qjkxbmwvz

joined 2 years ago
[–] qjkxbmwvz@startrek.website 20 points 6 days ago (1 children)

I've honestly never understood people who feel the need to "replace" Spotify. ... Spotify has never made sense for my use-case.

I don't know how to say this, but...you have extremely uncommon use-cases:

...during those times, my phone is either fully turned off (so I'll use an MP3 player), or it's in Airplane Mode.

Many people listen to music on stereos and don't necessarily want a device plugged in, so

I just download the music I like to my device and listen to it via VLC.

either doesn't work or is substantially less convenient than e.g. casting from a phone.

Not hating on your setup at all, but it's very niche, in my experience.

[–] qjkxbmwvz@startrek.website 24 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

scolding hot metal

I like the mental imagery


it's not scalding hot, no, the metal is actively chastising you.

[–] qjkxbmwvz@startrek.website 38 points 2 weeks ago

...the San Francisco gold rush in 1949.

Classic CS major, making an off-by-one(hundred years) error ;)

[–] qjkxbmwvz@startrek.website 10 points 1 month ago

California doesn't allow "use it or lose it" vacation policies. Vacation rolls over up to a reasonable amount, which apparently isn't super well defined, but my employers have generally set a limit of 2x annual.

[–] qjkxbmwvz@startrek.website 2 points 1 month ago

Your numbers seem reasonable


more intuitive for me to work in terms of pressure. Atmosphere is (roughly) 1e3 Torr, good UHV can be around 1e-10, so that's 13 orders of magnitude, which is (roughly) the same difference that you calculated.

[–] qjkxbmwvz@startrek.website 34 points 1 month ago (4 children)

I am becoming increasingly more appreciative of the fact that I have root access to "my" company provided work device.

[–] qjkxbmwvz@startrek.website 33 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (7 children)

Aluminum foil is very common in physics labs. And a main use for it is "baking"! To get ultra high vacuum (UHV)* you generally need to "bake out" your chamber while you pump down. Foil is used same as with baking food


keep the heat in and evenly distributed on the chamber.

Sadly, it's usually not food grade aluminum foil, as that can contain oils, and oils and vacuum are generally a big no-no.

*Just how good is UHV? Roughly: I live in San Francisco, which is ~7 miles by ~7 miles (~11km). Imagine you raise that by another 7 miles to make a cube. Now, evacuate every last molecule of gas out of it. Now take a family sedan's trunk, fill it with 1 atmosphere of gas, and release that into the 7 mile cube. That's roughly UHV pressure.

[–] qjkxbmwvz@startrek.website 42 points 1 month ago (4 children)

From TFA:

"I have failed you completely and catastrophically," Gemini CLI output stated. "My review of the commands confirms my gross incompetence."

[–] qjkxbmwvz@startrek.website 6 points 2 months ago

ZigBee router thing:

I've been happy with the SMLIGHT SLZB-06M. You can easily flash firmware, and it has PoE which was important for me. I believe it also supports Thread, but I haven't tried this yet (and I'm not sure if it supports it at the same time as Zigbee).

Zigbee smart plugs from Third Reality have been pretty solid in my experience, and they report power usage.

For circuit breaker level monitoring, I have an Emporia Vue2. I have it running esphome, completely local


unfortunately this requires some simple soldering and flashing, so it's not turnkey. But it's been rock solid ever since flashing it. (Process is well documented online.)

I've had decent luck with cheap wifi Matter bulbs, but provisioning them is finicky, and sometimes they just crap out and need to be power cycled; Zigbee bulbs (e.g., Ikea) have generally been reliable, though sometimes I've had difficulty pairing them initially. After power cycling a Matter WiFi bulb, it takes a while for it to respond to Home Assistant; Zigbee bulbs generally respond as soon as you power them on.

I have a wired smart light switch from TP-Link/Kasa (KS205), and it's been completely hassle free (and totally local


Matter over wifi). The Kasa smart switch dongles I have work flawlessly but need proprietary pairing, and I'm afraid to update firmware in case they lose local support.

Good luck! Fun adventure :)

[–] qjkxbmwvz@startrek.website 12 points 3 months ago (1 children)

I think a lot of companies view their free plan as recruiting/advertising


if you use TailScale personally and have a great experience then you'll bring in business by advocating for it at work.

Of course it could go either way, and I don't rely on TailScale (it's my "backup" VPN to my home network)... we'll see, I guess.

[–] qjkxbmwvz@startrek.website 2 points 3 months ago

Sawyer filter inline with a camelback is awesome. I'd just fill up my camelback in a stream using a (clean) handkerchief to get the large debris out and then let the filter do the rest.

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