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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: July 29th, 2023

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  • As someone who’s grown up in the Midwest, Menards used to be just a hardware store/lumber yard but in the last 15-20 years really has branched out to more than just a hardware store. Hence the home goods, pet supplies, clothing, groceries, appliances, etc in addition to the hardware store/lumber yard bit. In some ways it’s a lot more like Fleet Farm than it is like Home Depot, though Menard’s doesn’t have the farming supplies and tractor parts and stuff like that which can be found at a Fleet Farm.

    Since they made this change, the newer and remodeled stores are the ones with the multiple floors since they need all the floor space. But I remember some of the original and smaller stores were also multiple floors (electrical was typically upstairs), but those might be all gone by now. The one we went to when I was a kid wouldn’t be anyway close to being ADA compliant today. That store moved locations and the old building is long gone now.


  • toddestan@lemm.eetomemes@lemmy.worldFridges never die.
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    3 days ago

    Depends on how old it is. Mine’s a 1995 model. I’ve measured its energy usage and a new fridge would pay for itself at around 9-10 years if I bought a basic model*. That’s around the lifespan I’d expect from a new fridge. So I’ll just keep using the old one until it dies.

    (*) Current fridge is a basic, low end model, so assuming I replace with a similar basic, lower end model. Payback would be much longer if I upgraded.








  • DDG has also really gone downhill for me. It’s still noticeably better than Google, but DDG nows does a lot of the same shit that originally made me give up on Google years ago. I’m assuming a big part of this is because DDG heavily sources their results from Bing, and while Bing does manage to be better than Google, it’s not much better.

    I really need to put some effort into trying out a few more search engines and seeing if they are any better. Last time I looked, many of them were also pulling results from Bing so they all had similar issues.



  • What they are doing is comparing your answer and seeing if it is consistent with how it has been answered previously. They realize that not everyone is going to give the exact same answer, so as long as you answer it in a way that enough other people have answered it, it should let you in.

    I’ll usually go with the minimum number of clicks that I think will get me through, since I’m lazy and it’ll also at times slow down how fast you can click which is annoying.

    I’ll also answer them wrong if I think it’s a mistake that enough other people will make. “Yes… that RV over there is a bus…”



  • aren’t you still limited by ambient air temp because the hot side of the Peltier needs to be cooled by air anyway?

    You can certainly get subambient. Put some electrical current through a Peltier and one side gets cold, and the other side gets hot. Use the cold side to cool your components, and get the heat away from the hot side, and you can make it work.

    It can be a bit tricky. The hot side is right next to the cold side and it gets really hot, so if you can’t get the heat away it’ll leak right back over. Peltiers use a lot of power so you need a beefy power supply, and that’ll be another source of heat. Assuming you can figure that all out, you also have to be careful that the cold side doesn’t get too cold or you get condensation. Electrical components tend to not like moisture very much.

    I remember people experimented around with it back in early-mid 2000’s. General consensus nowadays seems to be is that it’s not terribly effective or practical and not worth the trouble.



  • You’re using a weird definition of profit, which to most people is some sort of financial gain. Saving money isn’t the same as profiting. You’re not turning a profit when you use a $1.00 off coupon on a package of Oreos at the grocer just like you’re not turning a profit if you download a movie.

    Also, go look up criminal copyright infringement. That’s what is defined as a crime legally, and downloading a movie or a CD doesn’t meet that threshold unless maybe you’re torrenting it and therefore distributing it. Morally, well you can argue that, but not everyone is going to agree with you.


  • I guess it’s up to you if want to trust it or not. He doesn’t share all the details, but he (at least in the past) shared enough details on his blog that I felt pretty good that he knew what he was talking about it.

    I will point out that he was one of the very few aggregators in 2016 that was saying “hey look, Trump has a very real chance of winning this”. Which is why I find it so amusing when people say he got it wrong in 2016 when in actuality he was one of the few that was right. After 2008 there were a bunch of copycats out there trying to do similar things as Nate Silver, and many of them were saying things like 99.99% Clinton. If people are going to criticize, that’s where I would direct it.


  • Well, you can think that but realize that you’re in the minority if you think breaking copyright for personal consumption is the same as breaking copyright for profit. That’s like saying stealing a loaf of bread because you are hungry is exactly the same as stealing a car so you can strip it for parts for resale.

    Also, despite what the RIAA and MPAA would like you to believe, downloading a CD or DVD for personal use isn’t illegal, which is why it’s a civil matter when someone is busted. There’s a line that needs to be crossed before the criminal justice system gets involved, and it’s above that sort of thing.



  • You can’t really falsify the claim “Clinton has a higher chance of winning”, at least the way Nate Silver models it. His model is based upon statistics, and he basically runs a bunch of simulations of the election. In more of these simulations, Clinton won, hence his claim. But we had exactly one actual election, and in the election, Trump won. Perhaps his model is just wrong, or perhaps the outcome matched one of the simulations in his model where Trump won. If we could somehow run the election hundreds of times (or observe what happened in hundreds of parallel universes) then maybe we could see if his model matched the outcome of a statistically significant number of election results. But nevertheless, Nate Silver had a model and statistics to back up his claim.

    As for Michael Moore, I’m not sure exactly how he came up with his prediction, but I get the impression it was mostly a gut feeling based upon his observations of what was happening. Nevertheless, Michael Moore still could back up his statement by articulating why he was claiming that and the observations he had made.

    Though one crucial difference is still the whole prediction thing. Michael Moore actually made a prediction of a Trump win. Whereas Nate Silver just stated that Clinton had a higher chance of winning, and once again that was not a prediction. So you’re really comparing two different things here.