drs1969

Edent, 11 days ago to HowTo

🆕 blog! “HDR on a Pioneer VSX-933”

I bloody hate hardware manufacturers. I wanted to use HDR on my PlayStation 5. The console supports it, my TV supports it, my amp supports it, my cables support it. Yet it wasn't working. I tried everything - updating firmware, replacing cables, and even reading the manual. Nothing. And then I stumbled on the answer […]

👀 Read more: https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2024/05/hdr-on-a-pioneer-vsx-933/
⸻
#av #hdmi #HomeCinema #HowTo

drcaberry, 17 days ago to random

I really hope the person who reported me is seeing this diatribe because why yes, yes they did hit a nerve. #SpamSuspect #ProfessorProblems #AcademicChatter #EngineeringProfessor #PurposefulProfessor #NoireSTEMinist #BlackSTEM #BlackTwitter #BlackMastodon #BlackFediverse #BlackFedi

video/mp4

drs1969, 29 days ago to random

Day of The Triffids started like this by the way. #Aurora

drs1969, 29 days ago to random

Well... that was emotional.
If you were out when the sky exploded and a cathedral of light was all around you, well you'll never forget it. #Aurora May 10th 11th 2024.

drs1969, 30 days ago to random

ALL UK CITIZENS to prepare offerings to the cloud gods for tonight!!! (Uk metoffice saying CME impacts at 10pm local time tonight)

#aurora #northernlights #solarstorm

AkaSci, 30 days ago to random

Incoming! A severe G4 Geomagnetic Storm is expected to arrive around 02:00 UTC Friday night / Saturday morning.

At least 5 Coronal Mass Ejections took place over the past 24 hours, directed towards Earth. These originated from a large and magnetically complex sunspot cluster (NOAA region 3664).

There is potential for disruption of communications, the electric power grid, navigation, radio and satellite operations.

And bright auroras as far south as Alabama!

https://www.swpc.noaa.gov/
1/n

Edent, 2 months ago to Electronics

Anyone know where I can buy one of these USB dongles?

I have a device with a USB Micro socket. I want to plug in to a computer with a USB-C port.

I can find the cable version of this OTG adapter. But I'm struggling to find a small, solid component.

#USB #OTG #USBC #Electronics

blog, 4 months ago to climate

We pay 12p / kWh for electricity - thanks to a smart tariff and battery
https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2024/01/we-pay-12p-kwh-for-electricity-thanks-to-a-smart-tariff-and-battery/

I love my solar panels. But the solar panels don't love the British midwinter. Most of the year, my panels produce more electricity than I can use. But in winter we're lucky if they produce 3kWh per day - and most of the time it is considerably less.

So our winter electricity bills must be massive, right?

Nope.

The normal cost per kWh is 28.5p (including VAT). We're paying less than half that - 12.4p per kWh.

Screenshot of our electricity bill showing 320kWh consumption.

This is thanks to two things - a smart tariff and a home battery.

The Octopus smart tariff charges us a variable amount throughout the day. Every 30 minutes the prices change to reflect the demands on the grid. During peak times, it can go as high as £1/kWh. That's a good incentive not to run the tumble-dryer at the same time as the rest of the country is cooking dinner!

During quieter times, the price of electricity drops - there isn't much demand at 3AM so prices fall. Sometimes they fall to zero. Other times, they fall into negative territory and we get paid to use electricity.

Now, that's all well and good, but most people don't want to shift their consumption habits. The dishwasher goes on when it is full and dinner is cooked before Coronation Street starts. That's where the battery comes in.

We have a 4.8kWh battery. It is hooked up to the Internet and knows what our energy prices are minute-to-minute. When electricity is cheap, it charges up from the grid. When electricity is expensive, it discharges into our home. If we boil the kettle at 7pm, the sensors on the battery detect that we're using expensive electricity and starts outputting stored electricity.

Essentially, we don't have to alter our lifestyle at all. Here's a typical December day. The graph is quite complicated, so let me step you through it.

