activistPnk

times out from tor

A deal being offered in my area is:

• they cover the roof with insured PVs, which remain the property of the supplier for 30 years. The supplier installs and maintains them at no cost. They repair any damage. Homeowner pays absolutely nothing.
• no batteries. Homeowner’s consumption is gratis when the sun is hitting. Any unused energy goes back to the grid.
• homeowner gets no credit for what goes back to the grid, but they still benefit from free energy they consume when the sun is out and ultimately a reduced energy bill.
• after 30 years, the panels and everything become the homeowner’s property. (The panels are likely worthless at that age anyway)
• if the roof needs to be renovated in the future, the supplier removes the panels and reinstalls them at no cost, but the homeowner will have some fees for things like scaffolding.

The supplier profits from some kind of green certificates from the gov.

Seems like a no-brainer, on the edge of too good to be true. So I’m trying to decompose this to look for traps and anti-features.

It seems to boil down to homeowners trade roof space for energy in return. 30 year contract.

It complicates any plans to go off-grid. A homeowner can buy the PVs at a price that decreases every 5 years, starting at €850 each in the 1st year. So €8500 for 10 panels. Then they can exit the contract and go off-grid in the first 5 years for that price. That price is where the deal seems a bit sour. A PV should only cost around ~€60, correct? Isn’t €850 an extortionate price for a PV? If someone knows they want to go off-grid in the future, I get the impression they’re better off rejecting this deal and buying their own panels.

They install a few different meters. So I wonder if it’s really just fancy metering. E.g. wouldn’t it make sense to feed all solar power into the grid, then just pause or offset the homeowner’s meter for energy they consume from the grid while feeding the grid?

cross-posted from: https://slrpnk.net/post/3036509

There is apparently a printer that can use spent coffee or tea leaves to print. I love this idea but I would not buy a printer when so many are being thrown away. I pull them out of dumpsters with intent to repair them. So the question is, can they be hacked to work with coffee or tea?

Canon actually disclosed how to hack their cartridges as a consequence of a semiconductor shortage due to coronavirus. So this suggests #Canon could be a candidate for this hack. Has anyone tried it? How precisely do we have to match the viscosity of homemade ink to the original ink?

This thread was inappropriately censored by either @[email protected] or @[email protected] claiming:

“Reason: Reason: Literally the opposite of anti-work is "over employment" which OP is arguing for”

There is an English comprehension problem by the mod. Would someone whose first language is English please:

1. notice that over employment is actually the problem that the thread’s thesis seeks remedies for. Being forced into a full-time or nothing ultamatim is a very common problem that oppresses anti-work proponents. It’s the single most common problem we face. Appalling that a mod would block the discussion.
2. undo the improper mod action

The mod’s action to suppress is actually a pro-work action, as it prevents discussion around solutions to over-employment.

Having a progressive tax system means tax rate increases disproportionately with the more work you do. And that’s a good because working less is encouraged by a reduced avg tax rate.

But what happens when you take a year (or 5 years) off? You live off savings that were taxed in higher brackets while earning zero. IOW, consider:

• Bob works 6 years straight earning 50k/year.
• Alice works 3 years earning 100k/year then takes 3 years off.

They both had the same gross earnings per unit time but Alice gets screwed on taxes because of the progressive tax system. My pattern is comparable to Alice due to forced full-time gigs that refuse part-time. My refuge is to subject myself to being over-employed for a stretch then quitting for a stretch of bench time. The only remedies I see:

1. Take a 1-year contract starting in June. Do not work the first ½ of the 1st year, and do not work the second ½ of the 2nd year.
2. Form a corporation, work as independent and direct your own “false independent” 1-person company. Money builds in the company as you pay yourself the same amount whether you are working or not. (Some people put the company in Hong Kong because it accommodates this well and the company feeds the director gradually and persists well after retirement -- or so I’m told)
3. Work in a country that adjusts for income fluxuations by giving you a tax credit if your income drops substantially from one year to the next.

I made up number 3. Does that exist anywhere?

Any other techniques to hack around forced full-time scenarios? Or to deliberately fluxuate working hard and not working without the tax penalty?

My goal is to keep central heating turned off as much as possible. I bundle up indoors, which works for the most part but I will struggle when temps drop low enough. And hands in cold air on a keyboard are still a problem regardless.

What about using an infrared heat lamp, which traditionally has these use cases:

• keeping pet reptiles warm
• farms: livestock and incubators
• physical therapy for humans (the claims: pain relief, skin healing/repair, blood circulation, anti-aging skin, …)
• (atypical) specifically to warm hands on keyboards (but the emitted light is white when red would be better so as to not disturb natural night vision)

The last bullet inspires some enthusiasm. But I am interested in a DiY project on-the-cheap, buying locally not online.

This array of IR LEDs will be hard to buy locally. But the question is, are LEDs even the way to go? That article has a complaint about the LEDs (ironically) having a short life. And a complaint that they do not produce heat anyway. Is that a failure of just that brand and model, or generally a gimick?

The temptation is to go cheap on the bulbs, but this ad for a heat lamp for lambs is convincing to the contrary. They sell bulbs for $21 that last ~4320 hours. These bulbs are claimed to last 6000 hours.

What about carbon heating lamps? They look like the basis of space heaters, which are notoriously ineffecient. Though I wonder if the problem is just that people use space heaters to heat a whole room.. when perhaps it’s more sensible to have a quite low setting to just keep hands or feet warm.

