Absolutely in that case it would be more for fiddling and having a conversation starter with friends. It also depends on how reliable your grid is etc.
From the article, it seems more about chinese brands, no?
> Some records even refer customers to Temu or AliExpress for spare parts and repair instructions.
> But even for products that are technically compliant, the listed weblink still rarely offers a direct path to parts prices. For major brands such as Apple and Samsung, it can take some clicking around before you find what you need, Right to Repair says.
> The battery bank from which I power my home is 12V (24V or 48V would be better and I’ll upgrade when the time is right). All my electricity comes from this battery bank.
> I have a power inverter, meaning I can use appliances with normal/household plugs, but the inverter wastes some power in the conversion process, stepping up from 12V to 220V. To then plug in a power brick, which will again throw away some power in converting 220V back down to whatever voltage a device uses, means double wastage, and a mess of plugs and wires.
Is this... a joke? How much freaking amps are you pulling? Average Canadian electricity consumption is 1270 watts. 1270 / 12 = 100+ Amps for one hour.
I'm guessing this is more of a third world situation and that electricity usage is much lower, but still...I fail to see how you would get to a setup like this. If you're fully off-grid then your generator or solar system could give you much higher voltage. If not, how are you charging the battery bank?
EDIT: From your CV, you are from the UK. I'm very confused.
Not the poster, but I live off-grid on a boat in the UK and pretty much everything (including the laptop I'm commenting from) runs off 12V DC.
I have 800W of solar panels and a 3.5kWh LFP battery bank.
I use approximately 2kWh per day in summer, 1kWh in winter, 500Wh when it's cold enough that I can turn the fridge off.
In the summer I dump any excess to an immersion water heater.
At that level the self-consumption power of an inverter, about 5-10W, is significant so I avoid relying on it for anything powered all day (but it's useful for appliances, power tools and other intermittent items).
Using incredibly wasteful amounts of energy isn't necessary, people just do it.
Unless there is some space/weight constraint, adding additional battery capacity for idle draw and running an inverter is likely less expensive than trying to find 12v only equipment.
OP is running sealed lead acid batteries, they could have 5-6x the capacity using LFP batteries with the same weight.
Space for panels is very constrained, they already get in the way more than I'd like.
I'll probably expand the battery bank at some point, but that only averages energy over a wider time period rather than increasing the total available.
I've spent very little on 12V equipment - my router and laptop are easily run off DC-DC supplies and USB supplies/lighting/water pumps/radios etc. are widely available.
The only thing that's powered full-time and would have been significantly more expensive at 12V is the fridge, and I got that for free with an easily-replaced failed thermostat.
Doubling my present battery capacity would definitely cost more than I've spent on everything else.
In America, a 1,000 square foot home uses an average of 8x the energy you do during the summer. I find that amount to be somewhat lower than I expected to be if I’ll be honest. After all, America is the land of central air conditioning and clothes dryers.
I’m sure you’re aware of this already, but maybe it’s worth pointing out to people that changing your lifestyle to consume less doesn’t require boat life, van life, or tiny home life. A smaller conventional house and a more thoughtful use of your thermometer will go a long way. Hang up your clothes instead of putting in the dryer, as a bonus they’ll last way longer.
That's how it came, and while I've incrementally added or replaced a lot of things there's no point switching.
I would probably go with 24V if starting from scratch - there's a huge market of automotive and caravan parts that are 12/24V and generally don't support 48V.
If relying on an inverter more I might have a 48V main bank and run the low-voltage stuff off a DC-DC.
It sounds crazy but pulling >100A from low voltage battery is kinda normal for a 6kw solar inverter (in 220-250V countries). It needs a pair of 50mm2 wires which is thick as a rope though.
> I’m not an uncritical Steve Jobs fan. I know, from having worked closely with people who worked directly for Jobs for many years, that he could be a mercurial, and brutish, boss.
That's a pretty big euphemism for Steve Jobs being a piece of shit. What I've realized throughout the years of working is that being able to work as a team is almost more important than your technical capacity. You can always become better in your field, but becoming a better human is a lot harder.
I've repeatedly said here on HN that Steve Jobs was king of the assholes and a huge piece of shit, and been soundly flamed for it. A vast amount of first hand anecdotes of him being an asshole exist and are likely not fabrications by the people reporting them. And yet people think he's some sort of god like figure because apple made cool products.
As a counter point some very boring individuals who are not jerks nor capable of forming a cult of personality have invented singularly iconic and widespread products which achieved great market share. One example would be Eugene Stoner and his design for the AR-15/M16.
Yeah but I would not say the products Stone invented are the same kind of, and I quote, “iconic”, as the products that Jobs invented. They’re just in totally different universes.