Two graphs showing power flows across a day.

The bottom graph shows how expensive it is to buy electricity throughout the day. As you can see, there is a peak in the early evening when electricity becomes expensive.

The top graph has two interesting lines on it. The purple line shows how much electricity we're drawing from the grid, the blue line shows what the battery is doing. Early in the morning electricity is cheap - you can see the purple line rising as the blue line falls. That shows the battery is charging. You will notice that it only charges at the cheapest possible times.

In the evening, you can see the purple line dip to zero and the blue line rise. That shows the battery is discharging into our home and there in no electricity being purchased from the grid. There's a similar dip at about 0830 when there's a little spike in price. Clever battery!

I want to stress that is is all automated. I don't have to do a single thing. The battery speaks directly to my electricity provider to get the half-hourly costs. The battery can predict what our usage will be, but keeps most of the electricity for the expensive times of day. Our smart meter sends our usage back to the energy company automatically.

Savings

Against a normal tariff of 28.5p/kWh, I'm paying 12.4p/kWh. That's a saving of 16.1p/kWh.

The bill above shows 320kWh per month, which means a saving of £51 from the electricity I buy. That's approximately a 55% discount.

We've had that battery since August, so about 5 months. In that time it has saved us approximately 500kWh. We only moved onto the smart tariff a few months ago, so work out the savings there is complex - but I estimate it's about £130.

December is a high use month (lots of lights on and oven cooking). During summer, the battery mostly fills up with free solar power. It is hard to predict exactly what we'll save in a year, but it should easily for 50% off our electricity bills.

Cost

But, of course, there's no such thing as a free lunch. Our 4.8kWh battery cost about £2,700 to supply and install. That's a large chunk of change. Based on our current projections, its payback period should be about 7 years. Of course, if electricity prices rise significantly, the payback period will shorten.

Solar panels are also expensive to install - between £4,000 and £12,000 depending on your property and how complex your roof is. They mean we pay virtually nothing for electricity in spring and summer. Again, the payback period is under a decade.

We can also sell our excess solar back to the grid. In theory we could also buy cheap electricity in the morning, store it in the battery, and then sell it back at peak times. In practice it isn't worth it; the cost of buying electricity at peak is higher than the price we could sell it for. So it makes sense to use the power rather than selling it.

If you can afford the large up-front capital costs, solar + battery allows you to make massive savings with a dynamic tariff. In times of solar excess, we pay close to nothing per kWh. In winter, we shift our consumption to pay at the cheap rate.

Effectively, it's like pre-purchasing all your electricity for the next decade.

Final thoughts

There's no doubt that the cost makes this prohibitive to many people. Ideally, the state should be mandating that all new homes have solar panels and space for optional batteries. We also need V2G (Vehicle to Grid) to allow electric cars to act as home batteries.

But there's no doubt that these technologies actually work! Yes, solar works in rainy London. And, yes, even fairly small batteries can make a significant difference in winter. We're on the cusp of a domestic energy revolution. When coupled with a smart tariff, it means people don't have to change the way they behave in order to save energy.

https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2024/01/we-pay-12p-kwh-for-electricity-thanks-to-a-smart-tariff-and-battery/

#battery #ClimateCrisis #EnergySaving #solar

drs1969, 4 months ago to astrophotography

It's amazing what you can do with a smartphone now. M42 the Orion Nebula taken with a smartphone. Afocal using a Televue 32mm Plossl eyepiece and a William Optics 80mm Apo refractor.
Anyone advise why I'm getting internal reflections in the image?
#Astrophotography #MobilePhotography

phistorians, 5 months ago to antiquidons

“And when I finally pulled it out of the sea, it was this big!”

May you be blessed with stories that require big gestures like this actor in a theatre scene. The onlookers (fellow actors) seem riveted by the tale!

📍House of Quadretti Teatrali, Pompeii

#FrescoFriday #AncientRome @histodons @antiquidons

JamesGleick, 5 months ago to random

Using #ChapGPT to generate text for fun is one thing. Using ChatGPT to generate text that matters is a very bad idea. Using ChapGPT to generate text with legal force might be worst of all.

