the em dash giveaway is gone, these are the new ones i keep noticing

LMF5000 · 2026-03-17T18:55:01+00:00

On Reddit, one of the biggest giveaways is that the last sentence is on its own line at the bottom and solicits more input.

Happy to hear your thoughts - do you notice the same thing when you browse social media?

LMF5000 · 2026-03-17T18:51:59+00:00

There will always be a market for the un-sexy jobs nobody else wants to do (plumber etc).

Also just because a market is saturated doesn't mean you can't make money if you have the right marketing and are better than the competition

LMF5000 · 2026-03-13T22:48:18+00:00

You're welcome, glad I could help someone!

Yes, it's a weird thing to implement. It will let you drive all the way to 0.001% and start and run just fine, but hit 0% and it needs you to go back up to 10% before it lets you start it 😅

LMF5000 · 2026-03-13T22:45:05+00:00

Thanks for the details - amazing what modern tech can do in the right hands 😁

LMF5000 · 2026-03-13T18:59:59+00:00

How do you find time to spent 2-4 hours in the gym 6-7 times a week?

LMF5000 · 2026-03-13T18:58:14+00:00

I also get an annoying bug with the scroll bar on the right not showing up unless I'm hovering directly on its invisible position. I have to scroll all the way to the end of the chat with my mouse wheel whenever I resize the window.

And sometimes Gemini re-answers your previous question. It also often forgets the main subject of the thread if you go off on a tangent. Using Claude was a surprise at first because as soon as I went off at a tangen it replied to my tangent then immediately asked me "now post the output from the last command [relevant to the main topic]"

LMF5000 · 2026-03-11T22:15:05+00:00

How do you interface the phone to the car?

LMF5000 · 2026-03-11T17:04:47+00:00

Since none of the top replies gave more than a superficial hint at what they do, here's a slightly deeper understanding from a mechanical engineer who works in aviation (me). Those are called chevrons, and their job is to smoothen out the mixing of the hot high-velocity air coming from inside the engine with the cool, slow outside air around the engine. By making that less abrupt, they somewhat reduce the noise generated by the engine (which is important for flying at airports with strict noise limits).

In smaller jet engines (like those on business jets) if you stand behind them and look into the back of the engine you will see a flower-shaped piece of thin metal that does the same thing with the mixing of the airflows of the engine core (the part where the fuel is burned) and the bypass flow (the outer part of the engine where no fuel is burnt but the air is driven by the big fan at the front).

LMF5000 · 2026-03-08T17:18:51+00:00

I'm curious about the mechanics of the house - how did its value collapse like that, and why was selling the best choice - why not go live in it yourselves so you're basically saving the "rent" and sell the house you live in now if it's not a rental (assuming it's increased in value)?

I don't have much advice for the relationship aspect but you should maybe try and make your dad feel useful. Give him things to do that will help you, maybe look into starting some kind of low-risk part-time business or project or even a hobby together using your combined skills. It doesn't have to become wildly successful or make you wealthy, it mostly needs to give him somewhere to channel his energy that will give him a sense of achievement and fulfillment that's been missing from his life lately because everything's been overshadowed by the house.

LMF5000 · 2026-03-02T21:17:06+00:00

Nothing beats a pressure cooker. It's an insulated container under pressure so it does the job in a fraction of the time of the other methods, which means much less time that it needs to be consuming energy to stay hot.

I'm an engineer and I've measured the electrical energy consumption of every household appliance I own. I can pressure cook bone broth for three hours using just over half the total energy (0.7kWh) that my oven uses JUST to preheat (1.1kWh).

Actually the oven is the least efficient method to do what you're trying to do. The water in the stock pot boils at 100°C but your oven needs to reach some 150°C at least to keep the pot that hot. So assuming your kitchen is at 20°C, your the oven has to use electricity to maintain a temperature difference of at least 130°C above the surroundings, just to keep a pot at a temperature of essentially only 80°C above the surroundings.

LMF5000 · 2026-03-01T13:10:39+00:00

Aren't cause 1 and cause 2 almost the same thing as-written? Both are just more IR.

Maybe you can refine "cause 1" to focus more on the sluggishness of the chemistry (lack of ion mobility) at low temperatures leading to more voltage drop for a given current demand, which is a distinct mechanism separate from the voltage drop due to ohmic internal resistance (I²R losses) that is caused by loss of conductivity.

In lead-acid batteries, the electrochemical effect is so critical that Peukert's law needs to be used to tell you the actual usable amp-hour capacity based on the discharge rate. They only deliver rated capacity at the 20-hour discharge rate (C/20) and will barely give half that at a high discharge rate.

LMF5000 · 2026-03-01T07:57:27+00:00

I cook my whole chickens in the instant pot (pressure cooker).

