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Its a little late but I wanted to tell you that I love this! King Duncan is thankful for the nice poetry :)
You shall be spared from toiling in the catnip fields when he forces the world to observe his omnipotence.
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If you decide to get a Dyna, you can start off with a cheap hand torch for a month or two to decide if you like it enough to spend on a more expensive induction heater. The Dynacup IH is 55-65$ USD and the inspire wand is often on sale for 90-100$usd on dynavap site. I share your concerns about fire and dont like filling butane so I went for the wand as first upgrade.
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Theres always going to be some imprecision with baked goods. Just try your best to cut it apart equally and hope it all averages out. If you want to get scientific and exact you should put the cannaoil in pill capsules.
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Hey bizzle. I discovered the art of bubble hash making this year and love it. I'm not a grower so I only process an oz of cheap shake I bought online at a time. I shake it up in mason jars and strain with bubble bags. Its so economical compared to buying mid grade bud if you just want to get high or relief.
Its a bit of a laborious process. The marson jar shaking gets tiring. Would like to automate the mixing somehow. After a while I stopped using all the layers of bubble bags and just collect all of it with the finest bag. I had a hard time keeping all the different hash grades seperate. Also, Im lazy and couldn't care less if my hash is full melt or not.
Each time I learned something and now it feels like I can wring just about every trichrome and oil crystal out of an OZ with maximum efficiency.
Dynavap was my go to with bubble hash. It has no batteries you can butane torch it (not a regular bic lighter, a jet flame torch) or use electric induction heater. It will get hot enough to properly vaporize the hash. The metal dynavaps are indestructible but I like the glass ones for thermal insulation can't stand my fingers getting hot.
If you just want to try dynavap and can tolerate silicone I recommend the B for its great entry price point. Some people like the dynavap experience some dont so you'll have t just try it if you are interested and see if its your thing. At least with B if you decide its not your thing not much money was lost (they have an awesome return policy too). I personally love the dynavap, it completely changed my vaporizer experience.
Ive never tried the dynacoil just put my hash balls by themselves in the chamber. A lot of reclaim does get built up inside, I'm not sure if a dynacoil would help catch some of that or if thats just the nature of smoking hash loaded with oil.
These days I found that the best way to vape hash is to put it in some vape wool or Japanese cotton, and put that in the one hitter mod for extremeq desktop vape. The first hit or two is a warm up to get the hash ball malleable, then you take the vape wool ball eith hash inside back out, rip open the ball and spread the hash all around the wool vastly increasing its surface area. After that you put the hash back in and it starts cranking out the vapor.
As for edibles, I recently made some infused coconut oil pill capsules and have been loving them. When I started out with edibles using regular butter I made lots of butter popcorn and rice crispy treats. I like the pill a caps a lot more since you can just dose them daily without any cooking involved. Its a process getting them filled up though.
Here's the oil/butter making guide I trust. You'll hear 10,000 different opinions on making cannabutter/oil. Differing oven decarb temp, time spent infusing, whether to use a crock pot, double boiler, or simmer on a skillet. whether or not to put lecithin in.
IMO the world works in averages. The particular process and exact timing isnt as important as its hyped up to be. As long as the good stuff is activated, gets in the oil, and isnt overcooked into cbd/cbn, you are golden. How you do that doesnt matter that much, so do what you think is best with the cooking appliances you have on hand and learn from the process.
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Coconut oil in gel capsules have no taste.
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Very good chart thanks for sharing
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Psudo random numbers come from a special set of mathematical equations which act as the basis for natural processes. These are known as nonlinear dynamic equations.
Their outputs feed back into their inputs. They show areas of high initial sensitivity where any tiny change in input totally changes the output over time. Finally, they often show areas of different cycling behavior. The branch of math which studies them is holomorphic dynamics.
The psudo-randomness of slightly different seed values generating wildly different outputs has to do sensitivity to initial conditions. This is a property of the paramater space structures in which those random number sequences cycles through. The 'path' of numbers that will be cycled through is determined by starting position and the geometric topology in the complex plane which the equation generates.
By graphing and iterating psudo random equations in the conplex plane, it generates infinitely complex geometric structures called julia sets which govern how algebraic numbers cycle through pseudorandom walks depending on initial seed values and equation used. These julia sets often are fractals with infinite complexity at its borders at all scales of precision.
Julia sets have a "stuff goes everywhere" property which is the the real magic of where sensitivity to initial conditions comes from. But now were getting deep into the weeds of math nerd territory.
Simply put, you put a random number in and it spits a more-or-less random number out, thanks to wierd properties that the higher dimensional fractal hyper structures generated by the equation in the complex plane have. Those lower dimensional random number cycles are embedded into the julia set structurally.
