1. An open source initiative to share and compare heat pump performance data

Total comment counts : 35

Summary

The article mentions the ability to add, edit, and view systems associated with an account. Users can monitor various installations with OpenEnergyMonitor and compare detailed statistics to understand performance variations. Users who are monitoring a heat pump with emoncms and the My Heat Pump app can add their details by logging in. For further discussion or support, users are encouraged to join the OpenEnergyMonitor forums. The article also includes information on the total number of systems in selection and the average COP (Coefficient of Performance) values based on individual system measurements and the total sum of heat and electric values.

Top 1 Comment Summary

The author discusses the benefits and drawbacks of heat pumps, highlighting their expense, installation requirements, and limitations. They express surprise that drainwater heat recovery, a simple and inexpensive method that utilizes lukewarm drain water to pre-warm incoming cold water, is not commonly mentioned. This method can recover around 50% of wasted heat and significantly reduce a household’s energy consumption. The author suggests considering a heat exchanger for showers as a first step before investing in a heat pump.

Top 2 Comment Summary

The article discusses the confusion faced by the author regarding certain terms and labels in a table they are trying to make sense of. They mention being familiar with the term COP but are unsure about other terms such as Training and Source. The author also mentions tooltips explaining some of the table headers, but feels that the tooltips for the most crucial headers are missing. They speculate that the table is an aggregator for information collected from a device called “emonHub,” which gathers data from various other devices. The author notes the presence of jargon that needs to be understood, such as the definition of the term “supply” in relation to electric cables that provide power to a heat pump. They provide a link to a documentation that they found to be the best guide, which is buried at the bottom of the article.

2. There’s a 30-year old dead Rabbit in Seven Sisters tube station

Total comment counts : 37

Summary

The article discusses the history of a mobile phone technology called “Rabbit” that was launched in 1989 but quickly shut down in 1992. Despite its limitations, such as only being able to make calls within 100 yards of a base station, Rabbit phones were cheaper and had better sound quality than other home phones at the time. After Rabbit was shut down, customers were given refunds but many kept their handsets, leading to a surge in sales. The Rabbit base station can still be found inside Seven Sisters tube station in London.

Top 1 Comment Summary

The article discusses the author’s experience exploring a ghost town in Southern Idaho. They describe the town as having a gas station, a restaurant, a few houses, and a small warehouse. The town had gone out of business decades ago and was completely abandoned. The author found the relics from the past, such as a desk with a corded phone and a filing cabinet, to be nostalgic. They also mentioned the presence of sharp objects and broken glass, and warned about the unsanitary condition of the bathroom. The author concludes by advising caution when exploring similar old-looking places, as they may not actually be abandoned and trespassing may not be tolerated.

Top 2 Comment Summary

The article discusses a phone service called Kermit in Holland, which was later renamed Greenpoint due to the high cost of the Kermit the frog trademark. The service was made obsolete by mobile phones becoming smaller and more affordable. Kermit was seen as a cheaper alternative to mobile networks. The hardware used in Kermit, such as thin flip phones, was also popular as home phones.

3. Hacked Nvidia 4090 GPU driver to enable P2P

Total comment counts : 32

Summary

The article discusses the implementation of P2P (peer-to-peer) support in NVIDIA’s Linux open GPU driver for the 4090 graphics card. The driver is a fork of NVIDIA’s original driver and includes modifications for P2P support. The installation process and system requirements are mentioned. The article explains that P2P functionality was not initially available in the 4090 due to the absence of certain hardware components, but NVIDIA added large BAR support in some 3090s and all 4090s, allowing P2P to work using a BAR1P2P mode. The process of enabling P2P is described, including mapping VRAM into BAR1 and modifying the mapping type and peer address fields. The article concludes by expressing gratitude to NVIDIA for the driver and the improvement it brings to the tinybox green.

Top 1 Comment Summary

The author is expressing excitement about the possibility of building a 4x4090 rig for local LLMs using tensor parallelism. They mention that this approach will be cheaper and faster than using a H100 SXM for inference. The author questions why 6 GPUs were chosen for the tinybox instead of 4 or 8 GPUs, as many functions work better with these numbers.

