surfrock66

My mom had Crohn’s so she was on the toilet a lot, and my dad got her a toto washlet, the fanciest one possible. It uses the seat as a warm water reservoir (never a cold toilet seat), has a light, and has a heated air dryer. When I grew up and we redid a bathroom, that was my single ask…and outlet next to the toilet and that device. It’s absolutely key, we put an unpowered bidet in the other bathroom and no one will use it.

Part of the free-market attitude though is that you should be allowed to buy policy, so in that regard it’s consistent, you just have to account for corruption in the cost of doing business.

If people are ok with that then I guess it will stand, but it’s insane and anti-consumer in my book. A product costs what it costs, based on supply and demand, and if you can’t afford it you don’t buy it. This flimsy premise of “It lowers the bar to entry so users can upgrade later without having to replace!” will never come to fruition, and it’s too slippery of a slope to “put in a quarter to turn on your A/C”.

That is insane. If it costs the same to make, then lower range isn’t a reasonable area to pitch a lower cost vehicle. Wanting to lower the cost is fine. Putting in cheaper/smaller components to get there is fine. If you are using the same components and just software locking them to nickle and dime the users later, that’s anti-consumer and should not be tolerated. I can’t believe how people look at micro-transactions in games and think “wouldn’t this be cool with IRL stuff?”

Huge bummer that they’re all 5+ years old. We’ve been moving to libreelec with Disney+, Jellycon, Netflix, Youtube, and amazon prime plugins. It’s not the same, but it’s workable. If Amazon keeps MatterCast open and open source implementations get made, that’s where I’m focusing my attention. A raspberry pi with libreelec that can be a casting target feels, to me, like the holy grail:

https://www.theverge.com/2024/1/9/24030324/amazon-matter-casting-echo-show-fire-tv-prime-video

No joke can you share those results? I’m holding out for matter cast

True blood, ultimate vibe setter

This whole thing sucks because this kind of tech has the potential to be revolutionary. For people with paralysis, or those experiencing vision loss due to eye issues, the tech to interface nerves with sensors and inputs will be absolutely revolutionary. On the other hand, Musk has a terrible track record with safety and regulation, develops tech by abusing researchers and workers with unrealistic timelines and expectations, overpromises and under delivers, and responds with hostility to even the most measured criticism. Having his name tied to the version of this tech leading the news cycle will paint it in a dystopian light, raising the regulatory bar to “panic” levels with no nuance, and will likely result in pushing more realistic approaches to the tech back a significant amount of time, hurting those it would help most.

As a Californian, the state should sue for damages and use the funds for high speed rail. The entire hype around this stupid tech was to torpedo high speed rail in the state so Musk could sell more cars. I get that this is Branson’s spinoff, but the tech isn’t viable and all the investor hype around it was just a smokescreen for public policy control and that HAS to result in some sort of reparations, it’s basically fraud in my opinion. The assets should be sold off and put towards public transit.

For sure, though I question the theory. Directional wireless power I think is feasible, but this sounds like blanketing (1-2 transmitters in a house with no regard for obstacles/direction, per the article). That sounds hugely wasteful, especially given how much more energy power takes vs. signal. I do think a zigbee type solution is the ultimate answer, because even if it goes back to batteries for wall stations, data transmission like that is so much less energy than power that the battery problem becomes null-ish.

This article is scant on details. It harvests RF to power/charge low energy devices. What RF bands? Is putting these through a house knocking out bluetooth around it, or existing RF remotes for devices? Or is this some background RF that won’t penetrate deep into a house to begin with? There would be “1-2 RF transmitters” to power the whole house…that doesn’t seem great, that’s a ton of wasted energy emanating in a sphere from the transmitter to hit these devices all over. I’m not sure what problem this is solving, copper wiring cost of extended runs to switches? Isn’t this problem going to go away if some system like zigbee got standardized and the switch hardware was baked into the end device itself to be controlled by any of multiple control points?

My son (who is 9) was diagnosed with celiac when he didn’t grow from age 2-3 (gluten -> guts make enzyme to digest it -> immune system sees enzyme making cells as invaders -> immune system attacks cells -> intestines swell -> nutrition stops being absorbed). He was effectively starving despite eating. He’s on track now as we have a strict gluten free household, and the fad people have created a market demand which makes companies want to make products that give him options…but a treatment like this would be life changing.

A lab in China synthesized a flake of material that behaves the way a superconductor might under a strong magnet, and a separate lab in China made a flake which showed high resistivity. Neither of those qualify for full validation and point to the fact that synthesis has a lot of unknowns that will require more precise doping methods than we have today. This is likely the start of a research path into doped crystals, a path on which a future discovery WILL lead to better conductors that are easy to make.

I am not a scientist but I have really been trying to understand this breakthrough. My understanding is not that room temperature ambient pressure semiconductors have been created. It is that several simulations back up parts of the discovery that would lead to said semiconductors, in some reviews are showing that some of the crystalline structures do successfully resemble what would be needed for superconductivity in super preliminary experiments on a tiny scale. We aren’t going to have magic superconducting wire yet, this is still very much in the theoretical material science phase. Ultimately, specifics around the way the doping has to work are pretty unproven. At this point it looks like things like electron photon interaction is happening as it would need to happen on a scale relevant to similar crystalline structures. LK99 isn’t yet in physical testing in any other labs yet, and any labs that would publish results already wouldn’t be worth listening to because there hasn’t been enough time for peer review.

No but they affirm your gender. Gender affirming care is not just about changing gender.

That includes breast implants in women and hair transplants in men, right?

I think watching his moves foretells the future of communities still on Reddit. Lemmy has learned from growing pains in the recent fast growth, but could it handle a true twitter-level meltdown’s influx of users? I think Reddit needs to stay alive a little longer so community federation and migration is possible, THEN Reddit can melt down. Watching the person steering that shop is helpful in gauging urgency.

This legendary excerpt from his Wikipedia:

Mitnick served five years in prison—four-and-a-half years’ pre-trial and eight months in solitary confinement—because, according to Mitnick, law enforcement officials convinced a judge that he had the ability to “start a nuclear war by whistling into a pay phone”, implying that law enforcement told the judge that he could somehow dial into the NORAD modem via a payphone from prison and communicate with the modem by whistling to launch nuclear missiles.