I wouldn't mind showing my ID to a person (in person), but there's no way I'm letting some company get a scan of my ID or passport to store in some giant database that's a rich target for hackers. Might as well give them access to all my bank accounts (Plaid) too.

(It sure would be nice if there were a national privacy law in the US.)

Also, it's illegal for companies to use facial recognition in my jurisdiction, so if I allowed them to "verify" me, they'd be breaking the law.

I (native english speaker) would order it as "mobile robotic probes". But if I were writing it, I'd say "robotic probe", "surface probe", or "mobile probe". In this case, robotic and mobile mean the same thing, so using both is redundant.

And although I would order it as "private robotic spacecraft", I don't think that's correct. The spacecraft is robotic, but it's not private. It might be privately-operated, privately-owned, or privately-funded (each has a slightly different connotation). But private by itself means that a private company is somehow responsible for the mission.

So if I were writing it, I'd use something like "privately-funded robotic spacecraft" or "robotic spacecraft operated by private company XYZ".

I did an entropy test on my Pi5 (according to https://rob-turner.net/post/raspberrypi-hwrng), and it (7.999832 bits per byte) has about the same entropy as /dev/urandom (7.999831 bits per byte).

However, when using it directly, it's pretty slow. /dev/hwrng is 200 KB/s, /dev/urandom is 40 MB/s.

Though, maybe that doesn't matter if it's just intended to be used to add entropy to the system entropy pool.

My company has an aversion to hiring. It's so expensive to hire people, you know! There are no young engineers to teach the ropes to. There are very few senior people do everything.

Needless to say nothing happens fast, good, or cheap. And we don't ship projects, they mostly just bob up and down in the harbor.

Though I'm seriously considering going back to a $50 flip phone and enjoying the 2 weeks of battery life and general indestructibility. My current phone spends most of its time sitting on my desk doing nothing. It's hard to get excited about a newer and much BIGGER phone for $500 that will also spend most of its time sitting on my desk, doing nothing.

If I were doing it now, I'd probably use wireguard, probably. This is simpler to set up and works great.

The Wheatridge solar/wind/battery facility in Oregon produces the same amount of power as a small nuclear reactor. $10 billion buys you a dozen of them.

There's nothing inherently wrong with that, but many of these require dubious "checkbox security" procedures and practices.

Unfortunately, there's no point in arguing with an insurance company or a contract or a certification organization, certainly not when you're "just" the engineer, IT guy, or end user.

There's also little point in arguing with your boss about it either. "Hey boss, this security requirement is pointless because of technical reason X and Y." Boss: "We have to do it to get the million dollar contract. Besides, more security is better, right? What's the problem?"

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/to-beat-the-heat-...

> Experts say road temperatures in the Phoenix area can rise to 180 degrees on a hot day

I guess being only 160°F means the gray is working. I wonder how well it would do if it were painted white.

That would be incredible. If the road noise outside my house gets too loud, I can transmit a lower speed limit instead of turning up my TV.

That doesn't seem as likely to grab the attention of people who watched Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny.

The antikythera mechanism is a (bad) predictor of planetary locations. People have recreated it in its entirety using legos. There isn't much mystery about what it does.

However, a new high resolution X-ray of the device inspired some scientists to do some neat math on it. I read the paper, it's good work. I'd love to a chance to get an article published about one of my papers, even more if regular people had even the slightest chance to understand it.

Also, I wouldn't worry about the BMS too much. Unless it's really dumb, when there's no charging or discharging happening it will put itself to sleep for most of that time. Technically it will use power, but likely only a few hundred micro watts to a few milliwatts (nothing that will make a difference on a 5 kWh+ battery). Then when the sunlight comes back in the spring (or whenever the snow melts off the solar panels), it'll see some input voltage and start feeding the battery again.

For general advice, they like it cooler[1] than other kinds of lithium batteries. Try to keep them between 15-25°C. Other than that, charge LFP batteries to whatever percentage you want whenever you want.

They are simply better than every other kind of lithium chemistry. Their practical downside is lower cell voltage (3.2 vs 3.8), and slightly lower energy density. I've spent the last 7 years building LFP-powered lawnmower-sized robots, and in practice, the lower voltage and doesn't matter. And, unlike other chemistries, they don't catch fire when you stab them.

For other kinds of lithium batteries, to maximize lifetime, keep them between 40-60%, avoid big charge swings (10-90%), and keep them warm (above 25°C).

[1]: At 35°C, tests show they lose about 5% more capacity after 2,000 cycles compared with 25°C. But even that isn't really a problem, because they don't get to 20% capacity loss until 4,000 cycles. See: https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1149/1945-7111/abae37, fig 3.

If it was that guy's job to use a rake and broom instead of a leaf blower, the same amount of cleaning would be done.

I've actually proved it several times...except for the insignificant detail that I glossed over that didn't seem important but tanks the proof.

Someday I'll have to publish my "book of lemmas that don't prove the collatz conjecture."