• 5 Posts
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Joined 11 months ago
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Cake day: July 30th, 2023

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  • And btw: you don’t need to reach 60°C with a heat pump. That would be pretty inefficient.

    Thanks for the feedback.

    My boiler gives me control of the temp of the water running through the radiators which is independent of the room air temp thermostat. I set the water to ~55°C which seems to reasonably get the air to 17° without running continuously. I mentioned 60° because I figured that temp would enable someone to heat their room up quickly. I wonder why you say a heat pump would not need 60°. I would think the radiators need to reach a high temp like ~50—60° regardless of the kind of furnace. Maybe I’m doing something inefficient. Should I use a lower temp? I could lower the water temp but then there would be a point where the furnace has to run continuously which i would think is inefficient. I’m not sure how to find the efficiency sweet spot.

    UPDATE

    That pricetag is just the unit and standard installation probably. Pieces are crazy high Here in Germany because the demand is crazy high. Not many heating installers have made the additional qualifications, so those who did can demand practically anything.

    Sounds reasonable. So if the demand has out-stripped supply on heat pumps, I wonder if geo-thermal would actually be cheaper than a heat pump ATM. IIRC the digging would be ~€10k (what I think is a typical price for digging a well… could be off). Though I don’t suppose you could use wall radiators with geothermal. Since geothermal water is only ~6° warmer in the winter, hydro-radiant flooring would have to be installed.






  • What bug report? There’s no bug single report in particular to speak of. I’ve filed hundreds if not thousands of bug reports over the years. The post is a reflection of a subset of those experiences.

    When a developer asks a tester to look at a module in the source code, that is not a consequence of a “half assed bug report”. It’s the contrary. When a dev knows a particular module of code is suspect, the bug report served well in giving a detailed idea of what the issue is.





  • That’s fair enough, but it’s a bit of both (satire and reality). It’s actually a true account (details withheld because I have a bit of respect for the developer in the recent case). This is something that really happens. Not often, but occasionally there are devs & others who expect bug reporters to do a fix. There’s a poor attitude that bug reporters are in some way a beneficiary/consumer and the false idea that the devs are working for the bug reporter. There’s also an assumption that the bug reporter is in some way in need of a fix. When in fact the bug reporter is a volunteer contributor, performing work for the project just like the dev. It’s just as wrong for a dev to demand work a bug reporter work on the code as it is for a bug reporter to demand work from a dev. Everyone gives what they can or wants to. A bug report is not an individual support request. It’s a community bug – one that may or may not even affect the bug reporter.





  • I wondered what that article would say about Ada. No mention. But certainly Ada gives you the ability to have the issues that are listed so apparently Ada is memory unsafe (despite it being highly regarded as a safe language overall).

    Also worth noting that Ada developers generally consider rust a watered down lesser alternative. OTOH, rust has memory safety and Ada does not, correct?




  • My early thought was: how can energy be a human right when you have people living remote and far from the grid?

    Suppose Alice and Bob both need an organ transplant. Only one viable organ is available. In that case, it is /impossible/ to protect the human right to live for both people. But we do not say “welp, guess we have to scrap the right to live as a human right”. We maintain the right to live as a human right even though protecting that right is impossible in some situations. If an ER doc decides to save Alice and let Bob die and he gets dragged into court for violating Bob’s human rights, the doc obviously has a strong defense that he was forced. The other human rights violation is that the two people were not treated as equals. The defense would be that if you let them both die to treat them as equals, the right to live was denied in more cases than needed.

    So w.r.t. energy, we could still declare energy is a human right (or claim that it inherently follows from other declared rights) despite the impossibility of serving everyone.


  • Should everyone have access to pay for the energy they consume? Sure.

    The problem in some regions (e.g. Europe for sure & probably China) is the utility companies force payment by bank transfer. So if someone is excluded from the banking system because banks refuse them or the consumer refuses the bank, they’re stuffed because the suppliers will not accept cash. The US somewhat protects against that because legal tender laws ensure that all debts can be paid in cash.

    But in any case, indeed this is the no-brainer case. People should not be refused energy by way of exclusion due to payment methods.

    Should they be granted free energy they aren’t paying for? Um, erm, well…

    This is the case Europe does better than the US.

    I think in the US they just cut you off if you can’t pay your bills (though there are probably some welfare programs probably mitigate that to some extent).

    In Europe, they don’t just pull the plug on you. No matter how deep your debt is, they throttle you so you have a little energy but your consumption is limited. This is not a solid option though because the throttling is only possible if you have a contract for energy to begin with. If you just moved and don’t yet have a contract, then they can cut you off. I’m not sure if suppliers can refuse to let you start a contract, but the contracts are worded such that you agree to pay by bank transfer, thus unbanked people are essentially forced to sign a contract they cannot satisfy.