Top 2 Comment Summary

The author expresses a desire for hardware companies to provide more documentation and allow the community to explore and discover the full capabilities of their products. They mention IBM VGA as an example of hardware with hidden modes that were uncovered by the community. The author laments that many companies prefer to tightly control their products to generate more profit, but believes that the PC was most productive when it was more open.

4. What is Webb observing now?

Total comment counts : 17

Summary

The website is temporarily down and will be back online soon. Thank you for your understanding.

Top 1 Comment Summary

The article discusses a survey called the Two Micron All Sky Survey (2MASS), which is not a live image but rather shows the pointing location. The current observation focuses on a census of high-redshift dual quasars and involves a 49 minute, 55-second observation. The survey aims to study dual (possibly lensed) quasars to gain more knowledge about early galaxies. The article provides links to more information about 2MASS and the research proposal.

Top 2 Comment Summary

The article mentions that there will be a planned outage for Space Telescope Live from Friday, April 12th to Sunday, April 14th, which may cause the website to be unavailable. The article apologizes for any inconvenience caused due to this.

5. Building a Linux Container Using Namespaces: Part – 1 (2020)

Total comment counts : 10

Summary

The article is about an error message stating that the requested resource could not be found on the server. The error was generated by Mod_Security.

Top 1 Comment Summary

The article discusses the existence of a second part related to containers. However, no further information is provided as the link is not accessible.

Top 2 Comment Summary

I apologize, but I am unable to summarize the content of the provided links as they appear to be URLs to other articles.

6. DwarFS – Deduplicating Warp-Speed Advanced Read-Only File System

Total comment counts : 25

Summary

The article discusses DwarFS, a fast and high compression read-only file system for Linux, Windows, and macOS. The focus of DwarFS is achieving high compression ratios for redundant data. Unlike other compressed file systems, DwarFS effectively utilizes redundancy while maintaining speed. In comparison to SquashFS, DwarFS offers better compression, faster file system build times, faster file access, and uses fewer CPU resources. DwarFS also features clustering of similar files, analysis to reduce the size of the uncompressed file system, a categorization framework for processing files differently, and a highly multi-threaded implementation. The author developed DwarFS in 2013 to compress multiple versions of Perl, taking up significant disk space, and was motivated by the desire to work on a C++ hobby project and explore FUSE. After several years of development and improvements, DwarFS is now in a satisfactory state for release.

Top 1 Comment Summary

The article discusses DwarFS, a fast and high compression read-only file system. The system is designed to provide efficient storage and retrieval of files by compressing data. Two links to discussions about DwarFS on Hacker News are provided, one from July 2022 and another from November 2020.

Top 2 Comment Summary

The article discusses a feature request to add a “library” option to a system called mkdwarfs. This feature would allow users to specify a list of files that should be loaded into the deduplication mechanism, but not stored, in order to make the image even smaller. The author suggests that being able to specify a dwarfs image as a library and having it use the files contained in it would enable the creation of a deduplicating incremental backup system. The article also mentions that the author currently has a system that can produce a compressed deduplicated file using a single file and a list of library files, but it is a bit cumbersome for decompressing and restoring everything. The author proposes that making it a proper mountable filesystem would make retrieving single files easier. The author’s use case is storing snapshots of students’ work for backup purposes, while also being able to track the progression of their development and identify cheating without storing multiple copies of the same large files.

7. DNS over Wikipedia

Total comment counts : 20

Summary

The article discusses a method to redirect domains ending with .idk using Wikipedia. By installing DNS over Wikipedia, users can search for a website’s Wikipedia article to find the correct URL from the sidebar, as Google’s search results may be censored. This approach aims to provide more reliable and up-to-date information for users.

Top 1 Comment Summary

The article discusses how Wikipedia articles are used to find the current URLs of websites that frequently change their URLs due to legal or moral issues. The article highlights that although Wikipedia seems more resistant to demands from copyright holders compared to search engine companies, it is not uncensored. The author suggests keeping this in mind when using Wikipedia for infrastructure purposes related to censorship.