If a typical red filiment bulb is used, is it fair to say a simple dimmer would be useful, such as that of this fixture?

A new fiber network provider drilled into the façades of private homes to run their cables, without consent, to save themselves the cost of digging. Their website was in Cloudflare’s exclusive walled garden -- which means they were drilling people’s façades who were not even necessarily in the included group who could get service.

So my friend hand-delivered a letter and got the receptionist to sign for it (thus can be recognised by a court). The letter objected to the use of their home to deploy a network that exclude everyone Cloudflare excludes, and also said something like “since you had no consent to drill my house and I explicitly object, I will detach your cable on date X. And unless you say otherwise, if you consent to my work then take no action. Your inaction will signal acceptance to my plans.”

The Internet carrier had to employ a lawyer to write a long strongly worded response citing laws and their right to drill people’s façades, which they then had to send using registered mail (these letters are not cheap).

That’s it. My friend did not actually go through with it. But it’s a bit of justice nonetheless because the Internet provider had to pay a lawyer then pay the reg. letter costs. Would be even better if a lot of people would react in this way and help pile on the costs.

Incidentally, the network carrier quit using Cloudflare. They did not state why, but it’s nice to think that it’s possible that they realised the injustice of being exclusive.

There was an ATM sign at a souvenir shop, so I entered to use it. Walked in circles looking for it.. sometimes they are very well hidden. Staff asked me what I was looking for. “The ATM”. They said “that’s me... just tell me how much you want and tap your card on the terminal.

It’s an interesting option for shops because if the cash comes from the register then that keeps the register light, thus fewer bank deposits and lower security risk.

But how does it work? The staff were at a loss to answer questions. They warned: if you have visa, the fees will be 11%. Yikes! Extortionate. Very hard to believe that’s even legal in Europe. Staff said most people use maestro (of course, Netherlands), but really bizarre that visa customers would be charged a staggering 11% and maestro 0%. I asked if it’s really an ATM transaction because that makes a big difference if the card is a credit card. A credit card at ATMs is doing a cash advance which has a cash advance fee on top of the interest. But what is this 11%? ATMs never charge a high percentage like that. I wonder if there is some DCC¹ funny business. Or maybe it’s some wild speculation about what the card holder’s bank would charge.

There is such a thing as cash back that does not require a purchase. I think they use an ATM signposting because they think consumers are unaware of cash back. So it’s a dumbing down. Perhaps fair enough, but the staff was clueless. Whatever is going on in that shop, the owner just put up a sign without informing their own staff as to the nature of the beast.

I opted not to use it because I had no certainty what the fees would be. No way of knowing whether my bank would charge a cash advance fee or whether I’d get hit with an 11% money-grab.

¹dynamic currency conversion (which by law must be the consumer’s choice)

ATMs are a nightmare for folks using non-SEPA cards. The biggest problem is getting solid info. E.g. this page falsely claims “Withdrawal limit: Bank ATMs in Netherlands have a withdrawal limit of 400 euros per transaction. However, there is no limit on the number of withdrawals per day.” The €400 per transaction limit is widely understood to be for non-eurozone cards, not local cards -- but in fact that’s also a bogus rumor because I have seen a non-eurozone card get ~€440 before. And the claim of no limit on the number of transactions is apparently nonsense too.

ABN·AMRO claims the limit is €2k. That’s probably correct for local cards but certainly not foriegn cards.

This page is one of few to acknowledge a difference between local cards and non-local cards. But still dicey info. “€250 - €400 if you use a foreign card” (the limit /can/ be higher than €400). But what’s interesting is the site shows a range. So which machines can push limits for foreign cards the most?

I think the swindle is like this: the ATMs charge foreign cards a transaction fee of €4 (which is probablly legally capped since ATMs are a near Geldmaat monopoly in most of Netherlands). Since that’s a flat fee, it makes sense for consumers to pull out as much as they can in one go (to the extent of their need). The lower the limit, the more recurrances of €4 they can charge. The anti-competitive maneuvering they’re doing is to conceal the limit. Without transparency, consumers are forced to guess. If they guess wrong too many times, the card can be confiscated by the machine, reported, or frozen. So there is pressure to under-estimate the limit.

Anyway, what is the highest amount anyone has pulled out of a Dutch ATM in recent years using a non-euro card?

(By the way, I was forced to choose a language to tag my post with and Dutch was the only choice. Yet the sidebar contains English. So I am submitting this English text with a Dutch tag in order to make the “post” button sensitive in alexandrite)

cross-posted from: https://slrpnk.net/post/15774903

No need to circumvent anti-consumer mechanisms and risk bricking. This router is liberated by design.

No need to circumvent anti-consumer mechanisms and risk bricking. This router is liberated by design.

It’s hard to find un-enshitified services, even just email. I managed to find a dozen or so ½ decent email providers. But they are only ½ decent. Many are shit in terms of reliability, probably as a side-effect of not being well funded. But then where are the discussions? I Lemmy-search for “onionmail” and only find a dozen hits.

Why is this? IMO it’s because there are just so many shitty options that they drown out the better options. Protonmail is the mainstream alternative to the notorious corporate garbage, but PM is a shit-show in its own right .. CAPTCHAs and other anti-human obsticals.

We need decentralization, but the nasty side-effect is that it spreads an already small crowd so thin we can’t find each other in the universe.