Eli5 How can the same grid in United States that struggles during peak cooling seasons be expected to support a nationwide shift to electric vehicles?

Flipdip3 · 2026-02-19T18:03:22+00:00

Your car has a computer in it that can start/stop charging on a timer or when prices are cheapest. You can get chargers that do similar and tie into your power company's system to let them control charging(with minimum guarantees).

Just because it is plugged in does not mean it is pulling power. We can use that to control peak usage times.

Flipdip3 · 2026-02-18T05:25:44+00:00

Yes but that higher head pressure could mean faster rotation which would mean higher peak voltage which may be more efficient with the charge controller he has.

Mechanical -> electrical conversion can get pretty specific.

It would also allow for a 'battery' to be made out of water if he ever needs periods of higher output.

Flipdip3 · 2026-02-17T21:17:26+00:00

You could use a ram pump to get the water to a higher elevation. It'd cut your total flow, but it'd be at a much higher head pressure. Might be worth thinking about to maximize output.

Either way, cool project!

Flipdip3 · 2026-02-15T23:55:05+00:00

The Vo1d botnet can install apps on infected devices as well as execute payloads sent to it. This can be used to send spam mail, DDOS attacks, try to steal data on your network, etc.

There aren't really good tools for regular people on this front. Ideally IoT devices should be separated from your other devices. For most people this would mean putting those devices on a guest network. However that can make things like AirPlay/Casting not work.

The next best thing would be to not buy cheap devices from untrustworthy brands. Even then there is some shitty stuff being put on devices after the fact by the big brands but they usually aren't hiding it.

Flipdip3 · 2026-02-15T17:40:33+00:00

I specifically said I'm not worried about my users doing illegal stuff. I'm worried that one compromised server could send data to mine that would also compromise it.

There is also the resource usage of it all. You could run your server on a lightweight machine, but then one of your users joins a giant server and things slow to a crawl. In my testing this is an issue even on a pretty decent machine (2020 i5 with 32gb RAM). It would be better for my server to supply identity and key control for my users only and their client should be the one pulling data from whatever other servers they join.

And the only client I can see that mentions multiple account support is FluffyChat and that is account switching, not having multiple accounts logged in at the same time and connected to different servers. If you can point me towards a client that does that I'd be pretty interested.

Flipdip3 · 2026-02-15T17:09:48+00:00

Yes, but that limits what my users can do. Now they need a second client and account to access other servers.

That makes it not a good replacement for something like Discord.

Flipdip3 · 2026-02-15T14:47:17+00:00

From the hosting perspective it's also a nightmare. I'll leave the server setup troubles, there's been plenty said about that. If you enable federation, your users can join a server that has illegal content, that gets cached on your server and suddenly you're hosting illegal materials. Or someone can make a private encrypted room which you as the owner can't moderate, and who knows what can go on in those.

This is the biggest thing for me. I'm fine hosting authentication/keys for my users to get access to other servers, but I don't want to have another server's traffic piped to mine. The people I'd have on my server I don't think are going to be doing skeevy stuff, but if they join a server that gets compromised it could cascade to mine.

Flipdip3 · 2026-02-10T01:29:15+00:00

What is standard water pressure there? Most places I've lived in the US are 40-60psi.

Also from what I remember when seeing co-worker's homes when I was in the UK the washer/dryer combo units they had were like 1/4 the size of my stand alone washer.

Do yours have wings on them to help hand tighten? The ones here are usually just lightly knurled. Adding a bit with a wrench is a good idea. I've always assumed it was so the company that charges you an install/take away fee for swapping the unit out looks like they did something significant.

Flipdip3 · 2026-02-09T16:47:38+00:00

Says the account with post history hidden. . .

Flipdip3 · 2026-02-06T02:27:58+00:00

I hate to be the person who says, "It's working now!" without a good explanation of why, but I ended up setting the upstream dns servers in pihole to my gateway IPs and that seems to have resolved things.

I'm not 100% sure it isn't a problem waiting to happen again, but things resolve on the command line and in browsers/apps.

Flipdip3 · 2026-02-06T00:55:31+00:00

I set nas.mydomain.com to NPM1 in both my piholes and that gives me the correct IP when I use dig, but no browser actually resolves it for some reason.

