Avatar

ebc

ebc@lemmy.ca
Joined
3 posts • 189 comments
Direct message

Shortest answer is that even if all Starlink satellites suddently exploded at the same time for no reason, they’d fall back to Earth in a matter of weeks. They’re waaaay lower than the other satellites you’re thinking of (see discussion on geo-stationary satellites for why), so they need to be actively pushed every few days just to stay up. They’re so low they’re still subject to atmospheric drag.

permalink
report
parent
reply

Respect has always been at the core of my wife and I’s parenting philosophy. Children are fully-qualified persons in their own right, they’re not an extension of their parents. They have their own tastes, dreams and aspirations. They’ll test to find the limits of what they can do, and it doesn’t really matter where it’s actually set but it’s really important that they do find it. They can understand why we have to say no to them, and if you communicate the reason they’ll respect it.

All of this continues well into their teenage years, BTW.

I keep telling my wife we have to write a book on parenting, but she thinks it’ll be too controversial (especially our views around daycare and schooling)…

permalink
report
reply
1 point

I own a sailboat, and let’s just say that it’s not as simple as it looks. If you want to have good sailing performance you can’t just weld a mast to the deck and call it good: Half of what makes a sailboat go happens underwater, so it has to be designed as a sailboat from the get-go. Not an impossible task, but it’ll need new ship types and perhaps new construction methods; it’s not something you can just retrofit onto an existing fleet.

All sailboats large enough to sleep in also have an engine, and most of the time it’s a 20-60HP diesel depending on the size of the boat. There’s a lot of buzz currently around switching to electric auxiliary propulsion, but the benefits aren’t as big as you get on cars. Main “issue” is that marine diesel engines already spend most of their operating time in their most efficient range of RPMs; you don’t get stop-and-go like you get on cars. Given that, there’s no regen braking to be had on a boat. Regen can still happen when you’re sailing, but the available energy from that derives from the velocity squared or something, so you only get something negligible like 200W when sailing at 5 knots (which is the common case for most 30-40 ft sailboats). You see, the main limit to speed on a displacement hull (like sailboats or container ships) is hull speed, which is mostly a function of hull length. Longer boat, faster boat.

This is good news for a container ship, though, because they’re much bigger and thus tend to operate at much faster speeds like 12-16 knots. I know some bigger sailboats in the 50-60 ft range routinely see 2kW+ of regen when sailing at 7-8 knots, so a containership sailing at 12+ knots could conceivably generate in the tens of kW, which could recharge batteries for when they’re becalmed or in confined waters where they can’t sail.

Also, a lot of newer ships already use diesel-electric drivetrains with AziPods, where the powerplant is actually a big generator, and the propellers are attached to electric motors mounted in rotating pods under the hull. Helps a lot with maneuverability and is actually more efficient. It’d be relatively easy to add batteries in there, but the main obstacle here is that it substracts available mass for cargo.

Other main point about sails on a boat is that it’s very labour-intensive to manage, so I don’t think current ships with their skeleton crews could do it without almost double the people.

permalink
report
parent
reply

Which may or may not be part of China, depending on who you ask… (don’t ask me, I’m just a random dude on the other side of the world)

permalink
report
parent
reply

Gen Alpha’s main influence for slang is Cocomelon.

permalink
report
parent
reply

For self-hosting purposes, Docker = lightweight disposable VMs that are configured via docker-compose.yml. All important data should be in “volumes”, which are just shared folders between the host and the container.

The end result is that you can delete and re-create containers at any time and they should just pick up where they left off from the data that’s in these volumes.

Each individual published image has some paths they want to use for that; everything is usually specified in their example docker-compose files.

If you’re not a dev, don’t even try to understand Dockerfiles, it’s not for you.

permalink
report
parent
reply

It’s not quite as point-and-click, but I’m using Docker for that because Yunohost kept messing up updates. Most server apps will have some instructions on how to run them in docker, especially a docker-compose.yml file, so you don’t have to rely on the Yunohost team to package said app.

The way I do it is that I put each suggested compose file in their own file, and import them in my main docker-compose.yml file like this:

version:  '3'
include:
    - syncthing.yml

Then just run docker compose pull && docker compose up -d every time you change something or want to update your apps, and you’re good to go.

Software updates in particular are waaaaaayyy easier on Docker than Yunohost.

permalink
report
parent
reply

Owner of 2 pinecils here, there are buttons and a display that shows the current temperature and other stuff. I only just learned that there’s an app, it works more than fine on its own, out of the box.

I got that specific iron because I needed to power it from 12v, and it works very well on the USB PD power supply I already have for my laptop.

permalink
report
parent
reply

I don’t know why they’re categorizing the 3 in “luxury cars” but if you look at the actual numbers it’s about the same as a Camry, which is in line with what I’d expect.

Did someone make a “f150 deaths”, or a “honda civic deaths” website? I’d be curious to compare because 555 deaths in 4.5 million cars sold sounds to me like a pretty good number, actually; it’s around 0.01% of cars.

Looking at the StatsCan website, looks like there were 1.5 million cars sold in 2022 and 1931 fatalities, which would bring the industry average to around 0.12% of cars, about 10x worse. Of course, not only new cars were involved in crashes, so I’m not entirely sure it’s an accurate comparison, but from what I can tell, your sources aren’t actually making the points you think they’re making.

permalink
report
parent
reply

Docker’s secret that most “getting started” tutorials seem to miss is docker-compose.yml. Who wants to type these long-ass commands to start containers? I always just create a compose file, and then docker compose up -d.

Dockerfile is for developers, you shouldn’t need more than a docker-compose.yml for self-hosting stuff.

permalink
report
parent
reply