Recent Comments

Thank you, OUC, for another great start to my day. Smiled at both TIME covers, LOL. Spy camera down, flag up meme is a good one. I'll never look at a map of South America the same, LMAO. Always like a good bacon meme!

all good , but bacon the weapon great !

Ditto. Especially enjoyed the bacon terrorist taste test:

I did.

Enjoy!

As far as solar goes....

Winter solar production is about 1/3 of summer production (Northern US, will be different in Texas).
Cloudy/stormy day production can be 1/10 of a sunny day.
Battery storage to get through nights and a couple cloudy days is doable (if somewhat expensive), especially if you can get by powering only high-priority loads part-time.
Battery storage to get through 10 days of cloudy/stormy weather .. not so much.
Battery storage to get through winter's lower production rate .. fagettaboutit.
Scaling the system so that winter production is enough, even factoring in extended lack-of-sunshine .. fagettaboutit.
You will need to scale the battery properly for both Kw (flow rate) and Kwh (storage capacity).

As a simple old person ,I do not like the possible future with AI. I think it will dumb down a majority of the populace more than it will help.
A small business and even some large business succeeded very well with pencil , paper and a few mechanical machines. Computers did not bring the cost of living down. Example, the cost of a replacement diesel engine for my pickuo was higher than the cost of the whole pickup when I bought it 20 years ago. And the newer one has all the new computerized gadgets but is make of alloys and plastic which are very expensive to repair or replace.
AI is like cooking a lobster. You place it where it is somewhat comfortable then you start applying the heat. The lobster adjusts gradually until it is to late.
We are becoming lobsters ! Our country started with declarations of freedom for all, and slowly we got there. In the last 40 years or so those freedoms have been going away slowly as the temperature is increased. We no longer allow emigrants to come and assimilate is our country, they come to establish their Norms and Customs here and expect us to assimilate with them.

I am afraid that AI and the illegal immigration will be the ultimate demise of our once great Nation.

I don't know your location, but since you mention needing heating, you
should super-insulate all your heated/air-conditioned living space.
If your home has any large windows, find a way to completely cover
them with insulated shutters that can be adjusted for outdoor conditions.
Indoor lighting is very energy efficient compared to space heating/cooling.
Rain catchment from your home roof is an good idea. Add a cistern and
use it in addition to your well. Clean water is essential to your health.
If you aren't already doing so, switch to line drying your clothes.
Add building a greenhouse to your plans.
I admire your goal. 👍👍👍

You probably already know these but here goes:

I don't know what your current chimney is made of or its size, but be careful with converting to wood stove because you can't usually just pipe a wood burner into an existing one. Expensive, but you may just want to put up a new stainless steel triple wall (all three of my fire places use this) and will last "forever". If your existing chimney is brick or stone and is big enough inside you may consider a stainless steel sleeve. Check local codes as you don't want to screw this one up.

Learn how to preserve food without refrigeration (canning, root cellar, etc.) before you may actually need it.

Refrigeration/freezing: choose a model without the bells and whistles. No plumbing for ice makers or drink dispensers and no digital crap needing repairs. Probably less strain on the solar panels, too. Unfortunately, these basic food preservers are getting harder to find. My old fridge lasted almost 40 years before saying "good by", but I was able to find a basic one to replace it with.

Plant some fruit trees that are hardy in your area. If you need to, consider dwarf types to get more variety on less ground. Look for disease resistant if you can.

"I see Paris, I see France..." Priceless, LOL! Break out the burka, madam France. Incestry,com - LMAO. Hiding from the cops reminded me of a true story that happened to some friends of mine in my misspent youth, ROFLMAO! Ah yes, the Great Pumpkin of socialism!

Indeed! LOL!

Pigs and chickens- if to your taste are an easy of source of meat.

Utilities, electricity- it is easy to under-estimate the capacity needed.
Calculate an estimate for production from your location- latitude, tree cover, cloud cover.. Plan for replacement of solar cells every 15? years, and for batteries, - lead-acid about 5 years, efficiency about 60%, LI-ion replace every 8,9,10,15? years, efficiency 70-80%.
I've seen estimates for electricity consumption per av family, 15 kWh per year, I bet yours will be double that. - vehicles, workshop..
Get an emergency diesel generator. Diesel has better life than gasoline.

