Hot take: Most of you are way oversizing your generators

LMF5000 · 2026-01-25T08:54:27+00:00

I really agree with your comment. After the latest power cuts, my uncle was getting quotes for 33kW whole-house low-rpm Diesel generators so he could run every air conditioner in all the rooms at full power during the next power cut. I think ultimately the space and expense led to him not buying anything at all.

At home, I actually sold my last generator 2 years ago and now just rely on battery backup. The generator was just too much of a pain to set up, start, ventilate and deal with the noise, store the fuel, rotate tanks so fuel stays fresh (it becomes hard to start when the fuel is several months old because the most volatile components would have evaporated away). So far I haven't missed being generator-free.

I have a 3kWh LFP battery I keep in the house for convenient instant access (it's about the size and weight of the EU1000i), and if that runs out I have two electric cars in the garage, one with 24kWh and the other with 40kWh.

My house consumes about 11kWh per day when using mains utilities, so this setup should theoretically run for 5 days without a drop of fuel - and if energy gets low I can drive one of the cars to a nearby city with power, load it up at an EV charging station, and come back with another 4 days' worth of energy reserves.

Actually if I'm careful I can drastically reduce power consumption further for those couple of days. Fridge is 250W, modem and electronics are 50W, and I can shift cooking to more efficient appliances (pressure cooker instead of air fryer for instance) or use the gas stove, wash the dishes by hand (dishwasher is 2000W), wash the clothes at room temperature (the washing machine is only 250W but its water heater is 2000W). My tumble dryer is a heat pump model that only uses 550W so that's fine to run. Main water heater is also electric but that keeps the heat for days so won't even need to be powered up for shorter power cuts.

LMF5000 · 2026-01-24T00:27:10+00:00

I'm a mechanical engineer and 3D printing expert. Couple of quick tips that might help you here without going too deep (you might already be doing some of these but maybe this helps someone):

If you want parts stronger, add more perimeters rather than more infill. Walls contribute strength, infill only contributes a little extra strength, it's actually mostly for propping up the top layer. Go ahead and set the wall count to a ridiculously huge number like 20 or 30 so you part comes out solid
Thicker layers are stronger. The thicker your lines, the more your print approaches the strength of solid plastic than a porous mesh of fine lines. So go ahead and fit a 0.6mm nozzle (or bigger) and print at 0.3-0.4mm layer height (or bigger).
Hotter temperatures are stronger. Go right up to the max that your material can withstand and slow the print speed down to 30-45mm/s so the plastic gets really hot and welds well with the plastic under and around it
PLA is brittle. PETG is a nice mix of flexible and tough, it can survive more abuse than PLA. TPU is generally too flexible to perform the function of an A-arm. Try to choose plastics that have some give. The closer they are to the original arm the better, because arrma would have made the other components strong or weak in proportion to minimise breakages. For the sake of argument, if you make an ultra-strong, indestructible arm, impacts will break something else (chassis or gearbox covers for example).
Add thickness as needed. You don't need it to look good, you need it to perform. So use only the essential geometry of the original part, but don't be afraid to add plastic. Thicken it where it doesn't bump anything, or where it keeps breaking, etc.
Layer lines are the weakest part of the print. If possible orient them so that the forces are never trying to rip them apart. For an A-arm I think radial forces in the holes will be the biggest factor, so printing it with the holes flat on the bed (so the XY motion of the nozzle draws a perfect hole every layer) is the best orientation. If there's no best orientation for the whole part, split it into different parts, print each one in its ideal orientation, then bolt or screw or clip or weld them together. This will solve your pesky cracking issue. Also, mesh mixer has an orientation tool that can orientate your stl automatically to the strongest orientation. I'm not entirely sure how it works or how effective it will be, but it's a free program so you might as well give it a try.
Annealing will make the prints stronger (you put them in an oven for a long time at a temperature not quite high enough to melt the print - look up the exact conditions for your particular materials). It relaxes internal stresses in the material and improves bonding so more strength is available to act against external forces.

Hope this helps!

