It’s a dark and political story wearing the skin of a light hearted romp like a serial killer with their victim’s face.

It takes a book or 2 for the mask to really slip (hence the hammyness of the first book or 2). It’s an excellent story, though a little marmite like (you either love it or hate it).

Randomly this appeared in my feed.

https://youtube.com/shorts/Qpyd7TsH14Y

Doesn’t say anything about the receiver side, but shows the mechanism quite well.

Silk, and have held up well so far. Not regular wear however.

I’ve personally resorted to using a thermal camera for green/white tea water temperature. I’m aware it’s a little overkill however!

A lot have them as a fall back. If they boil dry, they overheat and trigger the cut off. It’s a fail-safe however, rather than the primary mechanism. It’s also possible some use a bimetallic strip as part of the steam detection system.

Most now use a different method. The thermal cutoff has problems when the air pressure is lower than expected. It can get to a rolling boil, but never turn off.

Most now use the presence of steam coming off the liquid. This means it gets to a boil, no matter what temperature that actually is. I’ve seen a demo where they put alcohol in, and it worked fine, despite boiling at only 78°C.

I’ve gotten a pair past 2 decades with no holes or stains…

Speculating, but I would guess they applied a band pass filter to it. You can then either take a simple threshold value, or look for a rapid change and trigger off that. 4 buttons means 4 sets of filters, each tuned to a different frequency.

That said, the analogue electronics engineers of yesteryear were insanely competent and making analogue circuits do interesting things to save money or space.

I think the Minecraft modders got there first. That would push doom to 3rd at least.

FYI, I’m not Canadian. Just an observer from the other side of the pond, watching America die in morbid horror.

For me, the starter base can be spaghetti. It’s main job is to bootstrap science and production enough to start producing a main bus setup.

Once I can, I start building a main bus. Iron and copper are produced first, then fed into the bus. Allow space for significant expansion. I tend to use 4 rows of belts, with a 2 width gap. This lets me use yellow belts to skip under the main bus. 6 is also an option, if you can jump up to red belts for undergrounds.

Capacity wise. Factor in for 12 belts of iron and copper, with 2 belts of steel. Also stick a belt of iron ore and 1 of stone on there. You don’t need much, but it makes concrete a lot easier later. Don’t build it all out to full capacity at the start, just factor it in for space.

Factory wise, go tall, from 1 side only. This lets you expand upwards as demand increases, you can also duplicate areas, if you need even more production.

You can also put fluids onto the bus. I wouldn’t put construction, or supplementary items on it. E.g. yellow belts for science are made at the point of use. The big exception is gears. They are needed so often in large numbers that they are worth the effort.

End result, if you need more factory space, expand forwards, if something you’ve belt needs expanding, expand upwards. If you need more belt space, expand downwards. If you need more smelting, expand backwards.

Eventually, you will hit the limits of the main bus. At that point, I switch to a train based grid arrangement. It’s a lot more viable at that scale, particularly for quality in the DLC. At that point I’m already multi-planetary however.

Agreed. It turns down the shocks, making things a little more controllable.

Tbh, that sounds more bipolar than ADHD.

ADHD is chronically low dopamine level. We try and self medicate with novelty seeking behaviours. Unfortunately, there is no reliable way to boost dopamine (hedonistic treadmill in effect). We also have to deal with the effects of low dopamine on our executive functions. Basically, we lose most of our ability to direct our focus. This leads to both hyperfocus and hypofocus on various topics.

In a car analogy. We get painful electric shocks if the accelerator isn’t to the floor. We also have the steering wheel replaced by a toggle switch (full left turn, or full right, no middle position). Oh and we only have a certain number of switch flips before it starts zapping us too.

It’s intended as an open collaborative system. Small developers get an early injection of cash to fund further development. They can also get continuous feedback, from the community, as they develop. For smaller companies, this can be critical to help keep them on the path that makes the game better.

In turn, the community gets to have a say in how the game is shaped. They also get to play it early and watch it grow. It’s often also cheaper to buy early.

When used right, it’s awesome. Unfortunately it gets abused a bit right now. Bigger companies using it as a bug fixing tool is problematic, particularly when priced at full price. Also some (intentionally or not) do a “take the money and run”.

It’s also worth noting that Canada has a land border with the USA. They can also pass as generic American, if required.

Asymmetric warfare wouldn’t only be focused in Canada. E.g. a coordinated set of drone strikes could basically shatter large portions of the American power grid. There are too many soft, unmanned targets to viably protect, and the lead time of spares is measured in months to years, on some parts.

I believe it was old school analogue electronics, but I’m speculating there.

I just looked it up, it was ultrasonic signals. The main one was the Zenith Space Command.

Not fully related, but early TV remotes used sound rather than IR. The buttons made a distinctive “click” noise, from a mechanical mechanism. The different clicks were detected in the TV and used as input.

Plus side, no batteries to deal with.

Down side, about as (un)reliable as you would expect.

I need to jump back into that story. 😁

Charities paying for the e-waste is not universal. Depends on your local waste management. But nonetheless, when a machine is disposed of /someone/ must pay for it one way or another. It’s cheaper to actually use it.

Your forgetting storage costs. The value of older computers often doesn’t compare well with storage costs, particularly given the amount of time they sit there for. That’s what does us in. We only have so much space, and dozens of computers can eat that quickly. It’s similar with old monitors.

The pre-spychip AMDs have anywhere between 2 and 8 cores just before the last segment of 15h chips were made.

I wasn’t sure where the cutoff was, in practice.

It’s a marketing problem. Consumers don’t know to demand pre-spychip machines because they are wholly clueless about it. A charity shop can manufacture demand just by being transparent in their sales info.

In practice, most can’t. They don’t have the reach to change people’s views on the scale needed. They would also need to deal with people who didn’t understand what they were buying. Older computers often need a bit of finessing to get the most out of. Sticking windoze 11 on them, and giving them out to OAPs or single mums is asking for very frustrated complaints.

That’s a good idea. Either way, it requires an intervention in the status quo. In my region, the public is blocked from getting access to rejected hardware, which goes straight to the (apparently secret) disposal site.

If you think it’s viable, make a small business out of it. Tell the charity shops you will take the old laptops off their hands to repurpose them. Extra qudos to you, if you can mix and match to make, and donate a few “supercharged” computers that would be of use to their customers. Unfortunately I suspect the number of customers is too small however, and you would run into the same issues they do.

I’m involved in a charity that also ends up with a good amount of computer donations. Unfortunately, we have to be ruthless with what we accept. We have to pay to dispose of ewaste.

In practice, laptops with a dual core processor or higher can be put to use or given a new home. Anything older is useless. We still need to sort through and thin out the numbers at that level however.

Unless you’re willing to store the computers for them, until a unicorn comes in asking for one, it’s likely a practicality issue. While it’s far from perfect, it’s required to keep shops like that functioning at all.

A better option might be to go to a retro gaming shop/cafe. They are more likely to stock old hardware to play older games natively. It’s mostly consoles, but some also have PCs.