I am owned by several dogs and cats. I have been playing non-computer roleplaying games for almost five decades. I am interested in all kinds of gadgets, particularly multitools, knives, flashlights, and pens.

  • 16 Posts
  • 541 Comments
Joined 1 year ago
cake
Cake day: July 2nd, 2023

help-circle

  • Just bear in mind that nothing involved in “refurbishing” a drive removes the wear it has already experienced. That may or may not matter to you. The mean time between failures for a particular model is a meaningful statistic, but it doesn’t tell you too much about any individual drive. You may get lucky or unlucky with the lifespan.

    If you check and monitor your drives, as various people have recommended here, you are less likely to be surprised by a failure. If you keep them backed up you won’t be out anything more than the replacement cost of the drive when it does happen.









  • The 519As in the light I EDC still have their domes. I have another light where the domes were removed and I prefer them intact, particularly for this combination. Removing the domes shifts them from flood toward throw and lowers the overall output by 10-15%. The W2s provide all the throw you could want, so the 519As are there to provide a good flood around the hotspot.

    If you do decide to de-dome, bear in mind that it shifts the color temperature warmer by around 1000K. So if you want to end up around 4000K, buy the 5700K LEDs to de-dome.

    The overall throw of the DT8 lights is something of a compromise, but it isn’t bad. I suspect I’m getting over 500m of effective throw from mine. The W2s have a lot of reach and the sheer volume of lumens helps too.


  • I actually recommend the Emisar DT8K Dual Channel. It’s the light I EDC and I sometimes also use it as a bike light. I find the 21700 grips more comfortable than the smaller 18650s. The strange shape makes it thinner in the pocket than anything else with a comparable size of head.

    I suggest the Dual Channel loaded with one set of W2 LEDs and another set of 519As. That combination provides a lot of throw in the center with a lot of flood around it. If you want finer control you can configure it so you can adjust the relative strength of each channel, which will effectively act like zooming in or zooming out.

    Overall it’s the most versatile hand light I have. And it’s oddities make it nearly ideal for us as a headlight.



  • What scares me is that con men and delusional idiots are the ones making the decisions about AI. Like biological weapons development, this is an area where unintended consequences have the potential to destroy mankind. And it is in the hands of people who have demonstrated that they will fire anyone who wants to slow them down by examining the risks and the underlying ethics of what they are doing.

    Altman is the most obviously terrible example of someone who should never be allowed near this technology, but his counterparts at Google, IBM, Apple, and the other tech giants are nearly as bad. They want the fame, money, and power this could bring them. None of them are looking out for the good of humanity as a whole.

    I firmly believe that our best hope, at least for the moment, is that general AI is going to take longer than they think. We are not going to achieve it by building more powerful versions of what we have now. It will require something new and different. By the time that breakthrough happens, we need to have responsible people managing it.