What these judges apparently don’t realize is that ChatGPT’s superpower is plausibility. Its errors are that much more difficult to catch. Its output often looks right even when it’s utterly wrong.

https://gizmodo.com/uk-judges-now-permitted-use-chatgpt-in-legal-rulings-1851093046

ZLabe, 5 months ago to random

The last three months have also been extraordinary in the global mean.

This is due primarily to human-caused climate change and an (unlucky) combination of other factors (e.g., transition from triple La Niña to El Niño, atmospheric circulation forcing, multi-decadal variability, solar activity, volcano indirect effects).

Data information: https://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/

fraying, 6 months ago (edited 6 months ago) to random

This is fucking unhinged.

Corporations and politicians are ruining the planet, not people who take photos of their cats.

This is the same kind of blame shifting corporations use to distract from their own culpability. Look up the history of the litterbug campaign. https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2006/05/origins-anti-litter-campaigns/

Scolding people for using digital tools isn't gonna save the planet. Electing better politicians that create laws to rein in corporations might.

fraying, 7 months ago to random

Post a perfect album that came out when you were 16.

Michael Penn's March is still in heavy rotation in my earbuds.

dangoodin, 7 months ago to random

I so, so, so don't want to drive any new car that can do this:

A federal appeals court refused to bring back a class action lawsuit alleging four auto manufacturers had violated Washington state’s privacy laws by using vehicles’ on-board infotainment systems to record and intercept customers’ private text messages and mobile phone call logs.

The court ruled that the practice does not meet the threshold for an illegal privacy violation under state law, handing a big win to automakers Honda, Toyota, Volkswagen and General Motors, which are defendants in five related class action suits focused on the issue.

The plaintiffs had appealed a prior judge’s dismissal. But the appeals court ruled Tuesday that the interception and recording of mobile phone activity did not meet the Washington Privacy Act’s standard that a plaintiff must prove that “his or her business, his or her person, or his or her reputation” has been threatened.

A suit filed against Honda in 2021, argu[ed] that beginning in at least 2014 infotainment systems in the company’s vehicles began downloading and storing a copy of all text messages on smartphones when they were connected to the system.

An Annapolis, Maryland-based company, Berla Corporation, provides the technology to some car manufacturers but does not offer it to the general public, the lawsuit said. Once messages are downloaded, Berla’s software makes it impossible for vehicle owners to access their communications and call logs but does provide law enforcement with access, the lawsuit said.

Many car manufacturers are selling car owners’ data to advertisers as a revenue boosting tactic, according to earlier reporting by Recorded Future News. Automakers are exponentially increasing the number of sensors they place in their cars every year with little regulation of the practice.

https://therecord.media/class-action-lawsuit-cars-text-messages-privacy

ct_bergstrom, 7 months ago to ChatGPT

It is absolutely astounding to me that we are still earnestly entertaining the possibility that #ChatGPT and #LLMS more broadly have a role in scientific writing, manuscript review, experimental design, etc.

The training data for the question below are massive. It's a very easy question if you're trained on the entire internet.

Question: What teams have never made it to the World Series?

Correct answer: Seattle Mariners.

Now, four responses from GPT4.

NB: The Nationals won it all in 2019.

