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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: July 24th, 2023

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  • There are a lot of smart engineers that design those.

    If you have an external temperature measurement it helps. But it can’t see the difference between a cloudy day and a sunny day.

    If you connect it to an online weather service that helps, but it’s still hard for it to know how much the sun heats your home due to big south facing windows for example.

    This is something AI could be useful for. Feed it forecast, inside, outside temp and let it figure out how to balance those against each other for your home. I’m not sure there are many systems like this on the market yet.





  • At work we run some software that while you can get it to run under Linux it’s not worth the effort even for me to bother.

    One supplier is slowly moving towards the runtime being available on BSD at least. They also somewhat decoupled from visual studio in the latest release, while still being mandatory still it’s a step in the right direction.






  • If I buy steel for $1000 and pay 10% tariff the total cost is $1100

    If I make a car out of the steel and sell it I don’t pay any tariff. But I’ll charge $100 more because my steel cost was higher. (If someone abroad buys it their government may force them to pay a tariff, but I don’t see that directly).

    If I buy an engine I’ll pay the engine tariff, they don’t care if it’s made of aluminium, steel, wood or whatever. The custom officer will look at it and say that it is an engine and therefore it will be subject to engine tariffs.

    It’s always the total price of the thing you pay a tariff on. If you buy a car you pay the car tariff. If you disassemble the car and ship the parts in a box the customs official may decide it’s “car parts” and you pay the tariff on “car parts” which may be higher or lower.



  • They don’t need them.

    Stop selling spare parts and they will soon be useless.

    They are incredibly maintenance intense even in peace time. In wartime even more so because even minor combat damage adds up.

    Iran bought 79 F-14 in 1974. Revolution and arms embargo 1979. In 1984 they had 15 airworthy planes kept in shape by taking parts from other F-14s.

    They have since got some spare parts from hostage deals and the black market. Probably reverse engineering too so they have about 40 of them flyable. But the 5 first year has 80% of the fleet grounded should say something about it.



  • I bet it would take me 15 minutes to teach you to put 80% of shots on a dinner plate target at 100m with my 50 year old hunting rifle I got for free of an old man who moved to the city.

    Classical bows require strength to use. They have no sights either so you have to go by feel. Modern compound bows are easier to shoot but the arrow still drops much more than a bullet, so shooting at longer ranges is harder.

    Smaller caliber guns can be suppressed to be fairly quiet. A bow will be quieter but not by an order of magnitude.

    The advantage of a bow is that it’s easier to find somewhere to practice because even the most reckless shot the arrow does not travel as far before it drops to the ground. You can also reuse your arrows.