Posts by jake

Re: There are no admin controls for this feature

The question is why do the Corporate Lawyers allow the clusterfuck into the building in the first place?

Re: "a process that Lieberman said takes about four seconds"

A rubber ruler (or a simple piece of elastic with equally spaced tic marks) is a useful tool when installing railings, siding, fence posts, and anything else that requires even spacing in an uneven space. When stretched, the distance between tic marks all expand equally.

Re: evolution?

Language is evolving?

News to me ... quite the opposite, in fact.

Re: Hello bandwagon

"bandwagon"

Bingo.

Re: What a load of blockchain

"Obligatory xkcd comic regarding standards"

The nice thing about standards is that there are so many of them to choose from. —Andrew S. Tanenbaum

Re: What a load of blockchain

"I don't see how adding blockchain into the mix is going to suddenly make those messages easier to process."

It doesn't. Adding more layers also makes things more complex, and thus less secure. But at least some management will get larger bonuses this year ... and middle management will be able to play with pretty powerpoint presentations, as will whoever is in charge of press releases. And ElReg will be able to write about it, and we will be allowed to comment on it. And all of it eats tons of electricity, contributing to minimizing my heating bill this coming winter.

Blockchain is an ecosystem in a jar.

Re: Software is flakey and full of holes, get over it

32-bit processors? Luxury!

Either that, or just making room for feeping creaturism.

Re: "open-source software is deemed insecure, so it's not allowed" (28 percent)

"Did anybody ever sue M$? Or Apple? Or Oracle? Or ... (you name it)?"

Oh, sure! All the time. But not with any degree of sincerity.

_{Lawyers always read the fine print first.}

Re: Torys

Who you jivin' with that cosmik debris?

Re: Torys

I wonder if the British will ever realize that not only does the Universe not run on British politics, the Universe doesn't know, nor care, about British politics.

Re: Torys

Sometimes '95 seems like just yesterday ... About six months ago I was looking at the album cover for The Stooges Funhouse (autographed by Iggy and framed, on a friend's wall) and realized it had been well over half a century since I first heard it.

_{Current tunage: Bob Dylan "You're no Good"}

Re: ta ta Liz

Because as we all know, animals in the wild just choose a beautiful, comfy spot, lie down, and simply go to sleep, never to wake up again.

Would do these bleeding hearts good to see what happens when a varmint finds its way into a chicken coop. RealLifeInTheWild ain't pretty ... and from what Ive seen, the hounds do a faster job of the inevitable than many other forms of death.

_{Note that in reality Mufasa would have probably eaten his sprog ... fuck off, Disney.}

Re: The original girl boss

Boudica, Shirley.

Re: Great Britain to distinguish the island from Brittany

Some of us prefer to call it Albion, out of tradition. Ptolemy would have found this funny.

_{I told you it was all Greek to me ...}

"If I heard correctly, there may need to be a bit of hasty re-writing."

I was thinking that the next Sex Pistols reunion might prove ... interesting.

_{Yes, I know, Sid's no longer with us ... but Matlock is, and he helped write that song.}

Re: ta ta Liz

"and "Philip" maybe a bit too... Spanish?"

I dunno ... it's all Greek to me.

Re: The Lost Postie

"So why are you walking the streets? "It's my job.""

Picking up outgoing mail is also a part of that job.

Re: ta ta Liz

"Great, I've upset the incompetent ERG lying Tories."

Nah. You're being rebuked by everybody for being a right prat.

Re: A very sad day

"If I had been unfortunate enough to be born into the Royal Family I would not have been able to pursue my love of Computers"

If you had been unfortunate enough to be born into the Royal Family, your circumstances would have been completely different. Chances are you would never even have thought of making the above statement. The very concept would have been outside your ken.

I stuck out the meaningless bit. These is nothing fortunate, nor unfortunate, about being born. To think otherwise is to believe in "luck", which doesn't exist.

Re: ta ta Liz

If shooting food and killing varmints was all that somebody did, all day, every day, that person likely has extreme personality problems.

Fortunately, those occurrences are fairly rare in the life of any given person. Using this as a litmus test is a rather shallow argument.

Re: She was a good one

"It's not the people who are expensive to maintain, its the buildings."

Don't forget the grounds. It costs an arm and a leg to keep those lawns maintained, the trees and bushes pruned, the reflecting waters filtered, to say nothing of the trampled petunias replanted, the fag-ends swept up, the chewing gum scraped up, and all the other ravages brought down by the well meaning public oogling their heritage.

I hold a UK driver's licence. I didn't have to take a test to receive it.

