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Summary

Amid growing concerns over the impacts of climate change on worldwide water security, Bitcoin’s water footprint has rapidly escalated in recent years. The water footprint of Bitcoin in 2021 significantly increased by 166% compared with 2020, from 591.2 to 1,573.7 GL. The water footprint per transaction processed on the Bitcoin blockchain for those years amounted to 5,231 and 16,279 L, respectively. As of 2023, Bitcoin’s annual water footprint may equal 2,237 GL.

The estimated power demand of the Bitcoin network reached a new all-time high in March 2023,7 suggesting an annualized total electricity consumption of 141.9 terawatt-hours (TWh). This represents a 35% increase compared with the total estimated electricity consumption of 104.9 TWh in 2021 (Data S1, sheet 4). Consequently, the water footprint of Bitcoin may have increased by a similar magnitude. Assuming a constant water intensity of electricity consumption (15.76 L per kWh) since January 2022, 141.9 TWh of electrical energy consumption could result in a water footprint of 2,237 GL (Data S1, sheet 4). With the network handling 113 million transactions in 2020 and 96.7 million in 2021, the water footprint per transaction processed on the Bitcoin blockchain for those years amounted to 5,231 and 16,279 L, respectively.

the total water footprint of US Bitcoin miners could be equivalent to the average annual water consumption of around 300,000 US households, comparable with a city such as Washington, DC.

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Goofing around with a 30 dollar vector network analyzer i got around ThanksKilling on ebay when I got really high on edibles.

Im an absolute rook when it comes to RF, RF theory, antenna building, etc. i follow calculators that others have created for rookies like me. That said, there is a water tower about a half mile from my house that has a repeater for the local counties that are tied in to a EMS system. im working my way towards having a setup to follow the trunked radio system, decode it and allow me to listen to it. im “teaching” myself enough CAD to be passable when nobody who knows more is in the room, and am making a frame for the antenna so I can print it in ABS and mount my antenna outside eventually.

i followed a calculator i found online, and built a Moxon tuned for 853mhz which is the repeater’s frequency. I built it out of some rg6 that i stripped the center conductor from and a piece of rg58 with an SMA connector. i made a dimension jig, measured the reflector and elements, soldered everything together and then taped it to the jig I had my measurements on. Calibrated the VNA, and hooked it up to my antenna.

This is the results - my first photo is a sweep from 50khz - 1ghz. my VNA is only 30 bucks after all, so it has a very small resolution. I can do a broad sweep with about 100 data point, find its harmonics, then narrow down sweeps to get finer details. my second photo is were my SWR was the lowest. I didnt quite nail it, its resonant a little north of 853, which is my intended frequency, but even still im at 1.2 swr which is good as to my understanding. i had the logmag function set to a different input on the VNA so the measurement here is wrong in the second screenshot. it is correct in the first one.

SWR, I think t,his is a ratio of power transmitted to power broadcasted at the antenna. 1:1 is ideal. here its about 1.2:1 which is pretty good. needs to be under 2.5:1 as ideal. logmag shows what frequencies my antenna is good for lower -dB is better, here its tuned to about 750mhz-875mhz. everything below and above that is pretty well rejected. I think. like i said, im a rookie. im watching all sorts of stuff and reading everthing i can, because i want to test for my Amateur Technicians license next year. i imagine antenna theory and the like ties in to this somehow.

anywway, i did a thing, and wanted to show someone. anyone who knows more than me and feels like correcting what i got wrong please do so, but please be kind. Im just starting to feel like im getting the hang of the smallest thing, and dont want to be discouraged too badly.

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Hi, my siblings suggested that a present for our grandparents (younger silent generation) could be a digital picture frame that all the grandchildren could remotely upload pictures to. What I want to ask is if there are any that have an open protocol or open source alternate firmware that could be flashed to them, or otherwise can be recovered and used if the tech company making them goes out of business or just decides to stop supporting them.

So far, anything stable and user friendly enough for old people rules out trying to replicate an open source project from Hackaday, github, etc. I found and everything commercial I found seems to risk being a piece of e-waste in 6 months if the company goes out of business or decides that product isn't making enough money to keep supporting the app.

