It almost seems like someone ought to be able to build some kind of digital currency with low transaction fees and no centralized payment processor that could power microtransactions. I wonder why nobody has done that yet.
I know crypto was supposed to solve this problem, but I’ve never seen an implementation that actually did the job. You’d think someone would have built a successful “Patreon for micropayments” in the past 10 years, but no one has.
Yeah I think the problem is that most of the main chains had astronomical transaction fees; most of the side chains that solved this problem had a trust problem; and Bitcoin Lightning was sorta dead on arrival, though it had both the trust and the technology solution. At that point, this forum had already moved BTC from "amazing new technology" to "huge threat to social order and environment".
3M 6800 have all but sold out on Amazon, probably because of this review. I had almost forgotten about Portland in 2020. This author has some great writing about the double standard of non-violence as well. 10/10
I would generally use McMaster-Carr whenever possible. They will almost never go out of stock even during national crises. I don't generally trust Amazon for items that I can't validate myself due to counterfeiting, e.g. there's a lot of fake knockoff HEPA filters marketed as OEM.
Zoro still has them in stock. If you haven't heard of them, they are a subsidiary of Grainger, a huge industrial supply company. They seem to ship even faster than Amazon in my experience.
Another curious historical point: gas masks were banned in Seattle, back in '99. I'm unsure if that was repealed because the majority of search results are about a new law regarding masked law enforcement.
Very recently Amazon announced they'd stop commingling inventory from 3P sellers and themselves, so it should be safer to buy from Amazon in the future (if you look at the specific seller), but still maybe worth avoiding for safety critical items which are difficult to inspect.
They still need to prove that isn't just a saying. A good reputation takes a long time to develop and very little time to lose. With safety gear I would not take a chance.
If I'm going to take a chance I'd prefer to support a small company. Amazon is big, but I find most things they sell I can find a small company that sells the same for a similar price and they know their product and so will direct me to what works well.
There are some products where I absolutely don't take a chance (I buy all my tourniquets/etc from North American Rescue, who are the manufacturer or primary distributor, directly), but for a while I wouldn't even buy razor blades from Amazon because of the risk of getting fakes or commingled inventory from shoplifting gangs. I'm willing to take that level of risk on Amazon policy now.
As long as they don't make a mistake and send the wrong thing anyway, which happens. You're always better off getting safety critical items from a place that only stocks from a verified supply chain, rather than a place that keep them separate merely by policy.
FACE covers "physical" obstruction or threats of violence or force. Standing in the room and yelling is not physical obstruction, and none of what was yelled was threatening violence. Regardless, Don Lemon himself didn't take part in any of that - he just went there to film it.
The DOJ just wants to scare people out of protesting or reporting on crimes, score some points with their religious base, and "own the libs" by turning the FACE act around, probably in retaliation for the (IMO overcharging) of the "Pro Life Grandmother" aka Paula “Paulette” Harlow:
>“[The defendants] forcefully entered the clinic and set about blockading two clinic doors using their bodies, furniture, chains, and ropes,” the US Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia said.
No, there's basically no reason you'd ever want an alkaline battery except cost. For your use case of long-term storage or a rarely used flashlight (e.g. in a car emergency kit), you'd want a Li/FeS2 as the parent poster recommended, also called just a "Lithium" primary (i.e. non-rechargable) cell. They have a longer shelf life, don't leak, hold more energy, can provide a higher discharge current, work over a wider temperature range, and have safety characteristics very similar to alkaline.
I was going to say cost is a really significant factor there, but I was thinking convenience retail where they are marked up. They are only 3x more on Amazon. Now you're guaranteed to damage equipment as the current alkaline formulations leak.
There is one very good reason: the discharge curve. An alcaline battery loses voltage when it discharges, the lithium ones discharge with the max voltage until they suddenly stop working.
This is a reason insulin pumps require specifically high quality alkaline and lithium is considered a risk.
Lithium primary cells have a shallower discharge curve than alkaline, but not completely flat; measuring state-of-charge is essentially trivial for any competent design engineer. Medtronic specifically recommend FR6 lithium cells in their insulin pumps.
While the Medtronic pump has a setting to toggle between "Alkaline" and "Lithium" to adjust how it reads the battery percentage, the Dana i is primarily calibrated for Alkaline (LR03).
That's an interesting counterpoint, thanks for letting me know. I was really under the impression that lithium ion batters discharged more aggressively. Maybe that's just more reflective of how they lose capacity over time? Can you speak to the fire risk?
Main disadvantage is cost. Looking on Amazon, it's $1.61/ea AA lithium vs $0.62/ea akalaline. That's Energizer vs Energizer. Amazon Basics AA alkaline are $0.32/ea. (Unlike alkaline, knock-off lithium aren't much cheaper than Energizer.)
I actually can't think of anything besides smoke detectors that I'd use these for, of which my house has 10 or so. Not having to replace those yearly would be worth it. I use Eneloop NiMH or Li-ion rechargeables just about everywhere else.
There are a handful of applications where alkalines are better. IR TV remotes run effectively forever on a couple of batteries and the slow self discharge on the alkalines makes them ideal for the task.
In practice, the Duracell alkaline battery will leak caustic fluids inside the remote control and destroy it, and you will have to mortgage your house to buy a replacement on eBay, if it's even available. (I pick on Duracell because they are the worst. They leak if you look at them wrong, when they are brand new, inside the original packaging, before their "expiration date". But all alkalines are bad.)
All my remotes get NiMH batteries, no matter what. I don't care if one charge cycle lasts 10 years. It's cheaper than having the battery destroy the remote.
