The town I live in is bisected by a MOD railway and, from what I understand, permission was never granted for whatever was needed to supply natural gas on my side of the tracks. This rules out some of the more common traditional heating systems found in these parts.
We bought the house ~two years ago. The building itself was (and still is) quite sound but was a wreck in terms of features (no heating system at all, no flooring at all, and in terms of a kitchen and bathroom facilities it was quite ... minimal).
My partner had long hoped for underfloor heating downstairs as she loves the feel of walking on warm flooring. I have to agree that it is a delightful luxury and we don't otherwise have too many vices.
Direct electric underfloor heating felt like the least hassle in the long term and the easiest for self-installation. The alternative was a wet underfloor heating system (water filled pipework set in screed). The wet system is capable of leaking and eventually failing with expensive repairs, the electric system less so.
We use infrared wall-mounted heaters upstairs. As far as direct electric heaters go they're quite efficient. They heat the objects in the room rather than the air and it feels like the warmth of the sun on your skin.
I agree wholeheartedly that heat pumps are a more efficient option and could indeed be used as a direct replacement for our upstairs wall-mounted heaters. This is something we hope to put in but was not previously affordable when we were re-working the entire of the inside of the house from nothing.
As far as I understand, we would need a wet system for underfloor heating if we were to utilise heat pumps and at this stage that would be a prohibitively expensive re-work of what we already have.
Hopefully roof-mounted solar and a battery of some sort should even out the costs a bit.
I live in a house house exclusively warmed by electric heating (underfloor downstairs, wall-mounted upstairs). The heating system takes electricity as an input and provides heat as an output with no other direct benefits. As a whole the heating system can be quite power-hungry during cold periods.
A crypto mining rig takes electricity as an input and provides heat as an output with the possible benefit of creating some valuable digital assets. Serious crypto mining setups can be quite power-hungry.
Crypto mining for the sole purpose of making money is often considered an egregious and possibly wasteful use of power resources.
Is crypto mining for the purpose of using the heat to warm my house, with the possible benefit of generating valuable digital assets, similarly egregious, wasteful or inconsiderate in some way?
I'm left handed and have always used the mouse with my left hand.
The tilt on the cursor has never seemed odd or wrong or strange to me in any way.
I've been using computer mice in one way or another for more than 30 years and perhaps a lack of oddness comes from having so very much gotten used to it. Maybe newer left-handed mouse users would find the cursor tilt strange?
I work as a software developer but once trained as a barista when considering opening my own coffee shop. I can offer some fact-based reasoning as to how different coffees have the capacity to taste different (whether people have the capacity to discern the difference is another matter).
The dominant factors in the flavour of coffee comes from the preparation, both the roasting and the brewing.
Roasting reduces the acidity of the beans and draws out oils towards the outer surface. Both the acidity and oil content of the affect the flavour, with the acidity directly impacting bitterness and the oil impacting the smoothness.
The amount of total acidity contributors and oil contributors that are drawn out of the bean when brewing are a direct function of water temperature, water pressure and duration. Too low a temperature and the resulting drink is more akin to watery coffee dust. Too low a pressure and you get sort of the same results.
An ideal temperature and pressure combination, given a fixed duration (let's say 30 seconds) draws out enough of the oils to balance the acidity to get a good strength coffee (optimal bean to drink yield) that doesn't taste horrid. The acidity takes longer to draw out such that too long a duration results in a more bitter (and generally less acceptable) flavour.
That's a rough overview meant only to highlight that it certainly is possible, from both roasting and brewing, to significantly alter the flavour of coffee. I've oversimplified for brevity.
But can differently-grown beans of the same type affect flavour?
I don't grow coffee beans but I do grow tomatoes. From personal experience, the length of growing season, the amount of sunlight and the average temperature across the growing season affect the quality of the fruit. I find the same for sweetcorn, squash and many plants that grow above ground.
I don't think it is a stretch to suggest that the same factors have the capacity to impact the oil content of coffee beans if nothing else.
If growth conditions impact the oil content of the beans and the oil content of the resulting drink impacts the flavour, it seems plausible to suggest that the growth conditions can impact the flavour.
It's a security matter more than a performance matter, although improved performance is a nice side effect.
For assets served from a third party (a CDN), you don't want to send cookies that might include secrets (a session cookie that could allow access to a user's account for example).
You can trust that a third party won't intentionally log or make use of any sensitive information in cookies but you can't guarantee it. Best not to send it at all.
Might lab-grown diamonds have reached a point of being indistinguishable from natural diamonds such that people pass off lab-grown diamonds as natural diamonds without anyone being able to tell?
In my experience, the usefulness of live chat features varies wildly.
If the live chat service connects me to a human who is able to resolve my query in a timely manner, I'll take that any day.
Phoning a large company can result in waiting in a call queue for a long time. My attention is on the phone call instead of anything else. A live chat window can be relatively ignored and checked once in a while.
Emailing a large company can result in waiting for a reply taking 3-5 business years. Live chat gets me a response relatively quickly.
A live chat service that does not provide an easy means of interacting with a human and which instead easily allows getting stuck in a bot loop is a great example of poor customer service and, for me, a great way of quickly finding out who to not do business with.
That said, a poor live chat service for a business that I absolutely have to contact (most recently when terminating internet service after moving house) is an exercise in frustration and annoyance that is hard to replicate in any other manner.
I left a non 5 star review of an inexpensive Pixel 4 case. The case was too close around the flash resulting in the flash reflecting off the case resulting in absolutely awful pictures.
I was offered a refund and replacement of a newer version of the case in return for a better review.
The phone case was simply not fit for purpose as it was and the review fairly (I hope) highlighted this.
I accepted the replacement newer version and agreed to a more flattering review once the improved case was seen to indeed be improved. If the flaw had been fixed then it would be fair to reflect this in my review.
The improved case was no different and my review remained unchanged, except for an update reflecting the bribe.
I agree with the sentiments regarding the use of low-code/no-code tools for general purpose programming.
I'd like to present a specific use case as an example of how domain-specific no-code tools can help.
I'm developing a tool for automated browser testing. This fits well into the description of being no-code and is being developed as an alternative to writing C#- or Java-based browser automation tests in Selenium.
The "code" that you write is more akin to configuration that defines what page elements you want to interact with, how you want to interact with them and what you expect to happen. There's more to it than that, but this is not a sales pitch.
My project is in direct response to the experiences my partner encountered when providing browser automation training to manual testers within businesses.
Browser automation testing requires, in broad terms, a small subset of what is offered by C# or Java, however a significant understanding of and familiarity with matters such as objects, variables, sane naming and debugging is required to even begin reaching competence.
Many manual web testers, who were very capable, were just not able to grasp coding matters sufficiently. Many were, but plenty were not. For those that barely could, I feel for the people who have to maintain what would then have been created in their businesses.
Programming that requires only a subset of a general-purpose programming language has the capacity of being implemented in a no-code tool if the scope of the programming needs are narrow.