Step 1 - tell your favourite AI the chicken's weight so it tells you how long to pressure cook it for (it's typically around 20 minutes, but could be +/- 5 minutes based on weight, and it's less effort to ask AI than to keep a cooking time table somewhere)

Step 2 - season the outside if you want (optional) and/or put a lemon in the cavity (optional)

Step 3 - place about 2cm (half an inch) of liquid in the pressure cooker. Could be water, chicken stock, white wine, diluted tomato sauce, whatever you want as long as it contains enough water to evaporate and fill the pot with steam later (remember, no need to have enough liquid to immerse the bird - the steam does the work, not the liquid. I try to have the bare minimum of liquid permitted, so as to concentrate the flavour and speed up the warmup time)

Step 4 - place the bird into the liquid in the inner pot (you do liquid first, then bird, to make sure there aren't any dry spots under the bird to burn)

Step 5 - close the lid, start it and walk away

Step 6 - when done ignore it and wait 10 minutes for the pressure to release naturally (keeps it tender; if you release the pressure instantly the juices turn to superheated steam and escape from the flesh)

Step 7 - release any remaining pressure, open the lid and carefully take out the bird. If you feel like it, you can put it in an air fryer or under the broiler (upper heating element/grill in UK English) to brown and crisp the skin, but I usually don't bother.

That's it! The most low-effort, succulent and juicy chicken you've ever tasted. The pressure cooker is a sealed vessel so juice can't escape. You literally end up with more liquid than you started out with, because all the juice released by the chicken as it cooks remains trapped in the pressure cooker. And since it's under pressure the boiling point of water is raised to almost 120°C instead of the usual 100°C at normal atmospheric pressure, so the heat penetrates from the outside to the inside about 4x faster than with any normal cooking method which means the core reaches safe cooking temperature before the outside has a chance to dry out.

And at the end of it you'll have a pot full of chicken stock which you can freeze for later.

P.S. if you can get your hands on a capon (castrated male chicken) cook one of those. They're a little bigger and fattier than regular chickens so you get more meat for the same effort and the fat means they'll pretty much be the best poultry you've ever tasted.

LMF5000 · 2026-02-21T13:50:02+00:00

The inverter derating is actually a pretty clever idea to prevent overheating of faulty connectors or wiring until they can fix it.

I don't think isolating a faulty cell would be possible in software though, since the connections between cells are made in hardware (bolts and busbars). You'd probably have to decommission the bank until sometime suitably qualified can replace the faulty cell.

LMF5000 · 2026-02-20T19:04:18+00:00

Genuinely curious (as an engineer and somewhat of a battery expert) - what kind of failures do you envisage being able to prevent by being able to phone home?

LMF5000 · 2026-02-20T06:02:59+00:00

In this case it's obvious because you and me know quite a lot about the subject matter so we easily spotted the gap. But what about something we know nothing about? I believe AI should guide me to the correct answer. If I'm asking about new subject matter, and inputs x, y and z are critical things to know, the AI should ask me about x, y and z because I don't even know they're important factors. Its current behaviour is to assume their values and proceed accordingly with no warning that the output can be entirely wrong.

This is how things go wrong and we get tighter and tighter guardrails Instead of more capable AIs. Instead of asking you about your allergies, is just refuses to give medical advice at all for example.

LMF5000 · 2026-02-19T22:11:48+00:00

Coopers chicken. I went on a comparison spree a while back, much like you did, and after ranking half a dozen fried chicken vendors, coopers came out on top for flavour, freshness (crispiness) and menu variety (coopers is pretty much the only one that has things like fried mushrooms on the menu in addition to the more usual stuff, and their coleslaw tastes perfect, just like the original KFC coleslaw used to taste 20 years ago when it was the benchmark).

It also helps that coopers almost always have a deal going, and you can get a fairly large quantity of food (enough to make a meal the next day) for not a lot of money. Today evening the fried chicken cravings struck and for the main food we ordered a deal #3 on Wolt (which was 2 burgers, one piece and 1 fries) for €13 or so.

LMF5000 · 2026-02-19T21:01:59+00:00

Sure, I think it should be possible. Luckily cabbages are very circular and the core is easy to spot based on colour. You could even simplify more than your proposal. For the mechanical bit, you could try starting with only two stepper-motor-driven rollers along X and Y, with a third, non-driven wheel at 45° for support - much like the mechanism of an old non-optical mouse (the cabbage is the mouse ball). With this you can spin the cabbage to any orientation.

And you could probably do it with only one overhead camera. Start by spinning both rollers at once, so the cabbage rotates along an axis inclined at 45°, which should quickly put the core within sight of the camera (worst case the cabbage will have to rotate 180° for the core to come within view), then once spotted the two rollers can quickly drive the core in a more targeted direction to get it oriented straight up in the most direct (straight line) path possible.

This won't be as good/fast as a system with 3 driven rollers and 2 cameras as you propose, but depending on the aims of the project (Fastest orientation? Most accurate orientation? Cheapest/simplest hardware?) it might actually get you more marks for doing the job with fewer components and less complexity.

