Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

What's that touchscreen in my room?

laplab.me

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

441–450 of 576 posts

Re: What's that touchscreen in my room?

#441

Post by userbinator »

hgomersall wrote: post #306
concordDance wrote: post #302

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Rationing is ridiculously inefficient. People's desire for heavily carbon consuming things vs lightly carbon consuming things varies massively. If you're worried about the poor don't ignore the externalities of their consumption but subsidise them directly via UBI or somesuch. Rationing is a very worst of all possible worlds solution, losing you all the benefits of trade.

We don't want trade. We want people to reduce their carbon consumption. In any case, you could always allow trading of rations.

You do. Many others don't.

Re: What's that touchscreen in my room?

#442

Post by gretch »

autoexec wrote: post #436
ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #270

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a friend that is diabetic (a number of friends, actually). He has been doing a pretty lousy job of managing his diet. Until his doctor prescribed a monitor for a few weeks. This is a device that looks like a big Band-Aid that you put on your arm, inserting a fine needle under the skin, and communicates with an app on the phone, reporting things like glucose levels. Once he realized the effects of the foods he…

It'd be cool to give something like that a try, but I love that we have so much technology to monitor our bodies but I'd never use anything if it required a cell phone app since you'd have to worry about who else is collected/selling that data. We need more devices that work entirely offline, but they're hard to find because companies know they can make so much more money by collecting/selling your personal data and…

I don’t mean to minimize your concerns, and you should live your life as you see fit, but since you put this out there as a comment for others to reflect on - from my perspective your feelings are like paranoia or compulsion.

To me, my glucose number is completely impersonal. I wouldn’t care who knew this or not, it has little to do with my personhood, not to mention it moves so fast that no one can infer anything timely. And it’s the same range for all humans.

I’m also not saying that corporations should sell it!

It’s a bit like the fear of getting robbed. We all have the right to walk down the street safely, and if someone robs us, then that’s the bad guy (no victim blaming). But if the fear of getting robbed on each corner prevents you from trying stuff in life that you are interested in, and there’s very little chance a you will actually be robbed in any given situation, then that’s kinda like a crippling paranoia

Re: What's that touchscreen in my room?

#443

Post by bruce511 »

flagrant_taco wrote: post #438
stdbrouw wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your experience also points to the limits of monitoring and subsequent behavioral change, though. I mean, yeah, it might prompt you to start your washing machine a bit earlier or a bit later to align with high production by your solar panels... but how much consumption can you really move around like that, and how many energy hogs can you just decide to not use? If you notice high energy use while cooking, are you go…

> If you notice high energy use while cooking, are you going to start eating more salads instead? Of course, why wouldn't you? If the assumption isn't that effectively unlimited power is available on demand you adjust use accordingly. On sunny days with excess power maybe you charge and do laundry. On a stretch of cloudy days you avoid long periods of cooking or using large tools like sellers or air compressors. Adju…

>> Ultimately the biggest wins are when big appliances and heating/cooling respond to self-production

I think the parent post is pointing out that just measuring usage has limited value. The real value is when you are generating your own alternative. Then simple changes, that you barely notice, can have z big impact.

Some are obvious, hot water, laundry, dishwasher, pool pump, etc.

Between things like cooking can come into play. Lots of dishes can be prepared in advance, and consumed later. An air-fryer uses less electricity than my oven (and despite the name functions in the same way as an oven).

Re: What's that touchscreen in my room?

#444

Post by Jedd »

erhaetherth wrote: post #383
Jedd wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you have a conventional HWS? These are notoriously power-hungry, often poorly maintained and calibrated, and hard to monitor. You can buy a power meter plug - that sits between appliance and socket - and work your way around almost all your appliances apart from, typically, oven, air conditioner(s), and hot water systems. For those you're going to need to experiment by turning as many things off as you can, to est…

What's an HWS? Hot water system...?

Yes, sorry, hot water system.

Re: What's that touchscreen in my room?

#445

Post by cwassert »

jonathanlydall wrote: post #128

A few years ago I came to the realisation that if you want people to be more environmentally conscious or economical in terms of utility consumption, (electricity, water, gas, etc), they need far better data than a single figure per month. You want to be able to see usage to a resolution of at most 5 minutes. That way people can spot things like “having my electric heater on for those couple of hours used more electr…

I second this wholeheartedly.