A big issue with psudo randoms is they will always give the same series numbers if you begin the equation with the same computationally finite seed values. You could the generated sequence of numbers to work back and find the seed values and equation used to generate them. This is a serious security concern when using them for cryptography. The amount of computational work it takes to work back is massive but its doable with modern quantum super computers.
The mechanics of pseudo random numbers comes from statistical combinatorics, nonlinear algebra,fractals, chaos theory, and sensitivity to initial conditions.
True random numbers come from directly measuring physical phenomenon with sufficient randomness in their mechanics.
Things like the decay of a radioactive isotope or lava lamp turbulence have built in randomness. There is no seed or way to generate the same sequence of motions or predicting when isotopes decay.
Turbulance for example has fractal properties in its energy distribution as well as random brownian motion adding up on the atomic scale. Radioactive half life has uncertainty principal built into it. These universal operations have true uncalculatable randomness thanks to entropy, the uncertainty principle, fractals, brownian motion, chaos theory, and sensitivitiy to initial conditions.
The physical universe is the most powerful computer there will ever be. It calculates with infinite decimal precision in its mixed mathematical, statistical, and physical operations. It uses real trancendental like pi numbers with infinite non-repeating decimals, and does its calculations at the speed of causality/light.
Our best super computers will never be infinitely powerful. Our numbers need to be finite and computable to work with them and understand them. The universe could not care less if its values are finitely computable or usable for human work.
So theres fundamental limits to how random we can get through artificial computer algorithm generation using computable numbers. True randomness through physical processes leverages the universes in built infinite precision and mechanical algorithms as a black box and just measures the output result.
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I have a strange fascination with non credible defense post. Military people are like academic nerds when it comes to hyper specific vocabulary and in-the-know references. So many post and comments are like half ciphers where its a puzzle to piece together what is being talked about ad what the joke is.
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Wile Coyote was never quite the same after his final divorce. He found Rebecca with the roadrunner.
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Look if your sword can't cleave cavalry units in half with one stroke its a children's toy. These are blades for real men. The 14th century Hungarian swordsmen were just on that shonen anime character grindset .
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Yeah, I know better than to get involved in debating someone more interested in spitting out five paragraph essays trying to deconstruct and invalidate others views one by one, than bothering to double check if they're still talking to the same person.
I believe you aren't interested in exchanging ideas and different viewpoints. You want to win an argument and validate that your view is the right one. Sorry, im not that kind of person who enjoys arguing back and forth over the internet or in general. Look elsewhere for a debate opponent to sharpen your rhetoric on.
I wish you well in life whoever you are but there is no point in us talking. We will just have to see how the future goes in the next 10 years.
I wanted to share my current vaporizer setup with you guys. To start, heres synthetic ruby balls over ceramic heater set to max temp.  Next is a custom herb extraction chamber device made from an omega wand, modified dynavap fat mouthpiece, and diy nectar collector herb chamber.   The extraction device inserts into the EQ forming an air tight seal with glass adapter. The herb chamber sits directly above the ruby heater balls.   Finally some glass is added on top. Arizer solo stems work well. 
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Congrats bizzle! I hope to grow my own someday
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You'll never get good at a new skill if youre too afraid of screwing up to even try or give up after one go. Dont expect perfection from yourself and do the best you can. Learn something from the process and do it slightly better next time.
Fortunately cooking is very forgiving. If you do one or two things slightly wrong just roll with it. Here is the guide I am using today for my butter. ... also its text based counterpart If it goes well I'll update.
If its your first time i recommend not using super nice flower just get some cheap shake that way you aren't loosing much if the batch gets scuffed. After a few batches of cheap stuff you can take what you've learned and go for high quality flower.
The crock pot will be smelly do that part outside or in garage If you can. They have cheap propane ovens you can use outside for decarb too just need to get a oven thermometer and keep an eye on it.
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A tool is a tool. It has no say in how it's used. AI is no different than the computer software you use browse the internet or do other digital task.
When its used badly as an outlet for escapism or substitute for social connection it can lead to bad consequences for your personal life.
When it's best used is as a tool to help reason through a tough task, or as a step in a creative process. As on demand assistance to aid the disabled. Or to support the neurodivergent and emotionally traumatized to open up to as a non judgemental conversational partner. Or help a super genius rubber duck their novel ideas and work through complex thought processes. It can improve peoples lives for the better if applied to the right use cases.
Its about how you choose to interact with it in your personal life, and how society, buisnesses and your governing bodies choose to use it in their own processes. And believe me, they will find ways to use it.
I think comparing llms to computers in 90s is accurate. Right now only nerds, professionals, and industry/business/military see their potential. As the tech gets figured out, utility improves, and llm desktops start getting sold as consumer grade appliances the attitude will change maybe?
