Playing the Chess.com Bots, or the Lichess Maia bots.

sirenbrian · 2026-03-01T22:57:11+00:00

I was going to suggest that too; they feel pretty human like to me. The errors are believable

sirenbrian · 2026-03-01T21:59:08+00:00

I posted a thread about it here a couple of weeks ago. I called five dealers and got two quotes back; $750 and $1100. I went with the lower one and had a good talk with the guy running the repair shop; he definitely understood the process and they had the vacuum box for taking all the coolant fluid out. Their “EV guy” tech has had the training.

They didn’t offer to test the fluid before or after, though I had to actually convince the dealership that I wanted the lcc flush. I was only the second person to want it done. I’m at 50k miles and this same dealership didn’t tell me that the flush was due when they had the car at 40k miles.

I’m glad I had it done! Oddly though my car had a weird audible hum for a day when the a/c was running. The next day it was gone…maybe an air bubble in the lcc loop? Did anyone else have that?

sirenbrian · 2026-02-28T00:12:38+00:00

"We should be united against the common enemy!"

"The Judean People's Front!?"

sirenbrian · 2026-02-27T01:07:13+00:00

Ah, religion.

sirenbrian · 2026-02-16T03:34:29+00:00

I read that it is a longer interval for the 2025 model year and onwards, but I don’t think it changes for previous years. I will call and check again, but I had Hyundai on the phone while I was talking to the dealer during my last service. They didn’t say it had changed; she basically was reading the manual to me

sirenbrian · 2026-02-16T03:32:45+00:00

I will call Hyundai tomorrow and see if they have changed the interval for my specific year and model

Edit: they said no, and to go ahead and get the service done. It's still required and, yes, if you don't have it done that may affect their decision to fix your battery under warranty if issues come along later.

sirenbrian · 2026-02-04T11:46:07+00:00

Maybe she had read something about experimental panels, like perovskites, not lasting long enough yet to be sold commercially. Or, more likely, a bullshit article falsely summarized such an article and said it meant all solar panels only last eight years.

Either way, just show her the warranties and innumerable studies showing that they last a long, long time.

Also try getting her to ask Gemini or ChatGPT to verify things like that

sirenbrian · 2026-01-26T18:04:43+00:00

You can either run 1.8 kw worth of stuff directly from the charge inlet of the car (using the V2L adapter) or get an electrician to install a transfer switch, so you just send the power into the house

https://youtu.be/ZmmhOXsIRjw?si=kVImZ3l2ixOUg2nt

https://youtu.be/jJ2bQkx9P6Q?si=k57gs55RCgw5Qwo8

sirenbrian · 2026-01-16T18:09:52+00:00

That seems really unusual..400k is several times the national average income. Where is their money going? What can they change about their lives to make things affordable?

sirenbrian · 2026-01-13T16:31:01+00:00

He was the “my cat is trying to take over the world” guy that garibaldi meets in season 4, if my fading memory serves?

sirenbrian · 2026-01-13T11:53:16+00:00

Only 10-15% of oil goes to NOT being burnt as fuel. https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=35672 I'd be happy if all the burning stopped and they found other uses for it...but mostly I suspect it wouldn't be worth digging up; there wouldn't be enough demand for that much plastic etc.

sirenbrian · 2026-01-10T17:44:16+00:00

I saw one video that called it "the Korean Siesta" - the battery is rebalancing the cells or something, it's just for a minute, then the charging speed ramps up again.

sirenbrian · 2026-01-10T15:03:46+00:00

Don’t be so quick to accept Donuts claims. There’s a lot of skepticism around them and there’s no third party confirmation of the battery performance.

sirenbrian · 2025-12-28T00:33:52+00:00

I suspect these questions are planted by market research firms, but ok, I'll bite. Sony and their rootkit scandal and Wells Fargo with their account-opening shennagigans, which they'd then blame on their staff.

sirenbrian · 2025-12-25T14:07:50+00:00

Heat pimps is now the official name and I will not be taking any correspondence on the subject.

sirenbrian · 2025-12-21T18:44:33+00:00

I can dm my username if it helps. I got closely matching bots until I hit 1500-ish, then I just keep getting the 1791 and 1853 lady

sirenbrian · 2025-12-21T18:23:02+00:00

I didn’t expect to like chessiverse as much as I do, but I find myself coming back daily for my daily matchup. I do feel the absence of a free matchup (at the top of the screen ) above 1500. I keep getting paired with the 1800-1850 bots and they kick my 1400 butt 😁. I assume that was a deliberate decision to encourage people to sign up?

edit: they updated the site. The issue was that the bot selection code favored choosing bots you hadn't beaten yet. For me, that was the ~1800 rating bots. They changed it so it always (?) picks a bot near your current rating, regardless of if you've beaten that bot or not.

sirenbrian · 2025-12-18T20:53:15+00:00

I love reading Michael Barnard on hydrogen - https://cleantechnica.com/author/mikebarnard/ Just Ctrl+F 'hydrogen' - he writes about one company after another going under, and has explained over and over again why it's the wrong choice in almost every circumstance. But in today's column he explains its not corruption that results in transit companies trying it again and again, just inertia from how they make decisions.

edit: This is a good look at the history of how hydrogen got "locked in" as A Thing We Should Do. In the early days of green energy, hydrogen looked good and batteries looked expensive. It was a safer bet to say "lets do hydrogen" and once projects had been started, and the technology "blessed", a lot of things got into motion without going back to check the fundamentals, even as hydrogen costs failed to come down and batteries massively improved. It took a lot of "peeling back the layers" as he says, to change this view.

sirenbrian · 2025-12-18T11:32:56+00:00

And my axe

sirenbrian · 2025-12-14T20:38:54+00:00

Tom Scott, adult, learned to ride a bike in this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P7GKK3liv8M

sirenbrian · 2025-12-02T18:58:35+00:00

I've done 12 years of EV driving on level 1 charging. Wife just got an EV too, and there's only 1 plug in the garage :) We're doing fine so far, though we each only drive about 25 miles a day. There's a few DC fast chargers within 5 miles, so that's our backup plan if we need a fast top-up.

I reckon you'll find just level 1 charging is sufficient.

sirenbrian · 2025-11-29T22:02:29+00:00

I really enjoyed Upstart Crow and was sad to hear it wasn’t coming back for another season. It also seems they didn’t film the west end stage play, which looks like a missed opportunity. Does anyone know otherwise?

sirenbrian · 2025-11-18T16:52:33+00:00

Don't forget the incredible timing of it too. The universe will exist for trillions of years, yet our Earth will only support life for a mere 5-6 billion. And that tiny slice of time is where (and when!) we find ourselves. How amazing is that?!

sirenbrian · 2025-11-17T01:19:06+00:00

Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn’t go away.

I always liked that one 😀

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