@blakes7bot@mas.torpidity.netSeries A, Episode 04 - Time Squad
JENNA: Gan, the aliens have linked their ship to our power source. I'm getting a very heavy power loss. I'll have to disconnect. You'll be all right, won't you?
GAN: [Nods] Yes.
https://blake.torpidity.net/m/104/454 B7B6
@samvarma@fosstodon.orgSo I am now at 10% battery, with the machine connected to the power adapter… I wonder what happens when it gets to 0, but is still connected. Losing a percentage point every few minutes at this stage.
Almost seems like it uses the battery by default, and the power going in only goes to charging the battery, not actually running the machine?
And what would happen if I set topaz to do upscaling overnight?
@cdarwin@c.imRepublicans hold a 219-213 majority in the House,
but they could lock in more seats if reapportionments go their way
Normally, redistricting only occurs after the US census counts residents in each state every 10 years.
But a demand from Donald Trump to lock in more Republican-leaning districts in Congress,
together with a changing legal landscape around partisan gerrymandering,
set off a chain of mid-decade reapportionments.
Republicans and Democrats have…
@blakes7bot@mas.torpidity.netSeries D, Episode 02 - Power
PELLA: I shall. You follow. [exits]
[Gunn Sar's room. He is lying on a table while Nina massages him.]
CATO: [Enters] Sir, we have the intruder. His equipment and gun. [Hands them to Gunn Sar.]
https://blake.torpidity.net/m/402/56 B7B3
@blakes7bot@mas.torpidity.net
@hex@kolektiva.socialI explained something for a friend in a simple way, and I think it's worth paraphrasing again here.
You cannot create a system that constrains itself. Any constraint on a system must be external to the system, or that constraint can be ignored or removed. That's just how systems work. Every constitution for every country claims to do this impossible thing, a thing proven is impossible almost 100 years ago now. Gödel's loophole has been known to exist since 1947.
Every constitution in the world, every "separation of powers" and set of "checks and balances," attempts to do something which is categorically impossible. Every government is always, at best, a few steps away from authoritarianism. From this, we would then expect that governments trand towards authoritarianism. Which, of course, is what we see historically.
Constraints on power are a formality, because no real controls can possibly exist. So then democratic processes become sort of collective classifiers that try to select only people who won't plunge the country into a dictatorship. Again, because this claim of restrictions on powers is a lie (willful or ignorant, a lie reguardless) that classifier has to be correct 100% of the time (even assuming a best case scenario). That's statistically unlikely.
So as long as you have a system of concentrated power, you will have the worst people attracted to it, and you will inevitably have that power fall into the hands of one of the worst possible person.
Fortunately, there is an alternative. The alternative is to not centralize power. In the security world we try to design systems that assume compromise and minimize impact, rather than just assuming that we will be right 100% of the time. If you build systems that maximially distribute power, then you minimize the impact of one horrible person.
Now, I didn't mention this because we're both already under enough stress, but...
Almost 90% of the nuclear weapons deployed around the world are in the hands of ghoulish dictators. Only two of the countries with nuclear weapons not straight up authoritarian, but they're not far off. We're one crashout away from steralizing the surface of the Earth with nuclear hellfire. Maybe countries shouldn't exist, and *definitely* multiple thousands of nuclear weapons shouldn't exist and shouldn't all be wired together to launch as soon as one of these assholes goes a bit too far sideways.
@cdarwin@c.imFederal agents were told this week that they have broader power to arrest people without a warrant, according to an internal Immigration and Customs Enforcement memo reviewed by The New York Times.
The change expands the ability of lower-level ICE agents to carry out sweeps rounding up people they encounter and suspect are undocumented immigrants,
rather than targeted enforcement operations in which they set out, warrant in hand, to arrest a specific person.
A week before t…
@Sustainable2050@mastodon.energySolar, wind power and batteries are set to make life a misery for the liquefied natural gas (LNG) market.
A Reuters Breakingviews prediction for 2026. https://www.reuters.com/commentary/breakingviews/renewables-turn-lng-glut-into-sinkhole-2…
@aral@mastodon.ar.al“As we consider these three risks, we don’t have to speculate about how AI data centers might affect Massachusetts. Consider Ireland, a country with a similar population size, where AI has driven a data center boom. Warehouses full of servers are on pace to use one-third of Ireland’s electricity, drawing from fossil-fuel power plants and wind farms alike. That keeps old, dirty plants on the grid, sucks up renewable energy that otherwise would help replace fossil fuels, and drives up costs fo…
@cdarwin@c.imAcquiring solar panels at home can be an expensive hassle for people in the US.
But small, simple, plug-in solar panels for use on balconies are soon to become available for millions of Americans,
with advocates hoping the technology will quickly go mainstream.
Balcony solar panels are now widespread in countries such as Germany
– where more than 1m homes have them
– but have until now been stymied in the US by state regulations.
