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Cake day: June 5th, 2023

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  • Chup@feddit.detoTechnology@lemmy.worldThe Taliban’s curious love of SIM cards.
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    10 months ago

    As you didn’t read the article:

    “This move seems driven by the government’s interest in collecting and centralizing biometric data for identification, tracking, and surveillance purposes,” he said. Omar agreed: “Probably to keep track of the refugees.”

    They hand out SIM cards to track those SIM cards. Using a certain messaging app on the phone or not doesn’t change SIM card tracking within the network.


  • Especially living in a city, this looks interesting to me. ‘Fast’ charging I’ve seen was in the range 30-60 min but then it’s like the phone, from about 20% up to 80%. So living in a city, I’d have to wait for half an hour for half the battery.

    With a swap-station, it could be nearly as fast as a fossil fuel stop. About 2 minutes for a 0% to 100% stop.

    This also allows for smaller batteries, for smaller cars, for lighter cars. You don’t need to carry a lot of overall range if you can swap/refill to 100% in 2 minutes.



  • The article is quite harmless compared to the silly title.

    But the main argument is that Android has too many settings and options where users don’t even know what they are good for. And with further development it’s getting more features and more options.

    That seems to be a very minor and rather luxury problem to have more and more features and options.

    On the PC, there are lots of programs that already use a short list of options available and then a checkbox with ‘I’m an expert’ or ‘Advanced settings’ to show them all. More settings means more freedom for the user to chose from. Hiding them would be a simple task. But just because they exist and are shown, this doesn’t mean that anyone has to click on anything without even knowing what it does. So it’s not really a problem besides reading 3 more words in the list of settings but not doing anything with it.

    For options I don’t know, I just use a web search in case I’m interested. Or I just ignore them as long as I don’t have a problem related to the topic.


  • In the 1st step, maybe a year ago or so, they updated the Kasa app (v 3?) to only function with account and while being logged in at TP-Link servers to use your devices. And in now the 2nd step, they integrate Kasa into Tapo, which was always account-bound. The 3rd step is then probably the discontinuation of the Kasa app.

    Kasa was their more premium product line, that was usable without internet connection and without manufacturer account - which is why I paid more to get those instead of the cheap Tapo products. But now my ‘smart’ power outlets are in a box in the basement collecting dust and I cannot recommend anyone to spend money on TP-Link smart products, as they remove features after sale.


  • I understand ‘worst sales’ but ‘worst performance’ doesn’t really fit. It’s in my opinion this is a fantastic performance on the market. With right to repair, longer software support, some models with replaceable batteries, we can use the phones longer and make the industry more sustainable and consumer friendly. For the last years already, the model feature upgrades were marginal and it’s fine that way.

    In the future, I’d hope for further technical and regulatory development in that direction, resulting in further reduced annual sales numbers.



  • Data centres, business, hospitals etc. run batteries to bridge the gap until the diesel starts running. It can take a minute or a few until the diesel generator takes over, but it can run for hours and days with refuelling.

    Getting batteries for 8h is expensive and risky - what if the power cut suddenly lasts 9h? With batteries you have a fixed storage, with petrol or diesel you can just refuel.

    Having that unreliable electricity, my home server would be the least of my problems. I would already have a generator to keep the fridge running so the food doesn’t go bad every other day.



  • You should get/use one external drive for backups that you store separately (can be your 2nd or a new one). Having two separate internal drives for backup is not safe, as the system can damage data on both at the same time (e.g. malware/encryption, data corruption etc.).

    RAID is for availability/uptime. I like to compare it to a shop system at the checkout. You can’t have shop payments halted if one drive fails, so you have a RAID. It allows you to repair/replace while the system keeps running and your business keeps operating. In a large business, every hour of downtime can cost you hundreds of thousand of currency, so RAID gets even more sophisticated. Downtime is not an option.

    At home this is up to you. RAID can save you some hassle and grant performance, but likely costs you more money than it saves you. Backup is key, so have at least one separately stored copy and depending on the importance of your data, also have an off-site backup.



  • As per the intro, this whole article is only about southern Europe with extreme heat. Same for the solar output, which across Europe fell in July 2023 compared to 2022. It’s just higher in southern countries compared to 2022.

    In most of Europe, this summer is cold, wet and windy. So for most of Europe, without that much sun in summer, it’s the very windy conditions causing the cold summer, that pumps most of the renewable electricity. Just last week, wind generated 22% more electricity compared to the week in 2022.

    So overall it’s split and respectively the other renewable technology having large gains, depending on where in Europe you look.



  • Regarding the range problem, that is my personal conspiracy theory. It makes a lot of sense but no way that I or anyone can ever prove it.

    Theory: Range was never a real problem and car manufacturers seeded that topic to journalists/press, as the companies already had the solution available before communicating the problem.

    More range is done with a larger batteries, usually higher quality cells/chemicals. So making the car bigger and more expensive. That’s what manufacturers desire to do and sell anyways.

    It never was or is a real problem. They can just charge the customers more and it’s solved.

    As I’ve already seen posted, the real problem that cannot be easily solved is the charging time. Right now I ‘charge’ 0% to 100% in 1-2 minutes. No preparation, no special fuel, no special fees or subscriptions, no fuel stations only for specific brands, no apps, summer or winter same 1-2 min, no strain on the fuel tank by filling fast, sometimes waiting lines at the stations but they move quickly with 1-2 min per vehicle.

    I don’t see battery or charging tech anywhere close to that in the next 5, 10 or even 20 years.

    That’s hard to advance, with decades of research behind us and decades ahead, so car manufacturers focus on their favorite topic: range, where they can just throw their customers money at to solve it immediately.



  • I’m quite disappointed by most comments so far talking about RAID and data loss. That is not what RAID is for at all.

    RAID is for uptime/availability. When a drive fails, the system will keep running and working. For companies, that would lose thousands of currency per hour with a downtime, this is super important that the system keeps running. At home, it’s convenience that you can order a new drive and replace without hours of setting up and copying before you can watch the next episode again.

    Backups are against data loss. If a single drive fails, a RAID fails or you get some encryption malware or an employee destroys stuff on purpose, then everything is destroyed. It doesn’t matter if it was a single, any RAID, HDD or SSD. You order a new drive, make a new volume and restore the data from your backup.



  • Hm but that adds a lot more complexity, as then every single network item has to have an UPS as well, right? Certainly not a problem for a company with server room and racks. But at home in a house, the hardware might be spread out across rooms and floors. If there is a switch somewhere without UPS, it will cut off certain clients from receiving the signal via network upon power outage.


  • Is this doable with one UPS? I’m thinking of the signal wire so the device knows it’s running on battery and has to shut itself down sooner or later. We have 2 (who need shutdown, +1 can just lose power I guess) different devices mentioned here.

    I have one older APC UPS on the PC and one newer Eaton UPS on the NAS. Each UPS has a signal port with a cable connected to the main device that runs some software to notice when it’s on battery and supposed to shut itself down after X minutes battery time.

    The NAS UPS also has the router, phone and zigbee hub connected, but only the NAS will shut itself down, the rest will just lose power at some point, but those don’t matter.

    How do you get the server and NAS to both get the signal and both shut down after X minutes? Is there a specific UPS features required?