The AR-15 pattern rifle is certainly iconic; on its own probably more so (i. e. more recognizable) than almost all of Jobs's products. When allowing for the typical collective amnesia, the only two products that match, or manage to exceed, its iconographic status are the iPhone and the iPad; when bringing in historical expertise you can probably add the Apple II.
Interesting. I wouldn't have guessed that if you asked people in the US or around the world to pick the most iconic products that they would rank the AR-15 in particular above the top Apple products.
I guess it is possible, but I would be very surprised.
I might even think that the AK-47 or the Glock have more name recognition. But what do I know?
> I might even think that the AK-47 or the Glock have more name recognition.
A "yes" on the AK, and a "no" on the Glock.
The AR-15, incl. its variants, isn't called "America's Rifle" for nothing; it's the West's (tm) (cultural) analogon to the AK. Make the test and ask some "normies" to pick out an AR-15. Then do the same for the Apple products. I doubt many will be able to pick out an Apple II.
I'm just casually familiar with guns, if I saw an AR-15, I'd call it an AK-47. Or a machine gun. Every single human walking the earth has an iPhone or its replicant.
> I'm just casually familiar with guns, if I saw an AR-15, I'd call it an AK-47. Or a machine gun.
Okay. Sure. Just as there are people who call(ed) every video game console, or even home computer, under the sun "a Nintendo". I wouldn't call that casual familiarity... but I'm not here to argue about it.
> It's good to have a fandom.
I s'pose. If you've thought that's me you're sordidly mistaken; I'm not a gun afficionado but just somebody who's got to shoot short- and long-barreled guns to keep my weapon's permits, which I need if I ever have to carry one on the job. I would describe myself as casually familiar with guns, not more.
Stoner is more of a Wozniak. You’re comparing a guy who patented part of a rifle that later got used in another company’s DOD bid (and keep in mind militaries are strongly incentivized to standardize on platforms for basic logistics reasons), to a narcissistic asshole who sold something to a mass consumer market. Just different skillsets.
It's the implication that success excuses it that sucks. The fans don't care how their status symbols came about - only that they have them. The illusion is presented that without him we'd all be using MS-DOS to this day.
He was, objectively, a huge POS. Ask anyone who worked with him. He ruined people for capital gain. He failed to acknowledge his first child. He time and again made people miserable.
That phrase gets bandied about quite casually in my experience. Usually is an ironic light joke about somebody in your peer group on talking to other people or near your peer group.
As such, it's been sort of semantically watered down quite a lot in our popular cult.
He was a huge piece of shit. Yet, when I lived in Silicon Valley, I saw parents scrambing to get a house in the right district so their kid could go to Homestead High and have a shot of "being like Steve Jobs." They want their kids to be deadbeat dads who die in their 50s?
> No one has been remembered for being extra nice alone.
That might depend on how strict "alone" is. (Perhaps by definition, only having a singular exceptional trait makes it challenging to be renown.) For example, might Fred Rogers count? Or Dolly Parton who, though remembered for many things, has kindness as a core part of her legacy.
I think many people are remembered for being kind, but only by those who knew them very well, such as family and friends.
Well, depending on how you define success, I'd say Trump is successful getting elected as POTUS twice. He sure is a brilliant man to be revered, and the people complaining about his allegations are surely losers... (sarcasm to be certain)
I spent 11 years at Apple and attended many meetings with SJ. It was amazing to see how quickly he could understand a problem while, at the same time, being brutally harsh about why it hadn't already been solved. No one but Steve would have been allowed to consistently act that way towards coworkers.
Steve showed a generation of CEOs that being an asshole was a viable strategy.
> What I've realized throughout the years of working is that being able to work as a team is almost more important than your technical capacity. You can always become better in your field, but becoming a better human is a lot harder.
Is this a true realization though? Lots of people are very nice, but Jobs got a shit ton done that was truly remarkable.
Survivorship bias. My own experience is that the jerks self-select out because no one wants to work for them.
That said, in the entrepreneurial space it's less clear to me this is true. In a team setting? Sure. But the C-suite of a business isn't necessarily a team sport and a lot of wildly successful CEOs are notoriously pieces of shit including Gates, Bezos, Zuck, Musk, and many others.
I grew up in a one-highschool Texas town, a notorious football powerhouse. The brainwashing we received as players was incredible, and we were definitely respected members of our community (e.g. newspaper would interview us; girls; getting away with murder).
The football t-shirts we were given for dailywear said something to the effect of "loved by few, feared by some, respected by ALL" – and I just can't help but feel this message was terrible advice for [our] young impressionable minds.
We probably deserved it, when playing more-modest football programs, when the opposing team changed their objective from scoring points to breaking our ankles (literally).
