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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: June 21st, 2023

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  • Open source devices will become more mainstream as a push back by consumers against enshitifcation, privacy invasion, disposable products, ever rising subscription costs.

    Not just things like phones and laptops but things like mice, keyboards, headphones, even tvs and kitchen appliances. I know some of these are possible now, I use a ploppy trackball and qmk based keyboards but a wider spread of these across the home and more than just hobbyists like myself.

    Large chunks will be 3D printed, moving the large component parts of manufacting to the local area. Plus things will be endlessly fixable and upgradable.


  • I purchased a bunch of dlc for Train Sim World (tsw). I only buy dlc for tsw when its on sale, save a small fortune that way.

    Bonus savings if you can get one of the bundles on sale for double discount. I got £150 of dlc for about £55. Yeah dlc is super expensive for tsw but it doesn’t go out of date and nor is it needed for a multiplayer mode so why rush?

    Been after the expansion pack for Germany and the Preston Route for ages.

    Train Sim World® 5: West Coast Main Line: Preston - Carlisle Route Add-On Train Sim World® 5: Schnellfahrstrecke Kassel - Würzburg Route Add-On Train Sim World® 5: DB BR 101 Loco Add-On Train Sim World® 5: Maintalbahn: Aschaffenburg - Miltenberg Route Add-On Train Sim World® 5: Hauptstrecke Rhein-Ruhr: Duisburg - Bochum Route Add-On Train Sim World® 5: Ruhr-Sieg Nord: Hagen - Finnentrop Route Add-On Train Sim World® 5: DB BR 363 Loco Add-On


  • It depends on the quality of the ingredients put in.

    Bad tasting water will fuck up a coffee regardless of the recipe.

    Crap beans roasted till they blacker than vantablack and then left on the supermarket shelves for months simply don’t have the depth of flavour to extract.

    Using a bad grinder, like a bladed grinder more suited to spices will also impact your coffee more than a particular recipe. You don’t have to spend a fortune on a grinder to get good results, kingrinders are very good value for money.

    Recipes also need tweaking for the beans you are using, what works for one light roast is not going to be optimal for another, and unlikely to be suitable for a medium or dark roast. If you are after the absolute best you can get out of beans you will need to tweak the recipe (which includes water temperature) for those particular beans.

    Personally I use a slightly simpler version of the devil recipe with my switch, its good enough and far less time consuming to do.


  • I agree it has some value, but the problem is that value doesn’t seem to align with the cost of Western AI.

    If you look at what Altman said about how much OpenAI was losing despite charging an arm and a leg for its premium subscription, no one will pay for that for low value items such as transcription or scaffolding code.

    Unless it can actually replace high value jobs long term rather than short term pretend replace as with Klarana then its doomed with the current models.



  • None of which is tied to raising the retirement age for the younger groups, this does fuck all to fix the actual problem.

    None of which is tied to medical or elder care for the Danes, this is also mostly funded by taxation, again mostly paid by the young.

    The actual solution is to start means testing Ponzi scheme state pension funds with a tapered reduction based on private pension income. However that will never every happen to this particular group as they are the largest single group, and this will be a single issue voting matter for them as they are in the middle of retiring.

    Social care should be self funded by the government forcing sell off, of assets like the home, for those that can for this generation.



  • So this rise for Denmark does not kick in on people born before 1970, so it does not count for baby boomers or the oldest and usually wealthiest sub set of Gen X. Oh, also Danish politicians can still retire at 60 right?

    This is fairly typical with these age rises, applies to everybody BUT the largest group who have caused all the problem by being the largest group and who often haven’t paid their fair share in a lot of schemes as a lot of state pension schemes are a Ponzi scheme rather than an actual investment fund, including the Danes as its paid directly out of taxation.

    This means all the poor fucks who will now retire later will still be paying for that largest ever group to retire at an earlier age.

