fubarx

Many pumps come with built-in timers so you can turn them off when sleeping. You can also connect them to smarthome switches and set a routine to turn them on and off only when needed or via remote apps, wireless switches, or voice control (Alexa, turn pump on.)

We found the cost savings to be non-trivial. Main reason I put one in was because we had a teenager who started the shower running, then went away and got distracted. This solved the problem. And with a smarthome controller, it also reduced costs.

Also, those under-sink instant heaters do exist, but they're only good for a single faucet. They won't work with showers and baths.

That's why I put 'timed' in there. You can program when they shut off so it just goes back to the way it was before. Like when sleeping or out of the house.

A more fine-grain solution is to get a non-timer (cheaper) version of the pump, and one of those Alexa, Google, or Homekit compatible power switches, then not only can you set the time through a smart home routine, but can override them whenever walking out or coming back.

If using a traditional water heater, you're heating the whole tank all the time. And with a tankless but no pump, you're running gallons of clean water down the drain, waiting for it to get warm. It's all a tradeoff, but this, at least, only heats the water circulating inside your pipes and only during the hours you set.

If you have a tankless water heater, and have to run the tap for a really long while to get hot water, look into timed recirculating pumps. It'll save you a ton of money and make you kick yourself for not doing it sooner.

"Did I already shampoo? Can't remember."

(Apply a small dab of shampoo. Foams up instantly).

"Dammit, yes."

Day I got married.

Next would be the time the bartender offered me the half pint of beer for free while he went to change the keg.

All the deserved ribbing aside, if you had to design a removable, R/W, high-capacity, environmentally tolerant, secure, fault-tolerant, mission critical storage system that could last 25 years, starting NOW...

What would you pick?

That's a tough one, even if you design future hardware upgrades into the system.

• Do unto others, etc...
• Don't punch down. Ever.
• Hydration is key.

Friend of mine used to drink quadruple espressos at Starbucks every day, then go back to work. I was talking to him last week and told him about remembering the time he called me from the Starbucks and his name was called with the quadruple order. He laughed and said he actually bumped it up to quintuple at one point.

Then he sold his house and moved to another state, living out in the woods. Asked him how he managed without a Starbucks nearby. He said he now does Keurig espresso shots every morning. But it was getting expensive, since he had to press 10 pods in one sitting!

Moral of the story: he's perfectly functional and productive. Go nuts!

Apple and Google can fix the problem. Apps are required to ask for permission to access location information. Most of the time, it's for tracking and analytics, not anything related to the app's functionality. That's the data that is leaking to these data brokers.

In those cases, if asked, user can say no, but apps keep haranguing you until you capitulate.

Instead, the OS could add a button that says: "Yes, but randomize." After that, location data is returned as normal, but from totally random locations nearby. They could even spoof the data clustering algorithms and just pick some rando location and keep showing returns to them, or just trade the data from one random phone for another every N days.

You do this enough and the data will become polluted enough to become useless.

Only time there is because Google links to an answer there. Other than that, nope.

Yup. Techie, but with other interests. There are dozens of us.

Edit: gave up on Twitter and Reddit after being early adopter of both. Moved over to Fediverse and not regretting it one bit. All good.

I remember when self-reported online polls were considered dirty and useless.

Oh, how the times have changed.