Are we still doing the Cold War? An ever increasing number of drumps policies mostly benefit China

This is critical to follow up over time. The claim is that Starlink satellites are low enough that such debris de-orbits over at most a handfull of years. It’s self-cleaning. Given the massive low orbit constellations planned (Starlink is the first, not the only), it’s critical to know whether this is true.

Satellites are traditionally in higher orbits. Fewer satellites and more space greatly decreases the chances of collisions, but if the debris remains for centuries the impact can be catastrophic

This is what was going to say - this could be as simple as the known orbits of known spy satellites crossed over the base, so we can assume they took pictures, to known spy satellites were seen to have changed orbit and crossed over the base, even more likely to take pictures. And of course Russia is going to share: it would be surprising if they didn’t

Heck, Ukraine may have been notified of it by the us, for all we know, but we either didn’t talk to ourselves or didn’t connect the dots

My experience with a Pi4B has been rock solid and plenty fast for what I’ve tried so far, at low power consumption.

While I had problems in the beginning, it was all from the micro-SD card. People here will recommend staying away but I’ve had no problems since buying an “extreme” card. Well, starting to hit the size limit now - I can no longer kick off multiple concurrent updates because limited free space available on, I think, 16G card. Get bigger

If you’re starting with ha, don’t feel confined to only one.

IMPORTANT: a local area mesh is not just a low powered way of connecting devices but is inherently local-only. Highly recommended

The more common local area meshes include

• Zigbee - open standard, lots of inexpensive sensors
• Z-Wave - devices need to pay for certification but are more standard. I found more smart switches using this in my area
• Thread - the new standard. Same frequency as Zigbee but IPv6 based. Slowly rolling out.

The new Matter/Thread standard has support of the major players (Apple, Google, Amazon) so seems like the way to go for the future, but products are slow to roll out so you can’t count on it yet

Personally I found the strengths of each compelling so quickly added all three of the above to my ha setup. Ha is fine with it so why limit yourself

I follow the principle that devices must work “as expected” for my users, automation adds capabilities but does not replace them. This comes together with a focus on smart switches

• can be used interactively just like any switch
• continue to work as expected even if ha is down
• typically act as routers to strengthen your local area mesh. I have switches acting as routers for Zigbee, zwave, and Thread, so all my local area meshes are solid everywhere
• then I can automate

Wait, does it even count if it’s still only women who can find it?

USDA has a page on this and estimates 21% of US farmland does this. More studies to better explain the “why?” Is always good

Definitely a good start on dismantling the auto industry. Cancelling all those investments into new technology in favor of eking out just a few final years with the old stuff. In a mere few years, all that messy manufacturing will be gone over to China and millions more Americans can just sit and relax in front of their TV’s

As a somewhat market economy believer , I even believe collective individual actions can help trigger corporate changes. Think of the huge chunk of climate change caused by fossil fuel industry. It’s maddening, and dwarfs anything people can affect.

But you can choose battery electric or human mobility, you can chose an electrified house, you can even chose to pay for all renewable electricity generation. We’re on the cusp of shrinking that fossil fuel industry. If only enough people would chose to go in that direction, the industry would have to follow and that would make a real difference

I blame government more than corps. Corps just act according to the market they’re in, morality isn’t relevant. But government’s role should be shaping the market to serve society, and they are abject failures. Government’s role should be to serve the people, not get captured by corps and a handful of ultra-wealthy. At this point the failure is malicious

A buddy of mine has everything but his birthday is coming up …. I found the ideal indulgence: a $20 chocolate bar!

No it’s not one of those monsters, it’s normal sized. But it’s single sourced beans, gold medal award winning, local farm fresh dairy , infused with whiskey from a local distillery. That’s something he’s never had!

They are allowed now. I’m pretty sure Audi uses them in the us, and Tesla enabled theirs a year or so ago.

While I don’t entirely trust them, a lot of the time it’s pretty clear. You can watch an oncoming car with a dark spot around it, moving with the car

Personally i don’t understand how “dark sky” light fixtures are hard to find. Ideally, they all would be, as part of an efficiency rating

Same is true of us oil. If you want conspiracy theories, there’s a more straightforward one. Us oil tends to be expensive with the need for advanced drilling such as fracking and horizontal drilling. In order to make a profit, it has to sell at like $60/bbl or more. Raising the global price of oil helps enrich those oligarchs that funded drumps csmpaign

Here’s the problem with that idea…yes, global prices could go way up, BUT

• US has lots of oil, so won’t have shortages, just make a few obscene billionaire more obscenely wealthy. We’re deluded enough that renewables and EVs still won’t be an option
• Russia needs to sell oil to stay in the war, and they’ll be able to get more profit
• this mainly hurts everyone else

Or Trump declares victory (didn’t he already do that?) and goes home. In a bit of circular reasoning, maybe he starts making waves about the Epstein files to distract people from Iran

We not only don’t have time to spin up nuclear, but nuclear is not economically viable, and the hope that small modular reactors would change that doesn’t appear to have panned out.

Nuclear power generation has some nice properties but remains by far the most expensive and time consuming option

Someone needs to sell this to West Virginia. Instead of holding tight to the few remaining coal jobs, letting coal conglomerates ruin their health and their environment, losing their economy and their population, here’s something with a more believable promise for a better future

I agree here. During the Cold War, the doomsday clock was literally doomsday. It measured how close we appeared to be for society-ending, humanity destroying all out war between two nuclear powers, each with several times the nuclear weapons needed to end us all.

Now we’re in constant war, threat of constant war, endless instability, and yes, the American government is one of the biggest factors in recent reductions to global stability. We’re actively making things worst, from at least trying to do the right thing. It’s surely a catastrophe to the people affected, we’re talking hundreds of thousands to millions of unnecessary deaths, we can’t minimize that …. But it’s not an end of humanity level threat.

I don’t know what would be more effective imagery, but we’re closer while at the same time farther from catastrophe, so maybe it’s time to move on

Huh, the battery only has one radar and there are only 8 worldwide? That seems like a self-own

I’m saying the term is somewhat nebulous, with lots of gray area but also an objective definition would not answer the question.

People do disagree on what constitutes social media, and even apply it inconsistently to themselves. So let’s not pretend there is a clear definition. Language isn’t always cleanly defined so we can understand what “social media” is based on context