Your numbers seem reasonable — more intuitive for me to work in terms of pressure. Atmosphere is (roughly) 1e3 Torr, good UHV can be around 1e-10, so that’s 13 orders of magnitude, which is (roughly) the same difference that you calculated.

I am becoming increasingly more appreciative of the fact that I have root access to “my” company provided work device.

Aluminum foil is very common in physics labs. And a main use for it is “baking”! To get ultra high vacuum (UHV)* you generally need to “bake out” your chamber while you pump down. Foil is used same as with baking food — keep the heat in and evenly distributed on the chamber.

Sadly, it’s usually not food grade aluminum foil, as that can contain oils, and oils and vacuum are generally a big no-no.

*Just how good is UHV? Roughly: I live in San Francisco, which is ~7 miles by ~7 miles (~11km). Imagine you raise that by another 7 miles to make a cube. Now, evacuate every last molecule of gas out of it. Now take a family sedan’s trunk, fill it with 1 atmosphere of gas, and release that into the 7 mile cube. That’s roughly UHV pressure.

From TFA:

“I have failed you completely and catastrophically,” Gemini CLI output stated. “My review of the commands confirms my gross incompetence.”

Are we talking fediveese hackers? You know, the socialist-furries-with-UNIX-socks hackers?

Those folks hate cars, not trains. I don’t think we need to worry.

I don’t think this is the black and white issue that the headline suggests.

Homeless advocates appear to be on board with this, at any rate: https://www.kqed.org/news/12047353/heres-why-sf-homeless-advocates-are-glad-lurie-ditched-push-for-1500-shelter-beds

It sounds like the “more beds” campaign promise was somewhat misguided, as slapping a bandaid on homelessness isn’t a fix; more beds is, to an extent, just for show. Hopefully we’ll be able to get actual, research-based solutions to homelessness here.

I’m not super optimistic, but changing course on a campaign promise because the experts and advocates say your current plan is bad shouldn’t be criticized out of hand IMHO.

Alligator Alcatraz detainees allege proponents boast about inhumane conditions at immigration detention center

ZigBee router thing:

I’ve been happy with the SMLIGHT SLZB-06M. You can easily flash firmware, and it has PoE which was important for me. I believe it also supports Thread, but I haven’t tried this yet (and I’m not sure if it supports it at the same time as Zigbee).

Zigbee smart plugs from Third Reality have been pretty solid in my experience, and they report power usage.

For circuit breaker level monitoring, I have an Emporia Vue2. I have it running esphome, completely local — unfortunately this requires some simple soldering and flashing, so it’s not turnkey. But it’s been rock solid ever since flashing it. (Process is well documented online.)

I’ve had decent luck with cheap wifi Matter bulbs, but provisioning them is finicky, and sometimes they just crap out and need to be power cycled; Zigbee bulbs (e.g., Ikea) have generally been reliable, though sometimes I’ve had difficulty pairing them initially. After power cycling a Matter WiFi bulb, it takes a while for it to respond to Home Assistant; Zigbee bulbs generally respond as soon as you power them on.

I have a wired smart light switch from TP-Link/Kasa (KS205), and it’s been completely hassle free (and totally local — Matter over wifi). The Kasa smart switch dongles I have work flawlessly but need proprietary pairing, and I’m afraid to update firmware in case they lose local support.

Good luck! Fun adventure :)

My idea of “perfect philanthropy” is something like the Carnegie Hall. While I think it is the government’s role to provide places for art, I don’t begrudge a city for having a more modest venue. So having a world class, tour de force concert hall is a pretty neat philanthropic project IMHO.

In San Francisco, a ticket for any event at the big arena (Chase Center — home of the Warriors) gives you free Muni transportation: https://www.sfmta.com/fares/your-chase-center-event-ticket-your-muni-fare

It’s a start.

On the one hand, that sucks, on the other…well, what really sucks is that it’s probably necessary given the state of public transit and bikeability. (Haven’t been to Nashville, so I can’t comment on public transportation there.)

Any city in the US

I don’t think that’s correct, for example, San Francisco:

On December 11, 2018, the Board of Supervisors passed an ordinance (the “Ordinance”) eliminating required parking minimums citywide for all uses.

This does exist in major US cities, especially the older (by US standards) ones. I’m in San Francisco, in a “good” neighborhood, and restaurants, groceries, bars, and multiple forms of public transit are all a short walk away. This is very different in car centric suburbs/cities though.

I think a lot of companies view their free plan as recruiting/advertising — if you use TailScale personally and have a great experience then you’ll bring in business by advocating for it at work.

Of course it could go either way, and I don’t rely on TailScale (it’s my “backup” VPN to my home network)… we’ll see, I guess.

States != cities, e.g., https://underscoresf.com/heres-what-you-make-as-a-low-income-earner-in-san-francisco/

If you own own a modest place (<2000 square feet) in a decent (not “old money”) neighborhood in San Francisco and have kids, I would be shocked if your household income isn’t $350k+/year. If that’s considered “upper class” then it’s a very sad statement about how standards of living have degraded — this is likely comfortable living but it is not exotic car + first class airfare money. And it’s almost certainly “less house” than you’d like.

And unless you inherited a lot, you definitely need to keep working to afford that modest lifestyle.

https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/organizations/237395681

That claims ~$420k compensation with ~$25k “other.” If he is playing any substantial role in bringing in $100M+ funds for a good cause, I’d say this person’s compensation isn’t something I’m going to get worked up about. For VHCOL areas this is middle class household income (looks like they’re based in NY NY, so…VHCOL).

Well, yeah — dude’s brake cables are missing!

Sawyer filter inline with a camelback is awesome. I’d just fill up my camelback in a stream using a (clean) handkerchief to get the large debris out and then let the filter do the rest.

Yep, you’re right — I was just responding to parent’s comment about fiber being best because nothing is faster than light :)

Can you explain the Ethernet requirement more? Was that just that the computer didn’t have WiFi, or was it set up such that only the wired interface worked with their VPN, or…?

Can you explain your travel router situation? Did you use the travel router to access WiFi and provide an Ethernet port for the computer (I think this is called “WISP mode”)? Or was this an 4G/5G router?

In any event, at least on Android you can connect to WiFi and tether to a computer over USB. It’s very useful for setting up a computer without WiFi drivers, as Linux will almost always recognize the shared Internet (so, it’s functionally a USB wifi dongle with very good driver support).