Something Random

LunarMist

I can't believe I'm a Fixture
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Feb 1, 2003
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USA
Power is shot. No generator. Civilization is bullshit. POI while she can. I hope the stains will come out on
The crotch

L
 

snowhiker

Storage Freak Apprentice
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Jul 5, 2007
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Google will now let you cache areas of the map to your device in advance, so it works without service. Still not as good as a dedicated device with updates maps when offline, but much better when online (traffic data, etc).

Yeah the maps were cached quite a bit as many of the smaller highways had no cell (Verizon) service. We never had any trouble with maps. Now if we asked google to compute a different route to a new town/city and we didn't have cell service, that was a problem but the map itself still was there and worked.

Google must also pull telemetry from users using google maps as we'd be in the middle of nowhere and the map would have yellow or red highways signifying slow/stopped traffic. We'd have to slow down due to road construction and with almost perfect correlation we'd be hitting a yellow area on the road map. When we'd have to stop for a flagman, due to the highway being restricted to one-way only traffic, we be almost exactly on a red area of the map.

So yeah, when you use Google maps they receive telemetry from google map users on how fast they are driving on any particular part of a freeway/highway and adjust their maps and estimated ETA times to reflect avg speed of highway users. Even on a 15 hour, 852 mile plot the google ETA time was accurate to within 10 minutes.

Edit: This article says Google does receive/use location data to enhance its maps.
 

Stereodude

Not really a
Joined
Jan 22, 2002
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Michigan
And our friend Rush Limbaugh evacuates Florida even though Irma is just a hoax made up by the extreme envoronmentalists?

http://money.cnn.com/2017/09/08/media/rush-limbaugh-evacuates-hurricane-irma/index.html
He did not say it was a hoax. Unsurprisingly, the media is lying about and very much mischaracterizing what he said. He criticized the media for politicizing the hurricane Irma coverage. They certainly have gone way out of their way to absolutely leave no doubt that he was right. He obviously struck a nerve and now they're squealing like stuck pigs.
 

snowhiker

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I think "news" has now gone past the point of "info-tainment" and is now purely entertainment. The "left" leaning channels entertaining the left and the "right" leaning channels entertaining the right.
 

jtr1962

Storage? I am Storage!
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Jan 25, 2002
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Flushing, New York
He criticized the media for politicizing the hurricane Irma coverage.
No sure they're politicizing it so much as commercializing it. I'm tired of hearing and seeing all the plugs for bottled water, for instance. Seriously, when Sandy came I filled up a bunch of empty soda bottles and other plastic jars with tap water. Just as good, nearly free, and I didn't have to lug it back from the store. Funny how so many of these left leaning types can always be seen drinking some expensive brand of bottled water. Bottled water has to be one of the dumbest trends these days. "Hey, I want to save the environment but I'm OK with adding 300 bottles to the waste stream each month". Not to mention it's a colossal waste of money.
 

Stereodude

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No sure they're politicizing it so much as commercializing it. I'm tired of hearing and seeing all the plugs for bottled water, for instance. Seriously, when Sandy came I filled up a bunch of empty soda bottles and other plastic jars with tap water. Just as good, nearly free, and I didn't have to lug it back from the store. Funny how so many of these left leaning types can always be seen drinking some expensive brand of bottled water. Bottled water has to be one of the dumbest trends these days. "Hey, I want to save the environment but I'm OK with adding 300 bottles to the waste stream each month". Not to mention it's a colossal waste of money.
Well, he made most of your point too. He mockingly pointed out that drinkable water came out of their taps and that people had days to prepare and could fill containers (empty bottles / jugs / pots / etc.) now instead of rioting over water or complaining about getting ripped off by price gougers. He also got into the commercial aspects of it.
 

LunarMist

I can't believe I'm a Fixture
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There was some coverage abroad on the TV. I could not understand the language but the winds looked strong.
Was the Tampa seriously afflicted?
 

LunarMist

I can't believe I'm a Fixture
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Potable drinking water and water one would like to drink are often two different things.
It depends on the water supply, plumbing and personal taste. Of course during the cyclones potability is the priority.
 

Stereodude

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Potable drinking water and water one would like to drink are often two different things.
It depends on the water supply, plumbing and personal taste. Of course during the cyclones potability is the priority.
Oh spare me... Tap water is quite drinkable in every state I've been in. Additionally, there are these things called water filters. Since they'd be filling their containers at their own house they could use their very own filtered water.

Are there really people who only drink bottled water and don't filter their own (assuming they don't drink it straight from the tap)?
 

Handruin

Administrator
Joined
Jan 13, 2002
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USA
I drink my tap water but I wouldn't if I lived in Flint, MI. :)

In the event of an approaching storm like Irma I would fill up large containers with tap water. Just before the storm arrives I'd fill up my tub so I had water for various purposes like to flush the toilet or to use for cleaning.
 

jtr1962

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Flushing, New York
In the event of an approaching storm like Irma I would fill up large containers with tap water. Just before the storm arrives I'd fill up my tub so I had water for various purposes like to flush the toilet or to use for cleaning.
Exactly what I did during Sandy, although it turned out we never lost water. Most of NYC's water system is gravity fed. Unless you're in a high-rise, chances are you won't lose water in a storm. We did have four days without power, however. With the temps sometimes dropping into the 30s, that was hard. We have a gas stove. I kept pots of water boiling to warm up the place as best I could.

