Smokeydope

joined 1 year ago
[–] [email protected] 0 points 3 hours ago

Thank you! I added a video link to the description if you wanted to see it in action.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 3 hours ago* (last edited 3 hours ago)

The glass orb is easy to clean, the pieces that insert into the vaporizer need cleaning from time to time. The metal omega wand extraction device works best with some melted beeswax covering it so it doesn't stick into the glass adapters it inserts into. It uses metal bowl screens which need cleaning.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 3 hours ago* (last edited 2 hours ago)

Thank you for the reply! The glass orb doesn't take falls very well its a relatively fragile piece. However its cheap enough to replace from time to time.

The vaporizer itself requires no maintenance. The adapters and stuff inserted into it needs cleaning after awhile.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 3 hours ago (2 children)

Good attetion to detail. I have ruby balls directly above the heater so it behaves more like a ball vape. They balance things out while improving the extraction.

 

The orb v3 from vgoodiez, Goo-Roo hookah hose, arizer extremeq desktop vape and omega wand from DDave.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago)

You are welcome. Im happy if my writings can inform a few people from time to time. Yes thats absolutely what it means if you read the fine print of ecosia they tell you how they collect your data including IP address+ search terms and share it with google and Microsoft's ad network to show you ads through ecosia. So your data is still coming back google and Microsoft to be sold to the highest bidder. Everyones gotta get a cut profititing off your data, except for you. At least a small bit of that profit goes to the trees I guess.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 3 days ago (2 children)

Here's my guide to alternative search engines that discusses all the different search engines and how they differ under the hood. I wrote it to be understandable to everyone not just tech nerds.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago)

Ads aren't a thing in my life. On the off day I have to visit someone who lives with ads and suffer through one or two I tough it out, or look at my phone, or do something different.

I don't watch live TV. I dont pay for any subscription services except phone service and internet data. I watch YouTube content that has the ads stripped out. I download youtube videos that get often rewatched to hard drive. For movies I buy DVD that can have the drm stripped out.

I play good video games preferably drm free (steam is the one service I can't really give up easy, but it has offline mode and the deck so praise gaben!). I read e-books that are drm free. I have a mp3 player downloaded with all my music drm free.

The better question is, why are you willing to live with ads at all? Assuming you are in control of your living situation and have the power change whats shown on tv or played through speakers.

Why would you tolerate being constantly bombarded with manipulative messaging by companies, political canpaigns, and all the other powerful groups who want to affect he masses for their benefit?

Why is it so hard just say no? To give up the forms of toxic entertainment delivery? Why can't you sacrifice ease and convinence and familiarity to regain some control overhow your attention is spent during free time?

If you like something, buy it and really take the steps to own it physically.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago)

The digital manifestation of the ghost in the machine. It likes playing with the bits that line occupies when you aren't looking. Don't touch its line.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago)

I agree that oil capsules are the way to go for dosing precision and general healthiness. I like oil caps the most out of all edibles simply because you can lock in a approximate amount needed to get you medicated. Not requiring further cooking or excess calories is a bonus.

To answer your question abiut dosing vapor, I can give some insight as a vaping nerd.

Just to be clear I mean dry herb vaping where the raw cannabis flower is baked at a temperature hot enough to vaporize the plant oil with all the good cannabinoids but not hot enough to burn or combust the flower. This method is much cleaner than combustion smoking while avoiding the possible synthetic additives in cartridge vapes.

When it comes to vaping theres two paths users tend to head down. One common path is thst you just quit combustion smoking and want to emulate the experience of smoking as closely as possible. Big milky vapor clouds filling your regular sized bongs and exiting your lungs in a huge rip. This path leads towards the natural conclusion of expensive ball vapes and burning through zips a week.

More experienced vapor heads realize another path. You don't actually need all that much vapor to get baked, especially with good flower. So you go for maximizing your herb efficency by trying to get every bit of vapor out of a very small amount of herb These are the crowds that actually take dosing seriously even using measuring spoons and stuff. This path is most commonly followed by half bowl dynavap users, but there are many microdosing options.

Here are three different bowl sized.

