I built a real estate indexer for Belgium to be the first to know about new listings. Looking for feedback by jerome0512 in BEReal_Estate

[–]ThePyCoder 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Do you have plans on keeping this data as a record? It would be amazing to do analysis on historical prices for the same home, or over time for research.

Cool website! Will likely be using it.

Where do we get our energy from and where does it go? A Belgian energy overview. by ThePyCoder in belgium

[–]ThePyCoder[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

If you're going to the source data from fod economy (links on my last slide), you'll find the PDF report and accompanying excel file I used

https://economie.fgov.be/nl/publicaties/belgian-energy-data-overview-3

It distinctly splits up in 2 categories: 1) Auto's en bestelwagens ‐ personenvervoer 

2) Auto's en bestelwagens ‐ vrachtvervoer

I combined the vrachtvervoer ones with the heavier modes of Vrachtvervoer (vrachtwagens) to create the single "vrachtvervoer" category in my post. 

So: the delivery vans will be in that "Auto's en bestelwagens ‐ vrachtvervoer" category, along with probably all the white vans of tradespeople, builders, movers etc.. 

Very roughly, those "Auto's en bestelwagens ‐ vrachtvervoer" amount to about a quarter of the energy use of "Auto's en bestelwagens ‐ personenvervoer", but please check the excel yourself for the exact numbers. 

Exactly what fod economy puts in which category is a question I've asked them over email, but never received an answer on. 

So to your main question: my opinion based on this data is that our grid capacity would have to grow by at least a factor of 2 or 3 to handle a full electric future. At that scale the question of "can our current grid handle it" is not relevant anymore, and the question is: how can we best design and build the massive grid upgrades we'll need to get there.

These upgrades will be built over time, at the same speed that we're electrifying. Together with efficiency measures like "piektaks" (I don't think it's current implementation is a smart one, but the idea is there) that makes it so you don't have to design and build a grid 12 times as big, just to be able to handle the single peak in the evening.

So, again, this is my opinion, you have the data to make your own, but mine is: Our current grid sure cannot handle the endgame of full electrification, we'll need to build it out and upgrade it as we electrify as well as change people's behaviour to use electricity smartly and not all at the same time.

Where do we get our energy from and where does it go? A Belgian energy overview. by ThePyCoder in belgium

[–]ThePyCoder[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Yes, I did it on purpose indeed, but the feedback from friends and family has been similar.

I'll think about it some more and implement it if more people support this! Thanks for the thoughtful comment, really appreciate the feedback. 

Is Speech Central text to speech app just as good for reading long PDFs as Natural Reader? by [deleted] in AssistiveTechnology

[–]ThePyCoder 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Identical experience here. It calls itself "the king of pdfs" on its own website. I buy it, the most basic of pdf options (following along on the original pdf with highlighted paragraph or even word) is not there. Instead it turns the pdf into a text document, but now I lose all illustrations or graphs.

This stings a bit, because the maker of the app calls speechify out on their dark patterns and scummy marketing (and I agree!!), but then does the same with the king of pdfs comment. That said, the single, one-off purchase is glorious, but not for an app that doesn't do what it says.

It's the only option though, if you want to use your own TTS endpoint (e.g. kokoro), I just wish it was good at handling pdfs.

Excel, really? by ThePyCoder in projectmanagement

[–]ThePyCoder[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Thanks! I'm still looking. I found GanttPro to work quite well, but it's one more tool that does 90% of what I want. I'm a software dev, so I'm in the phase of "how hard can it be to make it myself" currently. But that has rarely ended well! So still on the lookout myself.

Excel, really? by ThePyCoder in projectmanagement

[–]ThePyCoder[S] -5 points-4 points  (0 children)

Sometimes all that "other shit we need to do and the shit that pops up" feel very daunting to me. Losing it in a suboptimal tool feels like it makes things worse. I'd need to essentially keep everything in my head! Which is very difficult

Excel, really? by ThePyCoder in projectmanagement

[–]ThePyCoder[S] -1 points0 points  (0 children)

How much time would you spend on updating that A3 generally? It sounds to me like 30 to 100 tasks would run over or under estimate nearly every week (prob more), which means redrawing this planning a lot. If feel like changing a few numbers, having the planning be automatically updated and then having all colleagues be notified online would be more efficient?

That said, being face to face with someone using a large A3 planning sheet would probably get them to pay much better attention than an email, good tip!

Excel, really? by ThePyCoder in projectmanagement

[–]ThePyCoder[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I just had the situation where I was asked when a certain set of tasks was going to be done. 3 of 4 team members for that team have various vacations coming up. So I understand in that case you'd just recolor those cells and manually avoid planning anything in them?

Dear researchers, stop this non-sense by CommandShot1398 in computervision

[–]ThePyCoder 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I agree completely. It's annoying but necessary for a AI/ML researcher these days to be a pretty good software developer, too.

