The Coffee House

[Gary A.]

ESCO Post Scriptum:

The KfW Kreditanstalt für Wiederaufbau, I am sure Leo loves the word, just published a report that most of the insulation measures on houses done in the past few years in Germany will never pay off financially. The KfW did most of the financing for these measures because the Federal Government wants that so.

It is part of a brain fart called "Energiewende" meaning a way to sustainable energy production and consumption.

The idea is great but results are bad. Lignite burning is propelled, Wind Mills are built in places where the wind don't blows, relatively clean nuclear plants are closed for no good reason and they pay the Netherlands to take our excess electricity in case the wind blows strongly on a sunny day. All that ideocracy is planned to cost roughly 1000 trillion Euros and in the end neither sustainability nor environmental friendliness is reached.

Reason for it to happen? They employed lobbyists from an organisation called EUROSOLAR to advise the German government on Energy Policy.....

Part of the equation is the government's responsibility for its citizens. European governments are extremely invested (literally) in the their economy and their economic engines (construction, manufacturing, energy production, et al). European governments enact a lot of "unhealthy" economic decisions purely based on employment issues. As an example, when Gary was living in Paris, France went to a four day workweek per employee, just to raise employment numbers.

"All that ideocracy is planned to cost roughly 1000 trillion Euros and in the end neither sustainability nor environmental friendliness is reached."

Sustainability and environmental friendliness may not be the government's End Game ...

PS- Europeans look at England and laugh because the UK has like ... 50% less government than Europe ... and we in the US have about 50% less government than the UK.

 

[Gary A.]

Telsa, the California car company, is now making glass solar shingles. Dunno the how long they will last, but glass like slate and it is made out of rocks (very small rocks).

 

[smoke665]

glass like slate and it is made out of rocks (very small rocks).

People who live in glass houses shouldn't live where it hails!! LOL For durability lightweight concrete or Terra cotta tile are only about twice the weight of conventional asphalt shingles, and offer pretty much the same durability as slate.

 

[JonA_CT]

The deed is done. I ordered an iPhone 8 Plus for myself and a iPhone 8 for my wife. They should be here next Friday.

I was going to buy the directly from Apple...but they make it so complicated. It took me about a minute to buy them from Verizon after I messed with the Apple page for 10 minutes.

Can't wait to hear how you like them. Now the 8 is different from the X yes? What are the differences? I will have to live vicariously through you on this as I struggle with my sad 6 plus that must be charged 2-3x day now. I spent all my mad money already this year on the xt2 and the iPad Pro! Apple care or no?

Yes -- different from the X. The X has the screen size of the Plus (but the phone is about the size of the regular 8 because the screen is bezel-less, is an OLED display compared to regular Retina screen, and has a suite of sensors on the front that allow facial recognition. The rest of the of it is the same -- same camera, same software features, same processor, etc.

I ended up doing the 0% finance lease on them, as I wasn't ready to drop $1600 in a fell swoop. For both of them, I'll end up paying about $50 a month total on top of my normal bill. Not terrible. That's where Apple lost me -- they required me to put that on a credit card, and I wasn't going to do that when Verizon just takes money from my checking account.

I'll pay for AppleCare+ separately. I can't not have it -- my wife made two claims on hers for her 6 (she likes to drop her phone on our gravel driveway), and I made a claim for the screen not function that I had to pay a deductible for, and a warranty claim almost at the 2 year mark for "touch disease" that they covered for free. Applecare is more now though... $149 for each. For $800 phone it doesn't seem too bad, especially because a single screen repair costs at least that much.

 

[Braineack]

anyone else having issue with Flickr the last few days?

 

[snowbear120 52]

Telsa, the California car company, is now making glass solar shingles. Dunno the how long they will last, but glass like slate and it is made out of rocks (very small rocks).

Tesla is also working on a semi tractor.

Shale/mudstone (sometimes basalt*) -> slate.
Sand -> Glass.

* basalt = ocean floor.

 

[snowbear120 52]

anyone else having issue with Flickr the last few days?

I haven't noticed anything unusual. Anything specific?

 

[SquarePeg41 3]

anyone else having issue with Flickr the last few days?

I have had a bunch of photos I posted that were hosted on Flickr show up as Photo No Longer Available. At first I thought it was me because I had done some clean up of my Flickr photostream but then it happened again so I deleted the link and uploaded directly from my phone after downloading the photos from Flickr. I also noticed that @smoke665 had some photos showing the same No Longer Available issue in a recent thread.

 

[SquarePeg41 3]

Can anyone identify this lens? Not my photo but posting for a friend who was about to give this old film dslr and lens away... Is it the Tamron 28-300?

 

[Braineack]

I haven't noticed anything unusual. Anything specific?

seems to be really slow and sometimes i have to hit refresh a lot to load anything at all below the header/banner. seems to be okay now at the moment.

 

[jcdeboever]

Silly grandson, I guess I'm the bad grandpa....

 

[jcdeboever]

Looks like a 28-135, @SquarePeg

 

[smoke665]

I also noticed that @smoke665 had some photos showing the same No Longer Available issue in a recent

The problem I had the other day, is that I embedded the link from Flickr, then later in the day I did some more editing and added some more to Flickr. I had forgotten that when you do this, the link from TPF still works, but the embedded image/preview doesn't. I had to go back and delete and repaste the link

 

[tirediron]

Can anyone identify this lens? Not my photo but posting for a friend who was about to give this old film dslr and lens away... Is it the Tamron 28-300?

I think it's the old Tamron 28-200 3.8/5.6.

 

[limr34 4]

Evening, hosers.

Lucille finally went to her new home tonight. It's a good home and she'll be well taken care of, and it was also time to let her go, but she was my first car love and I'm sad that she's gone

Bye Lucille!

Day 54 - lucille by limrodrigues, on Flickr