mipadaitu

joined 1 year ago
[–] mipadaitu@lemmy.world 26 points 8 hours ago

Probably zero since this all happened decades ago at this point.

[–] mipadaitu@lemmy.world 2 points 9 hours ago (1 children)

You are 100% correct, EXCEPT for the emergency cash flow thing is backwards.

Let's say you have $20,000 for a car. If you put that whole $20,000 to buy a car, and an emergency comes up where you need $5,000, it will be much harder to get a loan to pay for that on the same terms as a car loan.

On the other hand, if you put $2,000 towards the car and borrow $18,000 at 3% for 5 years, that's $325 a month, give or take depends on fees. Now you still have $18,000 free for emergencies, and you're theoretically still making money at your job, so you can keep building that neat egg with interest. If that same $5,000 emergency comes up, you still have $13,000, which is more than 3 years of payments to cover the rest of that $5,000.

Obviously emotions come into it. Obviously some folks can't just leave that $18,000 in the bank. But there are real tangible benefits to just taking out a loan.

[–] mipadaitu@lemmy.world 3 points 13 hours ago (3 children)

That's fine if that's what you want to do, but when car loans are less than 2% and bank interest rates can be 3-4%, you can literally make money by taking out a loan.

On top of that, if you are in an industry that gives regular raises, having a 5 year loan means you're paying less of your paycheck every year towards the car.

Obviously most people aren't thinking this far ahead, but even if you have the cash, sometimes it actually makes sense to take out a loan.

[–] mipadaitu@lemmy.world 6 points 14 hours ago

Page and a half here, and almost all of it was uncontested local elections.

[–] mipadaitu@lemmy.world -2 points 1 day ago (3 children)

At least he steals his ideas from good sci-fi.

Wonder who he pays to summarize them for him.

[–] mipadaitu@lemmy.world 5 points 1 day ago

It does work in the real world, as long as the floor is the problem, and the table is perfect.

Most of the time at a restaurant, it's the table that's been beaten up and is no longer even.

[–] mipadaitu@lemmy.world 1 points 1 day ago

I have a few of these. Honestly don't understand why more companies don't make flashlights like this.

[–] mipadaitu@lemmy.world 8 points 1 day ago (1 children)

4D batteries just doesn't make sense in 2024. That was for incandescent lights, modern LEDs are brighter and use a small fraction of that power. You could still have the form factor if you really wanted a giant flashlight for self defense or something, but a pair of AA's if you really don't want rechargeables would be more than enough for a long life flashlight.

But any LiIon battery is going to far outperform alkaline batteries.

[–] mipadaitu@lemmy.world 2 points 1 day ago (1 children)

They're assuming zero maintenance and all that's needed is refueling. I think if they have any anomalies they'll need to pull the booster to another location for inspection/repair.

[–] mipadaitu@lemmy.world 1 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Which is great, but as soon as one tower is out, then you're back to N towers.

[–] mipadaitu@lemmy.world 16 points 1 day ago

Camping equipment.

Cleaning service.

 

I have an indoor/outdoor thermometer to keep track of how hot the back of my Expedition gets. I drive pretty regularly with two dogs in the back, and over the summer and winter the temps can get a little extreme.

I need to be able to take it out to keep an eye on it remotely (it has about 1/4 mile range) but also have it not rolling around while I drive.

There was a coin holder there that I popped out, and used as a template for an insert to keep this mounted semi-permanently.

Printed with kinda crappy Amazon Basics PETG. If it holds up well, I'll reprint it with better quality black PETG so it matches the car better.

 

Really important step towards expanding our research on the moon, is creating highly detailed maps of the entire surface.

China is doing some great work on building out infrastructure and studies of the moon. They're the only country that's brought back any moon rocks in decades.

Space Race 3.0 is on, and we'll see how different approaches to the research and manned missions will move forward.

The US is currently building out an extremely upfront cost heavy project, but with a lot of long term benefits.

China is building a more straightforward moon project, but with higher ongoing costs, as much of the infrastructure is disposable (more like Apollo).

 

The amount of detail in these pictures is amazing. You can really see the texture in the nebula, and the features are so crisp, it kind of looks 3d.

 

Pretty interesting topic, would be interesting if it could be used to move satellites to a "parking orbit" once they run out of fuel. It's unclear just how much movement in an orbit that can be done, as it says it needs to be in the same energy level.

Source press release: https://www.surrey.ac.uk/news/new-technique-uses-knot-theory-create-tube-map-around-planets-and-moons

Source journal article: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s42064-024-0201-0

 

There was an issue on Reddit a while back where people would post some hateful stuff, and of course lots of people blocked them.

After a while, anti-trans, racist, and far-right-wing stuff were only seen by non-logged in users, other bigots, or new people, and they weren't getting the downvotes they deserved.

Is this going to be a problem on Lemmy too? I'm worried that if we're all blocking shitty users that we're just hiding the problem from ourselves, not fixing it.

 

This was a fun project, I had to measure and figure out the iottie thread pitch and then create an adapter to go from a phone mount stand to a backplate on my wireless camera screen for a backup camera on a trailer.

Basically replicated the back plate from the original phone mount with the same tolerances and spacing.

Took 2 test prints to make sure the threads and spacing was right, then I printed it out of PETG. Seems to hold up well, but I might end up adjusting the design over time if it has a weak point.

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