I can't tell you exact numbers but spitballing the biggest bowl probably holds .15-.20g, the middle one holds .10g and the teeny tiny one .05gs. How these get used depends on flower quality. If I'm vaporizing top tier ganja Its easy to get medicated and I want to stretch it out with the small or middle bowl sizes. If I'm vaporizing lots of cheap mid or shake I'm going for the big bowl.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago)

If your device happens to be 18-20v you can get a usbc-pd laptop connector with a dc barrel jack output. It has the USBC-PD chip built into it to tell the charger to output 20v and you can probably hunt down barrel adapter bits. Your regular 65-100w rated usbc cord plugs in like anything else.

The other voltages are tough theres not really a consumer market for 15v or 9v specific usbcPD to barrel things.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago) (1 children)

Hey entropicdrift good question. Those kinds of lanterns are expensive and complicated electronics with a definitive life expectancy. The lantern you linked is over 20$ for a single unit.

Most of those kinds of lanterns use a non replaceable rechargeable lithium battery built inside it that will only last about 500 charge cycles give or take before degrading. That is, if you are lucky and one of the other cheap mass produced quickly assembled electrical components doesn't fry first.

In the long term I deem its more cost efficient to take a page from the home lighting industry. Simply create a light fixture with easily and cheaply replaceable bulbs. A pack of 4 12v-24v bulbs cost less than that lantern and I like the warm lighting.

Its also a simple matter to convert any lamp fixture into one that can interface with my power system. Cut off the AC plug and replace it with a male cigarette plug. The trick is knowing thst you have to buy the right kinds of bulbs.

So when the 12v led bulbs do eventually burn out its a cheap single 5$ bulb that and a minute to replace it. I would rather put a broken bulb than yet another expensive lantern in the landfill.

Apotential benefit if I choose to power it with usbc-pd instead is variable dimmable lighting based on voltage level if the bulb is 12-24v.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 days ago (2 children)

Hey aubeynarf think you are talking about something like this.

Its a special usbc-pd to 5.5x2.5 barrel jack with manually selectable voltage. You just plug it into a pd charger and select the voltage of the device. The rest is finding a barrel plug to barrel plug adapter that plugs into your device. Hope this helps.

 
244
Duncan (lemmy.world)
 
 

Mistral Small 22B just dropped today and I am blown away by how good it is. I was already impressed with Mistral NeMo 12B's abilities, so I didn't know how much better a 22B could be. It passes really tough obscure trivia that NeMo couldn't, and its reasoning abilities are even more refined.

With Mistral Small I have finally reached the plateu of what my hardware can handle for my personal usecase. I need my AI to be able to at least generate around my base reading speed. The lowest I can tolerate is 1.5~T/s lower than that is unacceptable. I really doubted that a 22B could even run on my measly Nvidia GTX 1070 8G VRRAM card and 16GB DDR4 RAM. Nemo ran at about 5.5t/s on this system, so how would Small do?

Mistral Small Q4_KM runs at 2.5T/s with 28 layers offloaded onto VRAM. As context increases that number goes to 1.7T/s. It is absolutely usable for real time conversation needs. I would like the token speed to be faster sure, and have considered going with the lowest Q4 recommended to help balance the speed a little. However, I am very happy just to have it running and actually usable in real time. Its crazy to me that such a seemingly advanced model fits on my modest hardware.

Im a little sad now though, since this is as far as I think I can go in the AI self hosting frontier without investing in a beefier card. Do I need a bigger smarter model than Mistral Small 22B? No. Hell, NeMo was serving me just fine. But now I want to know just how smart the biggest models get. I caught the AI Acquisition Syndrome!

 

My first guitar string snapped and it launched a small circular pin somewhere. I looked up how to restring guitar strings and other peoples stringboard look different than how mine is set up. the pins I have aren't long and straight they are small circular things fitted into a small hole in the wood. What are these kinds of pins called? Can I upgrade to standard guitar pins?

