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Comment Re: The post seems to be referencing... (Score 1) 57

Sure, but from what I read, it is all pretty reasonable. I read a book about scheme therapy once. The introduction was pretty funny. Something like this: "You may be one of the few who had a truly happy childhood, but chances are big that you didn't." Personally? I had a lot of fun. Then you visit a shrink and he starts to point out certain things. Oh wait, yes indeed, that wasn't normal! But in retrospect? It was all ok and rather normal. Good things and bad. Cheers!

Comment Re: The post seems to be referencing... (Score 1) 57

Sounds right, but... abusive men, I think I need to clarify that, because you all say you are "bad", but you are all little soft cozy sissy macho bears compared to abusive men. I am talking about an order of magnitude beyond bad. I am talking about the real deal here. Drunk alcoholic dad that is a wife beater, dad that psychologically tortures by depersonalizing and being overdemanding. Systematic sexual abuse (of kids)...
I think you are all a bit naive here. It can be really ugly. I am a highschool teacher. I can place names on all those types of dads. A few moms also, but they are usually better at hiding it. (My school is in a well developed city, worked in another school, more rural, it was worse there)

Comment Re: The post seems to be referencing... (Score 1) 57

These things have been studied extensively by psychologists... As you describe yourself, you are not an abusive partner. You may be bad, but not really really bad. Some people really are drawn to the abusive ones. Psychology never is clear cut, there is a lot of diversity there, but a typical pattern is a dad that is abusive or violent. Their daughters have a tendency to end up with abusive partners. But again, this is psychology there is a lot of noise. I know a family, three daughters, 1 ended up with an abusive partner, even the kids suffered. The two others are more or less fine. I think one has a bad, but not really really bad partner.
Who's bad?

Comment Re: This is the way. (Score 1) 126

Well, I have to admit that it depends on your contract here. If you have a dynamic contract, you get payed for consuming electricity when the price is negative (and charged when you put solar power on the net). Most people have a different contract. At home, we get a price per kwh every month for conumption and production. It hasn't been negative (yet).
No digital meters in Germany yet? Damn, we made Belgium great. Must be doing something wrong! ;-)

Comment Re: This is the way. (Score 1) 126

From the numbers I got last week, 2000 euro assembled seems to be very low. You have cheap wall socket batteries, those sell for roughly 1000 euro, but definitely not for that capacity.
Payback time was in the order of 10 years. So currently no big financial incentive to go that way.
They did show us that you could get the batteries smart. Charge batteries from the net when the price is negative, discharge to the net if price for electricity is high. You could even help in stabilizing the grid frequency. You could earn money that way and it reduced the payback time, but they added the side note that the money earned would drop as more people join in. (i.e. subscriptionservice for data was free now since they are recruiting early adopters).
I doubt many people would go that way as it goes above a lot of people their heads.

Comment Re: This is the way. (Score 5, Interesting) 126

Hey US... Belgium here. Solar panels everywhere. Sunny and windy? You het payed to consume electricity. Digital meters are rolled out everywhere, incentives are organized to install home batteries, ...
The transition is challenging, traditionally we Belgians nag about it, as we definitely do not want to be great. But that does not stop us.
Went to the town hall last week. They did an info session about home batteries. The rules relaxed recently. Dude told us that Germany is actually ahead of us.
No guts, no glory. Cheers!
(To all the reasonable Americans, sorry, this taunt is not meant for you)

Comment Re:Speed it up! (Score 4, Interesting) 11

I started programming in python a year back, not professionally, but just for small hobby projects. I do have a lot of professional matlab programming experience. There are a lot of similarities. One is that for loops are extremely slow. The trick is to avoid those as much as possible and use built-in functions instead.
Not sure I am happy that python is the most popular language. Personally I prefer languages that are closer to the hardware.

Comment Re:Betteridges Law... No. (Score 3, Interesting) 57

I recently started teaching python to high school students. I have some job related programming experience, but no educational experience in that field. The courses I give are pretty ... sober and more mathematical oriented. Calculate the sum of a series, find the zero of a function with Newton Rhapson, ... . I noticed a strong polarisation effect. You have the "natural" coders. My classes are too slow for them. They eagerly read through the course on their own and start doing a little project under some mild guidance. Tetris, algorithmic animations, some optimize my crude sorting algorithm, it is nice to see what they make.
Then there is the other group. Pretty uninterested, basic for loop is very difficult to teach. My classes go too fast. Applying it to even simple problems goes way over their head. Usually they are more language oriented. I tried a more linguistic approach: i.e. make a program that conjugates regular verbs in French, ... with some mild success. Gamefication may help these kids. We've considered minecraft, but have not come around it yet
I think my courses still need a lot of improvement. Any pointers from experienced teachers, preferably high school audience is very welcome! Oh, I have 50 minutes a week per class, so this is a side dish.

Comment Re: Comment Subject: (Score 1) 147

Not sure what drove them into this. I was surprised that brands hid climate control in a touchscreen menu when I went looking for a new car. No-one wants that. It could be cost driven, but I doubt that as even expensive brands do this. Pretty sure this was discussed heavily during the design phase. I wonder what the pros were.
The only thing I can think of is that automatic climate control becomes more interesting and more people upgrade.

Comment Re:This is nothing more than a Glad conspiracy (Score 1) 21

I live in the EU, most shops no longer offer plastic bags. You want a paper bag? Pay extra. I used to have to throw away loads of bags. Now I just do a clean out of the box of plastic bags once a year.
Bins in my house? Still have bags in them that you occasionally get. Just empty the bag and put it back in. Except for the ones in the kitchen of course. You do not want to reuse that one. Sure I have to buy bags for that one, but I always had to buy there since they are pretty large.
It all sounds troublesome, but it isn't actually. I often forget my bag when I go shopping. Luckily supermarkets always have an area where they put their waste cardboard boxes. Pick one up there, put your groceries in it et voila, you have a nice recyclable container. Usually I put the box back in the trunk and reuse it.
It really is no effort.
I am sure you can do it. You just have to believe in yourself! (Not so polite version: stop being lazy, don't pollute the nest.)

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