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It delivers on what it promises to do for many people who use LLMs. They can be used for coding assistance, Setting up automated customer support, tutoring, processing documents, structuring lots of complex information, a good generally accurate knowledge on many topics, acting as an editor for your writings, lots more too.
Its a rapidly advancing pioneer technology like computers were in the 90s so every 6 months to a year is a new breakthrough in over all intelligence or a new ability. Now the new llm models can process images or audio as well as text.
The problem for openAI is they have serious competitors who will absolutely show up to eat their lunch if they sink as a company. Facebook/Meta with their llama models, Mistral AI with all their models, Alibaba with Qwen. Some other good smaller competiiton too like the openhermes team. All of these big tech companies have open sourced some models so you can tinker and finetune them at home while openai remains closed sourced which is ironic for the company name.. Most of these ai companies offer their cloud access to models at very competitive pricing especially mistral.
The people who say AI is a trendy useless fad don't know what they are talking about or are upset at AI. I am a part of the local llm community and have been playing around with open models for months pushing my computers hardware to its limits. Its very cool seeing just how smart they really are, what a computer that simulates human thought processes and knows a little bit of everything can actually do to help me in daily life.
Terrence Tao superstar genius mathematician describes the newest high end model from openAI as improving from a "incompentent graduate" to a "mediocre graduate" which essentially means AI are now generally smarter than the average person in many regards.
This month several comptetor llm models released which while being much smaller in size compared to openai o-1 somehow beat or equaled that big openai model in many benchmarks.
Neural networks are here and they are only going to get better. Were in for a wild ride.
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The site said thats a trumpet but it looks like he's taking a drag on a stupid long smoking pipe to me lol
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Have you tried a dynavap with induction heater for concentrates? The inspire wand induction Heatr comes with its own cups and bangers but dynavap is better in it
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?
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
I am a hobbyist computer and IT guy. Not professionally trained but I grew up with the technology and have been tinkering with them for years. I am still learning new things and enjoy deeping my understanding. Troubleshooting is often a great journey to discovering new insights. Shelved in the basement was a desktop pc released in 2018. Ryzen 5 2600 6 core CPU, 24GB DDR4 RAM, and an AMD RX580. These days such specs are modest compared to the latest and greatest but still pretty good IMO. If I remember right, it was having some graphical issues probably caused by a hdmi cable or something. It was a long time ago, no idea why such a good PC ended up collecting dust. Oh well, as a silver lining this story is about giving the PC new life. This week I began tinkering around with local AI. LLama 3.1 8b just got released; I have been having lots of fun learning with it on the laptop. Sadly my poor old thinkpad is just not meant for that kind of work. It was sloow to generate text and process information.. So remembering the 6 core desktop in the basement, the time felt right to dust off the PC and get it to do some useful computing. Unfortunately while the specs are powerful, the things wifi never worked right for some reason. I never thought much about it since the PC was situated next to a router with Ethernet as a connection. Now it needs to live significantly further away and rely solely on wifi for big file transfers. On an internet connection where my laptops right next to it were getting hundreds of mbps download, the pc was getting 10mbps. Ive had metal cased desktops before and none of them were this bad connection wise. Something was seriously wrong bottlenecking an otherwise great setup. So at first I figured it must have been a linux driver issue or some kind of software bug. Spent hours installing the right drivers for my specific wifi card and troubleshooting via terminal. Didn't help any. Then I figured maybe the card was bust and researched new wifi cards. I always thought wifi cards were little chips and antennas built into the motherboard. Not the case with this computer. My first important discovery was that this computer had a huge wifi card mounted just underneath graphics card taking up its own slot in the back. This makes sense, if you want to upgrade to the newest wifi frequency in 10-20 years just pop a updated card into the slot. My second important discovery was realizing the beastly wifi card had two little brass bits connecting out behind the PC. Threaded bits. Hey I know these, they are male coaxial bits.... For an... antenna.... *facepalm* The realization hit me like a club. Oh... OH. YOOO IT NEEDS ANTENNAS, DUDE. I had been using a radio technology with either no antenna or an inbuilt one so awful it might as well be malfunctioning. I felt like an idiot, have seen the back of that PC many times but for some reason just never noticed or thought about the coaxial bits and what they could be for. Oh well lets just order some cheap sticks and hope it helps. So I with the cheap set of antennas in hand, I screwed them on. Honestly expected it not to do anything because its never that simple. Fired up speedtest before and after installation. Before antennas was 10mbps up and down After installing the antennas >200mbps down and >100mpbs up. Yeeeeah looks like that took care of the issue right away. In the future ill look on the back of my big desktops and see if they could be easily upgraded with a set of antennas. The more you know!
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.
