Is this just more money for Palantir?

It was live streamed on YouTube. Many YouTube channels have the trial in it’s entirety. It’s not very long as trials go. Maybe 10 hours over a few days (or something like that). I’ve only watched part of it so far.

As well as the permitting policies, tarriffs, and fees for grid-connected solar systems. At least where I am (California), governments and utilities have made solar much more expensive than it needs to be.

Got it.

Ah, I see the unclear part. I read this line…

I imagine sitting on coach, searching for show. Then you want to watch some, and then you have to wait half an hour for full episode (or even season?) to download.

As if OP already had a media library, and was outside of their home, sitting on a coach (bus?) and wanting to watch something from their existing library on their phone/laptop/tablet, thinking they’d have to wait for the entire thing to download. This would not be the case. If OP had no content library, and wanted to browse for something new, then yes, you’d need to download the entire thing and add it to your media library first.

1. Getting stuff into your media library require downloading the thing.
2. Watching stuff (even remotely) that already exists in your library does not require downloading the whole thing.

attempts to query 8.8.8.8, regardless of your DNS settings.

Streaming box / stream app makers have been working around local DNS for a long time. Sometimes of course they’re assholes that want to do shitty things and do this to make interdiction harder. But sometimes there are legitimate reasons. Ones I remember… users who don’t really understand what they’re doing can be overly aggressive with blocking and block things that are necessary for a particular service (causing support problems). Sometimes the ISPs DNS servers have shit performance, and using a well known commercial provider like cloudflare or google can improve performance at scale. It’s not always evil.

You can’t watch media before it’s completely downloaded.

This is not true for just about any use case.

If you use *arr, you’ll likely use Plex or Jellyfin for a media server. That server will do progressive streaming. Netflix by contrast does dynamic adaptive progressive streaming.

Progressive streaming means that playback will start once your client has downloaded and buffered enough of the selected content from the server. The amount is typically a fairly small portion of the stream, like 10 seconds or so, though the specifics are left to the server and client configs.

Dynamic adaptive progressive streaming has a multiplicty of streams optimized for different devices, formats, and quality levels. This might be a few hundred copies of the same video asset, but in a few different codecs, a few different color encodings (ie HDR, SDR), and a quality ladder of maybe 10 steps ranging from low quality SD to moderate quality UHD (like maybe 300kbps at the low end, and 40Mbps at the high end. And these will be cached around the world for delivery efficiency. On playback, the client (player) will constantly test your network throughput in the background, and “seamlessly” adjust stream quality during playback to give you the best stream your network and client can support without stopping to rebuffer.

For example, if you’re on a 4K/HDR TV with Atmos sound, and great network throughput, you’ll get the highest quality HDR streams and Atmos audio. Conversely, if you’re on mobile that doesn’t support HDR and only stereo audio, you’ll get much more efficiently coded HD video (or maybe SD) and stereo audio streams that are more suited to playback on that device. It would be impractical (huge cost and minor benefit) to try to replicate dynamic adaptive streaming just for yourself.

In any case, even if you’re just pulling off a NAS, you shouldn’t need to wait for the entire file to download before you can start playback. If your files are properly coded, you should be able to do progressive streaming in just about any use case.

If you haven’t read about the Milgram Experiment, it’s a fascinating, and disheartening journey into notions of authority and compliance. In short… Milgram’s finding was that most people do what they’re told–even when they known it’s wrong–simply because they’re told to do it.

There is no verification that is true.

But there is a nearly continuous stream of occurrences where Meta is caught lying.

The article is kinda weak on details, but you can download the summary of the report they are referencing. It’s probably important to observe that this is the work of a lobbying group, so some skepticism is merited, but they claim to source from actual utility data. So maybe it’s reliable.