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All to say, I have several brothers, two of whom are experts in their respective fields (engineering and law), with decades (each) of practice and expertise:
they come off immediately as know-it-all assholes (to most people; to me, occassionally) simply because their levels of expertise come with the sacrifice of social niceties (not always, but often).
[within their circles, however, they are respected as gods]
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But to offer from their perspective (as a stupider brother of these two): most people my two "asshole" brothers deal with actually are quite stupid [relatively]; they are having to deal with us "morons" on an hourly basis [†]
Once you get past the outer asshole wrapper, these are the people that are driving our societies (for better or worse) "forwards" – do not forget this – they are assholes because they care so much about their work/goals [∑]
[†] remember the Carlin joke: think of the average person, and realize that half of people are dumber that that || to true geniuses (which I am not, but two brothers are) we are all "fucking idiots, most of the time" (to paraphrase their amalgamation)
I don't think intelligence entitles anyone to being an arsehole thought it might sometimes be frustrating. Lets say we make AIs that are more intelligent than us in the end - do we want them being arseholes to us just to achieve some new technology or dream that they have? Perhaps we would be just as happy without scalable fonts on our computers or phones that we can doom-scroll on and don't need to be whipped into achieving them?
My hypothetical argument (based on forty years with these two humans) is: the opposite would be worse (for these rare mental powerhouses "to not care," to not produce).
The bigger concern I have in a world of genAI-overlords is that too many competing AIgoalsetters will result in us humancattle becoming "tragedied in the commons," where too many competing goals overwhelm the limits of actual humanity's desire "to care" [i.e. most people do NOT want to work all the time; these two brothers do, as I presume hyperintelligent genAIs will, as well].
#They'reMadeOutOfWeights #Inexhaustable
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I am an identical twin with one of these entities, yet am (probably) among the laziest people I've ever met (not that I can't/don't/&haven't worked), but I prefer to do literally nothing (hobbies, only, in limited dosages).
There are many other options... A reframe that may be more compelling:
Anger and lashing out at events you can't control is a form of stupidity. It is emotional stupidity. You are expending resources and energy for no gain. It's natural and expected, but also something we can improve at.
You are also likely harming your goals by engendering ill-will. Any motivational benefit provided by being tough on those you interactive with can be achieved more directly, without 90% of the "asshole" piece. One can be firm, assertive, and determined without the poor emotional regulation.
I have 2 older brothers and idolised them until more recently. To me it sounds like you feel a bit overshadowed. Personally I would reject that whole thing. I know you're proud of them but you don't have to be proud at your own expense.
There are many engineers in the world and quite a lot of driven people who achieve things and enjoy letting one know it but the world is 8 billion people now and nobody can be Isaac Newton or Einstein or whatever. Nobody is really irreplaceable and one should not try to compete for renown unless one wants to make oneself unhappy. If someone loves you and you have enough to eat and somewhere to sleep and you're not overly worried about tomorrow then you're winning and if one of those things is missing then sort it out but don't go around talking about how you're lazy. ** that s*t.
Yes, this is how I observe my Truth; but also, what I'm trying to share/convey is that these "high functioning" individuals (e.g. two of my brothers) view almost everybody else as lazy (myself included).
While there is truth to this, I'm not trying to belittle myself; I'm trying to share how my own super-duper-intelligent brothers view most-everybody-else in this world... at least 7.8 billion of us.
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Thanks for your perspective. I think my biggest frustration (perhaps this is "normal: you got older"?) is that as they've hyperfocused in their specialties, they don't really have time for (almost) anybody else. I guess that's okay.
The argument here is that "know-it-all assholes" arise spontaneously if you excel in a field and care so much about it, which I kind of agree with. The corollary here seems to be that several people associate being an asshole as meaning you're good at something. However, that's just an excuse for being an asshole, as it's not a necessary condition to excel at something. It's only through our lack of discipline to tame our own minds that leads us to becoming assholes in general and using expertise as an excuse.
Those should not be ideals we strive for; you can excel without sacrificing social niceties and we should strive for intellectual humility. As one gets better in their respective fields (specially in ours that is always changing so fast), one should try to keep its ego in check. There is a saying in my country: "No one is so big that they cannot learn, nor so small that they cannot teach."¹
The problem with "know-it-all assholes" is that most think they are always talking to someone below them and their expertise carry on to all other fields². Their pride may prevent them from admitting from learning from even the most ignorant of beings.
As an exercise, ask your brothers the times that they were wrong (specially if there was anytime that came from someone that surprised them). If they fail to recollect many stories, I fear you're only hearing one part of the story and you'll never know it yourself. Steve Jobs himself used to do that: people would bring ideas to him that he would dismiss. A week later, he would come back with the idea presented as his.
We should strive to be gentle and humble to anyone, despite success in a field: we'll never know who we're talking to and what they can teach us. Perhaps is our misconception that we think that we're average (or above average) that prevents us from learning from other people.
