Oh nice! I’ve been wanting some fancy thing like this: https://ambientweather.com/ws-5000-ultrasonic-smart-weather-station

But that’s the most expensive one. The cheapest is about $150 USD. But I have trouble buying a cheap one when the expensive ones have so much more, but the expensive ones are too expensive 😆. Also I don’t have anywhere to put it anyway. Not that keen on a pole in the middle of the lawn.

Hope you come through ok!

What weather station do you have? It’s something I’ve been wanting to get for a while.

I have some ports wearing out (from kids tripping on the cable) plus the screen bezel has been broken for a long time. Will be nice to get some new bits! Plus get some of the port options that weren’t available when I got mine, like SD card reader or ethernet port.

I also wanted to upgrade the guts some time back but I’ll hold out for this announcement and see what the new stuff looks like (or get a discount on the old stuff).

Then I’ll have yet another machine to use as a server (the old mainboard) 😅

I’ve been running the same Framework laptop for years and years, after using YouShop to freight forward it. It is their original model, when there was only one option. At a certain point they started blocking people freight forwarding, and I haven’t been able to get replacement parts.

This morning I got an email telling me they are finally supporting NZ, so I can get those parts! And apparently they are announcing their next gen stuff in a couple of weeks.

Well I am a step closer to the answer. Here a similar photo taken on the Artemis II mission with the same identifying features: https://images.nasa.gov/details/art002e009212

In this fully illuminated view of the Moon, the near side (the hemisphere we see from Earth), is visible on the right. It is identifiable by the dark splotches that cover its surface. These are ancient lava flows from a time early in the Moon’s history when it was volcanically active. The large crater west of the lava flows is Orientale basin, a nearly 600-mile-wide crater that straddles the Moon’s near and far sides. Orientale’s left half is not visible from Earth, but in this image we have a full view of the crater. Everything to the left of the crater is the far side, the hemisphere we don’t get to see from Earth because the Moon rotates on its axis at the same rate that it orbits round us.

Long story short, like 3/4 of what is in this photo is the near side of the moon.

As a side note, the coloured image on the left of the OP appears to be this image that reddit detectives have decided was edited by OP. No one has found that coloured version on any NASA release.

I’m half confused. Light source - the sun, just take it when the moon is in it’s new moon phase (side facing earth is dark, side facing sun is light).

But the moon is tidally locked to earth, we always see the same side, so what is taking the photo?

Artemis II visited while the far side was dark, so I guess this is an old tweet otherwise why would NASA be releasing it now?

Happy to be told I’m dumb if I got something wrong…

Happy Easter weekend everybody! (And first day of the school holidays)

Anyone up to anything exciting?

Thanks to those working so the rest of us can do things!

The Cook Strait currents in particular are unlikely to wash any bodies up on shore. But I guess if you check on to a ferry then get reported missing, the police are gonna know you were there. So maybe it’s not that easy to not be noticed.

I wonder, if he hadn’t had a vehicle, would anyone have known he went overboard?

It’s an interesting question. This seems to happen from time to time. Is it actually more often than we know?

Haha yeah, and the expense of the fuel is probably the least of your worries. What if you showed up at say Easter Island, in the middle of nowhere, and they said sorry but they are restricting fuel sales so you can’t fill your boat!

Hopefully you enjoy yourself on that side of the Pacific and get good weather for it next year!

Oh I didn’t even think about how the time of year could affect your ability to get across the pacific.

I am sure I’ve probably asked this before but I don’t remember, is your boat a sail boat or do you rely on fuel? Heading across the pacific seems like quite a journey, even though I’m sure you could get fuel at many islands as you go.

Oh sorry to hear about your dog, happy to hear she is all better!

Did you end up with a new plan, if you’re not going to be heading across the Pacific?

No compensation I would say. He’s not declared innocent, the previous court deemed he likely did it.

I think the crown now needs to decide if they think they can win a case in front of a jury. If yes, they will probably charge him then go through the process similar to if it was a new arrest - decide if he is a risk to the public, and if so ask a judge not to grant bail. Then if approved he stays in custody until the trial has an outcome.

Edit: as per other comment he is apparently already on parole, so that would likely continue. It may influence the crown’s decision whether to charge him again, as since he’s out of prison it will probably be about his risk to the public now. If he’s a risk, they would need to get him retried to maintain the (I’m assuming) life-long parole.