This is set to change, wit…
@Techmeme@techhub.socialBig Tech's AI data center plans, which are set to need an estimated 44GW of additional capacity by 2028, face a power crunch that could deflate the AI "bubble" (Financial Times)
https://ig.ft.com/ai-power/
@mcdanlj@social.makerforums.infoI've been working on assembling my one-kilogram QSO¹ kit. I set a 1kg limit including the case into which to cram everything I need to work POTA on a whim because it's just bouncing around in the bottom of my backpack. I'm still working out what to carry for filter, choke, and ununs; after I'm done, I'll write up the whole kit with pictures.
I just swapped out a 20Ah Anker power bank for an 88g
@cowboys@darktundra.xyzTom Brady's NFL Power Rankings: Pats, Packers Take Big Drops As Playoffs Loom https://www.foxsports.com/stories/nfl/tom-bradys-nfl-power-rankings-week-16
@pre@boing.worldSo the temporary placeholder name "Your Party" is made permanent.
None of the options on the shortlist were good. Most of them just as grammatically inconvenient as the dumb placeholder name.
The people who decide on the short-list, who can be a member, whose votes counts and what the options are, have quite a lot of power.
Zara Sultana boycotted day one over who sets the rules and who can be involved. If Your Party have a governing body with power to override conference they end up like the Labour party and just are easily taken over and usurped by a cabal of thatcherite neoliberal capitalists.
They did allow the dual membership system and a wider governance, so Zara won on who gets to be a member and who gets to be in charge. Which is probably good.
Coz as the terrible name shows, if you put the idiots in charge you'll get idiocy not good collective decision making.
For now the membership appear to have won, and I hear are they are all very excited and fierce and canny and not likely to let the old guard just set up another dictatorship from the top.
They currently have half the membership count of the greens, less than a quarter that claimed by Reform. Lets hope they can get some attention towards something other than how billionaires think the country should be run and focus on the people.
Here's hoping they can inflate that number by draining the Labour party and Reform members who just want change really rather than actually liking anything said by Farage.
#yourParty #ukpol
@hex@kolektiva.socialAfter #Trump finally crashes and burns (I'm still saying I don't think he makes it to the mid terms, and I think it's more than possible he won't make it to the end of the year) we'll hear a lot of people say, "the system worked!" Today people are already talking about "saving democracy" by fighting back. This will become a big rally cry to vote (for Democrats, specifically), and the complete failure of the system will be held up as the best evidence for even greater investment in it.
I just want to point out that American democracy gave nuclear weapons to a pedophile, who, before being elected was already a well known sexual predator, and who made the campaign promise to commit genocide. He then preceded to commit genocide. And like, I don't care that he's "only" kidnaped and disappeared a few thousand brown people. That's still genocide. Even if you don't kill every member of a targeted group, any attempt to do so is still "committing genocide." Trump said he would commit genocide, then he hired all the "let's go do a race war" guys he could find and *paid* them to go do a race war. And, even now as this deranged monster is crashing out, he is still authorized to use the world's largest nuclear arsenal.
He committed genocide during his first term when his administration separated migrant parents and children, then adopted those children out to other parents. That's technically genocide. The point was to destroy the very people been sending right wing terror squads after.
There was a peaceful hand over of power to a known Russian asset *twice*, and the second time he'd already committed *at least one* act of genocide *and* destroyed cultural heritage sites (oh yeah, he also destroyed indigenous grave sites, in case you forgot, during his first term).
All of this was allowed because the system is set up to protect exactly these types of people, because *exactly* these types of people are *the entire power structure*.
Going back to that system means going back to exactly the system that gave nuclear weapons to a pedophile *TWICE*.
I'm already seeing the attempts to pull people back, the congratulations as we enter the final phase, the belief that getting Trump out will let us all get back to normal. Normal. The normal that lead here in the first place. I can already see the brunch reservations being made. When Trump is over, we will be told we won. We will be told that it's time to go back to sleep.
When they tell you everything worked, everything is better, that we can stop because we won, tell them "fuck you! Never again means never again." Destroy every system that ever gave these people power, that ever protected them from consequences, that ever let them hide what they were doing.
These democrats funded a genocide abroad and laid the groundwork for genocide at home. They protected these predators, for years. The whole power structure is guilty. As these files implicate so many powerful people, they're trying to shove everything back in the box. After all the suffering, after we've finally made it clear that we are the once with the power, only now they're willing to sacrifice Trump to calm us all down.
No, that's a good start but it can't be the end.
Winning can't be enough to quench that rage. Keep it burning. When this is over, let victory fan that anger until every institution that made this possible lies in ashes. Burn it all down and salt the earth. Taking down Trump is a great start, but it's not time to give up until this isn't possible again.
