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Wordle 1,061 6/6
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Ok, I have had my coffee, so you can all come out now!
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So, I pay all my utilities via credit card, and I receive emails when the bill is due and amount. Last month, the water department notified me that my bill was $240 and change. Considering my normal bill is $39 my attention was captured.
Here's the interesting thing - about 4 months ago, the water department started rolling out smart meters that they could query and collect usage information. Think now - water department, smart meters, automatic billing.... most of the people I've met from the county departments leave me less than inspired. This month, my water usage has been at a square wave. Normally 400 gallons a month, it's been spiking at various times and days to over a thousand gallons per day. I've already pointed out that their data is corrupt, but all I get is a tired voice on the line.
I may have found a new career, no, sorry misspoke, consulting opportunity.
Charlie Gilley
“They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.” BF, 1759
Has never been more appropriate.
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charlieg wrote: consulting opportunity
Working for them seems more of a headache opportunity.
"the debugger doesn't tell me anything because this code compiles just fine" - random QA comment
"Facebook is where you tell lies to your friends. Twitter is where you tell the truth to strangers." - chriselst
"I don't drink any more... then again, I don't drink any less." - Mike Mullikins uncle
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charlieg wrote: over a thousand gallons per day.
Wow! That's like a 1" pipe going full tilt the whole day! Maybe you shouldn't fill your pool daily; you know, it's not a bathtub 
Mircea
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Mircea Neacsu wrote: Maybe you shouldn't fill your pool daily; you know, it's not a bathtub
My mother-in-law once got a water bill that was the equivalent of filling her pool 10 times daily for an entire month! The water company then compounded the mistake by crediting her account - twice!
They never corrected the account. I told her that when she moved away from her old house, she should have asked them to close out the account and pay her the sum. 
At least the local paper got an amusing article out of it showcasing the incompetence of the water company.
Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows.
-- 6079 Smith W.
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Correct. And I have made the point that we don't have a pool. The general attitude I'm picking up is (a) oh elephant, I don't know anything about these meters... or (b) yawn, just another local whining about their bill.
Charlie Gilley
“They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.” BF, 1759
Has never been more appropriate.
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Some years back we had dual, electronic/analog water meters. In case of disagreement the analog/mechanical one took precedence. Now the city gave up on the electronic ones and we just have to read ourselves the analog ones and enter the reading on a web page once a year. Works great.
Mircea
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This sounds like a broken pipe.
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If it was continuous you would be correct. But what we have then is a "self healing pipe" which in all my years I have never seen.
The fact that on Monday morning Sunday's usage was *exactly* 412 gallons for 7, 8, 9, and 10 pm each - really? I don't think so. Monday had an issue so when I went back to Sunday, those numbers all changed. using Smart Meters in departments that might not be as technically adept to pay attention to this stuff is a recipe for nonsense.
Charlie Gilley
“They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.” BF, 1759
Has never been more appropriate.
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Definitely a meter failure then.
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My sympathies. We had a similar problem with "smart" meters here in Israel. It took a few billing cycles to fix, and IIRC, the meter itself was faulty.
The biggest problem was getting the pen-pushing, ![Elephant | [mastadon]](https://codeproject.global.ssl.fastly.net/script/Forums/Images/elephant.gif) ing bureaucrats in the water company to accept that this was a problem with the meter, and not an intermittent leak in our pipes.
At least we were reimbursed for the unusual bills (they used the last billing cycle from before the erroneous bills to charge us).
Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows.
-- 6079 Smith W.
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Whilst I was perusing another article in the MSN info world (that another member had mentioned) I stumbled across the following article "Scientists have found 'evidence' of advanced alien civilisations". The article relates to a scientific study of a combination of star surveys (roughly 5 million stars) and a methodology to filter the stars looking for specific emission markers that make the star unusual and possibly a Dyson sphere under construction. In the article there is a link to the official paper that the group produced (haven't finished reading it yet).
My own feelings are that Dyson spheres sound cool, but the amount of physical material that would go into making one would be prohibitive. Stars are big. Even red dwarf stars. Surrounding the star with technological material (all of the support devices to convert, control the flow of energy, store and forward it to the area of need). Would require the literal conversion of several star systems of every bit of matter in them (planets, moons, asteroids, every spec of material left over from the star formation) to provide the raw materials for the build. We might want to look for star systems surrounding a suspected Dyson sphere that have no planetary bodies associated with the star.
Of course, an advanced civilization might be able to capture the solar wind and also convert a large part of the radiant energy directly to usable matter.
In any case, here is the link. Have fun.
