Okay, so my airing of grievances post had some issues.
So, lets swap it up:
What events are you looking forward to in 2026?
Finally switching to Linux!
Nice. Have you chosen a distro?
All of them! I have Ubuntu 24LTS on my desktop, prepping Mint for a utility machine, testing Manjaro and Endeavor in VMs, not sure what distro I will move my laptop to yet.
<Insert highly subjective complaint about choice of distro here>
Either way, another soul saved. Great to have you on board!
I still have Azure certs, and Microsoft is still my job. But… if I can make my job moving others off Microsoft, many souls can be saved.
Oh, in that case, and considering the list of devices you’re updating, you might be interested in putting Linux From Scratch on one of the disposable devices:
https://www.linuxfromscratch.org/
I wouldn’t run it as my main driver, but it’s a book that steps you through each package to manually compile until you have a fully working system. It’s pretty error prone but along the way you learn how most of the pieces fit together. It’s probably still a bit much for now but I thought I’d mention it
Nice. Why the spread and not mostly sticking with one flavour?
Not familiar enough with the differences. Plus I’ll learn it better if I have to figure out all the ways to do a task instead of just one. Nano or Emacs or Vim? KDE or Gnome? Too much to choose from! :)
Yeah, there’s plenty to get overwhelmed in. If the overhead becomes a bit, then any of them are probably good enough and either way you’ll work out what you like
A friend of mine did something that might work for you: he used genAI as a linux tutor. It’s one of the better use cases I’ve heard for it, if you’re not ethically opposed. Just make sure to double check something more official before you run a command and accidentally destroy something
Ubuntu 24.04 is doing well for me. I use the cinnamon flavor. Switch the scheduler to performance, before that with multiple apps open while gaming there was stuttering it the CPU load was below a certain amount (Ryzen 5800X). After switching to performance all stuttering was gone.
Liquorix Kernel is something else I am looking at utilizing since I also edit 4K 60FPS video on the same computer.
I picked cachy because I was always curious about Arch and I’m LoveHating every second of it.
US midterm elections: November 3, 2026. The most-likely outcome is that the Democrats gain control of the House of Representatives, though they won’t actually take office until January 3, 2027.
If they’ll even happen. A certain someone is currently thinking and probably will try to dismantle them.
deleted by creator
Most likely outcome is a rigged election
What elections? Get out of your high horse
The Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope. It might not launch in the year but after it does launch we should see some new exoplanets and we might get some new information about dark energy. Since it’s scanning the sky we might see some interesting transient events
I’m always looking forward to new telescopes! With the way this disgusting excuse of an administration is going though I’m always afraid for the future of all remaining telescopes…
Gotta free up that budget to cut more billionaires taxes and throw more money at the military ya know?
…
Like the VIPER moon rover? Completely built but cancelled. And a bit hard to square with wanting to put boots on the moon since the mission according to Wikipedia was:
The rover would be tasked with prospecting for lunar resources in permanently shadowed areas of lunar south pole region, especially by mapping the distribution and concentration of water ice.
I guess that’s pretty small compared to things like the National Center for Atmospheric Research being dismantled. Actually, its a pretty long list
Spring. Because it’s fucking cold here atm.
It looks like there is an eclipse for anyone in Spain, Greenland and Iceland:
Hopefully trump death
I’m just looking forward to summer, I wanna get away with wearing short shorts and sundresses again
AMEN! Cannot wait for it to be bright past 4 flippin’ PM.
considers
You know, not really a problem that I’ve thought about, but outerwear is gonna limit what people can show from a fashion standpoint.
I’m not aware of any effort by clothing designers to really work on the problem, but I wonder if it’s possible to make outerwear that thermally-insulates, but is transparent.
I don’t know if it would run into problems like fogging up on the inner surface and that messing with transparency. If so, it might be possible to mitigate that via use of forced ventilation coupled with an inverse-flow heat exchanger, or maybe using some kind of hydrophilic insert to absorb moisture.
goes searching
What I get for “transparent jackets” is mostly raincoat-type things, thin sheet of plastic.
https://www.etsy.com/listing/661392917/long-womans-transparent-trench-coat
The problem with those is that those can’t do much to insulate.
There’s also this:
Which probably will do something to insulate, since air insulates pretty well, but the bending plastic on the sides of the air pockets are going to do a number on the aesthetic, since one can’t see clearly through it.
What I guess one would want would be a substance that thermally-insulates, is transparent, and also doesn’t act like a lens to distort what’s on the other side.
Aerogel is one of the best thermal insulators we have, so you’d need very little thickness to provide a very great amount of thermal insulation.
