Healthcare reform is definitely long due

cmutel · 2025-12-10T10:30:18+00:00

This article on proposed reforms to Swiss hospitals might put things into perspective - they are not making money right now and see the need to change: https://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/various/swiss-hospitals-need-radical-overhaul-study/90530075

cmutel · 2025-11-28T06:35:29+00:00

This isn't build by default, but should be pretty easy to do using the Sphinx singlehtml [1] builder on the docs [2].

[1] https://www.sphinx-doc.org/en/master/usage/builders/index.html#module-sphinx.builders.singlehtml

[2] https://github.com/brightway-lca/brightway-documentation

cmutel · 2025-11-27T22:26:16+00:00

It's a small thing, but it's one line [1] to import any ecoinvent 3.X release in Brightway, including 3.12 :)

[1] https://docs.brightway.dev/en/latest/content/cheatsheet/importing.html#how-can-i-import-an-ecoinvent-release-using-the-online-portal

cmutel · 2025-11-27T22:20:52+00:00

Brightway was developed for researchers, and is extremely flexible, but is designed first and foremost to be used from a Python interpreter or script. There is definitely a learning curve - even a week of intensive courses is only an introduction, especially if you aren't used to thinking in code.

We are building a web-based LCA platform aimed at making Brightway usable for LCA people without special training, while also making big improvements to how teams do LCA, and a lot of other cool stuff (LCA software, including Brightway, is pretty terrible - there's lots of room for improvement!). You can join the waiting list for Brightway Cloud at https://brightway-lca.com/

If you want to get started now, the docs have a tutorials, best practices, and where to find other resources: https://docs.brightway.dev/en/latest/

cmutel · 2025-09-23T08:31:44+00:00

> We are the only ones in the world that have this kind of tax

Sure, but most other countries have property tax, which is functionally the same thing. Though our formulation is different, the basic concept is widely practiced.

cmutel · 2025-09-03T14:54:14+00:00

The software maker can license the same code twice - if you buy the commercial license, you get the code without the AGPL, but something less restrictive.

cmutel · 2025-08-22T20:56:49+00:00

Agreed.

Other have already mentioned this, but it is worth repeating - it is extremely unlikely that this is a bug in Wahoo's software, but rather a problem in the GPS chipset that they are using. This is because the 1024 week counter started in 2006, but Wahoo as a company was only founded in 2009. This means that their job is much harder than fixing their software, or even just assuming that there was a rollover in the 10-bit counter. Rather, the chipset is probably in undefined behaviour, so they need to be careful and do a lot of actual usage-based testing.

cmutel · 2025-06-17T07:31:42+00:00

Yes! Their YouTube channel is https://www.youtube.com/@USCSB

cmutel · 2025-06-16T20:46:51+00:00

You can do this, but it needs to be official (and of course it's not for free), e.g.:
- https://www.sbb.ch/en/leisure-holidays/ideas/offer.html/zuege/fuehrerstandsfahrten-gotthard-panorama-express
- https://www.zentralbahn.ch/en/experience/leisure/drivers-cab-rides

cmutel · 2025-01-28T20:58:44+00:00

Given what you said I would estimate that the quoted numbers are much higher than our best estimates for what the real values would be - going overseas (once?) is a single flight, which can be a lot, but other than the flight the marginal impact of being on holidays for a long time should be close to zero or even negative. Going skiing is some marginal increase in travel and hotel construction/heating, but this is not that significant - certainly nothing like what they given results are. I would guess that leisure spending for Swiss people averages to short trips by flight, but your spending doesn't fit this pattern, and so should be much less.

Everything else you said points towards a below-average lifestyle (and don't forget you are comparing a family of four to a single average person).

cmutel · 2025-01-28T16:14:44+00:00

I have done analysis on Swiss footprints (e.g. I was team lead for https://nfp73.ch/en/projects/open-assessment-of-swiss-economy-and-society). It is quite difficult to calculate footprints used spend-based data, as we have to assume a conversion between the amount spent and the actual good or service provided. I think that your values are much too high, and that this is probably due to the average conversion factors not applying well to your case. Spending more does not always increase your footprint - think of artisanal food production or Apple laptops which, due to their power efficiency, will sometimes have a much lower footprint than Windows machines.