Which teams have never played in the world series?As of my last update in January 2022, the following MLB teams had never appeared in the World Series: 1. Seattle Mariners: The Mariners have been in the league since 1977 and, despite having several competitive seasons and star players like Ken Griffey Jr. and Ichiro Suzuki, they have not made it to the World Series. 2. San Diego Padres: While the Padres have actually appeared in the World Series twice (in 1984 and 1998), they haven't won a championship. 3. Texas Rangers: The Rangers, who originated as the Washington Senators before moving to Texas in 1972, have been to the World Series twice (in 2010 and 2011) but have not won. 4. Milwaukee Brewers: The Brewers have made one World Series appearance in 1982 but did not win. 5. Tampa Bay Rays: The Rays, who began play in 1998, have appeared in the World Series twice (in 2008 and 2020) but haven't won the title. 6. Colorado Rockies: The Rockies, who began play in 1993, made it to the World Series in 2007 but were defeated by the Boston Red Sox. Now, it's important to note that the list of teams that have never won a World Series is longer and includes some teams like the Padres, Rangers, Brewers, Rays, and Rockies, as mentioned, among others. However, this information is as of January 2022. The list could change based on subsequent seasons. You might want to check more recent sources to see if any of these teams have made or won the World Series in the past two seasons.
Which teams have never played in the world series? As of my last training data in January 2022, the following MLB teams have never played in the World Series: 1. Seattle Mariners - Founded in 1977, they have yet to make an appearance in the World Series. 2. Colorado Rockies - Although they've been to the playoffs multiple times since their inception in 1993, the Rockies have made it to the World Series once in 2007 but were swept by the Boston Red Sox, so they have played in the World Series. It's worth checking the most recent MLB seasons (2022 and 2023) to see if either of these teams have since made it to the World Series.
Which teams have never played in the world series? As of September 2021, three Major League Baseball (MLB) teams have never played in the World Series: 1. Seattle Mariners: The team was established in 1977 and is based in Seattle, Washington. Despite having some successful seasons and making multiple playoff appearances, the Mariners have never advanced to the World Series. 2. Washington Nationals: While the Nationals franchise itself has played in and won the World Series (in 2019), the team was formerly known as the Montreal Expos and was based in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. The Expos, established in 1969, never played in the World Series before relocating to Washington, D.C., and becoming the Nationals in 2005. 3. Colorado Rockies: Established in 1993 and based in Denver, Colorado, the Rockies have made several playoff appearances and reached the World Series once, in 2007, but did not win. It’s worth noting that teams' fortunes can change rapidly in sports, and new teams may have joined the league or existing teams may have reached the World Series since my last training data in September 2021. Was this response better or worse? d9 Better CP Worse = Same X

helenczerski, 7 months ago to science

Reviewing scientific papers would be much more fun if the actual science wasn't so often obscured by so many basic errors of grammar, communication and logic. It's often like marking 1st year UG projects.

No-one should be talking about scientists learning the skills to communicate with the public, policymakers etc until those scientists can actually communicate to start with.

And sloppy writing betrays sloppy thinking, so it matters.

#Grump #science #SundayReview

petergleick, 7 months ago to Energy

So AI may destroy the planet, but not the way you were thinking.

#energy
#climatechange

https://futurism.com/the-byte/ai-electricity-use-spiking-power-entire-country

JamesGleick, 7 months ago to random

Any bets on whether the European Commission will receive the “prompt, accurate and complete response” they demand from Elon Musk “within the next 24 hours”?

And will he, as they urgently insist, “be in contact with the relevant law enforcement authorities and Europe” and “respond promptly to their requests”? https://mstdn.ca/@deannapizzuti/111212450050656758

malwaretech, 7 months ago to random

I keep seeing this get reposted and I can't tell if people are trolling for engagements or if everyone is just completely financially illiterate. If you get any answer other than $400, you need to go back to school.

markmccaughrean, 7 months ago to Astronomy

Well, isn’t that lovely: our JWST image of the inner Orion Nebula & Trapezium Cluster is today’s Astronomy Picture of the Day 🖖🙂🤘

Thanks to everyone who’s sharing the images & don’t forget that you can download them at full resolution under a CC BY-SA licence via the link in the next toot 👇

#Astronomy #Astrodon #APOD #SpaceScience #JWST #Orion #JuMBOs

https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap231010.html

davidallengreen, 8 months ago to random

How will this progressive banning of smoking actually work?

Will retailers have to challenge someone who does not look 26, then 31, then 39?

"Excuse me, but can you prove you are over 40?"

May be a good idea in theory, but difficult to see how it can work in practice.