I’ve been wondering for a while now if it would be worth coupling a heat pump coils to the heat sinks of a battery, inverter or other building electronics to help offset the diminishing returns at the lower extremes.
The simplest example would be a heat pump with its own built in UPS style battery, but I also see it being built with coupling to a power wall style house battery.
This equipment would be installed outside, the difference being to position it near, or coupled to, the compression loop of the heat pump. When the pump is running, it draws from the battery, which will need to dissipate heat through its operation. Why not capture that heat and redirect it where desired.
In summer, you could decouple it and use standard separate heat dissipation mechanisms.
A black body catching some rays would give a decent boost (for part of the day at least) - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FtfaZMahSUU - just putting the split unit somewhere that catches the sunshine would probably be a non negligible positive!
Once we go down the heat extraction / transfer path some interesting efficiencies should crop up - any waste heat (higher than ambient temperature) exiting a property could reasonably be captured and used.
I’m sick of every product now requiring I establish, and maintain, a personal relationship with the manufacturer.
Notable examples for myself are Wahoo Fitness[1], Water Rower[2] and Roche’s Accu-Chek[3], which all now require logins and agreements to leak health data to be hosted on external services in order to continue using the products I purchased from them.
In Roche’s case, they gave barely 5 weeks notice that their apps will cease to function at the end of the year, locking all data and functionality on January 1, and punting all responsibility to their subsidiary, mySugr[4].
I see billionaire individuals and organised charities as polar extremes of the same policy failure. Neither should exist, and when they do it should be as an ephemeral anomaly.
Any charity which fails to prioritise putting itself out of business is functionally a grift.
If society truly valued what charities do, their activities would be intrinsically valuable, and not require a special economic status to be conjured for them to be viable.
People have this idea that you can just solve problems like world hunger by waving a magic wand, but you can’t. There are probably South Sentinelese starving right now, we can’t do anything about that because they won’t let us. The little world hunger that is left today after the advancements of the 20th century is almost entirely in war-torn messes, and you can’t eliminate war unless you eliminate human free will
Or they are considered valuable but we have a captive market… Many people would like charities to become institutional features instead of charities but then there are other interests who are against such things because then “muh capital”
Charities, as they exist today, serve as a void into which corporations and governments can abdicate their respective responsibilities. Continuing to tolerate charities, at least in their current form, is complicity.
I guess we're starting from different first principles here - I don't believe that societal fit requires sociopathy, but then, you and I live in different societies, and even if they're only separated by a few thousand kilometres of sea, I feel there's an ocean of difference between our countries in terms of governance and political style.
I'd agree that capitalism has a tendency of rewarding sociopathy, but there's no requirement to be an amoral asshole to be accepted by your community - in fact, it often prevents it.
My experience during the Christchurch earthquakes where people risked their lives to save complete strangers is what convinced me that most people are inherently decent, and I'm not sure a society made up of mostly decent people could become as cruel as you suggest.
I find ads intolerable, but I am privileged enough to be able to afford to make them go away in almost all cases.
For those on a very tight budget, Disney+ with ads, Kindle with ads, podcasts with ads, etc. are the only thing that is affordable.
I suspect for many in the lowest income brackets, traditional cable TV with good old fashioned commercials is a primary source of entertainment.
Thus, we also need to keep in mind that those who cannot afford to make commercials go away are subsidizing this further for those who can in an unfortunate irony.
This might seem crass but if I was in a situation where I couldn't afford the ad-free version of a streaming service, I would simply abstain from the service entirely.
I understand many don't care, but I hate ads with an intensity I cannot describe with words.
Right but that means you're not paying full price, since the ads subsidise it. So to modify the OP's point, people are going to need to be prepared to pay more for content and IMO we're already at price saturation point now.
Not necessarily - it's what the market will bear, not the cost itself. This just means the target market will tolerate the ads, not that they are subsidizing the cost of the TV. The extra revenue could just as easily be gravy - especially because this is probably the result of some implicit collusion.
This is my expectation of the market, based on at least the following two points:
1) Video games are sold at full price and still include ads and microtransactions
2) Cable TV was originally ad free (and marketed as such), until they realized they could include ads and make even more money.
I hold the opinion that executives at many of these companies hold the view, "Why only get some of our customer's money when we can get all of it?" (though they probably word it differently, something about recurring revenue and monetizing the existing customer base).
> Cable TV was originally ad free (and marketed as such), until they realized they could include ads and make even more money.
This is why I laugh whenever some new ad-free service launches. People forget history and then are surprised when it repeats itself. Any service that touts itself as "the ad-free version of X," will eventually be stuffed full of ads.
Video games are not sold at full price. 20 years ago the average game price was $50. The price point was universally increased to $60. In Europe the price point has scaled beyond that but in the USA the price has stayed $60. 20 years of inflation has not be accounted for in that price. 20 years of technology improvements leading to increased art team demands, etc.