1208
submitted 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
 

List of icons/services suggested:

  • Calibre
  • Jitsi
  • Kiwix
  • Monero (Node)
  • Nextcloud
  • Pihole
  • Ollama (Should at least be able to run tiny-llama 1.1B)
  • Open Media Vault
  • Syncthing
  • VLC Media Player Media Server
 

Hello, I am trying to get some advice from experienced electricians and engineer workers on what jobs could be a good fit for my experience and skill sets. As well as advice on how to do a better job picking work that won't screw me over.

I am a nationally certified (NOCTI) Electromechanical Engineer. I got mentally/emotionally chewed up and spit out after working as a maintenance technician for a couple years as a young 'n dumb kid right out of school. I have kept my electrical skills sharp enough to wire up my own offgrid solar DC systems. I remember enough theory to do calculations and read schematics. My maintenance days have me somewhat familiar with electrical wiring, air duct systems, mechanical drives, pneumatic/hydraulic systems, PLC automation, and repairing broken parts with all manner of tools. I enjoy the feelings of satisfaction and capability that comes from successfully putting together and maintaining an efficient functioning system.

But im kind of scared to get back into the career field knowing how dangerous it can be (Ive mainly worked on 480v systems) and how little money I was paid before. On one hand I feel like I should use my highly technical skills and further a real career. However on the other hand every company i’ve ever worked for has screwed me over with promised training that never happened, severely understaffed stressed out maintenance teams who didn’t have the time or energy to spend teaching a newbie, and OSHA violations so egregious the inspectors were surely bribed.

I guess im trying to ask where I went wrong. What job paths are a better use of my skills that isn't so mentally and physically taxing? What are some red flags to look out for? What is contracting work like? Should I try to get into a union? I really don’t know if I want to get back into this career field and I don’t know if I want to commit to a 2 year apprenticeship contract.

Im kind of an environment guy who cares about clean energy and would love to be helping out the planet a little through my work sometimes I fantasize about working on solar arrays and renewable energy stuff.

Im pretty good with computers and IT, I use linux daily, can ssh into a remote server, port forward, and have set up some local services on my own network. I am a main developer of an open source project decently familiar with the basics of programming in lua and commiting with git. A lot of the older guys have appreciated my help navigating companies old poorly organized intranets for schematic scans and work orders.

I am in my mid 20s, single and from the US but willing to travel.

0
submitted 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
 

Tonight I made some hash for the first time ever. Will see how the results are when it dries

1
submitted 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
 

Managed this rig up a homemade induction heater from a 10$ board off amazon +7$ cigarette plug terminal cable

Induction heater is for my dynavap, the commercial ones are quite expensive and I figured it would be a cheap and easy project to make one up

I made a quick YouTube video showing the IH off :)

1
Form & Function (lemmy.world)
submitted 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
 

The Orb

The spherical bong is the Orb V2. Its an extremely simple yet highly functional piece that has TWO female intakes connected to a matrix perc. This allows you to combine smoke or vapor from two different sources with one inhale.

The orb also comes with a female outtake, a 2' long whip, and an insertable mouthpiece which opens up many options for switching between mouthpiece, whip or even connect to another piece for further filtration such as the intake of a bong filled with ice. In this shot I have a custom made 3' long silicon whip one end has the smoked glass whip that comes with orb whip and other side is arizer whip mouthpiece.

The Air Max

The cylindrical black device in the top intake port is the Arizer Air Max, a well engineered electronic dry herb vaporizer. Essentially it is a miniature electric oven which bakes your herb to produce vapor. Vapor is healthier than smoke, taste better, and you get decarbed flower as a usable byproduct instead of ashes which is used for making edibles and other things. Electronic dry herb vaporizers excel at ease of use and precise temperature control.

The Arizer air max allows you to swap out the glass pieces. Instead of a mouthpiece I have a 14mm Water Pipe Adapter (WPA) inserted into it which allows it to connect to the larger top insert of the orb.

The Dynavap M+ 2023

The metallic stick in the smaller 10mm intake port is the Dynavap m+ 2023. It is also a dry herb vaporizer, but is instead heated through torch or induction heater. The Dynavap allows for complete vapor extraction of herb .1G of herb in a Dynavap cal fill the orb with milky white clouds. Its tip acts both as a mouthpiece and a built in 10mm WPA allowing it to be inserted into the smaller 10mm intake of the orb.