As a toy project I put a raspi with a small screen in my living room that would show the temperature and humidity for the last three days as a graph. It was somewhat of an eye catcher in the living room. The data was always interesting. Even if the humidity did not change much, at the very least you could always see that it was colder during the nights, which told me it was working.

It taught me so many things. The effect of opening the windows short vs. long on temperature and humidity. That the sun shining into my room was way more effective then my heating. How the temperature goes down exponentially when my heating turns off, and how the length of the of/off cycles depend on the temperature outside. Etc.

Re: What's that touchscreen in my room?

#446

Post by mcbishop »

philwelch wrote: post #429
mcbishop wrote: post #419

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For most people, running a 240-volt circuit requires an (expensive) electrician. In some cases, it requires drywall work. And maybe a utility service upgrade.

American homes already have 240V circuits for large electric appliances and electric water heaters. If you want to convert one of those from gas to electric or just want an extra appliance for some reason, sure it’s going to be more expensive than just plugging it into the wall but you’re also buying a fairly large, expensive extra appliance. And many of those appliances need work done anyway: water heaters, dishwash…

Points taken. I just wanted to clarify that it's more involved than swapping out the "plug".

Re: What's that touchscreen in my room?

#447

Post by trimethylpurine »

philwelch wrote: post #426
lazide wrote: post #412

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The odds a random US plug will be 240v is essentially zero, unless you’re standing next to an electric range/stove/dryer. And those plugs typically have one outlet and it’s already in use. Unless the prior owner was a welder anyway. Then you might have a few in the garage. Either way, not convenient for kettles.

Maybe I should make the obvious reason more explicit. If you have something designed to operate on 120V and plug it into a 240V outlet, there will be safety issues. It might even catch on fire. So the two voltages have to use different outlet and plug shapes for safety reasons. An outlet is not “randomly” going to be one voltage or the other because that would be a terrible idea. And yes, the 240V outlets are set up…

Upon inspection, the American Breville kettles are 1/2 the wattage with a 1 liter boil time of 4 minutes at 1500 watts.

The UK versions from the same brand are 3000 watts, but only reduces the boil time by 1 minute.

I'm not sure about efficiency one way or the other, but it's interesting to note that double the power does not yield one half boil time.

Additionally, at this elevation I would estimate my morning coffee, Americano (Italian coffee that requires boiled water), takes less time to make than it would at higher wattage at sea level. I'm only guessing.

I think it comes down to practicality more than either culture's love of tea or coffee.

Re: What's that touchscreen in my room?

#448

Post by nawitus »

kristjansson wrote: post #387
sampo wrote: post #362

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I think the jury is still out whether it'll actually lead to significant energy savings. In Finland you can get an electricity contract that follows the hourly spot prices. Usually the hourly prices varies in the range from 5c to 20c/kWh, but sometimes it jumps up to 40c, even 80c/kWh. The record was 2€/kWh for a couple hours in one day. Current hourly prices for today and tomorrow: https://oomi.fi/en/electricity/e…

Is there a cap? AIUI this is how those Texas power bills got to $xx,000 last year.

Yes, 4€/kWh, which is dynamically adjusted (if that spot price is reached).

Re: What's that touchscreen in my room?

#449

Post by caslon »

cm2187 wrote: post #183
caslon wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It was completely non-functional before, so there's really no loss.

I see half of the article about how he struggled to get the password, so not that dysfunctional.

It was powered off entirely! He had to replace a fuse to get it to have any baseline of functionality.

Re: What's that touchscreen in my room?

#450

Post by dzhiurgis »

gambiting wrote: post #224
dzhiurgis wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Half of that is fridge which at 10 quid a month is cheap. Then another 20w for wifi router which again, looking at what you pay to your ISP is nothing. So you got 8 pounds to account for which at UKs minimum wage is about 1 hours worth of work?

That's a weird point to make - I'm just saying 120kWh a month for a house with no one in it and just some basic appliances and network equipment is a LOT - in developing countries 120kWh would be the average energy consumption of the entire house with people living in it, and we just "waste" that because I couldn't be bothered to switch off some devices in my house. It's not about whether I can afford it or not.

But in developing countries thats exactly what you would use power for - internet, minimal LED lighting and refrigeration. If you are lucky you got AC on, but that will blow thru 120kwh in a day.
Post reply on HN