Thank you, very interesting. Not a chemist, but I believe PEX is polypropylene that is even more chemically and thermally stable.

Q: are all the food containers polypropylene? Again, not a chemist, but to my layman's senses, they're made of many types of plastics. I have a pretty good sense of smell, and many new food containers, including plastic bags like "ziplock", have a pretty strong and not good chemical smell.

Oh- add to that chemical smell list: "bottled" (in plastic) water.

I understand and respect your opinions. I'm anti-competitive and won't argue, but I want to point out: not a doctor nor biologist, fairly knowledgeable though, and two things to consider: 1) we're all different. Some people may be much more sensitive to the trace chemicals, and 2) the "gut biome" can be a very delicate / fragile balance. In some people it might be very easily knocked far out of balance. One I know of is "c-diff", which we all have, but if it gets out of balance, people literally die. Another: candida. Can be very difficult to stop candida overgrowth. Those and many more produce some very harmful toxins including neuro-toxins.

Or do like me and be your own mechanic.

Thanks. But I think my point stands: the jackboot thugs won't have access to my data unless and until a judge signs a warrant for it. I'm in the US. Sorry to hear that UK is ahead of us in becoming a full-on police state.

What if I encrypt something, using my own key, and upload that to Apple's cloud? IE, not using built-in Apple encryption, but maybe even just 7-zip and a 4096 bit key? I don't know, curious what others think.

I'm guessing you're referring to radon "daughters" (or sometimes "progeny").

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1140/epjc/s10052-021-09047-2/figures/1/

Yeah, if it's easy enough, tough to beat free.

I use an IP blocker and so far so good. Won't stop the Verizon FIOS link from getting clobbered, but it's got a lot of bandwidth. At that point it'll just choke the gateway.

Yes, agreed. And as I posted above, an end user doesn't even need to care about LAMP, they just need web and maybe email hosting, or some kind of webform for messaging. So, minimal admin, cpanel, wordpress, similar.

I'm actually admin for such a thing: simple websites, wordpress, looked into a few other specialty back-end things but potential customers vanished. It's tiny, has shrunk over the years. Owner has no interest in the thing. Many huge players, considerations, etc.

It may be me, but I'm starting to see a worsening blurring of the word "cloud".

To me "cloud" is Amazon "buckets", or whatever others call it. A VM that someone has to admin, and can run whatever the thing supports.

For small local businesses, they just need some kind of web and maybe email hosting. Would you necessarily call that "cloud"? (like a godaddy or wordpress or some other cpanel or other simple admin thing)

Look into "CyberKnife" and other similar approaches to focusing radiation into a small target area.

Yes, I pretty much use 20 amp circuits for convenience outlets, and 15 amp for dedicated lighting. In fact, even in small spaces, like a basement remodel I was part of, I ran 2 lighting circuits, and I alternate them so that if one ever does go off, like a bedroom, the hall will stay on.

I agree with battery-backed emergency lights. In fact, with LEDs, they're small, easy, fairly inexpensive.

Good question. TFA says that GFCI was only required for outlets, but now even hardwired chargers will require GFCI.

In the US we have sockets and plugs for 240V @ 60 A, which would provide 11.5 kW at 80% (standard derating / safety factor for all circuit breakers). So that's a pretty good charge rate. But something that big is rarely unplugged, so might as well hardwire.

As I commented above, you can buy small electrical boxes that hold one circuit breaker, so you could mount that near the charger, rather than using a (more expensive) GFCI breaker in the breaker panel. In fact, if I was in charge (sorry for pun), I'd require that type of install, rather than GFCI in main panel.

While I'm at it: GFCI outlets have LINE (power in) and LOAD terminals. IE, you can "daisy chain" wire other standard cheap outlets to the LOAD side and they're all protected by the one GFCI outlet. Of course there are limits to how much you can do this.