 

Smokey's Simple Guide To Search Engine Alternatives

This post was inspired by the surge in people mentioning the new Kagi Search engine on various Lemmy comments. I happen to be somewhat knowledgeable on the topic and wanted to tell everyone about some other alternative search engines available to them, as well as the difference between meta-search engines and true search engines. This guide was written with the average person in mind, I have done my best to avoid technical jargon and speak plainly in a way most should be able to understand without a background in IT.

Understanding Search Engines Vs. Meta-Search Engines

There are many alternative search engines floating around that people use, however most of them are meta search engines. Meaning that they are a kind of search result reseller, middle men to true search engines. They query the big engines for you and aggregate their results.

Examples of Meta-search engines:

Format: Meta Search Engine / Sourced True Engines (and a hyperlink to where I found that info)

Duckduckgo / Bing has some web crawling of it own but mostly relies on Bing

Ecosia / Bing + Google a portion of profit goes to tree planting

Kagi / Google, Mojeek, Yandex, Marginalia, Requires email signup, 10$/month for unlimited searches

SearXNG / Too many to list, basically all of them, configurable, Free & Open Source Software AGPL-3.0

Startpage / Google + Bing

4get / Google, Bing, Yandex, Mojeek, Marginalia, Wiby Open source software made by one person as an alternative to SearX

Swisscows / Bing

Qwant / Bing Relied on Bing most of its life but in 2019 started making moves to build up its own web crawlers and infrastructure putting it in a unique transitioning phase.

True Search Engines & The Realities Of Web-Crawling

As you can see, the vast majority of alternative search engines rely on some combination of Google and Bing. The reason for this is that the technology which powers search engines, web-crawling and indexing, are extremely computationally heavy, non-trivial things.

Powering a search engine requires costly enterprise computers. The more popular the service (as in the more people connecting to and using it per second) the more internet bandwidth and processing power is needed. It takes a lot of money to pay for power, maintenance, and development/security. At the scales of google and Bing who serve many millions of visitors each second, huge warehouses full of specialized computers known as data centers are needed.

This is a big financial ask for most companies interested in making a profit out of the gate, they determine its worth just paying Google and Bing for access to their enormous pre-existing infrastructure without the headaches of dealing with maintenance and security risk.

True Search engines

True search engines are honest search engines which are powered by their own internally owned and operated web-crawlers, indexers, and everything else that goes into making a search engine under the hood. They tend to be owned by big tech companies with the financial resources to afford huge arrays of computers to process and store all that information for millions of active users each second. The last two entries are unique exceptions we will discuss later.

Examples of True Search Engines:

Bing / Owned by Microsoft

Google / Owned by Google/Alphabet

Mojeek / Owned by Mojeek .LTD

Yandex / Owned by Yandex .INC

YaCy / Free & Open Source Software GPL-2.0, powered by peer to peer technology, created by Michael Christen,

Marginalia Search / Free & Open Source Software AGPL-3.0, developed by Marginalia/ Martin Rue

How Can Search Engines Be Free?

You may be wondering how any service can remain free if it needs to make a profit. Well, that is where altruistic computer hobbyist come in. The internet allows for knowledgeable tech savvy individuals to host their own public services on their own hardware capable of serving many thousands of visitors per second.

The financially well off hobbyist eats the very small hosting cost out of pocket. A thousand hobbyist running the same service all over the world allows the load to be distributed evenly and for people to choose the closest instances geographically for fastest connection speed. Users of these free public services are encouraged to donate directly to the individual operators if they can.

An important take away is that services don't need to make a profit if they aren't a product to a business. Sometimes people are happy to sacrifice a bit of their own resources for the betterment of thousands of others.

Companies that live and die by profit margins have to concern themselves with the choice of owning their own massive computer infrastructures or renting lots of access to someone elses. You and I just have to pay a few extra cents on an electric bill that month for a spare computer sitting in the basement running a public service + some time investment to get it all set up.

