gorbypark

"Fun" fact, they charge VAT on top of the new "handling fees" (aka tariffs). Each item category is now 6.05 euros extra in Spain (5 euros + 21% VAT).

They also seem to have no way to really tell item categories apart, so it's effectively a fee per single item. You can buy multiples and only get the extra charge once, however for example, if you order one ESP32-C3 and one ESP32-C6 from the same vendor, you will likely be hit with 2 * 6.05 even though technically they'd fall under the same item category.

This is a great idea. I’ve been playing around with a cheap little SDR and seeing all these Tetra signal around. Kinda disappointing there isn’t really anything to do with them since it’s all encrypted. It’s kinda fun to see the meta data and whatnot…but this gives me some ideas!

Digi is not blocking archive.today on fiber or mobile, I just tried it (Sept 21 ~11AM). However they do block a bunch of the libgen URLs, so I assume they'll eventually block this too, it's just a matter of time.

Canadian here, so take with a grain of salt. Both Canada and the US don't have a national ID system, at all (short of a passport). A state/province issued driver's license is the default form of ID. If you don't have a driver's license it is very possible you don't have an ID.

Most (if not all?) states and provinces will have some form of "non driving" ID available if needed. However, it is optional, costs money and requires other documentation to get it, such as an original copy of a birth certificate.

It's not that uncommon for an adult to not have an official ID. Either they never had one or have lost theirs and they haven't bothered/can't afford to get a new one.

The argument is that Republicans are exploiting the fact that this will disproportionately affect Democratic voters. Would some Republican voters be turned away? Of course. Would more Democratic voters be turned away than Republicans? Very very likely, and that's the point. It's a net win for one party to enforce voting ID laws while also not supporting some sort of free/cheap universal identity system.

Exactly. A car is a closed loop system. Coolant (which is water with some chemicals) cools the engine, then the hot coolant flows through a radiator which transfers that heat to the air, and then it just keeps cycling through. If there's no leaks then no coolant is lost.

The above method could be scaled up to data center levels, but is less efficient in terms of energy usage and cost. Cheaper/easier to just spray water into the air and get "free" cooling that way, as long as you have a source of free/cheap water to replenish what is lost to evaporation.

I'm not a nuclear engineer either, but I assume this is what is happening inside of the big iconic nuclear stacks. That's just cooling water being evaporated off to keep it cool.

That's the problem, removing heat at a sufficient rate. Of course it can be done, but the most efficient way (in terms of cost) is just open loop evaporation.

I'm not a datacenter engineer, but I used to work in the ski industry. Snowmaking systems use vast quantities of compressed air. It works better if that air is cool. Blowing hot compressed air out of a snow cannon means the air temperature (wet bulb to be specific) needs to be colder to make snow.

Anyways, most air compression stations use water to cool the air, and then evaporative coolers to cool the water. The water is reused, but a ton (not sure of the percentage) is lost into the air. It's more or less a tower with a big fan on top, and water percolates down from the top, being cooled by the air as it goes. The water is then collected and pumped through the system again (but of course has to be always topped up to counteract what was lost to evaporation).

Anyways, long story short is it's most cost effective to just spray water into the air to cool water, as long as water is free/cheap.

It depends if people care about it or not. I never once thought about accessibility in my non-AI authored app. I tried using the screen reader accessibility option and it was unusable.

I prompted Claude to "make my app accessible and usable with a screen reader" and it pretty much did a perfect job making it usable. *

* I'm not a a11y expert so "perfect job" might be an overstatement, but it made the app completely navigable by me using a screen reader.

Wow, odd. I haven't even set foot in Canada in 4.5 years and still have all the blocked features!

I am using OpenCode with the DeepSeek API with some pretty good results.

I have the complete opposite experience. Originally had a Canadian bought iPhone in Spain, had all the features a Canadian has and a European doesn’t (or vice versa). Upgraded to a Spanish bought iPhone and I am still a “Canadian”. I’ve been here for nearly 5 years but my Apple account is still fully Canadian (Canadian address, Canadian credit card on file). I think it’s Apple account location, maybe with some sort of system to allow people to switch countries but not allowing that to bypass restrictions? Or: that’s why a EU citizen can’t just switch their account location to unlock features?

> But does this act like a debit account?

Yeah, it's a debit account. I'm in Spain and use Bizum frequently. It's just a "pay from your bank account" system.

You mostly type in your phone number, get a notification (or text, depends on the bank) and open up your banking app and approve the transaction.

You can send money person to person as well.

Many European countries have a similar system. Wero is "just" stitching the national systems together into a EU wide one.

Credit cards with rewards and points are pretty rare in Europe, and if they do exist, pale in comparison to what you can get in the US/Canada. It depends on how you look at it, but it's kinda good. The EU caps credit card transaction fees at 0.3% and debit transactions at 0.2% iirc, versus in the US/Canada where they are frequently 2-3%. In theory this cost is just passed onto the consumer, so paying an extra 2-3% to get 2-3% back in points or whatever.

I saw a video from the UK government with a guy walking down the aisle of a Lidl talking about it! I quickly went to Lidl.es to look as these 800w balcony solar setups are legal here in Spain. Unfortunately they don’t sell the here! Maybe once the UK does it they’ll start.

The micro inverter (most of these balcony kits use micro inverters) uses the grid as the reference. Most of these inverters will actually do nothing when the grid goes down. Like, they shut down for safety so you are not back feeding the grid, but even if you had some sort of back feeding isolation going on, they would still do nothing because they don’t have the reference of the grid.

It’s a downside of many grid tied residential systems (even large ones). No grid = no solar.

The Enphase IQ8 series is one of the first mass market micro inverters based systems to have the ability to make its own tiny electric island when the grid goes down. Requires an isolation switch and a relatively power hungry controller to use that feature, though. I looked into them for a balcony solar setup but it would be way overkill to run a full on controller for 800w of solar!

The best way for a small setup is just have a small “solar generator” battery that can take MC4 connectors as input. Prolonged power outage? Unplug the inverter, plug in the battery.