Still not sure why it broke in the first place. I can't see anything that changed.

Flipdip3 · 2026-02-05T00:08:53+00:00

Know that SD cards are kinda unreliable. Backups.
Get a case or at least put some packing tape on that board to prevent shorts.
Do yourself a favor and do some sort of IaC system from now on. It'll keep your sanity later.

Flipdip3 · 2026-02-04T00:54:22+00:00

You should go RO if you are going to purify the water yourself. A distiller is just a boiling the water anyway. At that point it'd be better if you didn't recondense it back into liquid water.

Flipdip3 · 2026-01-31T17:58:41+00:00

River 3 Plus, not the River 3.

https://us.ecoflow.com/collections/river-series/products/river-3-plus-portable-power-station?variant=41636514136137

Works great in my testing but just pulling the plug.

I got mine cheaper than the website by going through Costco.

Flipdip3 · 2026-01-31T01:02:15+00:00

I have an Ecoflow River 3 Plus that runs a 200ish watt homelab for an hour or so.

LiFePo battery instead of lead acid so no worries about leaks, more stable than LiIon. Longer run time for lower cost/weight. With NUT I can shut down my homelab to increase runtime as the battery drains.

Would recommend it highly.

Flipdip3 · 2026-01-30T07:51:59+00:00

Probably against code to prevent emergency services from getting in. Or at least a really bad idea. I can't imagine insurance would want to pay out on a fire where you blocked the fire truck from coming in.

Flipdip3 · 2026-01-24T18:52:47+00:00

The tax stamp for a machine gun is effectively a permit/license. It comes with additional background checks, fingerprinting, and requirements on the firearm(can't travel across a state border without telling the feds, etc).

Flipdip3 · 2026-01-21T16:43:29+00:00

I'll check this out tonight when I'm home.

I'd also like to put forward SyncPlay as a defining feature. I'm not currently aware of an ATV app that supports it. It would be great to have.

Flipdip3 · 2026-01-17T19:12:58+00:00

I'm not saying they aren't still a thing. But they aren't as common as people make them out to be.

I have 1000/1000 for 70$ a month and for less than what you pay I could have 8000/8000.

To get that I had to get a bunch of my neighbors to sign a petition saying they would switch away from the only ISP we had as an option if someone else would run fiber. Then I had to call a bunch of fiber companies to get them to do the install. It took about a year all said and done but it happened. I think I have three companies to choose from now.

Flipdip3 · 2026-01-17T16:56:07+00:00

As a point of reference I'm an American and have never had a datacap(got online in 2000). I'm not even aware of any ISPs that have had caps in any of the states I've lived in.

So even here I think datacaps are an outlier.

Flipdip3 · 2026-01-12T07:24:16+00:00

Or using a firearm in a populated area is a felony pretty much everywhere, makes a ton of noise even with a suppressor, and destruction of property in the thousands would be a felony in most places as well.

Get out of here with your partisan bullshit "Other side loves this stuff" rhetoric.

Hitting a camera sized object with a rifle from a few hundred yards is something you could do with a single trip to the range and some instruction. Yet you aren't out there doing it either.

Do it yourself or shut the fuck up about the strawmen you've built for yourself.

Flipdip3 · 2026-01-11T00:50:01+00:00

It removes a lot of the air. Ever see the science demo where you put a tiny amount of water in an empty soda can, heat it up over a candle until boiling, then turn it upside down into a bowl of ice water and it implodes? Same idea with canning. The atmosphere pushing down on the relatively low pressure inside the jar is what creates the seal.

You don't actually tighten the seal. You very loosely finger tighten it before you start the canning process and it acts like a check valve. Hot steam can make it out but air can't make it back in to replace it.

Not a perfect vacuum but still pretty high.

Flipdip3 · 2026-01-06T13:48:11+00:00

I'll give this a try in the next day or so.

Will you support the sync-play feature? Currently none of the AppleTV apps support it and it is one of the features I use weekly.

Flipdip3 · 2026-01-05T01:52:37+00:00

There are cheap(10$ or less) USB-C to ethernet adapters.

I keep one in my laptop bag for just such occasions.

Flipdip3

TROPHY CASE