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It's basically passive radar using the wifi bands as the reflection AFAIK. It doesn't seem to be about the active state of devices, but the deflections in known points. It's creepy.

"also a distant relative bought a piece of farmland."


I don't get the reference. How does this interact with my commentary on the rapid proliferation of "AI" keyloggers in SV text areas?


"Stardew Valley".


I know it's a shamed topic around here, or it seems like it, however I find the Bitcoin mining aspect of chewing up these "needed to be wasted" loads the one true positive of it (Bitcoin).

Yeah, it's changed from its seeming origins. Yes it's number go up! But being able to turn that extra juice, that NEEDS to go somewhere back into 'cash' is certainly on my list of positives.

Obviously, it's lower than batteries and lower or on par with storing as sand/thermal (I guess location and season dependant on this one).

One other perk, now that I rant about thermal, is being able to absorb this extra energy, do some calculations and then provide (location/season) heat. Seems like the calculation aspect is the 3 birds one stone, to me.


I agree, except bitcoin should not be calculating meaningless things. Could have been a large decentralized AI training algorithm for example :)


Perhaps https://www.sdrpp.org/ would work for you? Just throwing it out there -- I've learned that my few SDRplay devices def. require a lot more pieces and parts on my linux machines than any of the other SDR devices that I own.


Semi-related, I've found this one of the primary reasons I wear a smartwatch. My phone now generally remains on silent 99% of the time, as does the watch. It's pretty easy to miss a vibration when a phone is in a pocket or on a table somewhere, but having a vibration on my wrist is almost always noticeable.

The few times I do not notice a notification, I'll pick up up when just keeping an eye on the time.

Not having bings , boops, and rings surround my life has been a huge nicety -- Far more than I'd have expected. Highly recommend if someone wants to be 'notified reliably' but has the modern day sounds also drive them a bit nuts...


Similar here in Maine under CMP. Something like 12.5 cents/Kwh, but with the delivery aspect factored in it's basically 28 cents/Kwh.

I always assume when people on here are talking their 'rates', that they are usually NOT factoring in the delivery fee unless stated.

But maybe some places are just really THAT cheap.


I pay 11.6 cents per kilowatt hour inclusive of everything (taxes too). My household used 647 kilowatt hours in April and the bill for the month was $75.02. The per-unit charge neglecting taxes and delivery is only 7.4 cents. This is in Washington state.


I don't know why anyone would not include the "delivery" fee, I think it really is that cheap in many places in the US.

Here in NYC the "supply" charge is much less than half of the total bill. If I add up all the fees and surcharges and taxes etc, the total ends up around 35 cents / KWh, which I thought was rather high until I heard about California ...


I pay around 10 cents per kWh in the southern US; we have a nearby nuclear plant. We do have a base fee just for the meter, but no separate transmission fee. My in-laws in Texas have an open market for generation but pay transmission separately.


why would you not include the transmission? residential customers just pay one bill and that's including the lines, maintenance.

In western states such as Oregon, Washington, it is actually 0.12KWH including transmission.


Regardless of engineering background or not, I do believe this is a major different between men and women in general.

I know I'm guilty of the same thing and I'm positive many others here have had very similar experiences.

IN GENERAL, it seems when guys talk to someone else, they are likely looking for input into a situation. If we didn't want input, we would just sit and ruminate in our own personal thoughts processes.

Your story is also a great lesson in why communication is key - unfortunately it takes both parties to realize this!


I think you're right that men and women (tend to) have different responses to someone venting to them, and different tendencies in when and who to vent to, but I think both (tend to) prefer the listening approach when they are venting. It's kind of like writing in that the benefit is in being open and being able to reflect on that openness. In addition to openness, just having someone to vent to brings the comfort of human connection.


This is why I will most likely never own an EV, and most likely never own a car newer than 2015 or so (depending on model).

The entire world offerings are moving to this type of model under the part guise part reality of tech dependencies that just don't exist in a stand alone product.

Stand alone products are disappearing more and more every year that passes. It is certainly no accident.


In a similar vein, my 'smart' thermostat solution for my oil furnace has been to splice in a relay board that's connected to an esp32 running esphome through home assistant. On that board, and many others around the house, I have many 'virtual thermometers running again off esp32's using dht11's and esphome.

This configuration has allowed me to control the single-zone furnace using any or a combination of 'virtual' thermometers to turn the relay board on/off depending on conditions. I left the real old honeywell thermostat on the wall as a fail-safe situation in case the system comes crashing down, to prevent the house from freezing up in the winter -- Just set at a low minimum.

The downside of this is I either have to directly adjust the temp via phone interface / tablet interface / or google-assistant interface, but when that is done, it is all done locally. Simply toggling a simple relay board that just connects the 2-wire thermostat feed like a typical thermostat does. It has worked great!

In addition, one of the heat pump units (MrCool!) in the house was able to use a cloud-free dongle to bring it's controls into local-only control as well via home assistant, as well. This can also be controlled via phone / tablet / google home interface (I subscribe, I feel home assistant is worth supporting).

All of the local only devices are able to be accessed from afar using tailscale into the local network, with subnet routing.

When you have something like home assistant controlling it all, it's quite easy to set up situations like 'when the outside temp is less than 15(f)', turn the heat-pump off, and use the oil furnace instead, etc.

It seems the commercial control boards that do things of this nature cost a heck of a lot more, and effectively do very similar things.

It's a good time to start really considering a more local-based solution if you have the time to get the initial configurations all sorted!


We have been very welcoming to the crows in our backyard and they now hang out with the chickens and ducks when they get leftovers / table scrapes.

Now they are arriving slightly before the hawks and other predators and scaring them off.

If you see crows randomly arrive, and look around, there is almost always a circling bird in the sky.

It's super cool.


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