It can be at least somewhat-transparent; most shots I’ve seen look kind of like a cloud:
And it looks like people are looking into using a thin layer on windows, as effectively-transparent insulation:
https://tokyo-smes.com/en/productservice/transparent-glass-film/
It’s also extremely strong.
However:
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It’s rigid, which isn’t ideal for clothing; the human body moves, and if you want it to fit to form, it has to be able to contour to it. That being said, we have made human clothing out of rigid substances before, like chain mail — you just need to segment the stuff into small pieces. To some extent, outerwear doesn’t need to contour to form; hoop skirts, for example, didn’t. We have made clothing out of joined, rigid metal plates before; it’s clearly at least possible, though outside of armor and sheer novelty of aesthetic, I don’t think that we’ve ever really had a practical reason to actually do so:
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I understand that it’s also damaged by contact with water. This can be dealt with by coating it with something that protects against water, but that stuff has to be able to resist being punctured. Need a transparent coating, maybe some kind of plastic, maybe Gorilla Glass or something.
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It’s presently (relatively) expensive to make. My guess is that that can probably be overcome; industrial diamonds used to once be pretty expensive too.
searches
It looks like these people have a flexible, composite blanket partly made out of aerogel and billed for use in apparel, though they’re not trying to make something that’s transparent (and their composite is even more expensive).
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2029
Waking up from the Nightmare.
More personal I suppose then anything large. But I’m getting solar installed! Was supposed to be installed last fall but due to weather it was pushed back. I’ll be glad to see lower, if not negative power bills (especially since the price recently jumped). Having 39 panels installed. So that’ll be nice.
I’ve got 7.2KW waiting to go on the roof. 400W bifacial panels with Enphase IQ8A’S. I have 3 panels running now and they generally shave 3kwh per day of my bill right now. In the summer peak the same 3 panels shave twice that off. Just have to get the racking materials and a few other things so I can get started.
I’m lucky that I can DIY the whole system where I am at. Hopefully the battery systems will start to drop in price before long.
Yeah, being able to do it DIY probably saved you a ton. I had been saving for years (didn’t want to pay interest on a loan). But had to pull the trigger last year because the government got rid of the 30% solar incentive. Funny side story, I also told a friend of mine about my plan; her fiancé is an electrician in Germany, and he was baffled why it was going to cost me so much. It would have been cheaper to have me hire him, fly him first class, get him a swanky hotel for however long it took, and pay him like x3 his normal rate.
Absolutely. Already replaced the roof, plumbing supply lines, and electrical systems. 18K houses need work but the payoff is huge.
Right now I’ve got about 5600 invested in my solar system. Mainly the racking and then batteries. Once it’s in place I have the option to add another up to 4.8KW. Local power rate sucks for the area. Mid summer the power is around .20 per kwh, the co-op nearby is less than half that. House is all electric and I run a couple servers so it adds up quick.
Google is building a datacenter in the next county over and a few more are coming in elsewhere, they are supposed to provide most of their own power but no one is sure if they are or not. I’ve seen a couple high renewable line upgrades and additions for power equipment which seem to be upgrades for reliability and filtering in the local grid. All the original 230kv lines have been upgraded to 345kv.
I’m in town but my house is ideal for a small vertical axis wind turbine. Generally at times wind is up solar is down, but gotta figure a few things out. One of the turbines that sit along a wall would be great but I have to figure out a design I can make and will be practical.
Getting my backup situation under control so I can be less stressed…finishing my basement studio and maybe starting on my gaming room finishing. Id love to have more people over for playing some old console games and ps1/2 (which are a new console btw).
The state of the world I choose to ignore
The Headline.
In 2025 China installed over 500GW of solar power. That is an insane amount it’s over 1.3 gigawatts a day or a large power plant per day. Sodium batteries have gone into production and gonna be sold at like 50$/kwh. These price points and scales are where it’s cheaper to build 2 times your power needed in solar and have like a week of battery backup so you can power everything off solar and wind. Right now it’s 60/40 fossil fuels/low carbon sources for electricity production, 2026 will be the year it flips to 49/51 in actuality, it might take a year or two before analysts actually realize it has happened.
Pierre Pollievre getting the fuck out of office, or at least stepping down. he’s fucking pathetic and only seeks to divide the country.
goddamn I wish we had proper vote reform for ranked ballots or whatever, and didn’t get stuck with the Liberals
US: hopefully trump’s death of old age
World: hoping for a fusion achievement
As much as I hope for both, I think only one of the two have a reasonable probability of happening.