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I've been using DDG for a while but I honestly don't understand their business model if they're privacy-focused. They're basically comparable to google in search quality, which is to say quite bad. Started out on the free tier of Kagi the other day after hearing about it on mastodon. It's a subscription service. So far seems to work okay. Anybody have experience or reviews to contribute?

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TLDR: EU wants to force companies to trust all certificate agencies on all browsers even if they are meddling and reading all your internet traffic.

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  • Opera GX is a “browser for gamers” with several features that appeal to gamers and enthusiasts.
  • As part of a marketing campaign, Opera GX inserted a loud splashscreen that jump-scared users.
  • While the splashscreen was present for a day only, users could not turn off the feature without manually deleting the splashscreen file or force-updating the browser.

Earlier this week, Opera GX ran a marketing campaign with comedian Eric André centered around burying your boring browsers. The campaign video is loud and chaotic, but I guess they were aiming for it, so I wouldn’t fault them so far. However, as part of the campaign, the folks at Opera GX also inserted a VERY LOUD Eric yelling “OPERA GX” into the browser’s splashscreen. Needless to say, users who had no clue about the marketing campaign were jump-scared and definitely not amused.

What made the jump scare worse was that the loud splashscreen would trigger every time you started the browser. You’d think the “feature” would be one-time or even optional. But no, you couldn’t even turn off the behavior. You’d need to force an update to the browser or manually delete the splashscreen executable. Even worse, the splashscreen caused the browser to open slower since it would play out this longer splashscreen.

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Upon looking it up in the Dell service manual for this model, I found the spec sheet actually lists compatibility with both 3200MT/s and 2666MT/s. But of course the fine print had some caveats. Apparently only the SKU of this model that included an MX350 dedicated GPU has the privilege of running the memory at 3200MT/s.

Is there a technical reason for this or is it just another example of bullshit product segmentation? I can't imagine why the presence of a dGPU would allow for faster system RAM. That seemingly implies that the motherboard in my laptop is probably perfectly capable of doing the same, but has been artificially limited in the firmware. This really pisses me off because it's the iGPU model that would have greatly benefited from faster memory since iGPUs pull from the system RAM. They don't have fancy dedicated VRAM optimized for bandwidth.

It sucks that lower end laptops always have jack shit for tuning options in their BIOS. I feel like a lot of performance is left on the table when it comes to these things.

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submitted 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) by Dirt_Owl@hexbear.net to c/technology@hexbear.net
 
 

internet-delenda-est You would think spam would at least make sense.

Weirdest phishing mail ever

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You didn’t build that

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submitted 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) by Yuritopiaposadism@hexbear.net to c/technology@hexbear.net
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Humble Tech Book Bundle: Hacking (www.humblebundle.com)
submitted 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) by oktherebuddy@hexbear.net to c/technology@hexbear.net
 
 

Interesting collection of books. As always before spending money on these things, remember: everything you buy has two prices. The price you pay to add it to your personal property, and the price you have to pay to make use of it. And the price to make use of technical books is very, very high. A stack of pending books (or games, movies, any media really) can be a demoralizer that leads to you reading fewer books overall. Personally I will not be buying this bundle but will take it as a reference of books to look into specific topics when the mood strikes.

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"Join us in a series of discussions with an amazing group of scholars, journalists and activists to learn about tech enabled Israeli apartheid, the history of tech workers in both enabling and dismantling apartheid, and what you can do to support Palestinians."

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  • The US is among countries arguing against new laws to regulate AI-controlled killer drones.
  • The US, China, and others are developing so-called "killer robots."
  • Critics are concerned about the development of machines that can decide to take human lives.

In a speech in August, US Deputy Secretary of Defense, Kathleen Hicks, said technology like AI-controlled drone swarms would enable the US to offset China's People's Liberation Army's (PLA) numerical advantage in weapons and people.

"We'll counter the PLA's mass with mass of our own, but ours will be harder to plan for, harder to hit, harder to beat," she said, reported Reuters.

Frank Kendall, the Air Force secretary, told The Times that AI drones will need to have the capability to make lethal decisions while under human supervision.

"Individual decisions versus not doing individual decisions is the difference between winning and losing — and you're not going to lose," he said.

"I don't think people we would be up against would do that, and it would give them a huge advantage if we put that limitation on ourselves."

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