MSN[^]
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I suppose one way to do it is to cannibalize the other planets in the system. Like hit each planet with a giant spatula to flatten it.
The difficult we do right away...
...the impossible takes slightly longer.
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Here's a question, how do you maintain gravity in a Dyson Sphere (assuming you do not have "artificial gravity")?
Never underestimate the power of human stupidity -
RAH
I'm old. I know stuff - JSOP
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I would suggest spinning it. You'd wind up with only a ring world's amount of living space but (like 640kb) that should be enough for anyone. It would probably make for an interesting typography in that "down" might not be perpendicular to the surface, but hey, you've already solved the hard problem of making and spinning it. This is probably a minor issue, comparatively. On the plus side there's no need to worry about artificial gravity failures sending the atmosphere and other loose material, like people, into the sun.
The "unused" sides, the axis poles as it were, could be for energy harvesting and such. They'd also make fairly good access points for ingress/egress of the sphere.
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From the CP newsletter
Astronomers are on the Hunt for Dyson Spheres - Universe Today[^]
Gary Stachelski 2021 wrote: but the amount of physical material that would go into making one would be prohibitive
There are all sorts of engineering problems, economical problems, and political ones as well. Those are pretty standard constraints on all fantastical theoretical constructs. Even much smaller ones.
Consider this - lets say one claims that the material in the solar system is enough. How do you dismantle Jupiter without destabilizing the entire star system.
Or what political system must the world have in place such that it would remain stable enough for perhaps hundreds of thousands of years while this was happening.
Those who want to believe often rely on yet more fantastical stuff to avoid such problems.
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It's all really a question of perspective. If you were to ask people in the 1600's to build the Hoover dam it would be deemed impossible. The technology, cost and political problems from the 1600's would preclude the project. However, come 1931 and it was now possible.
The same can be said for a Dyson Sphere project. The civilization that would tackle a project like that had outgrown the fusion reactor/alternative green power solutions and needed a larger source of power to continue to evolve their technological society.
BTW: Dyson spheres do not need to be solid objects. They can be made of earth sized sections that are towed into an acceptable orbit around the sun. So they can be built incrementally over time. Giving the civilization access to increasing amounts of energy. They do not have to be living spaces (although they can be). They can simply capture, convert and transmit the energy to somewhere else. Using the sun as a big fusion reactor and like a power company, transmitting the power to where it is needed.
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Gary Stachelski 2021 wrote: If you were to ask people in the 1600's to build the Hoover dam it would be deemed impossible.
The universe is not in fact infinite. There are very real limits. And scaling up known systems is not the same as claiming unknown systems (dams existed long before then.)
Gary Stachelski 2021 wrote: They can be made of earth sized sections that are towed into an acceptable orbit around the sun. So they can be built incrementally over time.
Ignoring the engineering, economical and political points that I already stated.
What are the exact engines would they use? How would they pay for the fuel? Who would pay for the fuel?
Based on your claim then it should be easy for you to find a scaled up version that was built now, which is comparable to that which was only built in the 1600s.
For example the Lake Homs Dam is one mile long and 23 ft high and built in the 1300s. Hoover is 726 ft tall and 1200 ft long.
Thus by your scaling someone should now be building a dam that is 20 times as tall as Hoover. But it just doesn't happen because there are real problems with scaling like that.
Tall buildings are a very good example of that. People would love to build a building that was 1 mile high (or 10,000 meters.) They are even willing to pay for it. But there are real engineering and physical reasons that buildings are not a mile high or even higher. There are also real practical issues with even populating a building even that is much shorter. Then are safety issues such as those from earthquakes and fires.
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Surely if you pointed a telescope at a star with a Dyson sphere then it would not be emitting any detectable radiation. Much like Dark Matter.
Wait... so that is what dark matter is?
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The thought is that no technology is 100%. So if you stick solid objects in front of a star, those objects will heat up. There will be some waste heat radiating from the objects. You can detect that.
In this case, the scientists were trying to be clever in trying to detect not a completed Dyson sphere but one that is still being built. That way they would be able to observe the star, note it's type, and predict the amount of light it should be emitting. If it was emitting less light and had a spike in the mid-infrared range. That might hint that a Dyson sphere was under construction. They also thought of many other conditions that would rule out stars for natural causes for the odd radiation being emitted by the stars. They started with a group of star surveys of stars within 300 parsecs of Earth, which totaled about 5 million stars and whittled it down to 7 stars that were odd and potential candidates. They are trying to get observation time to try and confirm or reject these 7 stars.
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Startups will claim anything...
Hogan
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When I see any article where a startup is making tall claims my mind goes straight to Theranos, FTX, Nikola and such.
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