Top 2 Comment Summary

This article raises concerns about the security of Chrome extensions and suggests that the Chrome store should allow users to install directly from a repository. It highlights the risks of extensions being able to read and change data on all sites visited, as well as the potential for phishing attacks. The article points out that although open-source extensions are meant to improve security, there have been instances of them falling into the wrong hands. It suggests that transparent code is safer than using closed-source extensions.

8. Organizing OpenStreetMap mapping parties

Total comment counts : 12

Summary

The article provides tips and advice on organizing mapping parties for OpenStreetMap (OSM) contribution. The author suggests selecting safe areas for mapping parties, preferably in posh locations, but considers organizing “advanced” mapping parties in economically backward areas with experienced mappers. Markets are recommended as good locations for mapping parties. The author emphasizes the importance of announcing the event in advance and building a community. It is suggested to communicate with participants through phone calls or using the Jabber/XMPP platform for privacy and freedom. Optional equipment like charging cables, power banks, and tape measures are recommended, and surveyors are advised to carry pepper spray for emergencies. The article also mentions the importance of measuring street widths and suggests different types of tape measures for mapping various lengths.

Top 1 Comment Summary

The author of the article is trying to organize mapping events but has encountered difficulties in getting participants to collaborate effectively. They mention that one person didn’t have an Internet connection, causing conflicts when editing the same area. The author concludes that it might be because they are not in a heavily populated area and are reliant on whoever shows up. They plan to organize regular events with minimal planning to reduce stress and have more energy for future events. The author’s first event with this approach will be happening tomorrow with only two other people attending.

Top 2 Comment Summary

The article is a shameless plug for a project called MapComplete, which allows users to view and contribute data to OpenStreetMap. The project’s website is located at https://MapComplete.org.

9. I made a thing to help you make a thing out of a keypad

Total comment counts : 11

Summary

The author of the article discusses their electronics projects and the creation of their Tindie store called Overengineered Widget Laboratories. They explain that their latest product, called Keypad:GO, is an easy way to interface a keypad or small keyboard with an embedded electronics project. The product handles various functions such as matrix scanning and key debouncing. The author provides a video demonstration and offers a detailed user manual with additional information, including the schematic and firmware. They encourage readers to visit their store and join the waitlist if the product is out of stock.

Top 1 Comment Summary

The author believes that the DIY embedded hardware is similar to what coders often do. They provide an example of spending time writing Perl to clean and correct OCR data instead of manually entering text, but end up with the same result. However, the author also sees this as an opportunity to build a tool that nobody asked for, hoping that someone else will find it useful.

Top 2 Comment Summary

This article discusses the author’s experience with solving a problem by using USB keyboards/keypads instead of PS/2 keyboards. The author mentions that they were able to get a low-speed USB host working on an ESP32 device, and they now prefer using USB keyboards due to their better build quality, despite being more expensive. The author also notes that they initially encountered a challenge with the different scancodes of USB keyboards compared to PS/2 keyboards, but they were able to solve this issue by using PS/2 keypads and a chip with firmware that translated the scancodes to 5V serial. However, the author found it difficult to source old keyboards, leading them to switch to USB keyboards/keypads.

10. Here’s a puzzle game. I call it Reverse the List of Integers

Total comment counts : 27

Summary

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Top 1 Comment Summary

The article discusses a problem that can be solved using graph search algorithms. It mentions that Dijkstra’s algorithm or breadth-first search (BFS) can be used for this problem, but they are not the most efficient options. The author suggests using the A-star algorithm with a suitable heuristic to improve the search process. One suggested heuristic is based on the difference in length between the target and current lists. The author also mentions the possibility of using a heuristic based on inversions. Overall, finding a good heuristic for A-star is likely the best approach for solving this problem, although there may be other clever solutions as well.

Top 2 Comment Summary

The article discusses a game that the author found cool and built a small version of it. They provide a link to the game for readers to try out.