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Comment Re:everything shredded and/or destroyed (Score 1) 88

All the systems you mentioned, are *personal* computers. I'm pretty sure Stack Exchange wasn't using home systems, but rack-mounted servers. Very different story.

Sure, but that doesn't change the fact that even "obsolete" hardware can be useful. As a sysadmin, I've used plenty of old(er) server class systems in production, as well as development and research, settings and they generally work fine; just be realistic about their performance and capability and plan accordingly. Not everything needs the latest and greatest.

Comment Re:True genius is to replace gas pumps, slowly. (Score 1) 76

Slightly over half the population live in SFD and can thus be assumed to be able to charge at home. Even then, charging options at both apartments and work centers is expanding.

That a "build it and they will come sort of wishfulness". Its guesswork.

I'd argue that it isn't any more guesswork than building a new McDonalds or Chick-fil-a. Wawa is a known successful model. Heck, the one closest to me also has a line of Tesla chargers.

Restaurants may not be the spur of the moment decision you are hoping for.

Doesn't need to be "spur of the moment". People get hungry, want food. Many older people also want out of the car for a while. Combining those two with the third - get the car charged back up, is effectively getting paid three times.
And yes, a few chargers at pretty much anyplace people park for a bit is a good idea.
Just consider the "expected stay duration"
Motels expect ~8 hours. So they're good with level-2 charging, but you're going to want enough to cover at least the percentage of the clients you expect to be in EVs.
Movie theaters ~2 hours. A low end level-3 DC charger is good here. Only issue is that you can expect them to show up in batches.
Sit down restaurants ~1 hour - basic superchargers.
Fast food - 30 minutes - modern superchargers
Convenience store - 5-15 minutes: The highest power superchargers.

Comment Re:How much power? (Score 1) 76

Question is, do they really have to be? We all know ISPs oversell their backhaul, for example. That gigabit connection won't be a gigabit if everybody in the area is trying to download at full speed at the same time.

Same deal with charging EVs, I think. Put more chargers in, preferably capable of full speed individually, but what are the odds that you'd get 80 cars in during the exact same 15 minutes? That every single one of them would be properly preconditioned for a full speed charge?

If you have a few cars that have been there for 10-15 minutes already, their charging rate slows down naturally, the station can coordinate with the cars and driver's plans to ensure that the power is divided up in a equitable fashion.

As for the solar panels over the parking - I know it's not going to make a huge dent in providing all the necessary energy for charging the cars, but putting a structure over the top to shield them from the sun and rain is still very nice, at which point they might as well be solar panels.

A station that has 80 charging spots but normally only sees 3 of them being used at a time might still be able to satisfy most of their demand via the solar panels.

I have to agree with thegarbz - I think it is highly unlikely for a supercharger station to experience perfectly steady demand. At this point Tesla should have plenty of multiple yearlong examples to figure out likely usage patterns.
I'd expect, given food establishment (but no breakfast?) to see peaks around lunch and dinner periods: 11 am to 2 pm, 5 pm to 8 pm. A trickle of cars otherwise. Add good breakfast, add a peak at 6 am to 9 am. (8am would be when the retirees mostly show up).

Comment Re:True genius is to replace gas pumps, slowly. (Score 1) 76

All we really need to do is take existing gas stations and slowly convert gas pumps to charging stations, in proportion to the local market's transition to EVs. Today? Maybe convert one pump at stations with 12 pumps.

True Genius would take it a step or two past that. For example, it is a rare exception for somebody to be able to fuel an ICE at home, mostly restricted to a few farmers. But "most" EV owners can easily do so.

This means that the optimal recharging locations and optimal refueling stations are actually somewhat different. Especially if you go from ~5 minutes attended fueling to ~15 minutes unattended charging.

The latter gives businesses a much better opportunity to sell EV owners more stuff when they stop by for charging. It's why I figure that the "quick stop" gas stations with a microscopic building for smokes and drinks wouldn't be as popular as the expanded food options available at expanded gas stations like Wawa. Note: Not endorsing, just giving as an example.

Of course, I'm not going to give Elon/Tesla any "Genius" points for implementing something I was suggesting years ago. Back when a fullish charge was closer to an hour than 15 minutes, I felt that placing EV chargers next to restaurants made very good sense. Even today, while 15 minute charges are a bit fast for a sit down place, more suited for fast food or even a convenience store, the ability to either charge more fully or slowly to help conserve the battery might be good.

