DamonHD

Ofc I meant 8kW! Eeek.

But also it is unlikely that we used 24kWh in any one day ever.

For a retractable you probably wouldn't be doing that more than once a day, and probably not for more than half a year, and less if if winds don't get too high. I can imagine 10Y life might be reasonable. But these don't seem to be retractable.

"The systems use monocrystalline solar cells backed by a 10-year product warranty."

My home is in London UK and is relatively small and efficient, but 8kWh may be higher than our peak demand ever over more than 20 years in this house...

Do you mean "must be able to sit in Parliament"? The Lords and Commons are the two distinct chambers.

There have been non-MP (ie non-Commons) PMs.

Obvs "MaaS" capitalisation for the full stock valuation.

Obvs(2) a variant of this service has traditionally been provided for free by drunken teens. They might prove to be better and more thoughtful custodians of investment funds.

Note that this is a UK-focused piece.

You are constructing a universe that simply does not exist or apply to me at least. I and my code are just not that important or special in the grand scheme of things.

You seem to be asserting some simple zero-sum exclusionary game here that does not exist. I am entirely content if Amazon or Google extracts some value - that in no way inhibits anyone else doing so in reality. But to me the far more important case - a messy long tail - is smaller organisations such as the small telco that used a few lines of my code to help avoid early smart-ish picture phones on their network blowing each other up with malformed JPEGs. Said telco could not have released the exchange's software suite under GPL if I'd had that 8 lines of my Java under GPL rather than Apache.

Availability to use, without adding other complications, is a key aim. I'm trying to maximise to other people whatever value there is in the work that I've done.

I just gave an example: not all potential users of code can either use GPL-ish code or are profit-driven megacorps such as Google; false dichotomies are false. There are many small or intermediate organisations (and individuals) who would like to use open source code with the fewest legal and admin complications possible. I supported a similar cohort with an early multimedia site with simple free licensing.

It's my (open source) code and I want to make it widely available, ie as open as reasonably possible, including cases such as my past small start-ups with no budget and not able to release everything open source. Why do I have to justify or explain that "why"?

I very much want my (open sourced) code to be used by anyone who wants to use it, in any context, including commercial, and with Apache I also want the patent protection effects.

Using such an inflammatory term to refer to someone's non-preferred style of licence is unhelpful to reasonable debate.

This is simply rude and wrong in its claims that (all) people (such as me) using BSD and Apache licences are doing so out of ignorance, rather than because we know and want the effects that they have.

This childish inflammatory bile rather hurts the standing of GPL and friends, which do have appropriate applications too.

Nuance would have been a fine thing.

Friends and family and their contacts.

For me the text renders in multiple low contrast fonts which are starting to give me a headache after the first para...

Key parameters: no storage/battery, maximum microinverter output 800W/3.5A, maximum panel kWp 2000W, maximum PV Voc 120V, use of ordinary BS 1363 plug.

Hmm, ~30 years ago the compilers that I was using were generating generally fine assembly/machine code. Some of the other tooling was more troublesome: cross platform high performance numerically stable code and C++ static template deduplication paid for a lot of beers around then, and I needed them.

My war story from dot-com times is being asked by a (v well known and then horribly imploded) Bay Area start-up what about its hiring form would need to change for the UK (if I was to run the UK office)... So under the "bad things you've done" section I said to change the exclusion from "minor drug stuff" to "fixed-penalty motoring offences"...

And it came back for me, at least for a refresh or two...

First time that GitHub has ever been down for me (London, UK):

    504 Gateway Time-out

    The server didn't respond in time.

I do not own a car.

I (/we) own outright a small home.

I am happy that I do not need to own a car (in a London UK suburb).

I am happy that I do not need to heat or maintain a large building.

Our outgoings are low. One child is already at university and the other will be soon.

My perception of a common US notion of a 'good' life only intersects somewhat with mine, and I have spent a reasonable amount of time in various US locations from SF to NYC via the midwest, etc.

I have asbestos in this modest[0] house: it's not any sort of a problem. (Lead only in my soldering kit in significant quantities so far as I know...)

I always have been fairly frugal and am in semi-retirement now from the residues of my last two small start-ups (to which COVID was unkind, so died simultaneously!).

My extended family has/had big houses, including one in which a famous film was set it seems, but I see those as mainly expensive liabilities. Never owned a car. Etc etc.

[0] As described by a visiting Secretary of State!

Wait for the money to evaporate ... more slowly than your remaining lifespan (and dying happy in your own bed for example) is one definition of winning.

Happy note: just had a sensible interaction with my bank where it called me back but the caller understood why NOT to ask data that could be used to access my account, and we managed to resolve the issue that I was having (which, I think, was my error)!

you also know for sure when you're going to leave it

Well, about that...

There is a thing called a Compulsory Purchase Order in the UK, with equivalent in the US for example.

Guess which freehold home owner with two thumbs can expect a CPO sometime in the next 10 years?

A few of the bank people that I spoke to during the last caper were pretty senior and those did understand the issue that I raised but found themselves constrained by their rules, though one or two got creative with me in a good way. (Pretty much none of those who called me were 'minimum wage' in my estimation.) But very more senior management should be setting good scripts and expectations for the less-well-paid staff doing the grunt work. That is what their higher pay should be buying, IMHO.

This is very much my experience.

I generally say at some point before terminating the call "you should not train your customers to give out account access credentials to strangers" and the caller usually has no clue what I mean. Does no one in the security teams have theory of mind?

This will be the way I bring up the issue with the regulator if I do. I can think of many ways round this issue that would be much safer and not especially arduous.

Banking example: trying to move some savings from one UK bank to another - back to where the money had originally come from, and that had just purchased the first bank too. It took 8h on the phone over a week or so to get the money back, which was interspersed with a comedic number of calls from withheld numbers and people unknown to me demanding enough info to get access to my money. And other very poor practice. The bank even conceeded at least once in writing that it knew that it was screwing up and sent me £100 by way of apology - but carried right on screwing up.

Non-banking: getting a call out of the blue from my Internet Service Provider again demanding enough credentials to get access to my (business) account, and unable to understand why that was very poor practice. I used to like that ISP a lot, and have been with it for a looooooong time, but the angry exchange with who seems to have been my account manager has soured the relationship a lot.

Unfortunately my UK banks (and others) DO regularly make calls to me unannounced and demand my ID to 'prove who I am'. They are not scam calls and the callers cannot understand what they are doing wrong. If I'd had more strength in the last round of this stupidity I'd have done a number on them with the regulator. (I used to work in finance and was the director of a regulated financial entity, so I think I'd have a head start.)

Maybe add a non-Twitter link so that people who don't have logins (or dislike X) can see it. Your Masto post link should work...

https://fosstodon.org/@robhawkes/116515573163883147