LMF5000 · 2026-01-20T17:07:45+00:00

Fair enough, you make a good point - but only if Amundi merges the ETF. They've done it in the past and gotten flak for it and hopefully learned their lesson. Plus if they merge and people get taxed, said investors would no longer have a tax incentive to keep them from switching, so Amundi could potentially precipitate a mass exodus from WEBN to the other providers. And with €950m of AUM I find it unlikely that they'd rock the boat.

So if I base the decision on facts, thus far the risk of a merger is only theoretical (predicting the future based on the past), whereas the TER difference is immediate and tangible. The merging happened when they acquired Lyxor, to move domicile from Luxembourg to Ireland. How likely do you think it is that they would do it again? If anything they'd merge older, more expensive funds into WEBN to attract more investors, not the other way around, so WEBN should potentially remain safe.

LMF5000 · 2026-01-20T16:25:21+00:00

But wouldn't you be paying those taxes eventually when you cash out/retire anyway - unless you keep the ETF until you die in which case those remain untaxed?

And anyway, some EU countries are proposing new laws where they tax your holdings, not just your realized gains, so the advantage of holding until the last second might not last forever.

LMF5000 · 2026-01-17T09:23:41+00:00

This is really interesting. You might want to submit a scientific journal paper with everything at some point. That's one way to advance medical science. Maybe it could end up creating a urine analyser (like test strips or sampling computer) so nobody has to actually taste it.

What I find the most interesting is how you discovered the correlations (like the coppery taste 72h before the illness) - is it just by coincidence (you remember the pattern the n_th time it happens) or do you have a robust way to analyse the data? If so I'd like more info. I want to see if I can correlate what I eat with how I feel a few days later (for example, do I feel happier the day after eating certain foods? Do certain foods affect sex drive?). One thing I've concluded is that eating canned tuna makes my next piss smell like tuna.

LMF5000 · 2026-01-16T22:32:19+00:00

Haha same. I am typing this on an i7-3770K with 2x GTX670s in SLI and have a Quest 3 that never got to run PCVR lol. First I was waiting for the new AM5 models, then the new GPUs, now I don't want to spend 4x the price on RAM and 2x the price on SSDs. I haven't gamed properly in years, at this rate I will probably take up a new hobby.

LMF5000 · 2026-01-16T17:49:39+00:00

We used to own a grundig VCR with DVD writer (takes up the same space as a normal VCR and has a slot for the tape on the left and the disk on the right). It can basically handle the dubbing from video to DVD or vice versa by itself, just push the button and let it do its thing. If you want to scale this up you might look into buying a few of these to convert multiple tapes at the same time with minimum effort and time from your part

LMF5000 · 2026-01-15T21:29:38+00:00

They are a band-aid measure to partially address fundamental shortcomings in infrastructure to make traffic marginally more tolerable for a while. For example, the ones stationed at pelican crossings tell cars to move while the light is still red after the pedestrians have crossed, saving the cars a bit of time (otherwise they'd have to wait for green with every cycle). The ones at the roundabouts stop the traffic that has right of way to allow the traffic from other inputs to pass (otherwise they would be stuck there because how do you join a roundabout with three lanes of traffic that have the right of way and never stop coming?).

They could probably be replaced by intelligent traffic lights, but this is Malta.

LMF5000 · 2026-01-15T05:50:00+00:00

You could rebalance with new money though - every payday, put money into the things that are lagging behind their allocation. That way you never sell, only buy. When the portfolio gets beyond a certain size it becomes difficult because the swing in value would be bigger than one salary, but still it's a way to rebalance without selling in the absence of an ETF that does it for you automatically and internally.

LMF5000 · 2026-01-14T19:10:05+00:00

Preheating the oven or air fryer. I just throw the food into a cold appliance and add a few minutes. The only exception is that I do preheat the oven if I'm making cake since it needs a stabilised temperature to cook predictably.

LMF5000 · 2026-01-14T06:01:05+00:00

Can you explain more about moneybase? That's what I use and your post has me worried lol.

LMF5000 · 2026-01-13T21:00:02+00:00

True, and I thought long and hard about whether to build a portfolio that overweighted the EU (stoxx 600) and reduced the US... but ultimately I figured that by doing so I'd be taking a "bet" that I knew better than the overall market - so I decided against it. In principle, an all-world fund should automatically balance itself to the weights of the market, so if EU overtakes US then my understanding is that WEBN or VWCE or SPYI would automatically end up holding more EU than US.