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](https://youtu.be/LEiJ9H87Qvo?feature=shared) showing the IH off :)
## The Orb The spherical bong is the [Orb V2](https://vgoodiez.com/collections/best-selling-products/products/orb-v2-by-vgoodiez). 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](https://arizer.com/glass-whip-mouthpiece/). ## The Air Max The cylindrical black device in the top intake port is the [Arizer Air Max,](https://arizer.com/airmax/) 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](https://www.dynavap.com/products/the-m-plus). 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.
Im not really a political person but the one thing I do care about is pot. Which candidate is most supportive of federally legalizing or at least bumping down the schedule 4 drug status of pot.
I wanted to power my extreme with my powerststion directly since its a 20v DC device, however arizer doesn't make car adapters. So I got clever. This setup makes good use of my power stations 100w USBC-PD charger port by utilizing a [special USBC-PD to DC input cable](https://www.amazon.com/FARSENSE-Adapter-Trigger-Connecor-Pressing/dp/B0BGFC77M6/ref=mp_s_a_1_3?crid=3LSEY7IUCEQFK&keywords=usb+c+pd+to+dc+adapter&qid=1700698985&sprefix=usb+c+pd+to+dc+adapter%2Caps%2C179&sr=8-3) that lets you manually select the voltage you want the charger to put out. This is necessary since the extremeq doesn't have the tech to communicate with the charger, so this device communicates in its stead. USBC-PD 100W can put out 20vdc at 5a, the extremeq consumes 20vdc at 1-3a, comfortably below the spec limits. This is an excellent way to power your extremeq and other similarly power rated desktops right from a dc system/ portable battery without the horrible inefficiency of converting to ac just to convert back to DC.
# 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](https://duckduckgo.com) / [Bing](https://duckduckgo.com/duckduckgo-help-pages/results/sources/) has some web crawling of it own but mostly relies on Bing [Ecosia](https://www.ecosia.org/) / [Bing + Google](https://www.ecosia.org/privacy) a portion of profit goes to tree planting [Kagi](https://kagi.com/) / [Google, Mojeek, Yandex, Marginalia](https://help.kagi.com/kagi/search-details/search-sources.html), Requires email signup, 10$/month for unlimited searches [SearXNG](https://paulgo.io/) / [Too many to list, basically all of them, configurable](https://docs.searxng.org/user/configured_engines.html), Free & Open Source Software [AGPL-3.0](https://www.gnu.org/licenses/agpl-3.0.en.html) [Startpage](https://www.startpage.com/) / [Google + Bing](https://support.startpage.com/hc/en-us/articles/4522435533844-What-is-the-relationship-between-Startpage-and-your-search-partners-like-Google-and-Microsoft-Bing-) [4get](https://4get.ca/) / [Google, Bing, Yandex, Mojeek, Marginalia, Wiby](https://4get.ca/about) Open source software made by one person as an alternative to SearX [Swisscows](https://swisscows.com/en) / [Bing](https://medium.datadriveninvestor.com/swisscows-privacy-focussed-google-alternative-search-engine-19adc2a59699) [Qwant](https://www.qwant.com/) / [Bing](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qwant) 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](https://www.bing.com) / Owned by Microsoft [Google](https://www.google.com) / Owned by Google/Alphabet [Mojeek](https://www.mojeek.com/) / Owned by Mojeek .LTD [Yandex](https://yandex.com/) / Owned by Yandex .INC [YaCy](https://yacy.net/) / Free & Open Source Software [GPL-2.0](https://www.gnu.org/licenses/old-licenses/gpl-2.0.en.html), powered by peer to peer technology, created by Michael Christen, [Marginalia Search](https://search.marginalia.nu) / Free & Open Source Software [AGPL-3.0](https://www.gnu.org/licenses/agpl-3.0.en.html), 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](https://invidious.io/) and [Piped.](https://docs.piped.video/) 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](https://docs.searxng.org/) 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](https://searx.space/) of all public SearX instances, I personally prefer to use[ paulgo.io](https://paulgo.io/search) 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](https://search.marginalia.nu) 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](https://github.com/MarginaliaSearch/MarginaliaSearch). Finally, [YaCy](https://yacy.net/) 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](https://yacy.searchlab.eu/) 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](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/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](https://staticmedia.kagi.com/kagi-features/Illumant_WASA_Executive_Summary_Report_for_Kagi_20220826_v1_0.pdf) and [shared it publically](https://blog.kagi.com/security-audit). 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.
From what I can gather this conflict as been going on a long time and the Hamas group has existed for a while too. Why are all the news cycles suddenly focusing on this the past few weeks?
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%?
My current means of powering things is USB rechargable batteries. I have a about five of them that range between small 3000-5000mah ones to a big 20000mah interstate battery jump starter pack. Is there a device that lets me add all their power together into a centeral power source so I don't have to keep swapping them out?
Now