How long ago was that, and have they been tracked for cataracts? UV in general is helpful in developing cataracts.

It does exactly what I got it for, and I'm happy with it. Since installation there have been 42 "events" with a total usage of about a day, the longest 3 hours. Most of the events have been ten minutes or so, just a few longer ones. It's kind of nice to find out about a power outage on my phone, then look out and see the street dark. (numbers off the app on my phone)

I've been in this house 40 years now, serviced by GMP. When we first moved in the power reliability was rather iffy. I'd started looking into a generator and sizing things up - then the reliability got much better. It was that way for a long time, then probably 10 years or so ago the reliability started dropping again. So when the battery option popped back up I was an early adopter.

A few notes that others have hinted about. It's not just a battery, it's got an ethernet cable into my network, so it talks to the utility. It's also got an environmental system built in for both cooling and heating, though sitting in my basement it stays at a pretty constant temperature. Because it's got constant monitoring GMP will know if things start to go south, and I suspect I'd get a notification on my phone. So it's not like the thing is suddenly going to burst into flames with no warning at all - there will at least be prompt notification. More likely it's not completely out of the blue and there are warning signs.

I started a project at work on Python 1.5, and it was a bit disruptive when I had to move it to 2.0, and even 2.1 was some disruption from that. I continued supporting that project for between 10 and 15 years and kept it at Python 2.x even after Python 3 was out.

At the time I figured I would be retired before I needed to move to Python 3, but I was wrong. I ended up moving to 3.x several years before retiring this past spring. Part of the problem is that RedHat Enterprise last I knew shipped Python 2.7 by default. The company also had local installations of Python 3.x, and both versions had semi-overlapping additional libraries, which was quite annoying. I actually had some code that was split between the two versions and passed intermediate data between them.

Or take the money and then run anyway.

Since people here presumably have experience with these things...

My wife and I will be in the market for a new car a few years down the road, and we've been thinking tentatively that it will be electric. One of my bigger concerns is that we live in Vermont. One of the things about internal combustion engines is the amount of waste heat, and that means that heating the interior in winter is pretty simple. Waste the heat inside instead of outside. With an electric there is less waste heat, and that means that heating the passengers means losing range.

I know with electrics they start with heated seats because that's a more efficient use of electricity. I'm wondering how comfortable are electric cars in deep winter from actual owners.

Or the other side of the solution is for Paramount to have a process for this kind of thing. They really should not be discouraging fans in any way, even as they need to protect their copyrights and trademarks legally. This isn't an either/or kind of thing, both can be done at the same time.

That's what's interesting. It's pretty common to use sodium hypochlorite, then a little hydrochloric acid to compensate for the pH rise. My pH doesn't rise, all summer. If anything it used to fall after rain, and I'd have to add borax or washing soda. This year the pH has been stable all summer after initial setup. I guess acid rain is getting cleaned up.

The semiconductor manufacturing industry practically lives on HF acid, it's utterly irreplaceable. They also know how to take proper precautions with it, and understand mitigations in case of accidents.

I regularly use 12% sodium hypochlorite in my swimming pool.

Almost all of us use a chemical that is cancerous, poisonous, and is so volatile that if you vaporize a 17 gallons of it, it's equivalent in explosive power to half a ton of TNT. By the way, 17 gallons is what it takes to fill my gas tank.

Lots of stuff is dangerous, but you just have to understand how to use it safely.

Agreed. The impact to the rich will be on their balance sheets. So what we're really saying here is that the balance sheets of the rich are more important than the lives of everyone else.

We hit an interesting point a few years back. In parts of the Persian Gulf states the wet-bulb temperature got too high for survival. What that really means is that the temperature plus humidity got so high that you can't sweat yourself cool enough to survive. Air condition is necessary for survival, and that means a power grid, too.

More areas have been added to that list, and this year parts of the US south are now too hot to survive without air conditioning. These areas are one long-ish power blackout away from mass death by heatstroke.

I don't like ads, but I understand that they have to pay for content, so I don't use ad blockers, don't have any installed.

What burns me is the sites that tell me to turn off my ad blockers - which I know I don't have. When you dig just a little deeper, what they really want is to track me. I've DO have stuff installed to prevent tracking, and I'm not about to remove that stuff or turn if off. I have tried to give site feedback about this, but they won't let you to the site feedback page without allowing tracking.

They lose my eyeballs. I turn away, go somewhere else.

The other big burn is that one of the sites that has done this is "alternet.org", which should be a site that understands not wanting to be tracked - yet they, or their advertisers, are insisting on it.

By my observations, youtube isn't doing this. They serve me ads and don't trip the tracking stuff. When it lets me skip, I do. Sometimes I end up watching ads, or let them run while my eyeballs are elsewhere.

Years ago I asked Siri if she was in a relationship with Alexa and she said, "None of your business." I don't own an i-anything, but we had a relative visiting who did.

I've also found that Alexa has a much better repertoire of Chuck Norris jokes than Hey-Google. The latter has exactly two, and the second one is simply a brush-off explaining why there are no more.

Leaves me hearing Marvin's voice, "Brain the size of a galaxy, and they're asking me to set timers and tell Chuck Norris jokes."

I wanted to say something similar. Even if it's not iron, it's mass and it's already out of Earth's gravity well. We can figure out what to do with it - even if it's turning it into something like concrete structures - that's valuable, too.

I remember hearing a report some time ago, I believe on NPR. that they'd found that the American Southwest was deforested by the Native Americans there hundreds of years ago and it became a desert as a result. Too much use of wood, for construction and cooking fires.

There were also similar stories told of Easter Island.

My son-in-law once told me that in Nebraska the farmers consider trees to be in competition with their crops for water, and are therefore eager to see the trees go. However trees don't export water the way crops do. We never learn.