471–480 of 576 posts
“hello_stranger.txt” feels like something I would’ve written as a 11 year old pretending to be a mad scientist. I’m going to start leaving those files on every system I touch. Thank you Nikita.
I do something like that but it's actually a Canary token. So I can know if someone is snooping.
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> 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 going to start eating more salads instead? There’s been some interest in this locally due to energy regulation moving to a more punishing system for peak usage. Also high electricity prices. And the topic came up that people would be encouraged…
Maybe it's because Britain introduced cheap electricity overnight in the 1970s (before I was born), but I've never thought of using the washing machine overnight as unsafe. The dishwasher too. Trading electricity between Europe gives us lower prices overall, and a more stable and efficient grid.
For some definition of us.
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The 3A fuse is due to the way the UK wiring system works rather than what is optimal for this device. All appliances in the UK have a fuse where they connect to the building wiring, normally in the plug, but can be in a fixed fuse-holder like this device. Somewhere in the process it was recognized that having lots of different fuse values would be confusing and awkward for users, so these fuses are the same size and…
Oh yeah the UK system.. I lived in Ireland for a long time and it was a bit archaic sometimes. I like the idea of fuses in every plug, mind you. Because some equipment just can't be trusted. I didn't like the switches in every outlet (even though they're not mandatory, they are very common). And the way the plugs are so huuuge and always fall with the pins up do to the design so they are a foot-piercer. In Ireland 1A…
No idea about Ireland.
(Here in Denmark there are switches on sockets. I find it useful on the rice cooker, which doesn't have its own switch and would otherwise need to be unplugged. The other sockets are generally left with the switch "on".)
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Fossil fuel interests have really rotted a lot of minds with their propaganda. In some ways this may turn out to be a bigger crime than the carbon issues you think are just a conspiracy to control shower length.
Rotting minds, really?
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Most people in the UK don’t have a garage. Almost every home I’ve lived in has had a gas boiler somewhere inside.
Fair. But I strongly suspect nearly every house with a garage has the boiler in it. Edit. So having done a little research this probably isn't the case. Maybe it's a regional thing, all the (mostly suburban) houses I've lived in and visited, in the north west of England, are set up that way.
In London it's wherever the landlord's plumber can fit it, as he illegally subdivides the house into several flats. At least going by my experience as a student. Kitchen, bathroom, garage, outside wall...
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Also, in quite a few houses, the initial run of water out of the hot tap is cold for quite some time until the hot water has either made it round from the hot tank, or if you have a combi boiler system then after that has fired itself up, got up to temperature, and then the hot water has made it round the pipes from there. It may be that the washing machine uses so little water that most of the water it gets from the…
For me indeed it takes >30 sec to get hot water in the kitchen (modern kitchens have small boilers), but the washers are near the boiler, so hot fill would be more efficient. The boiler supplies 60 deg C water though, so that is not enough for the 90 deg C program for example. And then you need a heating element anyway...
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Rotting minds, really?
If someone close to me said that they fear an authoritarian government because the length of their showers might be curtailed, or the power draw of their shed might be outlawed, I'd be genuinely worried about their mental health.
Public forum though. No one has seen a psychologist because a text box intervened about their “rotting [brain]”.
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Maybe it's because Britain introduced cheap electricity overnight in the 1970s (before I was born), but I've never thought of using the washing machine overnight as unsafe. The dishwasher too. Trading electricity between Europe gives us lower prices overall, and a more stable and efficient grid.
> Trading electricity between Europe gives us lower prices overall, For some definition of us.
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 agree fully, I believe that my Home Assistant energy dashboard has done more for our energy consumption than any other measure. If you’re in the Netherland you can get something like a “slimme lezer”, plug it into the p1 port of your energy meter and it will pop up in Home Assistant with the right sensors. The energy dashboard will give an overview of your gas and electricity usage, solar production, proportion use…
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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…
I think the main speed increase of American machines compared to European ones is due to much higher water consumption. A modern European washing machine uses 30-50 litres per wash, vs 75-100 for a modern American one. That's also halved the time required to heat the necessary water, so another reason a hot water connection might not be so useful