I once troubleshot a customer's problem: their basement, garage, and outdoor outlets had stopped working. Hmmm. Pretty easy one: the cheapo electricians wired all of those outlets to the LOAD side of a GFCI outlet in a 1st floor powder room. Nobody noticed the outlet not working because there's little need for an outlet in a powder room (just toilet and sink).

I'm a Scandinavian car owner (older Volvo) in the US. Very interesting. I didn't know you guys have 3-phase to homes. We pretty much can not get 3-phase to a residence.

Just to clarify, in case you or others don't know, we in the US have 240V "split phase" to houses. It's 240 center-tapped, so you have 120V from phase to center-tap, center-tap is tied to neutral (return) and ground at the main breaker panel. That way we have 120V to normal outlets, usually 15 or 20 amps, sometimes 30. And 240 for "big" stuff- water heaters, dryers, HVAC, stoves, ovens, some water well pumps, etc.

Most commercial buildings have 3-phase, usually 480 coming in, but often transformed to 208 which gives you 120 phase to ground for single phase "normal" appliance outlets, and 208 3-phase for bigger stuff.

Factories have 480 3-phase and use it extensively. I recently worked in a food factory and was surprised at how much 480 was used, even in small-ish motors.

But back to residential: main power feeders from utility to house have been 100, 125, 150, 175, and now 200 is most common. So that's actually 48 kW into most homes. And, believe it or not, many new homes are built with 2 200 amp (42 breaker) panels, so nearly 100 kW. Just to clarify- we don't hog up all that power! It's more that you often need more than 42 spaces in the breaker panel. Every 240 V circuit uses 2 breaker spaces, so if you have 10 240 circuits, you've used up 20 spaces of the possible 42. (I think we all know why there are 42 spaces in a panel. :)

I wish this site would let me mod you "insightful", but please accept the honor. Thank you for that insight. Even as a USAian, I hate that about much of USAian "culture". People far too full of themselves, and outwardly proud of it. Bold and confident don't need to be brash and abrasive.

Not sure if you've ever visited, but it's interesting to read about people's reactions to visiting the US for the first time. Mostly that we're actually very friendly people, nice, kind, hospitable, love visitors, etc. We love accents! You'll get treated with honor and elevation if you have accents. Well, if we can understand it! Of course we have many of our own and some are impossible to understand, especially some "deep south" ones. Ugh.

I see what you did there. (sorry, couldn't resist a good pun!)

Yes, hence my comment on an inline noise filter. You know, I could experiment with that. I don't feel like shelling out $50+ for an AFCI breaker, but maybe I will and try some filtering.

You probably know that with the advent of very efficient 3-phase motor controllers and super magnets, more and more appliances are moving away from brush motors. But you can't beat them for their simplicity plus power to weight ratio. Also so easy to repair, especially when the brushes are easily accessed.

Wow, thank you for that link. I had no idea there were so many different types of breakers used in UK. Very good. I'll study up later. Just seeing the different waveforms RCDs are designed for tells me they're doing much more than simple GFCI functionality.

Here in the US, our GFCI systems, AFAIK, (I'm an EE _and_ do wiring, residential, commercial, and industrial, but I'm not necessarily up on the latest and deepest details) a GFCI outlet just looks for balance between the "hot" and "neutral", or two "hots" if it's a 240 V GFCI or breaker.

IE, the GFCI circuit does not look, at all, at protective ground current. Doing so would defeat the use-case where someone touches something "hot", but isn't grounded through that appliance, rather might be touching a water faucet, or another appliance that's plugged into a different circuit.

In fact, our GFCI outlets are perfectly useful on older circuits that do not have ground wires in the premise wiring. Again, they're just comparing outgoing and return currents.

This comment should go at the top level of this discussion, but by now it'll be lost in the noise. A fix for TFA's problem: a GFCI breaker can be mounted in a small dedicated electrical box, located right next to the car charger. No need to have it only in main breaker panel.