As Lemmy users, you should at least vaguely understand the power of a decentralized service spread out among many individually operated/maintained instances that can cooperate with each other. The benefit of spreading users across multiple instances helps prevent any one of them from exceeding the free/cheap allotment of API calls in the case of meta-search engines like SearXNG or being rate limited like 3rd party YouTube scrapers such as Invidious and Piped.

In the case of YaCy decentralization is also federated, all individual YaCy instances communicate with each other through peer-to-peer technology to act as one big collective web crawler and indexer.

SearXNG

I love SearXNG. I use it every day. So its the engine I want to impress on you the most. SearX/SearXNG is a free and open source, highly customizable, and self-hostable meta search engine. SearX instances act as a middle man, they query other search engines for you, stripping all their spyware ad crap and never having your connection touch their servers.

Here is a list of all public SearX instances, I personally prefer to use paulgo.io All SearX instances are configured different to index different engines. If one doesn't seem to give good results try a few others.

Did I mention it has bangs like DuckDuckGo? If you really need Google like for maps and business info just use !!g in the query.

Other Free As In Freedom Search Engines

Here is Marginalia Search a completely novel search engine written and hosted by one dude that aims to prioritize indexing lighter websites little to no JavaScript as these tend to be personal websites and homepages that have poor Search Engine Optimization (SEO) score which means the big search engines won't index them well. If you remember the internet of the early 2000s and want a nostalgia trip this ones for you. Its also open source and self-hostable.

Finally, YaCy is another completely novel search engine that uses peer-to-peer technology to power a big web-crawler which prioritizes indexes based off user queries and feedback. Everyone can download YaCy and devote a bit of their computing power to both run their own local instance and help out a collective search engine. Companies can also download YaCy and use it to index their private intranets.

They have a public instance available through a web portal. To be upfront, YaCy is not a great search engine for what most people usually want, which is quick and relevant information within the first few clicks. But, it is an interesting use of technology and what a true honest-to-god community-operated search engine looks like untainted by SEO scores or corporate money-making shenanigans.

Free As In Freedom, People vs Company Run Services

I personally trust some FOSS loving sysadmin that host social services for free out of altruism, who also accepts hosting donations, whos server is located on the other side of the planet, with my query info over Google/Alphabet any day. I have had several communications with Marginalia over several years now through the gemini protocol and small web, they are more than happy to talk over email. have a human conversation with your search engine provider thats just a knowledgeable every day Joe who genuinely believes in the project and freely dedicates their resources to it. Consider sending some cash their way to help with upkeep if you like the services they provide.

Self-Hosting For Maximum Privacy

Of course you have to trust the service provider with your information, and that their systems are secure and maintained. Trust is a big concern with every engine you use, because while they can promise to not log anything or sell your info for profit, they often provide no way of proving those claims to be true beyond 'just trust me bro'. The one thing I really liked about Kagi was that they went through a public security audit by an outside company that specializes in hacking your system to find vulnerabilities. They got a great result and shared it publically.

The other concern is that there is no way to be sure companies won't just change their policies slowly over time to creep in advertisements and other things they once set out to reject once they lure in a big enough user base and the greed for ever increasing profit margins to appease shareholders starts kicking in. Companies have been shown again and again to employ this slow-boiling-frog practice, beware.

Still, If you are absolutely concerned with privacy and knowledgeable with computers then self hosting FOSS software from your own instance is the best option to maintain control of your data.

Conclusion

I hope this has been informative to those who believe theres only a few options to pick from, and that you find something which works for you. During this difficult time when companies and advertisers are trying their hardest to squeeze us dry and reduce our basic human rights, we need to find ways to push back. To say no to subscriptions and ads and convenient services that don't treat us right. The internet started as something made by everyday people, to connect with each-other and exchange ideas. For fun and whimsy and enjoyment. Lets do our best to keep it that way.

 

I am doing research on best practices for my lithium batteries and lifepo4 powerstation. There's some conflicting opinions and variation for cycle numbers.

Will leaving my things plugged in at 100% hurt it more than constantly unplugging at 80% and replugging at 20%?

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