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¹There is a variation, "No one is so ignorant that they have nothing to teach, no one is so wise that they have nothing to learn.", but I kinda like the former because it fits perfectly with the Lord of the Rings.
> Once you get past the outer asshole wrapper, these are the people that are driving our societies (for better or worse) "forwards" – do not forget this – they are assholes because they care so much about their work/goals [∑]
I forgot to address that you mentioned explicitly that assholes are pushing our society forward and they are assholes because they care about their work. Be careful to not conflate expertise and assholeness. As I mentioned in my comment, assholeness is a disguise; it's not a necessary condition to be excellent in your field. It may help one to achieve their own goals sometimes --- which in general revolves around getting more money to the highest bidder and themselves. They care so much about their work that sometimes they have a huge blindspot that prevents them from seeing the tragedy of the commons right in front of them (per Upton Sinclair's law). No, it's not expertise, it's lack of character. They are simply unaligned with what's good for society vs. what would bring them more money. Steve Jobs was an expert in some fields, but he needed Steve Wozniak. Wozniak is a great counterpoint to Jobs expert-assholeness: he was an expert (a programmer's programmer), cared about his work, and for all accounts, was kind and ethical. As an example of just an asshole, there's Martin Shrkeli and several other politicians that fit the bill --- just assholes, not experts, pushing their own goals.
The main element missing from my previous comment (which you responded to) is my failure to convey that my two expert brothers' "assholeishness" stems from having to deal with literal stupider people, all day long. Not just customer service dealing with general public -stupid, but actually 40-IQ-points-LOWER -stupid.
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>As an exercise, ask your brothers the times that they were wrong
I know most of the few skeletons hanging in their closets; somehow all the chaos, on the road went to me (they are both indoor cats, now).
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I'll read over more of your thoughts and update if anything else sticks out to me. From a legal-representation-POV, obviously you want a bigBAD asshole representing you (it's just how the game works).
The reason industrial PLCs cost so much is because of their reliability. They need to be working flawlessly 50 years in the future. Trying to vibe code your way into a PLC compiler feels like it could blow up in your face after a little while.
That is also ignoring the safety PLCs with safety instructions that are certified for use with ISO 13849. Can you imagine getting inspected because your safety subsystem cause injury and you explain how you don't use the officially licensed software to program it.
You completely stripped what I said from its context. GP explicitely said they donate to ReactOS in the hopes of one day being able to run that industrial software on it instead of on Windows. In this context, running the software on ReactOS instead of official Windows would already fail your hypothetical inspections. This is why I suggested trying the LLM route.
If I had to explain a failure in production I would much rather say "due to availability of old hardware, we ran this on a different version of Windows/inside a VM/inside a Windows compatibility layer/Wine/ReactOS" than "we vibecoded the entire driver stack from scratch, go ask Claude why the plant blew up lol".
Running the same software in a different environment is unlikely to cause issues. But with vibe coding, you're throwing away the code the manufacturer certified as working, and the best possible outcome is it bricks your hardware in dev before things escalate to a post-mortem.
Maybe you're being sarcastic, but I'm pretty sure clang + gcc do offer these.
The problems at first glance :
- Not having control over the implementation detail of the interface that your library provides is probably not wise. Sounds like a lot of bad bug reports and edge cases that you have no control over.
As others have alluded, __builtin_memcpy doesn't resolve to a runtime implementation. GCC and clang treat functions like memcpy specially. Because they're defined by the standard and are reserved names, compilers can assume the exact semantics specified by the standard and elide library calls altogether with optimized inline code. But if the compiler can't do the optimization (can't prove alignment, indeterminate length, etc), it just emits a library call, even if your source has some other local function definition named "memcpy". Explicit use of __builtin_memcpy is treated identically to calls to memcpy, unless the compiler is invoked with -ffreestanding, in which case it only optimizes __builtin_memcpy and skips special treatment of calls to memcpy, but __builtin_memcpy could still expand into a call to memcpy. If you're writing a C library you want to use -ffreestanding. (I think. There may be more nuance. More info at https://gcc.gnu.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=56888)
The Secure Enclave on iOS devices runs sepOS, and earlier fork of the UNSW/NICTA L4 nano kernel work. Obviously Apple has huge resources to verify their own kernel on their own hardware, but seL4 is likely much more secure. With Apple's appetite for architectural security improvements I think they will eventually move to an seL4 derivative with special hardware security add-ons.
There are a number of talks at the upcoming seL4 summit, but see 2025, e.g. Kry10 KOS.
The problem is that the NSA violates everyone's privacy without a care in the world.
This makes it pretty easy for them. Stockpile a bunch of vulnerabilities and go to town.
When you cannot even know what their budget is (since it's classified), can you even know what their capabilities are?
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