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What if the help they need is just to talk to someone without fear of consequences?

If they dispatch you to an institution you could lose your job just when you need money to pay for the bills you'll be sent.

With some careers, like being a pilot, you'd never be be to find another job.

You'd lose your ability to take out life insurance (even if it was a short temporary depression that you got over, like a side effect of a medication, the life insurance companies won't care.)

Or the institution's records could be hacked and you'll live in fear of your friends and family finding out.. which could cause rebound suicidal ideation...

There is no way I would ever call these hotlines unless it were 100% anonymous.


I live in the US and while most of us know about the more serious crimes that often get prosecuted, there is a long tail of crimes that no single person could memorize. Over 60,000 pages of federal laws alone.

Although the claim is likely exagerated, people apparently break on average around 3 laws per day. If the government wants to lock you up for something, they can build up a case

And probably 20,000 of those are carve-outs for big contributors.

Its one of the few places you can be fairly sure you're chatting to people, not bots, who have no agenda to sell you anything.

Of course if it ever becomes popular, that will quickly change. But for now it is like early IRC.


No one has once ever spoken to me on it.

Even if someone did, you’d only get every 10th message.

I love Noctua, and just wish they'd branch out from PCs and build more types of fans. Our lives are filled with so much irritating noise from noisy fans. Air conditioners, kitchen extractors, hair dryers, box fans, air purifiers, vacuum cleaners, leaf blowers, car climate control & radiator fans, just to name a few. I'd happily pay a premium for quieter things.

As far as air purifiers are concerned, there are well-regarded designs you can buy that use PC fans (you can order without fans and put in your choice of fans) and furnace filters. I just got a North Box Polaris: https://aidankepo.wixsite.com/northboxsystems. Luggable supplies an equivalent for Americans.

I’m getting tired of the grayscale colors of the 2010’s too. I could use more brown and beige in my life.

https://a.co/d/0eRatANA

Have you tried Vornado’s alchemy line? I splurged on it due to similar feelings and have been quite pleased. I use the petit as a desk fan.


They do have industrial fan series

I don't own a (stationary) PC, but I have bought Noctua for other projects due to them having good reviews. Was surprisingly hard to find good fans for my usecase, that wasn't industrial (pricey). And PC fans are easy to control.

I'm not sure what you're expecting but it simply isn't possible to move the volumes of air those things utilize without making noise.

I would suggest taking that money and buying larger speakers


I'm just expecting a reduction in volume, vibration, and unpleasant resonance.

In any of these categories you can already find some machines are quieter than others despite comparable air flows. So its definitely possible to reduce noise through clever engineering and precision manufacturing.


I don’t think we need complete silence? Surely we can have something better?

Perhaps there are others in your neighborhood in the same position, who would only get into it if there were other nodes. So be the first, get your friends into it, and maybe more nodes will follow. It's only $30 or so for a device.

They have a decent range (15 miles or more) so depending on how rural you are, you might be able to create a line of repeaters back to a major population center.


Lol, I'm rural enough that the concept of "neighborhood" has no meaning here. I'd have to have a neighbor first. And friends all live further away than 15 miles.

Your point still stands though.


I literally just put the meshtastic antenna on the roof today, in an old services box. Been in the window for months, had a few weird perfect weather moments show a few nodes and a ping. Put it on the roof, hours ago, nothing yet.

Someone has to start up the area! (I live in nowhere maine).


Set it up, and when family visit, give them little LORA pucks to strap onto their belts when they go out on the property. Boom little property wide messaging network. Send out a text when dinner's ready!


Its optional but it helps to see where nodes are on a map, and would be useful in (for example) a search & rescue operation.


"useful in (for example) a search & rescue"

I can't read that without assuming the real intent is to deliver bombs accurately, but the startup pitching it knows that'd get bad press, and the investors all know exactly what it really means...


Meshtastic/MeshCore have nothing valuable to offer in terms of delivering bombs accurately. Moreover, militaries already have access to much more robust radio messaging hardware and protocols for data and location transmission.

The main reason both Meshtastic and MeshCore have location data as a part of the protocol is because they emerged from the Ham community which has always taken its role in search and rescue seriously, and because it also appealed early on for other off-grid uses like hiking.


Coffee can do strange things to animals. There's a study where NASA gave various drugs to spiders to see how it affected their webs[0]. Coffee had a stranger effect on the web than marijuana.

[0] https://web.archive.org/web/20210327150247/https://arachnidl...


Salient point:

Caffeine is a chemical that plants evolved multiple times independently as an insecticide.


More than anything this seems like a good reminder that spiders aren't human.


And that can be easy to forget in this fast paced world.


what about spiderman?


Obligatory reference to this classic wildlife film from the Canadian Wildlife Service in Ottawa.

It's almost unbelievable.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p2HipedgM3I


I'm an immigrant to the US who still has a bank account in my home country.

After I told that bank I'd moved abroad, they required me to fill out paperwork for FATCA and give them my US SSN.

I also have to self-report all foreign accounts and their balances to the IRS. The penalties for not doing so are severe.


I'd love if it could tell when a plane is ascending or descending and then add the last known rate of change to the simulation. Then you could watch a plane land.


You still have to pay the interest from somewhere. And presumably you'd need to put the coins into some kind of escrow so that the lender can get their money back even if you conveniently forget your private key.


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