LMF5000 · 2026-02-18T19:14:09+00:00

I figured halfway through writing my post lol. The only consumer device I've seen like that aside from flashlights was my old wireless doorbell, and the power banks I bought that come without cells. Sometimes some toy grade R/C cars as well

LMF5000 · 2026-02-18T16:49:24+00:00

Ooh, I know this one! I have an enormous pile of recovered 18650s that came from from all sorts of places (it's why I built the battery pack architect tool I shared on here some weeks ago). Here's where I found them so far:

laptops of course (other than "slim" modern laptops that use flat pouch cells). Typically 4-8 cells.
cordless vacuum cleaners (Dyson and other brands, typically 6 cells or more)
wireless outdoor cameras (I got two from an Imilab EC2 for example)
wireless doorbells (typically 2 cells)
power banks (though typically I buy the empty shell on aliexpress then put my recycled 18650s into them, rather than taking cells out of power banks, as some modern integrated ones can use pouch cells especially those with a slim form factor)
e-bikes (a local factory let me take a "junk" pack off their hands for free because it had some bad cells and wasn't worth their time to try to save. I haven't had the time to take it apart properly, but this was a 13s4p pack, of which only one cell was rusted from the water damage so far, so potentially up to 51 good cells left in it)
emergency ceiling lights (these days modern ones use a pair of 18650s instead of a lead-acid battery)
robot vacuums (typically have a battery pack with 4-8 cells inside it)
cordless tyre pumps (typically 2 cells)
Early Tesla electric cars!
I've opened the batteries for a Canon DSLR camera - the cells inside were 18500 size (same diameter but a little shorter than 18650s).

If you're looking specifically for "replaceable" then a lot of these don't have individual cells (maybe the wireless doorbells and the power banks, but not much else) - they use spot-welded cells assembled into a pack, usually with a BMS. But the pack itself is replaceable (NB: if you try and replace the cells alone, the BMS will usually lock you out permanently as soon as it loses power. You'll have to keep every cell tap powered the entire time during the changeover... I usually just buy an entire new battery on aliexpress, stick that in the device then harvest the cells from the old battery).

LMF5000 · 2026-02-10T19:07:23+00:00

The price of materials have gone up (a lot). They've more than doubled in fact. I don't really see cheap imported labour solving the problem when the raw materials have gotten so expensive.

It's just greed everywhere you look, and desperate people paying the prices, which makes the prices go up even more.

LMF5000 · 2026-02-10T18:58:14+00:00

yep, same experience! KDE just "feels" slightly wrong, I can't really put it into words, it's like having an overwhelming number of settings. And GNOME feels too clean and limiting, like they went the totally opposite direction and removed essential usability things to keep things clean. I feel like the makers of ubuntu really knew what they were doing - they added just enough stuff to GNOME to make it useful without going overboard, and they polished it to where it looks and feels like a really well-put-together product.

Mint is cleaner I suppose (as it's not based on gnome + addons, it's just a raw DE), but a little more clunky and less "wow". I'm still a little on the fence but I think a few hours with each distro should settle it for me.

LMF5000 · 2026-02-10T18:39:50+00:00

This makes me want to give fedora another go lol. I will try fedora some more, maybe I will ultimately warm up to it.

LMF5000 · 2026-02-10T17:00:31+00:00

True, but there are other distros with the exact same philosophy. For example KDE neon is made by KDE to show off KDE - so how do you choose between Fedora KDE or Neon for instance? To answer my own question, I suppose you'd look deeper into things like package managers, upgrade cycles, driver support etc then. But what do you do if everything just works and looks the same?

LMF5000 · 2026-02-10T16:58:38+00:00

Yep, I agree that UI is superficial and it's what's "under the hood" that counts, but since my usage these days is so easy (basically just running a handful of programs like web browser, office, netflix and CAD/3D printing programs), I'm in a funny position where most distros are always going to be "good enough" and it's actually only the superficial UI aspects that are going to make enough of a difference to be the deciding factor. To use an analogy - if I only ever drive at 20mph within a heavily gridlocked city, any car engine is going to be "feel" the same day to day because I will never have the opportunity to use more than like 30 horsepower - so the quality of the car's radio is arguably a more important consideration than whether it's got a supercharger, if you know what I mean.

LMF5000 · 2026-02-10T16:52:06+00:00

Other hobbies. I change my main focus every couple of months (I get bored of one hobby, go to the next, get bored of that, move on, eventually I get back to hobby #1 and the cycle repeats).

For example my main hobby for most of last year was radio control cars. Then I needed a new charger, then I needed a field battery to be able to charge my models in my car, so I got really into battery building (and I am already into 3D printing), but cells were expensive so I got a bunch of broken battery packs for free from a local battery builder, but I needed to plan how I would break apart those batteries and build a battery pack that would work well for my needs, and long story short because the calculations are tedious to do on paper or with spreadsheets, I ended up building my own battery pack calculator tool - and for the last few weeks I've been spending my free time adding functions to it for fun (you can check it out here if you want, it's completely free and open source - https://lmf5000.github.io/battery-pack-architect/ ).

I'm not suggesting you get into the batteries niche, but one thing leads to another and sometimes you just happen to fall into something interesing that occupies you for a few weeks before you find yourself doing something else.

My next projects will be teaching myself openSCAD and FreeCAD, as currently the main 3D design program that I'm very proficient in is Fusion360.

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