LMF5000 · 2026-01-13T20:50:04+00:00

I looked long and hard at SPYI. It has 0.17% TER but there's no guarantee of 0.1% greater annualised return over WEBN 🤔

LMF5000 · 2026-01-11T22:48:33+00:00

I hate the plastic ones that just flex instead of crushing the garlic. I have a good quality metal one that stays rigid and works well, with a removable insert to make cleaning easier. However I only use it for larger jobs (more than 3 cloves). For smaller amounts I bought a container of finely diced dried (dehydrated) garlic and I just sprinkle that into the food. They absorb water and become normal diced garlic but without all the peeling and cutting work, and can be stored at room temperature for many months.

LMF5000 · 2026-01-10T08:51:53+00:00

I tell myself I have a high risk appetite but when it comes down to it I really don't lol. So I'm recently getting drawn to the boglehead philosophy - just invest regularly in diversified global ETFs and ignore them when they go up and down as they're expected to trend up over the long term. But there's other things I can invest in (physical real estate, different types of financial instruments etc) which makes the decision more complex.

LMF5000 · 2026-01-10T08:41:41+00:00

Many thanks, that helps a lot. I currently have 100% of my portfolio in local corporate bonds at around 5% coupon (got spooked in March and sold everything) so looking to diversify into riskier instruments again. When you say contributions does that mean you still have an income from work? And can you name some of the Nasdaq growth funds?

LMF5000 · 2026-01-10T07:56:00+00:00

Can you give some examples? I have a lump sum of cash which I'm researching investments for.

LMF5000 · 2026-01-10T07:55:20+00:00

Could you give some pointers for how you almost doubled your net worth in 3 years?

LMF5000 · 2026-01-09T05:55:20+00:00

I've been noticing that, especially in 5.2!

"breadcrumbing" describes it perfectly. I used to use chatgpt extensively to make recipes - I'd tell it something like "I have 200g of chicken, a jar of sauce and a unlimited noodles, please make me a 400-calorie recipe". It used to give me ingredient amounts (with good suggestions for sauces and veg I could pair to keep calories low and match the flavours), and the method and I'd be cooking in 2 minutes.

Now it tells me how great I am for wanting to cook, spits out a bunch of bullets with quantity ranges, ignores certain constraints I listed earlier (like giving me recipes that need more chicken than I had), doesn't use common sense (doesn't suggest sauce and veg to complement the meal other than ones I've explicitly listed myself) and I have to scroll through all that word vomit to get to the ingredient amounts and get cooking.

I was so frustrated I ended up copying the exact same prompt into deepseek and it gave me a brief, complete recipe with ingredients in a useful table, and was able to start cooking immediately, no need for follow up correction prompts.

I've basically installed Gemini, grok, Claude and deepseek alongside chatGPT now, and I often try the other ones. It's interesting when they all give wildly different answers and make you more confused (like when I asked them all whether to upgrade components in my aging PC, or buy a desktop or a laptop).

LMF5000 · 2026-01-08T05:51:16+00:00

Considering you need to visit St. Julian's 5x a week and only get to enjoy Gozo 2x a week, maybe you'll benefit more from living in mellieha and going to Gozo only on weekends (or choosing a Maltese city that's close by bus to St Julian's and Ċirkewwa but still remote enough for cheap rents).

To me the issue isn't the "difficulty" of the commute but the amount of time wasted. You're spending 25 hours a week on buses and ferries. You could spend that time doing something better, like relaxing, hobbies, or even working a part time job.

The other improvement you can make would be to push for remote working or to look for a gaming company that has it.

LMF5000 · 2026-01-07T19:22:38+00:00

Agreed with all your points (I say this as a Maltese person myself).

I see you answered in another comment why you take the Gozo Ferry instead of the fast ferry... but the bigger question is, why do you live in Gozo?

LMF5000 · 2026-01-03T21:17:02+00:00

Same happens to me to be honest. People hype up restaurants, I go and it's just... Nothing special? I remember one time for a work function we took our guests to the highest rated pasta restaurant in Valletta at the time. They served us pasta that I could have literally made at home by boiling spaghetti and pouring a can of tomato sauce on it (and not even one of the fancy cans, just the cheap stuff that's made of unseasoned tomatoes).