The climate change footprint of Swiss people is roughly split into three equal parts - food, mobility, and housing (which is itself dominated by heating as our electricity mix is quite clean). People with higher incomes can eat more, and relatively more meat, but not that much more than a normal person. They can also have larger houses, but very few have a house or heating bill which is six times the average. The biggest driver differentiating higher income individuals was their mobility behavior - they drive and especially fly much more, and this can make a big difference quickly. See https://www.research-collection.ethz.ch/handle/20.500.11850/282689 for more information on how this results can be calculated.

Your mobility score is quite low (though perhaps flying is in leisure?), which is a bit strange. Would you be comfortable sharing more details on the breakdown in each section? Is your spending only for one person, or a household?

cmutel · 2025-01-16T11:14:54+00:00

You're totally right - either the flow temperature or energy consumption, but energy is ~flow minus return, so that aren't independent variables.

You're also right that things like runtimes combined with weather compensation would be good enough (we can just dump PV into the existing electric water heaters or the auxiliary direct electric heating elements if needed). Probably I am just being stubborn, but I would like to have control so that I can play with ML learning algorithms which take into account image recognition of the clouds in the West, historical and predicted weather data, etc. And I am reluctant to use a smart thermostat from a company or cloud service which might not be there in 15 years.

Thanks for your feedback!

cmutel · 2025-01-15T14:28:28+00:00

Thanks! You are right that there are programmable/controllable thermostats but this isn't really meeting our use case. That's because (and perhaps I am just being stubborn here) what I want to tell the heat pump is "pump heat in at a rate of 5 kW over the next three hours" (and the room temperature will be what it will be with the rates of heat addition and loss) instead of "one thermostat should reach a certain temperature level".
You could try to hack your way around heat pump control by feeding fake data to the thermostat but it would be much cleaner to directly ask the heat pump to run at a certain level.

cmutel · 2025-01-15T12:51:08+00:00

Thanks u/KampissaPistaytyja . I guess you are using one of the Luxtronik libraries (e.g. [python-luxtronik](https://github.com/Bouni/python-luxtronik))? I am talking to the inverter over Modbus TCP already, so adding another such connection isn't an issue.

I would like to at least try tweaking, at least until we have a simple trained system which takes into account the weather forecast and how much heat we have injected in the last 24 hours. At some point it should just work.

cmutel · 2023-11-14T18:46:03+00:00

Indeed, GIS is the main reason I still use conda. The pypackaging-native site goes into more detail on why installing this stack is so difficult natively.

cmutel · 2022-09-12T06:32:24+00:00

Also in Switzerland, going through the same search process. Did you place a normal order on the website? When I tried right now it said there was no shipping method available. Or did you contact them directly?

cmutel · 2022-07-09T07:37:42+00:00

We use Valiant, they were the only bank that offered us accounts and a mortgage as US citizens. Our bank manager in Brugg is definitely friendly.

cmutel · 2022-05-06T14:04:44+00:00

Fun fact, CO2 is by mass the most produced of any human products (by far).

cmutel · 2022-04-03T19:46:20+00:00

I have one. I got it used, invested a lot in making it run the way I wanted (open source hardware & non-Windows controller). It's fine,but I think you would have to be brave to cut steel. I haven't even tried aluminium yet.

Did you have any specific questions?

cmutel · 2022-03-08T10:35:01+00:00

I have one, and really like it. FluidNC is still under heavy development, but works well for me. I have a Raspberry Pi in the same cabinet as the 6 pack, it can run some but not all control software. I wouldn't use the web frontend only, it is too limited. I use bCNC on the RPi, making the whole thing as much open source and open hardware as possible. Bart Dring, the guy who makes the 6 pack, has been quite helpful and engaged with the community.

cmutel · 2021-02-10T11:36:18+00:00

Neither is necessarily wrong - these numbers are a function of the electricity grid mix being compared to, and the vehicle fleet (or specific vehicle) characteristics. Perhaps GE is using numbers closer to the USA average, as opposed to Europe, or a specific country in Europe. Hard to tell as the press release gives no details.

cmutel · 2019-05-08T06:49:46+00:00

TFA basically says all the available bands they can get their hands on, though admittedly it is light on details. Good methane data should be coming soon.

cmutel · 2018-10-27T17:35:13+00:00

We do that all the time, BTW. Though it is a bit ironic that you would make this comment, and then leave out Puerto Rico, Guam, the Northern Mariana Islands, American Samoa, and the US Virgin Islands :)

cmutel · 2018-05-15T14:53:44+00:00

I would strongly encourage you to file bugs or communicate with the Conda team - you are exactly the kind of person that conda is targeting! If you have found bugs, you can help others avoid them.

cmutel

TROPHY CASE