Ekky

Thank you for the correction.

I think genAI would be pretty neat for bit banging tests fuzzing, aka. Throwing semi-random requests and/or signals at some device in the hopes of finding obscure edge-cases or security holes.

I haven’t found a definite favorite yet, but I’ve bought a few Western Digital external HDDs which have all supported S.M.A.R.T. over USB. I’m currently using their WDBU6Y0050BBK devices. They don’t have the best reviews, but mine have worked just fine over the past year.

Contrary, I’ve had two Seagate external HDDs in the past, none of which supported S.M.A.R.T. over USB, and they died after about 10 years of sparse use (powered on for backup at least once a year).

I guess one could find what USB chip the WDs use and then compare with other drives, but no one writes such stuff in their product information. >:(

If it’s important, or if you love your stuff, then always keep a backup.

I personally do three 5TB ext. drives, and only two drives may be at the same location at any given time. I’m also making sure only to use drives whose S.M.A.R.T. can be read without removing their enclosure.

Not sure who thought it’d be a good idea to make an external drive where S.M.A.R.T. cannot be read through whatever interface it uses.

If nothing else, then to have a reference to whom else not to befriend, and to have a known source for all the hottest new nonsense.

Kinda like Urban Dictionary. Lots of degenaratory stuff on there, but at least i got somewhat reliable definitions for all the weird stuff people call me and/or each other.

Yup, our everybody’s dear Ursula. I realize that Europe has many institutes and multiple unions, but I feel that the EU best represents Europe as a whole. And, of the multiple bodies the EU is made of, the European Commission often lays face to news and is said to hold the most “power”.

Yes, the USA is a master of making itself seem much more powerful and important than it really is, and what do news outlets love more than painting the devil onto the walls? Denmark living in the USA’s pocket doesn’t help much either.

At this point I wouldn’t be surprised if more Europeans know the presidents of China, Russia, and the USA than know the name of our own European prime minister, which would be pretty sad if actually true.

Of course it’s important to know what other countries are up to, and the EU is currently reliant on the USA for conflict handling (please make a joint European army), but unless you plan to intervene then I see no reason to fanatically follow their politics. Just tell me whether we’ll have to deal with some ancient inept dude, or another ancient inept dude who has managed to weaponize incompetence.

Welcome to my rock, i guess.

I’m vaguely aware that the USA is gearing up for another political tragedy, but who, living outside of the USA, actually follows that stuff? Can’t influence the outcome much either way if you can’t vote, except perhaps by spreading propaganda.

Hope the preview works right.

Yeah, I’ve been bamboozled by this before. Found out that both “dike” and “dyke” mean “water barrier” but also can be slurs.

I guess it depends on context and audience, though, I hope the context is clear in this case. :P

Edit: Also, “dam” doesn’t fit since it’s an island and not a river or lake. The island does have dams, but those are not nearly as important as the dikes.

The Baltic sea just had a once-in-a-century storm surge this fall. There was little danger since the baltic sea is rather well protected, but many local dikes weren’t up for the job, resulting in quite some damage (in general, the houses on my island were mostly unscathered).

Took us the better of two months to drain the water from the island, and in the meantime we had to hike along the more robust dikes to get to the harbor.

We also had to empty our lakes of saltwater to attempt and save our fire-bellied toads, as the Copenhagen Zoo is trying to preserve the species on the island.

This is the way! The razorblades last for about 4 uses (7 if stretched) so a pack easily lasts a year, and I haven’t cut myself with one yet (in contrast to those pesky plastic razors which can’t keep sharpness throughout a single session).

Never gonna give my safety razor up, one would have to wrestle it out if my cold, dead hands!

When it comes to hobby we tend to ask each other to send a link to the product in advance of the gifting occasion. It takes the surprise out of the event, but you get something which you can actually use.

For other gifts, try to keep a log or notes. And yes, gift cards are also very nice.

The “language” setting would be vastly more useful if you could select a default post language, as well as apps implementing language as a choice when making a comment.

You’ll never be in doubt whether I posted something from app or web, as I actually have the possibility to specify the language when using the web interface, which otherwise is “undefined” by default.

Go to your profile settings and unselected “undefined” under your languages. Make sure that “English” is still selected.

You’ll be unable to see the majority of content, but this is the easiest method if you really don’t want to see any content from non-English speaking countries.

That’s one of my favorite theories as to what “sentience” is.

We humans might just be so riddled with mutations and barely functional genetic traits, which tend to be more in our way than help, that we just might have succeeded in banging together a “mundane sentience” by sheer amount of error processing alone.

Whether this is true is of course up for debate, but it would mean that we can achieve AGI just by feeding it enough trash and giving it enough processing power. Bonus if the head engineer sometimes takes a hammer to the mainframe.

Right, my bad. I thought you were explaining turbines in relation to the post, which would indeed have one attempt to run sand through it if not used with either liquid or steam.

I also wrote turbine and generator separately, as, as you stated, turbines and generators are not the same. I, in turn, hope I didn’t give the impression that they were.

I fully agree about the system as a whole better being described as a battery, which usually includes generators of some sort to convert the stored energy back into electricity.

And yes, this is a rather precarious article, which also is why I wrote the half-question half-joke about unnecessary conversion steps using turbines.

And that’s my confusion, why use a turbine (connected to a lift) to turn the heavy weight into a flow of steam or liquid, presumably to convert this flow to electricity using another turbine with a generator connected to it, instead of simply converting the heavy weight to electricity using a lift (or corkscrew) to turn the generator?

This is, of course, assuming that a turbine only is a turbine when it is driven by steam or liquid.

I guess the publishers of the article either got the definition wrong, or there’s a less used definition of turbine which I am not aware of.

But isn’t the definition of a turbine “a type of machine through which liquid or gas flows and turns a special wheel with blades in order to produce power” with the “power” (aka. rotational energy) going to a generator?

Where does the liquid or gas come from? Isn’t this battery supposed to lift heavy, solid objects?

It doesn’t outright state that it uses solid weights, but their illustration looks more like they’d use a lift with sand or weights, and not a turbine with liquid or steam:

Very interesting, and good to hear.

Though, I’m not sure why they would drive a turbine to drive a generator, instead of just driving the generator directly. Their illustration doesn’t show any turbines either.