Comment Re:everything shredded and/or destroyed (Score 1) 88

It was probably all obsolete anyway.

"Obsolete" hardware often works fine, and it's usually rather inexpensive.

For example, all my systems are old(er) and inherited from friends/family. My Windows 10 system is a Dell XPS 420 that a friend gave me in 2017 and it works great -- don't know when he got it, but the model was discontinued in 2009. Only thing I've replaced is the HDD, later replaced with a SSD. My Linux Mint system uses an ASRock Z77 Extreme3 motherboard with Intel Core i7-3770 CPU (32 GM RAM) -- old, but works great. My OPNsense router uses the MB from a HP a6130n with Athlon 64 X2 (B) 5000+ CPU (8 GB RAM), and a few Intel GB NICs (1 Intel 82571EB/82571 (2-port), 1 Intel 82574L (1-port)) and stuffed into a simplified case - very old, but works like a champ. I've got two other old systems currently unused: Dell PowerEdge T110 (32 GB ECC RAM) and a Dell Inspiron 530a - both run Linux like a champ. Using SSDs instead of HDDs for the OS disks helps keep these pretty useful.

Comment everything shredded and/or destroyed (Score 4, Insightful) 88

For security reasons (and to protect the PII of all our users and customers), everything was being shredded and/or destroyed. Nothing was being kept...

Everything? Pretty sure just destroying the disks (SSDs/HDDs) would be sufficient. Destroying *everything* seems like wasteful overkill. I've worked places (DoD contractor) where drives being discarded had to be shredded and/or melted, but drives being returned to the Government were just securely wiped, several times. In practice, we securely wiped all drives, even ones destined to be physically destroyed.

I'm sure someone would by the servers...

Comment Anomalies (Score 1) 30

This is interesting so it raises the question of whether other hurricanes strengthened last time this layering happened and one passed over.

That this storm strengthened /exactly/ when a solar storm hit Earth seemed like a more promising anomaly but a strong dataset would support their hypothesis and rule out a massive coincidence.

Comment Prurient Interests (Score -1, Troll) 118

As the meme says, "we knew more about the Coldplay Kisscam couple after one day than we know about Matthew Crooks after one year."

Be careful about what people find interesting but be even more careful about what people find anti-interesting.

Especially the "free press".

Comment Re:Too much tech. (Score 2) 48

Yeah and those people would have thrown a bricked bike through the front window of their corporate headquarters.

Amazon tried real hard to upsell me a wifi sprinkler timer yesterday.

Ha, no, the $18 microcontroller-based timer will do just fine. They could have temped me with a Matter/Threads unit but no, they don't try that hard. Doesn't "Work with Alexa".

Imagine my garden dying because a tree fell on the Comcast line and it took a few days to rebuild. Such weird expectations! I wonder how many "smart" households went bonkers during the 4hr Starlink outage?

Comment Re:Or maybe (Score 1) 54

It binds more strongly than O2 or CO2, but not permanently. Just time removed from the source will clear it. Providing supplemental O2 will speed that up while supporting life functions if they got a larger dose.
Basically, CO will win most fights with O2 for hemoglobin, but when it is experiencing a few hundred per trip through the lungs...

Comment Re:Is this really a 'breach'? (Score 1) 86

In the GSR (Gossip, Shame, Rallying) Model this is a biological imperative.

So you would expect high costs to be easily paid if the model is accurate and the service fills the need.

Some might say the theory fits the data.

I'm that weirdo who won't save fifty cents on a can of Spaghetti O's by signing up for a "loyalty" surveillance card but most people aren't in the slim minorities.

Comment DANE (Score 1) 66

A subset of people are really against DANE which lets you self-attest your TLS cert without a parallel PKI. DNSSEC was the PKI in that model.

There are pros and cons but a big con was people not paying for certs.

Now with LetsEncrypt we have DV certs almost everywhere, few people pay for certs, and two PKI's with little protection for anything else that uses DNS.

Oh, and LetsEncrypt would be marginally better off with DNSSEC. Their new observation standard at least helps mitigate BGP shenanigans.

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