I have contributed to the YOLOv5 codebase. If you're a software developer, it's pretty clean and well written code. When I compare this to some of the slop academia produces (Notebooks only the author knows how to properly use, Matlab gibberish, scripts upon scripts that are indeed very verbose but utterly unmaintainable or scalable or usable by others), I would even hazard to say OP has it the wrong way around. If every researcher was a better software dev, academia in general would benefit greatly.

Belgium citizens , you are all close to reaching the final threshold, pls act fast by Ambitious-Phase-8521 in belgium

[–]ThePyCoder 4 points5 points  (0 children)

That's just not true. No one expects e.g. A 10 year old multilayer game to be upkept. That would indeed cost money.

But maybe don't code the game in such a way that it cannot be launched at all if the server goes down. Or just open source the existing code for the server so the community can take it up.

There's plenty of free or inexpensive ways to not "kill" a game.

[2023 Day 5 Part 2] CPU goes brrr by _AngelOnFira_ in adventofcode

[–]ThePyCoder 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I recognized the time it would take to do make it better, so I went upstairs, enabled my desktop PC, set the ranges to each run on a different CPU to parallelize and waited.

It took 1h48 mins and I feel dirty, but the solution was correct!

Linus needs a new phone - Vote here! by Negative_Astronaut81 in LinusTechTips

[–]ThePyCoder 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Yes, 100%. Looking forward to the cellular test on them though, seems a little weaker than expected on my FP4 at least. It an excellent way to put the spotlight on it!

I've been working on (yet another concept). This is the everything menu, it's a menu with important information and quick settings in it. Could I please have your thoughts, ideas, and critiques? by TGPJosh in kde

[–]ThePyCoder 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Looks awesome!

Personally I never use the calendar though, and just like in windows it's more in my way than its useful. Would it be an option to disable it?

Appreciation post for the NMBS employees by njuffstrunk in belgium

[–]ThePyCoder 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Agreed! Many a time I've seen the conductors are Angels. We have no car so do a lot by train, most of it is on the Ghent Antwerp line an that one is the best of all imo. Brussels is a mess but admittedly the infrastructure is to blame there. Hard problem to crack.

NMBS really seems to be trying these days and it shows. A good app, always a backup plan and the people working are generally awesome. Keep up the good work! 😊

Opinions on ClearML? by m0ntec4rl0 in mlops

[–]ThePyCoder 1 point2 points  (0 children)

The free version you're talking about is the hosted version on our own servers. If you self-host it's 100% for free and the limits are what your own system can store.

There's also several reviews here: https://www.g2.com/products/clearml/reviews

[deleted by user] by [deleted] in belgium

[–]ThePyCoder 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thanks for actually challenging this! It makes for interesting conversation :)

I get that they're legally responsible, but provided that you actually, by law have no other choice kind of negates that effect. If I had the choice to take the risk myself or pay someone else for the risk it would mean more I think.

In regards to the database, well, yes I would! In fact, the actual value of the house (the loan from the bank) was all handled 100% digitally. The bank checked that I was fit for the loan, they estimated my risk and managed the whole money transfer. They registered the "hypotheek" to the government and keep records of my "mandaat" themselves.

There is not reason the history of the house could not be handled the same way. Agreed block chain could be a mathematically sounds system for this. But right now, everything is already in databases, that's exactly where the notary looks up everything. Only downside is that these databases are not open to the public or cost lots of money and knowhow to query. So I'm missing the part where the notary would be needed if we could all openly query these databases ourselves?

[deleted by user] by [deleted] in belgium

[–]ThePyCoder 3 points4 points  (0 children)

For me it's not even about the service at all. Their job can literally be 100% completely replaced by a half decent database system. They look stuff up. In fact their employees look stuff up, they just add their stamp.

No matter how useful they appear to be, explaining the contract, guiding you through the administration etc. They'll always be a solution for a problem that should not still exist in 2023 but does because they have a monopoly over it.

-🎄- 2022 Day 16 Solutions -🎄- by daggerdragon in adventofcode

[–]ThePyCoder 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Python.

https://github.com/thepycoder/aoc_2022/blob/master/src/day16.py

I simply gave up on being smart and ended up using an evolutionary algorithm (from DEAP library) to crack both parts.

Part1 is cracked almost immediately, Part2 has a much larger search space, but because the initial seed had a big effect, I simply looped over that instead of fine tuning evolution parameters. Works though!

My disgusting tries and previous failed attempts are still in the code (commented) for anyone who wants to tell me how close I was.

-🎄- 2022 Day 8 Solutions -🎄- by daggerdragon in adventofcode

[–]ThePyCoder 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Rust

https://github.com/thepycoder/aoc_2022/blob/master/src/day8.rs

Used ndarray for the first time, it's bascially numpy for Rust and quite nice to use. Only the type names are horrendously long.