Back in days of Yore, before TheInternet (really!) I had a California driver's license with a motorcycle stamp, and also an International license. My insurance guy in Blighty told me that I could get a break on my insurance rate if I obtained a British one. So I headed off to the MOT(?? is that right?) to take care of it. They looked at my existing paperwork and just rubber-stamped the application to drive manual transmission cars and motorcycles. Up until that point, I had no idea that you Brits had separate tests for automatics and manuals.

Re: Not my Queen

Not the time, nor the place, you tedious twat.

Congrats, you've earned one of my rather rare downvotes.

Re: Odd statement ... There are four lights...

"That's four things"

The way I read it, I assumed they were including the EV as a large appliance. Because it is.

Re: Cars are next, then your digital money

Here in Sonoma I have discovered that it is far more energy efficient to keep the place at a cool temperature constantly than it is to allow the place to warm up when I'm away, and then try to cool it back down when I return. Granted, I have very good insulation, but so should everyone else.

Re: Cars are next, then your digital money

"Xcel confirmed to Contact Denver7 that 22,000 customers who had signed up for the Colorado AC Rewards program were locked out of their smart thermostats for hours on Tuesday"

So presumably, the smart people went down to their local hardware store and purchased a cheap chinesium thermostat (~$20) to replace the obviously b0rken-by-design so-called "smart" one, right?

Re: The Sunshine State

Yes, we can, and are. It has only been recently that it makes sense for the average homeowner, at least from a TCO perspective.

The cost of admission is very high ... but once installed, you can pull the meter and ignore the grid for the rest of your life.

I'm projecting my setup will have paid for itself in about ten years (guessing at PG&E rate increases). After that, it'll have another 20 years of life in it with one battery swap, and possibly another 15 or so after that with another battery swap.

My costs were lower than yours might be ... When I rebuilt this house, I made provisions for a solar plant on the roof, including wire. And I did the installation myself, minimizing labo(u)r costs.

Re: Odd statement ...

Not with all the dams silting up it's not.

Re: Costs

When I installed my solar stuff, I decided I wanted nothing to do with the grid. PG&E doesn't even have wires on my property anymore ... and they never will again, the thieving bastards.

Re: Nukes

California has just (today) given PG&E the money to keep Diablo Canyon's two plants going for another 5 years. Once again, the people of California are bailing PG&E out after their fucking boneheaded decisions came back and bit them in the ass.

Re: Most EV chargers already support time based charging

My AC runs off the inverter. The inverter doesn't give a shit if the power comes from the PVs, the generator, or the battery.

However, for the most part we don't use the AC. The GSHP keeps the house at a nice, toasty 70F (21C) pretty much constantly. I expect the AC to kick in on Sunday, Monday & Tuesday, when it's supposed to be around 105F (40C).

Re: Har Har

Trump being right about a few things is no surprise. The amount of shit he babbles constantly is akin to a million monkeys with a million typewriters ... and about all it shows is similar to a stopped clock being right twice per day, but is otherwise pretty useless as a tool.

Re: Har Har

What the fuck do MAGA (Muppets Annoying Genuine Americans) have to do with intelligent people pointing and laughing at California's joke of an energy policy? Has anyone noticed the dams silting up yet? And now we're going to get another 5 years of Nuclear (in you FACE, Gavin!), but after that no more nukes (none even on the drawing board[0]). But we're working on Wind! (Never mind that ALL of the good places for wind generation are already full[1].) And we'll have better batteries RealSoonNow! Honest! Really, We're Working On It! Etc. Etc. Etc. ... During the meanwhile, let's build another hundred or so natural gas plants to keep us going ...

I'm ever so happy that I told PG&E and the PUC to fuck off ... The idiots running things couldn't organize a piss-up in a winery.

The heatwave California is heading into (today through next Tuesday or Wednesday) is absolutely nothing new. It is normal, it happens every year. In fact, there are typically six to ten of them every year. It is the fifth so far this year. (I'm in Sonoma, California.)

"our utility will pay me $2 per Kwh to adjust my A/C thermostat to reduce overall power use."

So the more you use, the more the utility will pay you? That sounds kind of stupid ... Surely they can't be paying you according to how much you DON'T use ... Consider that you didn't use 450 GWh this afternoon, and you won't again tomorrow.

[0] Not only are there no new nuclear plants on the drawing board, as of 1975 it is actually ILLEGAL for an energy company to start planning a new one here in California. No shit! The mind absolutely boggles ...

[1[ Except the Coast ... but the California Coastal Commission will never allow wind plants on or near the coast. So there goes 850 x 40 to 100 miles or so of prime wind ...

"the crap tools parents have to manage access."

Excuse me? When my daughter was growing up, her computer was in the common living area. And I ran her ISP. The tools were there back then, and they still exist. In fact, she's using them for her own kid.