#USPol
@kurtsh@mastodon.social
@cellfourteen@social.petertoushkov.euInterestingly, CachyOS was restrcting by default the power draw of my GPU. Once I enabled the maximum allowed wattage and set the KDE power preferences to Performance, this game matched its FPS/Upscaler results in Windows and Linux 🕺 👾 🎮 (It's a 3 min video of me, running like a madman on an alien planet.)
The Alters - Windows vs. Linux - FSR 4.0.2 INT8 vs. FSR 4.0.0 FP8 (EMU)
@lightweight@mastodon.nzoss.nzACT and their Atlas Network operative leader, David Seymour, are the tail wagging the National ACT NZF coalition. Luxon conceded pretty much everything ACT required from National. Perhaps he is more right wing than National is, but also wanted the reins of power, so he was happy for ACT to lead it... but I wonder how National supporters feel about our domestic policy being set by an overseas oligarch-funded 'tail' wagging the National dog?
@leftsidestory@mstdn.socialSome City Some Nature III 🏙️
一些城一些自然 III 🏙️
📷 Nikon F4E
🎞️ ERA 100, expired 1993
#filmphotography #Photography #blackandwhite
@azonenberg@ioc.exchangePCIe update: I'm getting through the flow control initialization for VC0 (the only one my minimal PCIe endpoint will support) and the host is now sending me a TLP. This appears to be a "set slot power limit" message request which I'm going to ignore because I'm not in an actual slot.
But I still need to ACK it and send flow control DLLPs, so that's next on the list. Right now the host repeatedly sends the TLP (not getting an ACK) until it times out from lack o…
@Sustainable2050@mastodon.energy 150 GW in a year: record new wind power capacity installed globally in 2025! Not really evenly spread over the world ;)
China 100 GW (that country where Trump couldn't find a single wind turbine :)
Europe 17 GW
US 7 GW
India 6 GW
Rest of the World 20 GW
<…
@trezzer@social.linux.pizzaManaged to put the new Pi music player together before leaving work today. Got it set up with remote control and a quick test of playback. Next stop: Speaker mounting and figuring out if I should bet on physical security through obscurity by making it not easily visible or using a moderately long RCA cable. What’s a reasonable cable length with decent quality cables?
@mlawton@mstdn.socialPleasant conditions out: sunny and windy, cool but not cold. So I ducked out of the office for an afternoon runabout on the greenway.
Followed it up with a walkabout while talking to my sister on the phone.
#Running
@brichapman@mastodon.socialSolar power just hit a new milestone. Chinese researchers broke the 10% efficiency barrier for selenium solar cells for the first time, reaching 10.3%.
What makes this exciting: selenium cells have wider bandgaps and high efficiency potential. The team used optimized contacts, light-driven crystallization, and special annealing techniques.
The result? Stable devices that lost minimal efficiency after 1,000 hours of testing.
@cdarwin@c.im @cdarwin@c.imIt’s hard to articulate just how quickly batteries for grid storage are coming online.
These massive arrays of cells can soak up electricity when sources like solar are available and prices are low,
and then discharge power back to the grid when it’s needed most.
Back in 2015, the battery storage industry had installed only a fraction of a gigawatt-hour of battery storage capacity across the US.
That year, it set a seemingly bold target of adding 35 gigawatt-hours by …
@primonatura@mstdn.social"Analysis: UK renewables enjoy record year in 2025 – but gas power still rises"
#UK #UnitedKingdom #Energy #Renewables
@cdarwin@c.imThe US supreme court on Monday appeared poised to support the Trump administration’s argument that the president should be able to fire independent board members
-- dismissing a precedent that for nearly a century they have been protected from presidential interference.
The case gives the court, which has a 6-3 conservative majority,
an opportunity to overturn a New Deal era supreme court precedent in a case called
"Humphrey’s Executor v United States"
…
@blakes7bot@mas.torpidity.netSeries D, Episode 02 - Power
VILA: Outside.
PELLA: Are the others looking for him?
VILA: Yes, we think he may have had an accident. [pause] How do you know about the others?
https://blake.torpidity.net/m/402/109 B7B4
@cdarwin@c.imBillionaires are spending massive sums on politics. A backlash brews.
Christina Persson,
a 55-year-old English teacher in a small town of just over 2,600 people,
is fed up with billionaires.
In May, during the debate over Trump’s “One Big Beautiful Bill,”
she spearheaded a move to erect a billboard reading,
“Tax breaks for billionaires. CUTS for everyone else.”
Two months later, she set up shop at the county fair and sold
“Eat the Rich” ice c…
@cdarwin@c.imTrump's mad hubris has been coming fast and furious.
On Air Force One, next to a grinning and bobbing Sen. Lindsey Graham,
Trump doubled down on the notion that the failed state of Cuba would be next to fall,
finding time to threaten Colombia, Mexico, and even Greenland.
This isn’t evidence of great power.
But it is more than just the egotistical impulse of an unchecked imperial president.
It is a deliberate strategy that involves the gleeful destructio…
