sure, rough around the edges.

    The Doors? Um…ever seen a picture of Jim Morrison? Dude would make Derek Zoolander blush.

    Out of curiosity, I asked Spotify for modern metal music, and I got The Black Dahlia Murder — frontman looks like a regular dude who I’d grab a beer with.

    Yeah, modern pop places a ton of emphasis on looks, sure. But I think this has been pretty prominent in music for a very long time, be it the airbrushed R&B of the sixties, the androgynous glam of the eighties, or the metro sexual (guy)/model-esque looks of modern pop.


  • It can be daunting to get into the hobby, there are a ton of niches.

    To start: where are you? I’m in the USA, so that’s where my experience is.

    License: required to transmit on the ham bands; you can listen without a license.

    Range: are you looking to talk to people in your city/region? If so, a cheap “walkie-talkie” style (called “HT” in the biz — best avoid “walkie-talkie”) is a good place to start. These VHF/UHF (very/ultra high frequency) radios are affordable — something from Baofeng(~$30) or similar will work just fine, though they are often looked down on (I have one — for the price, it’s great). You will have the most luck if there is an active ham scene in your area, in large part because they may have a repeater, which can greatly extend your range. Many regions will have scheduled “nets” where you just go around and chat.

    If you’re looking for the ability to chat with folks on the other side of the world, you’ll want to look into HF (high frequency). This is much lower frequency, thus longer wavelength, than the handheld VHF/UHF HTs. So…the antennas take up a lot of space. Mine is 52 feet long, in the attic. And the radios are much more expensive (more like $1k new). ICOM 7300, Yaesu FT710 are popular entry level units (but you also need power supply, cables, and antenna).

    That said: if you just want to listen to HF, the antenna doesn’t matter as much at all, and you can use an SDR (RTL-SDR probably works?) for listening. You can probably also find a used shortwave radio that covers some of the HF ham bands.