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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: June 9th, 2023

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  • Agreed.

    As I say, it’s just the idea of 1.5m can’t be wrong that is wrong. More so coming from a newspaper that depends on the success of marketing for its revenue.

    Approx 2% of a population can definitely be sold a crock of shit if the marketing is good. Just look at the numbers who voted Trump in the US or Reform in the UK.

    Honestly, if solar Balconies produced 30% of the nations’ electricity, then it would be very impressive.

    But while Germany producing 54% clean energy is bloody impressive. Honestly, 30% is likely to be solar as a whole, not just balcony solar.

    The number of locations where the low sun would be inline to balconies is limited. Due to urban conditions. Mainly only higher flats over the average city line and rural areas.

    And while in those higher or rural flats. The low sun may shine the correct way 30% of the day (if the panels can tilt). For that to generate 30% of the flats use over a whole year. Would take a pretty big balcony. The best panels available commercially nowadays are <300w per m2. So most balconies would have 600 to 1200w max. The whole side of the flat would likely be 4x to 6x times that.

    I’d guess it’s still worth doing. (def the whole side of the building thing) Mainly because the panels are so freaking cheap atm. It’s the cost of bats and volt/current/charge management that would be the greatest cost part. But for most users. 30% from balcony alone is not realistic.




  • Honestly, it depends on what you spend. Many high-end fridges in Europe come with 10 year manufacturer’s warrantee. And EU law requires manufacturers to provide parts for 10 years on such goods. So honestly yeah.

    That said, cheaper ones tend to make it past 5 (mine is 8 years old) without maintenance. And if I had to replace it 3 times in 10 years, it would still be cheaper than getting the expensive ones. (worse for the environment)

    As for solar panels. I am about to replace the one on my boat. It is well over 5 years old and still works. I’m replacing it because I can get 2 410w huge panels for way less than the 100w one cost the past boat owner.

    6 years really is nothing for a solar panel. My new ones came with a 20-year warrantee. (something like 85% after 20 year). High-end ones are better.

    The 2 MPPTs are likely to need replacing first. But again, 6 years may be well beyond their warrantee. But is reasonable to expect. The lifepo4 battery should just manage 10 years. Before losing significant storage. But that is with the BMS set to keep them from 10-90% charge.

    So no, 6 years is a very reasonable time to expect from solar.

    EDIT: In a house setup. It is the inverter that is most likely to need replacing. But again, 6 years is more than likely for a quality one.

    On my boat, the vast majority of the equipment is 12v, as it’s just more efficient. But the cheap (very) Chinese inverter did not last a year. So yeah they can be cheap crap if you don’t get good ones. But we don’t really use it much. So haven’t bother replacing it yet. Will do so this summer.




  • Only if those device makers are willing to use it. And that has always been the tightrope linux has walked.

    Its very history as a x86 platform means it has needed to develop drivers where hardware providers did not care. So that code needed to run on closed hardware.

    It was bloody rare in the early days that any manufacturer cared to help. And still today its a case of rare hardware that needs no non free firmware.

    Free hardware is something I’ll support. But it is stallman et als fight not the linux kernel developers. They started out having to deal with patented hardware before any one cared.


  • proprietary

    Well related to the owner is the very definition of proprietary. So as far as upstream vs not available for upstream is concerned. That is what the term is used for in linux.

    So yep by its very definition while a manufacture is using a licence that other distributions cannot embed with their code. Marking it proprietary is how the linux kernal tree was designed to handle it.

    EDIT: The confusion sorta comes from the whole history of IBM and the PC.

    Huge amounts of PC hardware (and honestly all modern electronics) are protected by hardware patients. Its inbuilt into the very history of IBMs bios being reverse engineered in the 1980s.

    So as Linux for all its huge hardware support base today. It was originally designed as a x86(IBM PC) compatible version of Unix.

    As such when Stallman created GPL 3 in part as a way of trying to end hardware patients. Linux was forced to remain on GPL 2 simply because it is unable to exist under GPL 3 freedom orientated restrictions.

    The proprietary title is not seen as an insult. But simply an indication that it is not in the control of the developers labelling it.






  • High use Blender users tend to avoid AMD for the reasons you point out.

    This leads to less updates due to amd users not being to interested in the community.

    It is an issuw without any practicle solution. Because as I need a long overdue update. Again nvidia seems the only real choice.

    Everyone is sorta forced to do that unless we can convince amd users to just try out blender and submit results.

    So hi any AMD users who dont care about blender.

    Give it a try and submit performance data please.