• 3 Posts
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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 14th, 2023

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  • It means that U.S. automakers find it cheaper to have their vehicles made in China and then import them in the U.S., rather than make them directly in the U.S. in the first place.

    This means that manufacturing in China is so cheap that even with the tariffs, it is more cost effective to go there. If your goal with the tariffs is to level the game, then this should not happen (no one would relocate like that unless there is a massive gain).








  • If you have fiber, it’s unlikely you will benefit from something like Starling. Transfer data wirelessly through a constellation of satellites will have running costs much higher than just having a fibre. That is unless you have to dog a trench or run a fibre on mast for km for just one customer, which is where Starling starts making more sense.

    Starling is for rural customers, mobile customers, and possibly an option to counter monopoly abuse by some Telco companies. But if you are in a city with fibre, then do use the fibre, that’s your better option.




  • The Oxford study is really good. But I can’t say the same about this article.

    A COP of ~2 is not great for a heat pump, calling this a triumph is really weird. But from a journalist saying that a COP above 1 means the heat pump “creates energy”, I am not sure I should have expected more.

    But what’s great is that this COP of 2, while bad, is not catastrophic. That’s still in territory where gas boilers are more cost efficient that a heat pump, but unless you are living in a place that is consistently under -10C for several months, then a heat pump has overall lower running costs than a gas boiler. And you are starting to hit pretty northern territories with this.

    What’s important is also to be able to store heat during the day so that the heat pump runs at its most efficient time. But that can unfortunately coincide with the higher consumption time, so the timing needs to be adjusted properly to avoid using it during consumption peaks.



  • It goes much more into details than that. Math comes very fast into play (and yes, simple sums is math and many people struggle even for that unfortunately) and if you want to avoid it, you have to trust other people to do it for you. And that comes with a small or very high price, depending on how well you are able to judge them.

    For example, if you want to build a fence around your house, paint your walls a new color or with a design, or sew yourself a new outfit or quilt, all of those activities require knowledge about measurement and scaling. More complicated construction projects, such as building a treehouse, require lots of mathematical problem-solving skills.

    Once you’ve laid out the plans for one of these projects, you need to buy all the materials. Percentages – which are special kinds of fractions – are especially important to understand when managing money. Understanding percentages can help you budget your money and increase your net worth.

    Beyond budgeting, you might find yourself using percentages when cooking a double batch of brownies, determining how much medicine to take when you’re sick or understanding the weather forecast.



  • If you are in an enterprise environment, it is easier to sell Ubuntu - at least there is a company that can provide support for it behind. Companies want to make sure someone is on the hook to fix an issue that would be blocking to them, and this is much harder with something like Debian.

    That’s why Red Hat is used that much in companies, and what Canonical main revenues are coming from.

    But as a selfhoster, I use Debian by default for my servers. Only if there is a very specific need for Ubuntu would I switch, and I am frankly tired of the Snap shenanigans on my desktop (thinking of migrating to PopOS or KDE Neon).