Human folly for 02025-10-05

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• (youtube.com):

  #Xiaomanyc #video where #Chinese teachers rate his level of Chinese: they say his pronunciation is imperfect (but not identifiably English-tinted), his vocabulary is weak, and his grasp of classical Chinese proverbs is nonexistent

• (youtube.com):

  #Primitive-Technology #video on cylindrical water bellows made from fired clay #ceramics with folded-leaf check valves, sunk in a clay-lined puddle to use as two liquid pistons. One of his undersized fired-clay handles broke off, so he lashes on wooden handles. He’s still doing a lot of unnecessary work lifting massive fired clay vessels. Then the spout broke off.

• Sources say Bay area house party (astralcodexten.com):

  #humor about #SFBA house parties, startups, Twitter, etc.

• Isekai (en.wikipedia.org):

  Isekai is a Japanese fiction genre similar to Western “portal fantasy” (Peter Pan, Wizard of Oz, Connecticut Yankee, Narnia)

• The prophet and the barbarians (metropolitanreview.org):

  Sam Kriss lives in a cabin up on a mountain and writes a Substack

• Compy (github.com):

  "Compy" is “A console-based Lua-programmable computer for children based on löve2d framework. (...) Command-line based UI, Full control over each pixel of the display, Ability to easily reset to initial state, Impossible to damage with non-violent interaction” #small-is-beautiful #Lua

• (dl.acm.org):

  #PDF #paper of Bhandarkar and Clark’s comparison of the #ISAs and #performance of #VAX and #MIPS from 01991. #history

• Item (news.ycombinator.com):

  “I built [a plug-in microinverter #solar #energy household power station] in Utah which is the only part of the [#USA] where it’s currently legal, so I can give you the numbers.

  • 4x Hyundai 435W Solar Panels @ 167$ each for $670 total - 1x EcoFlow Stream Microinverter for $257. - Various cables, MC4 crimping kit, etc.. about $150.

  Grand total was $1077, I set them in direct sun on my patio and have generated 6-8kWh per day. At Utah energy prices (0.12 where I live), they will pay off in about 4 years. Somewhere like California with 4x the energy prices as here, it would probably pay for itself in <1 year.” #pricing #photovoltaic

• Deaths per TWh for all energy sources (nextbigfuture.com):

  0.44 deaths per TWh for rooftop #solar #energy as of 02008, according to Brian Wang, compared to 161 for coal. #safety

• 2020 fatalities for US roofers increased 15 as solar roof installations increase (nextbigfuture.com):

  Brian Wang calculates almost 1 death per TWh for rooftop #solar #energy as of 02021. #safety

• Solar is only cheap when its not (investigativeeconomics.org):

  Llewellyn Jones makes all kind of misleading claims about #solar #energy #pricing

• Nbk448087 (ncbi.nlm.nih.gov):

  Electrical injuries kill 1000 people a year in #USA. #statistics #safety #paper

• Dsarchive (simh.trailing-edge.com):

  #DEC microprocessor #history #retrocomputing

• Item (news.ycombinator.com):

  Discussion from last month of #VAX #history and #Mashey’s explanation of its demise.

• Dick sites Alpha axp architecture (danluu.com):

  #PDF #paper by Dick Sites from Digital Technical Journal in 01992 about the #DEC Alpha. #history #retrocomputing