and “crisis actors”

Nice. Yeah, that’s what I’m looking to do. Grid is just there when I’m not generating enough onsite.

The good thing is there seem to be plenty of options these days.

Yeah, that’s a good place to start. Seeing that it costs almost $50/mo just to run my server/network gear was really eye opening. The stack averages about 290 watts (thank the gods I downsized when I did!) which comes out to:

(290/1000) * 24 * 30 * 0.23 = $48.02/mo

Still cheaper than cloud subscriptions, though.

Yeah, I was looking at Anker’s version of that, but it doesn’t have quite as much flexibility as some of dedicated hybrid solar inverters I was looking at. I haven’t read the specs for the EcoFlow version, but Anker’s is positioned more as a UPS/backup power for your house rather than primary power (unless you’re fully off-grid).

The hybrid inverter I was looking at can be configured in “UPS” mode (backup if your power is out) or only to use utility power if there’s not enough PV and the batteries are low as well as some other combinations.

I’m still in the planning phases since I don’t want to be installing on the roof or burying conduit in the winter lol.

Thanks. And yeah, being able to install solar eventually was one of many factors when I decided to buy a house on a whim rather than rent (not so much a whim as “ahead of schedule” due to unforeseen circumstances surrounding the house I was currently renting).

$0.56/kwh power

Jesus. My condolences. I hope anything you feed back is credited at retail rate.

This has been the push I’ve needed to pull the trigger on installing solar. My electric rates have gone from $0.09/KWh to $0.23/KWh in the last 5 years. Just got my bill after reducing as much as I could (my house is all electric sans the furnace). “Surely it’ll be under $100 this month,” I thought. Nope.

I’ve got 800W of PV currently in an ad-hoc setup* but I’m putting together the plan for a 3.2 KW system that can auto switch between battery, PV, and grid without backfeeding. Minus the batteries, the whole setup is going to cost me about $7,000. (Batteries aren’t required and will be added later)

Grid-tie is technically legal in my area, but the hoops you have to jump through are insane and there’s a high likelihood of being denied by the power company over the most bullshit of minutiae (seriously, they treat someone possibly feeding back 400 watts the same as if you were a MW-scale solar farm).

*The ad-hoc setup is just 4x200W panels in a 2S2P config. I charge an Anker PowerStation from that and use it to power random stuff. It’s currently powering my server stack while charging from the panels. :)

Because:

1. I’m not a lazy, smooth-brained rube.
2. I’m not in the business of selling AI to lazy, smooth-brained rubes
3. I have no stake in the supply chain nor do I stand to profit from those selling AI to lazy, smooth-brained rubes.

Furthermore:

1. I don’t trust “AI”. If I’m going to have to fact check it anyway, might as well just do it myself and earn the damn knowledge.
2. AI does not work for me (or you). It works for the companies who are forcing it on you and sucking up your data.
3. The energy costs and water requirements are mindbogglingly staggering
4. I refuse to feed or ride any hype train
5. It’s creating scarcity of things that could be put to better use (energy, water, computer components, land, talent, you name it).
6. It’s not even AI. It’s just a dead-end bullshit generator

In my nearly half century on this planet and having dealt with many a drug dealer in my younger days, absolutely none of them have been this pushy 😆

“Does it piss you off when Google/whatever does [blank]? Yeah, me too. So I run my own versions to not have to deal with that crap. Would you like me to set you up an account on my stuff?”

Best I can offer is https://github.com/searxng/searxng

I run it at home and have configured it as the default search engine in all my browsers.

At best, it’s JARVIS from Iron Man 3 when he went all buggy and crashed Tony in the boondocks. lol

To me it is the ultimate gamble with one’s own thought autonomy, and an abandonment of truth in favor of false comfort.

So, like church? lol

No wonder there’s so much worrying overlap between religion and AI.

I’m about that same age but am so glad we’ve largely abandoned the “www” for websites.

On my personal project website, I have a custom listener setup to redirect people to “aarp.org” if they enter it with “www” instead of just the base domain. 😆

server {
    listen              443 ssl;
    http2		        on;
    server_name         www.mydomain.xyz;

    ssl_certificate     /etc/letsencrypt/live/mydomain.xyz/fullchain.pem;
    ssl_certificate_key /etc/letsencrypt/live/mydomain.xyz/privkey.pem;
    ssl_dhparam         /etc/nginx/conf.d/tls/shared/dhparam.pem;
    ssl_protocols       TLSv1.2 TLSv1.3;
    ssl_session_cache   shared:SSL:10m;
    ssl_session_timeout 15m;
  
    ...
    
    location ~* {
      return 301 https://aarp.org/;
    }
}

The only one I didn’t hate was the jingle:

🎵 "F-R-E-E that spells "free"
credit report dot com, baby". 🎵

😆

Yeah, but they should take that pissing contest out of the UX.

I was an adult during that time, and I don’t recall it being anywhere near as annoying. Well, except the TV and radio adverts spelling at you like “…or visit our website at double-you double-you double-you dot Company dot com. Again, that’s double-you double-you double-you dot C-O-M-P-A-N-Y dot com.”

YMMV, but it didn’t get annoying until apps entered the picture and the only way to deal with certain companies was through their app. That, of if they did offer comparable capabilities on their website but kept a persistent banner pushing you toward their app.

The baguette cushioned his fall and the striped shirt scared away any predators. The beret was just a beret, though. Even if you’ve fallen down a 130ft ravine that’s no excuse to look dowdy.

(None of this is true…probably)

I predate both of those events by multiple decades lol.

Printers were well established even on the Trash-80 I grew up with. The bloatware drivers aren’t really what I’m talking about. I suppose Clippy could be considered prior art to the whole “shoving AI in your face” but at the time I was a WordPerfect fanboy.

I learned a long time ago to never install manufacturer printer drivers. Or, at least, never install them from the provided Setup.exe.

They’ve always installed a bunch of bloatware (HP has always been the worst but other brands are just as bad).

If you look in the setup folder, there’s usually the raw drivers you can install from Device Manager. If the driver package is just a single .exe file, you can usually unpack it with 7zip and get at its inner contents.

If that fails, the system-included HP LaserJet 4200 PCL driver is about as close to a universal print driver as you can find lol.

I challenge you to a race around the world. Go! [beat] Ha ha ha ha ha ha!