Most estimates on the variability of actual sunshine hours, are too optimistic.
you need to understand variability as well as averages.

Fines from DEP. ! there was a case in my area, owner of rural property put a footbridge across a stream, had to be removed by court order, native something or other were not consulted.

Heating, without local knowledge, check out timber: local, free or cheap, legal.

Good luck!

The Socialism monster/kid puts it in a nutshell and says it all.

Might try to publish another edition for monday or tuesday, called "Payback"

In order to afford this toy I've been working a lot. So, I haven't gotten around to just now opening the box for a setup called a "spot lock". This is a retractable electric motor that will allow me to park my boat over schools of fish, holding it there with the GPS system. Can't wait! Getting it installed in a week. This will complete this boat's setup to being the ultimate fish catcher....

My pleasure

That's great! It's great for kids.

And the chicks are free.

To those comparing it to auto-complete. You are at least 12 months behind the current state of the art.

I just had it analyze thousands of open source files in the PostgreSQL DB Source tree. We want to convert the "automated tests" from Perl to Python (because nobody learns Perl any more, and we can do better).

This, if done by humans is easily a 5+ year investment in time and energy.

With AI, it was able to break the task down, and over the course of 8 hours, we diced and sliced the code into an analysis heavy approach, that would produce files OTHER AIs (Agents) would be able to use, to complete the process in a "mostly" automated process.

This will reduce the human effort by 90%.
We will focus our top talent on Creating VERY Readable tests (Perl... Not so much, IMO).

And showing the AI how to convert the Perl to readable/solid Python. And to exercise these tests.

While we are there, it identified flaws that are caused on OLD and SLOW servers, and we might have found 2-3 approaches that will remove these errors from our tests. (On a slow computer, sometimes Job A finishes before Job B even starts, and the test FAILS to run properly because of it. In other cases, B can timeout waiting for A to finish, etc. etc. etc.)

We can make an entire class of errors go away.
Work NOBODY Wants to do. It's BORING. It's repetitive, and it requires lots of testing and validation, making it "NOT FUN", and it's hard to be proud of it. The old way, it will NEVER happen. This is OPEN Source, not someones paid job.

The plan is so awesome and achievalbe, my company will sponsor a full time employee to work on it, just to give back to the community.

So... No. It is NOT just an Auto-Complete.
Yes, it can be wrong. But if you invest enough time, it's the single fastest way I have ever seen to analyze and summarize a sh~t-ton of source code in my life!

One thing it identified. There are only 7 HARD test patterns that need to be designed by a Senior Engineer. Then run through the AI, and rules configured to make sure the output is what we want to maintain in Python.

Done yesterday. I would have NEVER started this without the AI assistance!

"Money for Nothing" is still my favorite opening Riff....

Did someone say: "Head"?

$15 a head? No problem. Solo driver, plus as many guys as you can fit into the trunk. so maybe 3 or 5 bucks apiece.

Those were the days...

"Dave, I'm afraid I can't let you do that" -HAL

A.I. or S.I. is a tool. A computer tool.
A very powerful computer tool.
Clearly dangerous in the wrong hands. Like a bomb, a gun, an automobile or a chainsaw.
Very useful until someone stupid comes along with bad intent.
I've been in the computer industry for over 50 years, worked at MIT for most of them.
MIT has been working on some form of this concept before I was even born.
A.I. (S.I.) is not a new concept by any stretch of the imagination.
The genie is out of the bottle and he ain't going back in.
Government control is not just a bad idea, it is the worst possible solution.
The proposals I've heard involve limiting participants to the few already in the game and immunity from liability. i.e. carefully hidden "back doors"
The bottom line goes like this: At the end of the day computers only do what you tell then to do.
Decision making is one of the things we typically ask of computers. "If A and B exist, but not C, do this, else do that."
Over simplification, I know. But essentially that is what computers are, decision makers.
If you chose to let your A.I. powered Tesla do the driving, that is a choice you are making.
If the Army decides to let a Predator drone decide and execute targets, that is a horse of a different color and a separate conversation altogether.
The Terminator argument.

A discussion that must be had long before any such process is implemented.

We called that a PEBKAC (Problem Exists Between Keyboard And Chair). LOL