Jigsaw puzzles, the bigger the better. It keeps you constantly mentally engaged and the act of reaching for pieces and looking around is good physical activity too. I get back ache if I do a jigsaw session for the first time in a while. It really tires me out before bed and can prevent that rumination before falling asleep. Finally it’s really cheap, there are limitless puzzles in charity shops and even some libraries lend them.

Wow nice! I have done the same but I always forget and stick a fork through them at least once a year!

Every time I consider the plastic/stainless pipe option I think about drilling holes all down it and putting a hose fitting on the ends for integrated irrigation… then the project gets to complicated and I stick a 2x4 across instead.

One day though.

Those look to be very long boards, every time I do this in ~1-2 years they tend to flex outwards under the weight of the wet compost and start to collapse.

Just wondering if you have anything in place to prevent flexing?

I’ve been considering plastic pipe or stainless rod bolted to each side through the soil.

Well there are contractors who need to tow heavy machinery around, so about 0.01% of the people that buy them need them.

That’s a terrible thing to say!

…Only joking.

I tried to buy an EV for my parents a couple of weeks ago and the dealer had the EV misinformation playbook memorised and tried to convince us that EVs were a fad and that should get a hybrid until Hydrogen takes over.

I’ve decided that whenever I see these common myths, I’m not going to just let the misinformation go unquestioned.

In this case I think specifically focusing on EVs will generate more clicks for article writers, but it does also feed a common anti-EV narrative that they are somehow worse than ICE cars because of tire wear, which is not true.

I do see the other side that the tires being developed are specifically looking at EV owners, so this is a tough one to get the balance right on, but I do still think the headline is written to stir trouble and generate clicks.

One thing is certain, America needs to stop buying so many trucks!

I agree entirely, but the title of this post suggests that EVs are the problem, but actually it’s heavy vehicles.

Additionally when we say “problem”, particulate pollution from vehicles is 99.9% a diesel problem, and 0.1% a tire problem. (Not actual statistics but let me know how wrong I am with the actual stat)

That explanation is fair enough but the headline is red meat the the EV disinformation brigade.

That is a list of the most sold vehicles in the US. Where are the people lining up to say the ICE trucks that are so popular are causing all this tire pollution?

Those are the most sold vehicles in the US, when you have heavy EV’s in the top slots you can say that heavy ev’s are a problem… until then it’s what you are buying is causing the problem.

2023 top 5 vehicles sold in USA and weight:

1 - Ford F-150 4069-5697lbs

2 - Chevrolet Silverado 4400-6947lbs

3 - Ram pickup 4765-6440lbs

4 - Toyota RAV4 3370lbs

5 - Tesla Model Y 4416lbs

Looks like the only electric on the list is below the average weight. We don’t have these conversations about the trucks.

deleted by creator

What kind of backhanded EV misinformation bullshit is this?

Electric, gas, petrol, hydrogen, diesel, cooking oil or vodka; what you put in your car to make it go makes no difference to the tires or the wear.

Ah I see, yes app/web OTP is one of the best methods, unless people are calling to report the app/website not working (a workflow I’ve seen many times) The industry has put hundreds of millions into voice recognition but the sample size required for AI to trick voicerec is really low now.

You actually want them to do this, it’s terrifying easy to set up a cell tower or call centre and convince banks and people you are customers or banks.

This is correct, i should have said “telephone banking password/passcode” but also the security questions are at best hash encrypted (so basically plain text). I had thousands of hours of call recording and millions of customer details on my work laptop all unencrypted. The security for enterprise telephony companies is seriously lax, I wouldn’t be surprised if a few unexplained leaks originated from these companies.

The company that provides your banks phone system has full access to pretty much every piece of information your bank holds on you, including call recordings, phone numbers, addresses, debts, credits, and your phone password. We can trick our own systems into thinking it’s you on the phone.

Avoid calling your bank at all costs, and if they call you say “no thank you I’ll do that online or in branch”, as soon as you pass security the phone system is accessing all your data. If possible go into branch or do everything on a banking app which has far better security.

It’s the equivalent of $16.50 a month where I live and that is not an insignificant proportion of my monthly income. The adverts are constantly repeating and often for products and services that are actual scams. I firmly believe as soon as enough people pay… we’ll have to pay more or they will show us a smaller number of “specially selected” ads.

No problem, I remember researching the available panels at the time and selecting the most efficient and playing panel Tetris to get the most possible on the roof.

In the end the installer did a last minute switch, but although the panels were not the best available they were pretty close. The most annoying thing was that the panels were slightly different dimensions and the installer insisted in wider margins around the panels so I ended up with several fewer panels overall, ruining my carefully planned layout.

I have never felt so personally attacked by a SpongeBob meme.

In 2011 in my Region of the world (Europe) there were no commercially available panels to buy that could hit anywhere near 20%

I’ve not read this paper fully but I suspect it’s referring to lab testing, or panels produced in small numbers and 10x the cost of all other panels. Mine were REC240PE for reference.

Edit: that chart is titled “Best Research-Cell Efficiencies” so this is lab testing and it’s exactly the point of this thread… “35% Efficiency, Why is this not in stock at Costco!?!”