I think shutters (preferably white) would probably help on south and west facing windows. I don’t really see them used much down here; the ones I do see are fake. Highly reflective silver tint (applied on the outside) helps more than dark tint. Window awnings would also help. Large trees are the long-term solution :)

I haven’t had a filament LED fail on me yet. The cheapest LEDs you can find aren’t worth it; best to get a name brand.

Plants don’t need much, if any, green light (they reflect it). LEDs can be made to be full spectrum. I can think of no reason why anyone would want incandescent lights for plants. Even before cheap high power LEDs were a thing, people usually used high pressure sodium lights.

The Supreme Court is heavily in favor of “states rights” now, so state politicians know they can cater to special interest groups (for donations of course) with impunity. States are heavily gerrymandered, so they have little risk of losing their position. In some cases, such as book, education, voting, and immigration laws, the goal is to further ensure the states remain Republican in the future (prevent children from growing up “woke,” and prevent immigrants from living there, which tend to vote Dem). Democracy in the U.S. is pretty broken, and is slowly being dismantled further.

It’s probably losing a lot of money and he despises what twitter was (spreading the “woke mind-virus”), so if he can’t make it a profitable Truth Social clone, he’s going to kill it to cut his losses (in a “meme-able” way).

Isn’t it important to keep tabs on what the obscenely powerful are up to? I.e. to try to hold them accountable, to be informed on what you’re protesting and criticizing, to prepare for what they’re going to do next that may affect you?

LOL. I watched that too yesterday. I don’t think the people he talked to were the most reliable narrators though. People have been claiming everyone else doesn’t want to work since the beginning of time :) Some of the people they were complaining about “collecting checks” sounded like they actually were disabled (seizures, anxiety, etc). Regardless, if you feel your choices in life are to work at a gas station for $7/hr and still need government assistance just to survive, or just collect a check, you’re going to choose the check. These people are broken by poverty, and believe they have no hope to lead successful, rewarding lives (which may or may not be true).

I have family that lived in some of those exact same towns. Sadly, most died very young (in their 20s) ) due to poverty/drugs/shit-life-syndrome.

Hmm. I can see that if meetings only take place every 2 weeks. We have daily meetings (agile), and pretty granular task/issue tracking, which are even more important for remote workers, IMO.

IDK your personal experience, but it’s almost always the pay. Possibly you’re just matching the pay other companies offer, and the industry doesn’t pay much in the U.S. comparable to trades that require equal training, so there aren’t many workers that go into that trade. Or, the labor market is extremely tight for that trade.

I was in a similar circumstance, and was able to find quality candidates by raising what we were offering considerably (+30-50% above regional average, according to sites like glassdoor). We were able to attract very good employees away from their previous employers this way. But, these were more “professional” jobs, and sounds like you’re looking for “lower-skilled” technicians, which may have different subtleties. Another option is apprenticeship-like arrangements (on-the-job training + paying for technical school), depending on the industry/trade.

If people don’t care to have work ethic, show up on time, etc, it’s usually because they feel like they’re being shafted, and have horrible, non-inspiring management, so they feel they owe the company nothing. If people feel like they’re working for a company, instead of with a company that’s helping them “self-actualize” or whatever, you get the “companies pay just enough so their workers don’t quit, employees work just hard enough to not get fired,” attitude.

A lot of the LED bulbs have very cheap power supplies/control circuits. I’ve had the best luck with the filament-style LEDs. I remember seeing a video a while back stating filament-style LEDs tend to have better cooling because the driver circuit is surrounded by the metal screw material and the LEDs are separated from the driver PCB. I also haven’t had a Phillips Hue bulb die on me yet, but they are quite expensive.

Thanks didn’t realize that.

I can kinda get it. There are tons of servers, all with different rules, and I’m guessing some don’t federate with eachother. I compared ~20 servers rules and how fast they loaded before chosing one.

Search sucks. Home feed is only chronological, so you need be careful about who you follow. I.e. if you follow someone that posts important stuff, but only weekly, it will get drowned out by following people that post every hour. Then there’s the weird design issue that all replies aren’t necessarily synced between servers, which is unituitive.

Mastodon needs to implement some kind of better search, and a better algorithm for the home feed, and make it the default.

Journalists are just going to go where the most people are because it’s their job to self-promote.

“Slow” in what way? I, and a few other people have been using it as a replacement to Slack for the past 6 months, and haven’t noticed it being slow. We’re just using the matrix.org server. Only downsides I’ve seen is it doesn’t have all the features Slack does (but I have never used them anyways), and search sucks (which is understandable because it’s encrypted).

I think a bigger problem is they demonetize and depromote any video discussing a controversial or kid-unfriendly topic. This affects the actual content.

Also, don’t forget to subscribe, hit that like button, smash that bell, and leave a comment letting me know what you think!

Have a few Rigid tools (cordless drill, impact driver, router, contractor table saw, orbital sander). Originally started buying Rigid for their “lifetime warranties,” but after using their registration process, it appears they’re doing everything they can to make people give up, so I don’t buy this brand any more. The contractor table saw is great, regardless.

I now buy Dewalt cordless tools. Good quality, but battery prices are ridiculous.

For tools I don’t need to use very often, I buy from Harbor Freight. Some tools are barely usable, some of their hand tools are superior to other store brands from other stores.

Twitch takes 50% revenue. Youtube takes 30%. Twitch has an overly strict TOS to stay relatively kid-friendly. Twitch recently tried to limit content creators from showcasing sponsors in their own videos, but I think they backed away from that plan. Basically, it’s at the fully enshittified stage at this point.

Apparently, there’s a new twitch competitor, Kick, backed by an online gambling company, which I even worse. They have their content creators do gambling streams where the odds are modified to make it look like their games pay out more. And they explicitly promote bigots and fascists on their platform.

GPT-4 is quite a bit better, but the subscription is expensive. I subscribe because I think it saves me quite a bit of time. I use it almost every day for things like refactoring (shorter) blocks of code, “translating” code into different languages or frameworks, or just for generating examples for completing tasks using frameworks or libraries I’m unfamiliar with.

What method did you use to generate only JSON? I’m using it (gpt3.5-turbo) in a prototype application, and even with giving it an example (one-shot prompting) and telling it to only output JSON, it sometimes gives me invalid results. I’ve read that the new function-calling feature is still not guaranteed to produce valid json. Microsoft’s “guidance” (https://github.com/microsoft/guidance) looks like what I need, but I haven’t got around to trying it yet.

I watched it on shrooms when I was a teenager. From what I remember, it was pretty good as an art piece (atmospheric, cool visuals and audio).

Book is better for the plot/storytelling. IIRC the film was supposed to be a companion piece for the book.

“If Rome possessed the power to feed everyone amply at no greater cost than that of Caesar’s own table, the people would sweep Caesar violently away if anyone were left to starve.”

• Eben Moglen

I think imposing artificial scarcity on art, information, and tools; and rationing based on those with the ability to pay is immoral. I mean sure, most art that people pirate is just empty entertainment. But imposing artificial scarcity on tools (software such as OSs, CAD, productivity software, etc), news, and academic papers behind expensive licenses that many cannot afford to pay is objectively immoral. If piracy did not exist, I am positive the world would be without many of the technological advances we have today.