We really need a better way of managing this risk. I don’t have any suggestions but the blatant bribery is a pretty big problem to democracy.

I originally joined by being randomly posted a questionnaire with an explanation about what they were doing and that I’d been selected from the electoral roll (and a blurb explaining they are allowed to do that 😅). These days it’s done online, that was 10+ years ago that I joined. They literally just have the link to the questionnaire on their website, but they are doing a 20 year study of changes over time so I’m not sure if they have any new people joining at this stage - I have no idea what would happen if you just filled in the questionnaire!

On their FAQ they have this slightly relevant question (emphasis mine):

Can my partner join the study?

The NZAVS was designed to randomly sample adults from all across New Zealand. Randomly sampling people means we can provide reliable estimates of the overall population. This remains the key focus of the NZAVS. Over the years, a number of participants have also let us know that their partner is interested in joining the NZAVS, and to ask if their partner could also be sent a copy of the questionnaire. Partners who join the NZAVS are not part of the original random sample, and because they are choosing proactively to join the study, they might differ in important ways from the more general random sample of participants. However, including partners in the NZAVS allows us to answer additional and important questions about how people affect one another in relationships. For example, people’s own attitudes and values might predict their own wellbeing, and their attitudes and values might affect their partner’s wellbeing. To examine how partners’ influence each other like this, researchers need data from both people in a relationship, not just individuals. This new exciting part of the NZAVS will use the data we have from both people in relationships to understand the ways that people’s attitudes, values and wellbeing develop within, and are affected by, their closest relationship partners. If your partner wants to join the NZAVS then they are most welcome to do so, and can join the study simply by completing the questionnaire online and entering their contact details.

It sort of implies that they need people to join by random sampling to make sure they get the right spread of people, so I guess you can’t choose to join? You could always email and ask, they have contact details here: https://www.psych.auckland.ac.nz/en/about/new-zealand-attitudes-and-values-study.html**___**

I just assumed that the article focuses on the pumped part because it’s new and exciting. They also discuss that this opens up opportunities for wind and solar, any thoughts on that? It kind of implies the wind and solar projects couldn’t happen without it.

“Being down in Central Otago, this project will unlock a great deal of wind and solar development in Southland. There’s a lot of projects in Southland that need support for the intermittency of wind and solar.”

If the project goes ahead, it will provide firming for “several thousand megawatts of wind”, making investment in renewables more viable for generators, he says. Onslow investors “could well be part of that”.

The other thing to remember; is that this is not a generation asset; it a demand shifting system. Very useful, but it doesn’t bring new capacity online, where as the same money spent on solar would bring significant new capacity online.

I may have misunderstood, but isn’t this $16B project to build a brand new dam and brand new hydro generation capacity? It sounds like this hydro would add 8TWh of annual generation capacity:

If run for approximately six months, the huge project would produce around 4 terawatt hours of power – more than all of the country’s current hydro schemes put together.

The pumping part is the demand shift, but the project appears to add significant generation capacity even without the pumping part.

Haha I keep forgetting that most importantant point. I think building a giant hydrodam would pay for itself over time and provide a lot of much needed power, but I keep forgetting about the opportunity cost! The “what else could we spend $16B on” part of the puzzle!

Our power scheme does seem to incentivise scarcity as then the generating companies get paid more for generating the same amount of power. I see what you mean now about a government owned and coordinated hydro scheme, where hydro is used when it’s the best option instead of when it pays the most.

It is really hard to justify anything against solar right now, but we are installing a very small amount.

Are we? Every time I turn around a new solar farm seems to pop up.

Batteries should be used to buffer short term fluctuations, these can ramp up in seconds and hold for a while to let the hydro catch up.

Battery storage at grid scale is pretty new, and I don’t think NZ has any yet (just a planned one up north). A big downside too batteries is they will need replacing a lot, I hope we have appropriate recycling facilities to handle it.

One of the main benefits of hydro is the longevity. If you go big then you can build something that will still be going 100 years from now, making a very low cost per watt over it’s lifetime. The scheme in the OP seems like it’s building a whole new dam, they must think that adding the pumping to is is worthwhile otherwise they would just build the dam without the pumping component.

The use of hydro is dictated my market forces rather than efficiency.

I’m curious what you meant by that, that we use hydro because it’s cheap?