15 Feb 23
2 edits
@endlame saidYeah when I was growing weed I had a damaged but functional pump that would electrify the barrel of food water while it was mixing it. You could feel it with your hand. You get a similar sensation if you put your tongue over both the circles on the end of a 9 volt battery at the same time.
I used to change outlets and fixtures while the power was live.
It drove my boss nuts.
If I got shocked it would just feel like vibration in my hands.
He tried it once and got shocked and screamed like he was in the electric chair 🤣
I never messed with anything stronger like 220 or the panel box. No sir. That's a quick way to die.
16 Feb 23
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@athousandyoung saidYes, I've been hoping for a product that does not require plugging into the ground in a receptacle, since at the bottom of the basement stairs the nearest receptacle is around 40 feet away.
[youtube Multimeter in water]WMybuHCvgmQ[/youtube]
This guy stuck his ground of an ordinary multimeter ($7 to buy online) into one of the holes in a surge protector that was plugged into the wall (I think). Metal pipes or other metal objects also can be used to ground (e.g. if you’re poking around the inside of your computer tower you’re supposed to touch the metal ...[text shortened]... ody as the ground which would shock you. You will need some kind of grounding wire to make it work.
The basement has flooded three times in the past 18 years. The water will get two or three inches deep, and I've got no wiring that low to the ground. Still, I want to be cautious. If the sump pump has died, maybe it's because some bizarre thing happened where water got into its mechanism. It has a special fuse built in the cord (all sump pumps do), but I'm a bit the paranoid sort.
I guess I'll get that $7 multimeter or something like it, and tinker with getting a 40-foot ground wire or something. It's the product descriptions for multimeters that left me hanging in January. Like: what can this unit do and not do?
This thread went off in a strange direction...
16 Feb 23
@shavixmir saidThe entire interview with Tim Hwang - who was involved in setting global policy for internet search - is very eye opening to read and/or listen to. He describes a research article written by the Google algorithm inventors (Larry Page and Sergey Brin) in which they explain in great detail the dangers of incorporating advertising into internet search.How prescient of them! Of course they still went out and did it. Keep in mind this was well before the hellscape we're currently experiencing online.
It is what the world has come down to.
Headlines have to be eye-catching, that leads to more clicks, leads to more advertising leads to ever extremer eye-candy.
And so we all become click-bait whores.
And they conclude, much to, I think, the chagrin of their future lawyers that would be representing them before various antitrust proceedings and otherwise, that essentially, no search engine in their right mind should adopt advertising because once you have a third party that is paying to access eyeballs in your search engine, you have lots and lots of incentives to shape your experience to cater to the people who are really paying your bills. I think this is part of the concern about online advertising is to say, well, in that case, you really want to be able to provide a lot of data about your users to these advertisers. That’s one thing that you might want to do. The other thing is that you might want to make sure that the ads are kind of indistinguishable from legitimate search results that the search engine is showing up.
16 Feb 23
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@soothfast saidSure I guess I am the same way, personally. But just because you buy very little online doesn't mean your eyeballs are not being sold. You are still a victim of the internets overall business model. You are still fed only the news headlines and search results that google thinks you will click on, rather than the news headlines and search results that are most relevant to your query.
The key is to not want much.
There really isn't much stuff that excites me. For the most part the hobbies that engage me don't require buying the latest gizmo, or even having a screen in my face. A few video games are an exception. Maybe hanging around on this site occasionally is another exception.
Silicon Valley may think it knows what I want or who I am, but not ...[text shortened]... Christ's sake, if I want to know if an electrical socket is live I just stick a nightlight into it.
That's the fundamental problem. You go to a free amusement park for the rides and all you get are the **** rides because they are easier, cheaper, faster to build and they look cool. The high quality rides never get built, and we never find out that there could be something better.
