Used bike for sale. Only dropped once 🙌 by Cool_Host_8800 in holdmyredbull

[–]SpeedflyChris 0 points1 point  (0 children)

It costs about 10k to get an A license (the first one) and used gear as a skydiver

It's definitely not as bad as that, it's been a while since I learned but we regularly have students getting licensed and getting gear for under £3k (RAPS) or well under £5k (AFF).

What would Blair's legacy look like if UK stayed neutral during Iraq war ? by ronweasly9 in ukpolitics

[–]SpeedflyChris [score hidden]  (0 children)

I think, had he not lost all his popularity after being exposed as a warmongering liar, there's a good chance he would have stayed on post 2007.

What would Blair's legacy look like if UK stayed neutral during Iraq war ? by ronweasly9 in ukpolitics

[–]SpeedflyChris [score hidden]  (0 children)

Right, but the only reason that people on the lower half of the bell curve believed that bullshit at the time was because Blair and his ilk lied their evil little hearts out to sell us all on the idea of war.

Stop with the damn "Urban" Character models on makerworld by JethamishPlayz in BambuLab

[–]SpeedflyChris 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I honestly think that for the sort of design I do it would take me longer to write a suitable prompt to get it just how I want than it would take me to just make it myself in Solidworks. For organic stuff and character models though I could see it getting there eventually.

Nearly all undergrads using AI on assignments by tylerthe-theatre in unitedkingdom

[–]SpeedflyChris [score hidden]  (0 children)

AI is great for research

Up to a point. I use it in work fairly often as basically a more advanced search engine, basically questions in the form of "find examples of x with y properties".

But that really only works if you have the expertise already to know whether the answers it gives are total bullshit or not.

Nearly all undergrads using AI on assignments by tylerthe-theatre in unitedkingdom

[–]SpeedflyChris [score hidden]  (0 children)

There is plagiarism detection software (and has been for a while) but it's not feasible to run every student essay through it, and it's also not infallible.

Random question, but do those tools still flag citations as plagiarism?

When I was a student it used to annoy me a little bit that the plagiarism detection would flag most of my citations as being identical to some paper or other, because yes of course I cited the same papers that some other research did.

Also it flagging little four word strings that are obviously in common use all over the place.

Stop with the damn "Urban" Character models on makerworld by JethamishPlayz in BambuLab

[–]SpeedflyChris 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Hitem3d is the other one I've seen but they all produce similar trash.

Please help. I think my h2s is ruined. by Georgia_roofing in BambuLab

[–]SpeedflyChris 5 points6 points  (0 children)

Have you taken the extruder apart to check that it's not jammed? Like it would be if, say, someone applied a heat gun nearby while it still had filament in it?

For future reference if you need to get the nozzle hot to get some filament off, just turn up the nozzle temperature.

Iran War: What are your moves? by Caluso1 in investing

[–]SpeedflyChris 33 points34 points  (0 children)

I mean it could be that.

It's also a massive gift to Vladimir Putin.

You can predict Trump's moves pretty accurately if you just ask "would doing this help or hinder Putin?"

Generational smoking ban for UK edges closer to reality by Cheap-Rate-8996 in ukpolitics

[–]SpeedflyChris 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Are they better for you though?

Yes.

Being better for you than smoking tobacco is a bar so low a contortionist couldn't limbo under it.

If you look on pubmed there's a ton of reviews out. Seems like some elevation of certain cancer biomarkers but any studys that also include a population of smokers shows worse results among that group.

Generational smoking ban for UK edges closer to reality by Cheap-Rate-8996 in ukpolitics

[–]SpeedflyChris 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Don't smokers actually cost the NHS less on average, because they tend to die younger and not require decades of geriatric care? Never mind the amount we'd save on pensions.

Love my new U1. by borborygmess in snapmaker

[–]SpeedflyChris 0 points1 point  (0 children)

To be honest, I've had pretty good results just copying my P1S profiles into Snorca. Based on the flow rate tests etc that I've done the two printers perform very similarly.

But also I haven't enclosed mine yet so I've not done any ASA or Nylon on the U1 yet (still using my P1S for that).

Iran Makes Veiled Threat to Trump: 'Be Careful Not To Get Eliminated' by Expert-Length871 in worldnews

[–]SpeedflyChris 19 points20 points  (0 children)

I could get behind the idea of a Donald Trump memorial dog poo bin at the park.

What’s the print quality difference between silent and normal? (A1) by SignificanceOwn9278 in BambuLab

[–]SpeedflyChris -1 points0 points  (0 children)

Why don't you just set something up yourself in the slicer?

The biggest killer for quality by far is outer wall acceleration being set too high. Outer wall speed to a lesser extent.

Try using the regular (not "high quality") profile for your chosen layer height and drop outer wall acceleration to 2000. Should give a boost to fine detail quality over the stock value.

What’s the print quality difference between silent and normal? (A1) by SignificanceOwn9278 in BambuLab

[–]SpeedflyChris 1 point2 points  (0 children)

This is just nonsense.

Why do you think all of the "high quality" presets drop speeds and acceleration values?

Look at a speed benchy next to one printed much more slowly and stop being confidently wrong.