In any case, here are some key observations from the report summary if you’re curious:

• The US solar industry installed 43.2 gigawatts direct current (GWdc) of capacity in 2025, a 14% decrease from 2024. The utility-scale sector shrank nearly 40% quarter-over-quarter in the fourth quarter. Revised tax credit timelines and safe harbor dynamics reduced the imperative to interconnect by year-end. They also increased the urgency to begin construction on new projects.
• Solar accounted for 54% of all new electricity-generating capacity added to the US grid in 2025. Combined, solar and storage made up 79% of new capacity in this timeframe. Throughout all of Wood Mackenzie’s US power sector outlooks, solar capacity constitutes roughly half of new capacity added each year through 2060.
• 2025 was a monumental year for the US solar manufacturing industry. New cell capacity continued to expand, and wafer capacity came online for the first time since 2016. Module manufacturing grew more than 50% in 2025, with 65.5 GW of capacity online, up from 42.5 GW at the end of 2024. However, the actual production of these facilities remains considerably below domestic demand.
• In 2025, the residential segment installed 4,647 MWdc of solar capacity, declining 2% compared to 2024. Although module shortages and delivery delays were a concern in the fourth quarter, many installers ultimately received the equipment they needed. However, 2025 volumes weren’t higher leading up to the Section 25D expiration because there simply wasn’t enough time to meaningfully ramp up sales and installations after the passage of the OBBBA.
• The commercial solar segment grew 6% in 2025, adding 2,345 MWdc of new capacity. The pipeline of NEM 2.0 installations in California continued to come online. We expect it to decrease in 2026, but even in the fourth quarter, more than 70% of installations were still NEM 2.0 projects rather than NBT (net billing tariff) projects.
• The community solar segment installed 1,435 MWdc in 2025, down 25% from 2024. Maine and New York saw slowdowns, and no new community solar programs generated growth.
• The utility-scale segment installed 34.7 GWdc in 2025, a 16% decline compared to 2024. Nearly the same amount of capacity came online through the first three quarters of the year as did in 2024. But substantially fewer projects that were originally slated to come online in Q4 were energized. Due to the changes in tax credit deadlines, developers delayed commercial operation dates and focused on safe harboring their pipeline

The point about NEM3 in California is already happening. NBT installations and applications are sharply down from before the MEM3 cutover. I expected that to be a bigger factor in the data than it was. But residential being down only 2% nationwide likely means it’s up in most other states. That’s good news.

You’re still affected by this as nearly everything you buy was transported on a truck.

Also, Californians pay 3x the national average for electricity too.

No. Debian on the server. CachyOS on the laptop OPNsense / FreeBSD on the router-firewall appliance.

I don’t really feel like I need a single OS across everything. The lack of that has never been an issue.

Most Americans don’t understand the distinction between partisanship and politics. The phrase “I’m just not political” usually means either “I don’t want to hear your partisan bullshit right now.” or “I hold objectionable views that I can’t articulately defend.”

This is an interesting bit:

The women who work as courtesans at Sheri’s are hired as “independent contractors” by their employers (Jeremy Lemur, the brothel’s marketing director, provided a statement to Mother Jones that emphasized that specific phrasing multiple times). However, the terms of their actual jobs may not pass the “ABC test,” a legal framework used to determine whether a worker should be considered an employee.

And it’s not just the employer saying that they are independent contractors, the courtesans themselves say it several times. Such as:

“A lot of us are artists,” explained courtesan Paloma Karr, who is also a writer and activist. “We have all sorts of other jobs."

There’s a lot more to it than just a few quotes, but at least from the article, both sides seem to think they are independent contractors.

If you didn’t know that Chevron used to be Standard Oil, and if you didn’t know that its been the most prominent company in the Richmond area for about a century, the connection might not be that obvious. But if you know any of the history, its not hard to figure who runs “The Richmond Standard.”

What better way to signal progressive policy than make Liz Cheney your hype man.

Due process always has exceptions. Prosecutorial discretion being a relevant one in this context.

sounds like he means “a great deal of good” as

He fancies himself a great businessman; a deal maker. There is no chance he meant a great deal of good for the world.

Cops ain’t really buying anything. More probably they are directing the spend of taxpayer money on some vibe-coded garbage ass app one their friends made for a100x markup along with a long-term training and support package.

Relatable… I had an apartment in Studio City right on the LA River. It wasn’t even the cool part of the river you see in movies. I used to jokingly call it my waterfront property.