The same strategy came in handy last year when they replaced the water mains on our block. A few times we had no water for a day. You can get a surprising amount of flushes from a full tub.

Wouldn't drink the water in Flint, either, but in 99% of the country the tap water is potable, either with or without filtering.
 

Howell

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Feb 24, 2003
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Chattanooga, TN
Oh spare me... Tap water is quite drinkable in every state I've been in. Additionally, there are these things called water filters. Since they'd be filling their containers at their own house they could use their very own filtered water.

Are there really people who only drink bottled water and don't filter their own (assuming they don't drink it straight from the tap)?

I would not drink tap water in FL. Tastes like NG was mixed in. And the week at a time that I was there did not make filtering the water economical considering all the restaraunts had drinkable water.
 

snowhiker

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Are there really people who only drink bottled water and don't filter their own (assuming they don't drink it straight from the tap)?

I'm kinda that way. But I could also say, "Are there really people out that that drive an Audi when a Toyota will do?"

If I want to drink water I grab a bottle of Arrowhead out of the fridge. I've been drinking Arrowhead for 20+ years now. I even have a RO system that supplies filtered tap water (for ice-maker and for drinking) but prefer the taste of bottled water. It might not even be better than tap but I'm just used to the taste of it, so tap water just taste 'wrong' to me. If I leave the house when it's hot outside, 6-7 months/year, it's just easier to grab a bottle of cold bottled water and go.

With all that being said I should add that I'm not afraid of tap water, especially coming from an RO or filter system. I drink plenty of filtered tap water at work. The work water coolers filter and zap water with UV so it's more than safe. No issues or worries about it. When I brew sun tea or use water for cooking I use RO water. I just prefer (or I'm used to) the taste and CONVENIENCE of bottled water.

For me, bottled water is a $5-7/week indulgence that I'm OK with. The RO is $50'ish/year for new filters. All of my plastic bottles are recycled.

What boggles my mind is people not having some stored water at home in cause of an emergency. 10 cases of generic bottled water is $25-30, sometimes $10-15 when on sale. I even have 15-20 2-liter bottles in the garage filled with tap water just in case.
 

sedrosken

Florida Man
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Nov 20, 2013
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Eglin AFB Area
Anyone know of a completely free alternative to NetLimiter? I have need to control my internet bandwidth usage -- I'm nearly always doing something on the internet, I just need to throttle my bandwidth so it doesn't kill the experience for everyone else on our extremely limited connection. NetLimiter fit the bill nicely while the trial lasted but that pricetag is too steep to justify when alternatives that work just as well for my use case may very well exist. Mucking about in router QoS settings, I can't manually define them to set a hard limit on how much I can use, blame Netgear. I don't want to limit my local throughput, just my internet bandwidth usage.

In other news my K550 VARA has never been quite the same since that fateful spill back in March -- even now, after several alcohol baths and hours of furious scrubbing, some keys occasionally stick and the switches on others bounce. I can't seem to pull apart those MX Green clones -- I'm not sure they're supposed to come apart at all -- so I decided to splurge a little and pick up a refurbished Corsair K70 RGB with Cherry MX Reds for about $90 off of Ebay -- I love blues for typing, but with more time to spend in games, typing isn't all I do on this machine anymore, and reds are a nice compromise for me. I love it so far, the lack of a tactile bump actually seems to assist me in typing for some reason, and now you can't hear my typing from a mile down the road. Since K70s are so expensive anyway just as it is, I decided to splurge a little more for the RGB model -- an extra ten dollars over the non-RGB model isn't going to kill me. Getting to light it exactly as I want is worth it. Best part, with real Cherries I actually know how to get them apart and can clean them properly should a situation like what happened with the K550 occur again.

My uncle gave me his old stereo -- it's as old as I am, possibly slightly older, and it was plenty expensive back in its day, commanding $600 in 1998 when he bought it. It runs two 200W speakers each with their own subwoofer, and with an aux input... well, you can probably guess what I tried, and I notice no audio lag with it serving as my speakers. Having a good dual tape deck (just old enough and just expensive enough to have Dolby noise reduction) and 5-CD changer along with the obvious FM/AM tuner is a nice bonus too.
 
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Bozo

Storage? I am Storage!
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Feb 12, 2002
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Twilight Zone
RE: water
Excellent program on PBS about Flint Michigan. Learned a lot about public water systems.
We don't drink our well water. It is safe but is a little acidic. Makes coffee really bitter. Since we started using bottled ( distilled ) water, I don't have to take Prevacid.
 

snowhiker

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Of course the total light transmission depends on the relative orientation of the individual filters.

True.

However, the :scratch: is that if you have two polarizers stacked on top of each other with their polarization effect oriented 90 degrees from each other ALL the light is blocked, but if you stack a third filter on top of that some light can now gets through?!?
 

LunarMist

I can't believe I'm a Fixture
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What is the current thinking on dreams? Last night in the fevers I was on a nightmare that Earl Scheib was chasing me with a hatchet.
 

LunarMist

I can't believe I'm a Fixture
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USA
It was $49.99 that I remember. Body work, color change or metallic paint were extra. After a few years the paint could peel off since they didn't do much to prep the underlying paint.
 
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LunarMist

I can't believe I'm a Fixture
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Feb 1, 2003
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16,624
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USA
What case? I have not had alcohol for some weeks, and will not have any until October at this rate..
 
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