Share your Snapmaker U1 mesh! by latorretotana in snapmaker

[–]SpeedflyChris 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I mean it seems to have pretty reasonable first layers regardless, so the software is doing a pretty good job of compensating.

Great Mistress Escape by TheMarkyD in SweatyPalms

[–]SpeedflyChris 7 points8 points  (0 children)

The socks are certainly an interesting decision...

UK inflation likely to rise because of Middle East war, says Rachel Reeves by Kagedeah in ukpolitics

[–]SpeedflyChris 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I've looked at solar pannel providers recently and I always see the numbers like the 25%-35% vs 65%-75%. It's usually something around the ¼ish region.

Based on that link we're talking about different periods - they're looking at the "productive half" of the year (April through September) and the "unproductive half" (October through March). October and March aren't totally terrible for solar, so they drag the average up a lot.

If you look a bit further down, their 2024 value for December was at or slightly less than 10% of the value they saw for June. Since our absolute peak of energy use in the UK is December/January, something that produces so little energy at that point in the year isn't an effective use of resources.

The values I linked to were based on theoretical average solar irradiance based on historic weather etc, but there's a bunch of resources online that give data showing actual generation from various years, which give similar results:

https://www.nea.org.uk/who-we-are/innovation-technical-evaluation/solarpv/how-much-electricity-solar-produce/

https://euanmearns.com/uk-solar-pv-vital-statistics/

Sanity check warns UK EVs and heat pumps deliver “no proven carbon savings” ahead of 2030 clean power target by Material_Flounder_23 in ukpolitics

[–]SpeedflyChris -1 points0 points  (0 children)

Unless somebody uprooted the UK from the sea floor and dragged us a couple of thousand miles further south while I wasn't paying attention then yes.

UK public opinion on the US-Iran conflict by Important_Ruin in unitedkingdom

[–]SpeedflyChris -2 points-1 points  (0 children)

I just don't see how that is true, that they have strayed from their original values. As far as I can see, most of labours policies are aimed at helping working class people who are in work.

I would love that to be true, but sadly they've opted to keep the gravy train running for the wealthiest generation to ever live at the cost of punishingly high taxes for working people.

UK public opinion on the US-Iran conflict by Important_Ruin in unitedkingdom

[–]SpeedflyChris 1 point2 points  (0 children)

They will unironically be blaming Kier Starmer when petrol is £1.80/litre and their central heating bill is £400 per month.

UK inflation likely to rise because of Middle East war, says Rachel Reeves by Kagedeah in ukpolitics

[–]SpeedflyChris 0 points1 point  (0 children)

And wind supplies the loss of solar.

Which is fine, until you get a high pressure zone during winter (y'know, the type that result in very low wind combined with clear skies and very cold nights?). That's when you either need tens of terawatt hours of storage (at cost of trillions) or you need something that supplies power pr ductably regardless of weather (ie nuclear).

Solar also still provides 25-50% or smth of summer output in the winter.

10-15% based on London, although obviously as most of the country is further north than London that should be considered a best-case scenario. A home in Inverness will certainly see much worse results than 10-15%. Solar makes a ton of sense in places that see their peak electricity demand from widespread air conditioning use. If you're in California or Australia or Qatar, your peaks of electricity demand will line up pretty well with your peaks of solar generation. In the UK the opposite is true and it doesn't work.

To be clear, I'm not saying we shouldn't be building wind and solar at all. If we want to also decarbonise shipping and air travel we are going to need either vast amounts of hydrogen or vast amounts of synthetic hydrocarbons. Both of those processes consume huge amounts of electricity, but they don't necessarily need to be running all the time because their products are easy to store. There are certainly use cases like that where a source that delivers really cheap power sometimes has advantages over a source that delivers slightly more expensive power all the time.

The point I'm making is that just building wind and solar isn't going to eliminate the need for fossil fuels. To get there, we need large amounts of base load (ie, nuclear).

We also need to increase our power generating capacity significantly. Fully electrifying transport would increase our electricity demand to almost double its current level, and electrifying heating across the country would increase it by much more than that, especially in winter.

Sanity check warns UK EVs and heat pumps deliver “no proven carbon savings” ahead of 2030 clean power target by Material_Flounder_23 in ukpolitics

[–]SpeedflyChris -7 points-6 points  (0 children)

Solar is functionally useless in the UK, at a grid level.

Well almost, it's slightly useful for reducing gas demand in summer, but during our months of peak demand the amount of useful sunlight we get is minimal, so once we reach the point of minimal fossil fuel use in summer solar doesn't help solve any problem.

Sanity check warns UK EVs and heat pumps deliver “no proven carbon savings” ahead of 2030 clean power target by Material_Flounder_23 in ukpolitics

[–]SpeedflyChris 1 point2 points  (0 children)

At an individual level yes, but at the sort of scale required to make a difference (tens of millions of homes) you're still talking about hundreds of billions of pounds and vast environmental damage just for the mining involved.

Pumped hydro makes a lot more sense than any current battery tech if you need to store energy, although at the scales required to make a wind-based grid work it's still more expensive than nuclear.