And to top that off, the frequent mass sale events on popular game distribution channels have led to a culture of people not purchasing games UNLESS they are on sale.
I'm not a fan of the implementations they have selected to make up for that, but it's a bit disingenuous to imply that all money making on top of the $60 cost is profiteering.
> 20 years of inflation has not be accounted for in that price
With all due respect, the inflation argument sounds good but is not based in the reality of the market. Other folks have gone into a lot more detail on why this argument is badly flawed.
But to pick a single argument: if the inflation argument was valid, companies - both AAA and indy - would be unable to make a profit without selling microtransactions. But those games and companies they are turning profits. Even companies selling games with microtransactions are getting record profits when you discount recurring revenue - microtransactions.
Yeah but look at how large the market is, and how much it has grown since then. I'd imagine it's at least 10x the size and it costs virtually nothing to sell to all those additional customers. That's the real reason video game prices haven't kept pace with inflation.
Valve has proven with lots of data that holding deep discount sales actually greatly increases revenue. It took a long time for the industry to fully realize this.
They are not simply trying to cover costs. It's indeed charging what the market will bear. Which I have nothing against, I'm more upset that gamers fork over cash for all these micro-transactions. But that is another topic.
Where does the myth that cable TV was ad free come from? Cable TV was never as free. Cable was first introduced to bring broadcast TV - with ads to places that couldn’t get reception.
Then the “Superstations” like TBS and WGN came to cable. They were local broadcast channels that used satellites to broadcast nationwide to cable companies.
Then came cable TV channels like CNN, ESPN, MTV etc with ads.
Also, there were some Cable TV channels, sometimes bundled with other channels, that explicitly did not have ads (HBO, to name one), just to complicate things further.
> Although cable television was never conceived of as television without commercial interruption…
HBO has always been a premium add on to basic cable. Just like it is today and it still doesn’t have ads.
> But scores of big companies, including General Foods, American Express, Procter & Gamble and Pepsico, are already cable advertisers, along with innumerable used-car dealers and other local businesses that can afford cable's relatively low rates.
> Many cable channels have yet to begin operating, and those now running commercials, such as Ted Turner's 24-hour Cable News Network or U.S.A. Network's ''You'' program for women, carry 30-second and one-minute commercials that are a standard feature of regular television.
Even that doesn't really work. I'm "not paying full price" only because they force upon me hundreds of channels that I don't want, including really pricey ones like every sport. The bullshit I actually watch, I'd be shocked if I'm not paying more than full price for.
The real problem is that content creation/disribution industries are addicted to ridiculous pricing and distribution policies. Nobody can buy what they want, at reasonable terms, we're stuck with them playing stupid games that hurt everyone (likely including themselves).
Strong disagree on this one. I'm pretty sure someone looks at the service that lacks (to their mind) sufficient advertising and is making decent revenue and thinks something like "Wow, a couple (more) ads and this could make a lot more money!" And then (more) ads are added.
Unless there's some dis-incentive we can expect to see more ads in more places. People abandoning the service doesn't seem to be enough, I suspect the longer someone has a particular service the more they become accustomed to it and the more pain it takes to get them to move to another service.
Even if you are paying full price, inevitably the complany will have some brilliant CEO who figures out that not showing ads constantly is leaving money on the table.
The only channels that promised fewer ads because you pay for it and delivered on it (not switching to double dipping within a decade) are the ones financed by mandatory TV license fees.
People do pay and it does not work. The only thing that works is government regulations.
Pay for games? They shove ads in them, game engines even have support for this.
Pay for subscription services? They show you ads for their own shows at best or half a minute of paid advertising before every episode at worst.
Pay for anything at all? They track everything you do whether you pay or not. Worse: now they know you have disposable income since you're spending money on frivolous entertainment. The value of your attention just went up and so did the opportunity cost of not advertising to you. The more society pays, the more annoyed the executives get at the money they're leaving on the table.
What society needs to do is make advertising illegal. Just straight up prohibit it, consequences be damned. No buts, no compromises.
Amazon Prime Video requires a paid Amazon Prime subscription. You are paying for the content. You also paid for the TV you watch it on, and you pay for the delivery service to your house. There's money every step of the way, so, having advertising on top of that? Insane.
Depending on the service you may be paying a subsidized price.
Around 1994 my parents were paying $110~ USD for a cable package in suburban NY. It was basic cable, the extra premium channels, and HBO. Adjusted for inflation that's $210, I know that inflation doesn't always tell the entire economic story but now I'm paying
Netflix $20, HBO $15, Disney+ $6.76, Hulu is free with my cell phone plan but let's say $10. That's $52, my internet is $65 however I would have that anyway for many other reasons. Even if you added that in it's still much less expensive that in the past. The quality is also significantly better, and I can choose to watch most shows when I want.