I've only had batteries leak in remotes left unused for over a year. I just pick up Duracell or whatever is at Costco.
I've also bought two replacement remotes off of Amazon in the past year, one Samsung and one Insignia. I think they were $15-20 each, which seemed very reasonable to me.
Generally they won't have the manufacturer's logo, but everything else on the outside looks 100% identical, and all the buttons worked.
I have never, in my 40 years of life, had an alkaline battery leak and destroy something. I'm aware that it can happen, but in practice it doesn't happen very often.
I don't know what to tell you. I'm older than you. I've seen it happen 20-30 times in my life. I've seen batteries leak in flashlights, clock radios (the backup battery), wall clocks, calculators, cameras, remote controls, thermostats, wireless mouse, and so on.
A few years ago, I had an unopened pack of 8xAA Duracell alkalines. They had expiration dates on them, and had 2-3 years left. Two of the batteries were leaking in the pack.
Over the past 15 years, I have gradually migrated almost everything to NiMH. I don't see leaking batteries anymore in my house. But go to a thrift store, e.g. Goodwill, and open up the battery compartments of things. Many of them will have been destroyed by the leaking batteries.
I have many times in my less than 40 years of life. Often things that had batteries left in then and forgotten about for a few years, and often with the cheap batteries something came with. Often with kids toys, TV remotes and rarely used flashlights. If you're the kind of person that takes batteries out when you put things away or you change the batteries somewhat soon after they die you likely never had any leak.
I have a Canon AE-1 that takes a 4LR44 to operate the light meter. When I got it the battery had deteriorated significantly, causing a lot of damage to the battery area. I had to remake the battery contacts cutting and soldering in new springs and pads as the corrosion had practically completely eaten the old ones. That was probably the most notable leak I've encountered. But the previous owners didn't even know there was a battery in it, so it likely had that battery in there for a decade or more.
I have seen every kind of common alkaline battery size leak acid or have corrosion. 9V, AA, AAA, C, D. It helps that I used to fix broken things for a living, I guess.
Can’t recall if I’ve seen a CR2032 leak acid or corrode, but I think I have.
I think you're thinking of rechargeable Lithium-ion batteries. GP is talking about lithium primary cells, which have even lower self-discharge than alkalines. Usually about 1/2 the self-discharge rate of alkalines.
Huh? Are you saying that if Gavin Newsom is elected, rather than turning down the rhetoric, restoring the rule of law, and taking the pressure off of the immigrants and brown people who are scapegoats of the current administration, he instead wants to commit violations of the 4th amendment under the color of searching for immigrants but _actually_ in order to find firearms that are legally owned by US citizens? Presumably in preparation for a mass violation of the 2nd amendment (aka "round 'em up boys")? And your source for this is ... you're friends with someone who works "in the Newsom camp" and you go out for lunch with them?
I'll be honest, this sounds like some crazy conspiracy theory, so I'm gonna take it for what it's worth ... nothing.
Oh boy, just what we need. Drama between open hardware vendors. Neither of these responses feels like the complete story to me. I hope there's a path forward to heal this rift in one way or another. Both SparkFun and Adafruit are doing amazing things for the community and I would love to see both continue to thrive.
There was conflict between the new (old) hardware manufacturer Core Devices, and the Rebble community that's maintained the app store and software for the original Pebbles. I think they've worked it out, but it got ugly for a bit.
I'd say the opposite - any fibre in a wall should probably be single-mode fibre (SMF), simply for future proofing. Single mode optics aren't much more expensive and single mode fibre hasn't changed nearly as many times as multi-mode. You can run 25G over the same SMF that once ran 1G - not so with MMF.
The interesting bit is that Trump and many of his supporters seem (to me) to be openly working to bring an end to US dominance and promote the likes of China to the top spot instead. The US got its global power by being relatively undestroyed by WWII, and thus both willing and able to pay to rebuild the rest of the world, while performing some very sneaky currency and political manipulations. Now the US wants to cut off our allies and strengthen our enemies.
You have to differentiate what countries leaders know and the general population knows.
I'd argue that leaders in South/Central America were under no illusions of how the US operated - the fact that Trump does so openly doesn't really change that. The 'great game' goes on.
What's changed is the wider public perception - both home and abroad. The question is will that create political pressure for a change.
For example, the new openess of the US-Israeli agenda in Gaza and the West Bank and elsewhere appears to have really shifted the political landscape domestically in the US in terms of unconditional support for Israel. The US self image is potentially shifting - this could have much bigger domestic implications.
Likewise aboard, while the current US hostility to China is not a suprise to the leadership in China - it's a continuation. The view of the US in the general population in China will be shifting, which will potentially create political change in the response.
Now I'm not sure Trump understands he is potentially squandering that soft power, because he lives a bubble which applauds the strongman messaging - and let's face it - he has won 2 elections on the back of it.
That for me here is the real risk - people shifting from thinking they were the good guys ( even if that was not entirely true ) to accepting they are out for themselves - and how that then effects both domestic and foreign policy over time - will US society fragment with people being ever more isolated domestically and as a country abroad?
Pretty much as you say. Legal exists within a system of laws. Hypothetically these laws might not have a carve-out for "CTO doesn't like the behavior" but they almost certainly do have a carve-out for "national security reasons". You'll pretty much never find a lawyer advising a client to break the law because it would be more ethical to do so.
who knows how often or what kind of access is/can be given, but we will never know most likely because National Security Letters are almost always accompanied with gag orders
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