Sorry for late reply: in such a use case you'd select the fuse specs to match the need- hold current, trip current, etc. I only did a brief skim of available ones but there are many that would work well. Forward resistance is extremely low for these types of currents, on the order of milliohms and sub-milliohms, so I^R losses would be nil.

I'm not sure why they're not used, but when I get a chance I'll ask a very genius EE I know. My hunch is they just don't want to add the cost.

I have some experience installing PV systems (here in US).

Must be online? I'll do some research, but that sounds worrying. I wouldn't mind a passive monitoring system being online, but I would not want the inverter itself potentially vulnerable to attack.

The inverters I've installed simply sense the grid's demand for electricity and vary their output accordingly. Not sure why one would need remote control of an inverter.

Disclaimer: I'm an EE but haven't researched this, this post is not authoritative. It's just meant as an idea tossed out there for possible discussion.

Have you or has anyone thought about using self-resetting fuses on each battery? That won't solve every scenario, but should make a lithium-based battery pack much safer. One would need to find out the full operating safe areas (temperature + current) to decide what the fuse specs need to be. Of course then lower the fuse amp limit even more for safety margin. Determine how much current your device needs then figure out how many cells you need in parallel.

Of course if the cell shorts internally it's boom. AFAIK that's usually due to cells being packed tightly with no room for normal expansion.

Some years ago I stumbled on an article about Li-ion cell recharging. Not sure if the article was authoritative- I didn't do much more research. But it said you don't want to charge Li-ion with constant current, that something bad happens. They want constant voltage, which might be a lot of amps initially. But then you have to limit the charge time, all while monitoring temperature. Of course that's all do-able, and normal Li cell packs have circuitry to do that.

Sorry for delay- life's crazy right now. Thanks for that. Yeah, sounds like a great platform. My mom adapted extremely well to computers. She started with Win98 and AOL. I have to give AOL a ton of credit for making things easy for her and other novices. I gradually migrated her up to Win7. Sadly she passed away 7 years ago but otherwise I would have seen how she liked MacOS and several Linux desktops.

I'm a big fan of MX Linux. Not actively running it- more long stories. I'm mainly a Slackware guy, also done much with Alpine, gave MX a deep try for server use, but server owner changed long story things so that's all tabled. MX allows you to run systemd if you wish. It also installs some systemd support directories and files for applications that (stupidly) depend on those things, but don't need the actual systemd daemon itself.

Thank you, that video is hilarious. I'm just a few minutes in and I love how he compared Fisker's (the guy) face and smile to the car's front.

I'm also having nightmares. 2 years ago I bought an '06 Volvo salvage car that I otherwise love. The most worrisome thing: "Reduced Engine Performance Mode" message, which actually has 3 or 4 levels of "you're screwed". Thank you Bosch, and Volvo too. I wonder if I can adapt a Chevy ECU?

Supposedly there are software updates that improve some of the hyper-sensitivity to unimportant things that cause the limp home mode, but said updates done only by dealer will probably cost me more than I paid for the car. And, maybe they've already been done to my car? I have _no_ history on the car.

Trying to learn how to do my own programming. I've found some interfaces and software but they're also more than I paid for the car. I keep searching...

What about your new mom?

Sorry, had to!

Which distro / desktop is she using?

My point exactly: there are multiple. For most people, sadly, it's Microsoft Windows. No choices. Many (most?) don't even mess with the few customizations there are in Windows. But it's mostly consistent from computer to computer.

I know many semi-techies who talk about that they're using "Linux". I ask "which distribution?" I get deer in headlights. After more questions, or sometimes eyes-on, it very often turns out to be Ubuntu, but could be any of (too?) many.

A concern: non-techie person "A" uses Mint / Cinnamon. Non-techie "B" also has Linux, but Zorin running XFCE. Person "A" wants to use person "B"'s computer, or maybe just looks at it, but has no clue what is going on, gets confused, becomes disillusioned about Linux.

So, back to my original question: which distro (and window manager) is best for most non-tech people?

I have some machines 20 years old, working perfectly. I don't think an SSD is necessary. Most of mine run spinning rust and they're fine. Gotta be careful with swapfile: excess background tasks hogging up RAM causing swapping. Also defrag occasionally.

In a way I'm glad Microsoft is abandoning 10. It would be so so awesome if it triggered a large loss for Microsoft and exodus from Windows.

We techies should use it as an opportunity to help people upgrade to Linux. Not sure what distro I'd recommend though. (yes, we all have opinions on that...)

Also not a lawyer, but have been doing much legal research for other reasons.

In the US, the legal system adheres to "The American Rule" which means each litigant pays for their own lawyers. Obviously extremely unfair when a multi-billion corporation goes against a single non-wealthy person. You'd wish the lawmakers would do something about these insane unfair and unbalanced cases.

However, you can search "American Rule exceptions" and find out reasons you might be able to sue for and recover legal fees.

As with far too much of the legal system, there are many reasons and gray areas. Unreasonable delays, malicious prosecution, etc. As always you have to prove these things.

IMHO using extremely fast and possibly inaccurate AI is a bit unfair.

Also, background / clips should not count as infringement. If someone posts full and uninterrupted audio of a song, I can see where that might constitute a violation if the poster didn't get permission.

I don't do much video work, but some years ago a friend asked me to edit together a video from clips he made of a vacation home he owns and rents out. He wanted some background music. I did a quick search and found out that one of my all-time favorite groups, "Spyro Gyra", encourages people to use their music in videos, wherever / whatever. They deserve far more recognition and audience, but I suspect since they buck the big money machine, they don't get much air play.

Yeah I just remembered- the CD drive often (usually?) connected to a sound card. They often were sold together. IIRC some sound cards had 2 or 3 CD drive interface connectors, so could support most drives. Ugh.

I barely knew about them at the time and was unhappy when I learned about the many. Company I worked for at that time was doing all SCSI hard disks and CD drives. I got lucky and got an external NEC CD drive (on clearance) that has SCSI and it worked very well. Also got early Linux CDs including SLS, Yggdrasil, and I forget what else. I tried several, liked SLS which became Slackware, which is still my primary Linux distro. I used to boot from a pair of floppies, but fortunately never had to install from a pile. Did some Xenix installs from 5.25" floppies, but I think it's only like 7 or so. And then Windows 3.11- I think that was 10 or so?

And Lockheed, particularly the L-1011 which IIRC has a pretty good safety record.

> absolute language

I agree, and have noticed it seems to be getting worse. Maybe I'm just noticing it more. Some guesses involve people trying to be more concise, like in texts, and the result is less clear communication. Maybe add in, for whatever reason, people being stronger in their beliefs, and then more emphatic. I dunno.

The Air India Preliminary report specifically states "01" seconds.

Yes. I downloaded their preliminary report. I just searched it for "switch". There's a good pic showing the switches, right below the main throttle levers. The switches have fairly large bat handles. The investigators will need to dig into maintenance records to see if that plane had been checked for proper locks on the switches, but the preliminary report indicates they were not checked, as it was only an "advisory not mandatory".

IMHO, looking at the picture, they're not well protected, however it would be fairly clumsy to switch both of them off accidentally.

Interestingly I can't find anything in the report regarding whether the investigators found the switch locks installed, and/or functional. They look pretty ugly, not sure if they're too damaged to analyze the locks.