Subsidized doesn't mean anything in this context. These services aren't offered below cost, they're very profitable. Companies will always view not showing ads as leaving money on the table, regardless of how much profit they're already making.
I would love to pay my local sports team or NBC or something money directly for broadcasts of all their games but it's impossible because the exclusive streaming rights are split out across at least 3 different services that I'd need to pay far too much for on top of my season tickets.
We already do that, since ads presumably make the companies money. Thus the overall effect of this should be that we make products cheaper, since they won't have to pay marketing budgets.
Network effect companies (e.g Facebook) would see how useless their network effects are when only some are willing to pay, and they therefore can't get all their friends updates.
And most creators will find out just how little their content is worth (you probably need to be in the top 50% just to make pennies per hour).
I would say bring it on, but most sites would run into the problem that for their media customer it wouldn't be worth the effort to click the apple pay (or whatever) button to get access.
I remember paying for DVDs and being forced to watch trailers after putting the disc in the tray. Even when we directly pay for content they can't help but add advertisements.
Not quite. A while back we used to pay for cable tv and the programming used to have tons of ads. Now, we assumed the premium you pay for Apple products was because 'you' were not the product, unlike say Android, but looks like with some clever marketing about privacy focus Apple was just building up their own ad business.
I think paying for content/product doesn't ensure you wont see ads, well perhaps it doea but until the company decides it needs higher margins.
People call me crazy for paying for reddit and YouTube premium. The fact is, they're some of the few places where I can pay directly to host the servers and pay the creators. I won't considering using any other social network where I can't contribute directly, versus indirectly with my data and eyeballs.
It's not that simple. The demand to reach a target demographic isn't going away. Thus, as the difficulty of reaching that demographic increases so does the cost advertisers are willing to pay.
Also, it's common for companies to offer a paid service and then double dip with an advertisement offering as well.
It is the TV and media companies that are a) using lies and deception to convince America that it's ok to instead pay (1x + advertising + a hidden loss of privacy) for a TV, and b) colluding to raise the prices of 'dumb' TVs as an added lever against consumers.
Educating people on the real costs, and pointing out better alternatives are the best ways to combat this.
Last time I bought a TV was about 10 years ago, IIRC I paid €350 for it and it had no "smart features" at all and I assume Samsung made a profit on it. Or do you want to tell me that Samsung ate a €3k loss to give me a TV?
This is just silly; TVs can maybe made a little bit cheaper by some ads, but not much, and TVs were plenty cheap for a long time well before "smart TVs with ads" became a thing (my TV wasn't a luxury model, but not the cheapest either).
Advertising requires views which drives engagement optimization which results in addictive design. Binge watching of TV shows, excessive social media usage, video game addiction have all been linked to depression, anxiety.
Convince people? Any ban on advertising is already likely to enjoy significant public support. There's precedent for this.
Maybe, maybe not. The mental effects of products optimized for delivering advertising don't seem to be great for people or society (see: Meta's products, Twitter, TikTok).
This actually is a very valid argument. Cigarettes actually provide value to the user. Yes, there are negatives, but the user typically knows those and decides the upside is worth the risk.
Do people know the risks of being profiled by ad companies? I am not sure most people can even begin to understand the associated risk. The few attempts to show people what companies know about you were shut down pretty hard.
It’s been discussed for years in dozens of articles on hacker news and everywhere. At this point the burden is on you to show us on how being plugged to social media 24-7 is not harmful.
Not at all. Being bombarded with every not-yet-banned psychological trick ever invented is unethical: harms privacy, makes public spaces ugly, increases waste, and when not promoting actively harmful stuff, promote stuff in harmful ways.
I’ve configured dozens of networks over the past decade to use the same SSID for both bands, and have never observed a real world issue with myriad clients. The only tweak is sometimes the 2.4GHz Tx power needs to be dropped, but it’s rare.
Some locations I’ve had to create additional bespoke SSIDs for a specific band, but it’s only because the customer has explicitly requested it because they think it matters.
Weirdest bespoke network I have is one that only exists for an LG washing machine. It’s network stack eventually gets corrupted when network isolation isn’t enabled and receives some sort of broadcast packets.
Using NAT with IPv6 betrays a lack of understanding with how it’s supposed to be used, and a stubborn continuation of IPv4 kludges.
Multiple addresses/prefixes are a required component for IPv6 to function, which I suspect is often the biggest source of misunderstanding from legacy IP competency.
If you need a stable prefix for a host, use a ULA or your own GUA. If you need to provide services from 2 or more upstream networks, configure the host with addresses from each of the delegated prefixes from those networks. If you need to do all of the above, there’s nothing preventing you from configuring them all simultaneously. You can even use the IP and routing stack to provide selective service access and trust thresholds.
Prefix mobility is something that should have been anticipated when IPv6 was being hashed out, and would have made many things much easier, but it’s far from critical, and gives IPvA an easy killer use case.