    What is particularly insidious with this type of change is that the private pension age has also been raised for people in the UK. This means even if you can afford to you cant take it as early as you once could. Absolutely done because they will be means testing the UK state pension at some point.



  • UK based. I did get all my beans from Outpost Coffee as they my local specialty roaster but they got too expensive for me when they went from about £40 a kg to about £55 a kg. I mostly buy from Rave Coffee, they aren’t as good as Outpost but two thirds of the current price before their regular offers, and good enough. When you buy nearly 2kg a month its a lot of extra cash to spend over a year.

    I do buy from local specialty shops when I travel, picked up some beans from Island Roasted when I was in the Isle of Wight last week.

    I keep meaning to try some of the more interesting beans from Sigma Coffee, they seem to have a great selection but they are even more expensive the Outpost.


  • Germany was miles off, they lost the war before the first bomb was dropped, 7th May vs. 6th August. Its impossible for them to be both behind the Allied effort to make a nuclear bomb (so would have not been read to drop one until after 6th August) and still make one after they surrendered.

    The Allies very much lied to the scientists about how far along the Germans were to guilt them into making one against objections raised at the time.

    Now if those defecting Nazis who joined NASA and the like post war would have instead been used to replace objecting Allied scientists in the nuclear program, thats a real possibility.





  • We have a granny charger that came with one of our EVs that we use as a backup and with our caravan to charge on sites that allow it. As I am UK it tops out at 2.4kw (10A @ 240v) and its annoyingly slow even charging for more than 12 hours at a time.

    Our main home charger is 7kw, and as we get cheap electric every night for 7p a KwH for 5 hours, we can charge about 40kwh in that time period. Means even our largest battery is fully charged in two nights from completely empty. If we tried that with the granny charger it would cost significantly more, as it would be up to 40p a KwH outside of the main hours and take 40 hours to charge the same amount.

    Now if you doing only a few miles a day, less than 40 miles (4 miles per KwH, charge for the 5 cheap hours using the cars charging timer, charge 10 KwH), it might work out ok for you, but then charging every day cannot be good for the battery? I know it would get annoying quite quickly. It would also get pretty painful if you have more than one EV, we have three between us and the kids, so its not remotely practical.


  • I recently streamlined by espresso prep by switching to a blind shaker and bean cup with built in scales, saved about a minute of time vs. having to WDT and RDT plus the time moving my shot scale to/from the espresso machine. The other big change was switching to a 58mm to 49mm step down basket as deep basket depth really does seem to make it easier to dial in shots as they have a bigger sweet spot. Couple that with adding in flow control so I have greater control over pre infusion timings and shot ramp down means I have to spend far less time dialing in that I did for a great shot.

    Its probably not worth the expense to do this for most people but for me its helped me stay motivated to keep making espresso shots first thing in the morning.

    Longest part of using my e61 is the pre heat, that’s about 15 minutes. This I turn on remotely using a smart switch so its not dead time. I am either out with the dog or in the shower while its pre heating.

    Weighing and grinding the beans is about a minute, I tend to run some hot water from the group head into the cup to pre heat during this time. Decanting into the portafilter and tamping is less than a minute. The shot pulls in about 40 seconds including pre infusion. Banging out the puck is another 20 seconds or so. I would guess about 3 minutes end to end.

    I do clean my espresso machine every day, which means about 5 back flushes and a portafilter less flush at the end. Wiping everything down, emptying the drip tray, refilling the water, thats a good 7 to 10 minutes. Its excessive but I absolutely cannot stand dirty espresso machines.

    While I am away from home I use a picopresso with a 1zpresso J Ultra hand grinder, thats considerably more time to make a shot as hand grinding takes over a minute alone. I pre heat by running a full basket of water through the pico for every shot, and clean up has to be after every shot as well. Its probably closer to 6 minutes per shot with the pico. With the upgraded basket and pressure gauge its capable of very good shots considering its size and cost, at least with the J Ultra.