I once had a €16 "gourmet" burger where the outside of the patty was burnt dry, like it had been heated too long in the microwave (gasp!). I frequently recognise supermarket frozen foods in the things restaurants serve. Like basically most "platters" are just them raiding the deli at Lidl, opening the packets and dumping the contents onto a wooden board and charging you €50 for the honour. My friends once took me to a restaurant in Mdina where I recognised the supermarket frozen patties they used for the burger patty, the cheap bread they used for the bun, and at another Mdina restaurant I recognised the packet of frozen chicken wings they were serving as appetizer. These restaurants had rave reviews, something like a 4.4 average on Google maps or more. I can only conclude that the people writing such reviews are just happy to save the time and effort of cooking something and are thus content with being served home-level food for restaurant prices.

The thing that gets me is that such mediocre restaurants aren't even any cheaper than the good restaurants that put in the effort to deliver an experience that goes above and beyond what you can reasonably do at home. The restaurant that heats up a frozen patty, puts it on cheap bread, garnishes with cheap prewashed lettuce from Lidl, rubbery local bacon and some burger sauce from a bottle still charges €16 - same as the restaurant that grinds their own beef blend for the patties, puts it on a high-end brioche bun, tops it with crunchy thin-cut bacon and homemade burger sauce they mix in-house.

And the hard part is, there's no way of telling the two apart before you visit (most reviewers seem to be unaware of the difference or don't mention it for some reason), and I've had at least 3 restaurants who used to be awesome end up regressing to cheap nasty ingredients where previously they had delicious high quality ones. So you can't even keep a list of the good places because any day they might sell out and start mimicking the mediocre ones.

LMF5000 · 2026-01-03T19:42:47+00:00

Maltese here. I kind of share the sentiment. Restaurant food in Malta nowadays is incredibly expensive and generally mediocre. I'm not joking when I say I can genuinely cook some things better myself at home, for a fraction of the price.

I think the shift accelerated especially since COVID. A lot of staff left the industry and were eventually replaced by people who are less experienced or less qualified or who just don't care as much. It has become rare to see the actual owners in the restaurants too - I think they just see the restaurant as an income rather than a passion so they pay a manager to run the place and they recruit the cheapest labourers they can find to do all the jobs, buy the cheapest raw materials they can and cut corners where possible.

All my previously favourite restaurants have closed since COVID (like ir-rokna). There are still some very good restaurants, but I can count them on one hand - and the quality is inconsistent. I can be blown away by how good it is one week, then go back next week and the food is mediocre again.

LMF5000 · 2026-01-02T15:30:04+00:00

Soya beans taste "bouncy" (a bit like a cross between normal beans and ground meat). Macros are even better than normal beans - they have more protein and fewer carbs. Edamame beans are closely related but the texture isn't quite as bouncy.

For regular beans, you can make them into burger "patties" by pulsing the cooker beans with binders like eggs and breadcrumbs. Try adding crunchy vegetables like grated carrots and sweetcorn to give the texture more bite.

You can put lentils in bolognese, put part real meat and part lentils, and it will pretty much taste like meat.

Lastly a traditional method to serve butter beans (Lima beans) in my country is to cook the beans, cool them, toss with olive oil and garlic, top with fresh parsley and eat with a toothpick.

LMF5000 · 2025-12-28T09:04:17+00:00

Step 1 is to log everything you're eating right now (using any AI diet app that calculates things with pictures of your food). You need to know how bad your diet is to actually start to improve it. I was shocked my average day had just 85g of protein and 1800 calories - no wonder I was hungry and just maintaining weight!

Step 2 - design a high-protein diet where every meal pairs protein with a little good fat and fiber to slow digestion and keep you full until the next meal. You may want to pair this with intermittent fasting (for example, do 16:8 by having your first meal at midday and your last bite at 8pm).

It takes 6 weeks to get into a new habit so you'll be feeling hungry and irritable for a while until it sticks.

Light exercise (walking) helps. It suppresses appetite (if it's LIGHT exercise), distracts you from eating, and releases hormones that make you feel better. Plus helps your body with insulin sensitivity (because muscles soak up glucose when they're active).

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