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Joined 9 months ago
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Cake day: February 27th, 2024

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  • Ah you sweet child. Go to any legit second hand store and ask for the original receipt for the item. Nope. A charger may well have been changed or another similar one given after all it’s only USBC.

    There are a plethora of reasons why a legitimate seller may have a non standard charger and when I sell an old phone or a laptop on a market place there is an expectation the item isn’t stolen. It’s called good faith in contract law and why you can’t be guilty of handling stolen goods if you have no knowledge or expectation of it being stolen. For example if you buy it in a pub with a dog and 2 kilos of meat all for £50, then there is a reasonable expectation it is stolen, but buying from a second hand electronics store or eBay, there is an expectation it is not stolen.

    As for someone else’s login, well if you wipe the drive or factory restore it, it no longer has anything on it and can have no such identifiers. This is why I stated that Steam can and I believe should do more to make the device lock down, but they have no incentive as it costs them money to implement and manage but with little to gain for them.



  • I have mixed feelings about this. Steam could make a lock that is more like the IMEI or android and iPhone lock that means it is far less valuable to steal and easier to track and lock. But by reporting it you remove THEIR obligation to provide warranty to someone that innocently buys a used steam deck that is still within its warranty period but that doesn’t hurt the person who stole it only another innocent party in the ordeal. Now if they gave you $25 off another steam deck or something I would see the point.

    Not saying don’t do it. Just that it seems a little redundant now.





  • We use gravity batteries in the UK. They work well and are pretty good at their efficiency. When you are creating massive systems they are made to last decades. There is always upkeep but it is the same with coal, gas and nuclear plants. All these renewables are far cheaper and far more cost effective than these power stations and for years the main problem has been that wind and solar cannot be used as base load, but with battery storage on a mass scale, thermal and hydrogen storage, we are now at a place where building out far more solar and wind than we need is viable and mixing in these technologies to provide base load and grid stability.


  • Hydrogen fuel cells also. Use the excess to make hydrogen which is simple to store and then use it as a fuel to burn when you have demand. These have started to be put at the bottom of wind turbines so they don’t need to be stopped when the wind is blowing but there is no grid demand.

    All these systems help balance the grid too meaning these renewables can be used as base loads instead of dirtier base load generators like coal or gas fire stations.







  • As a UK Nissan Leaf owner I’ll explain, they basically have given up on existing customers. They don’t really care about us anymore. The app works okay and does the bare minimum but it is clunky and slow. They have a new app for all models over 2019 or 2020 and it works better and is significantly easier for them to update and maintain.

    The 3G service in the UK will go first as the 2G service provides a lot of emergency failover. The 2G network has around 10 years of service left and even then will probably be left on longer.

    https://www.ofcom.org.uk/phones-telecoms-and-internet/information-for-industry/policy/2g-and-3g-switch-off

    They want rid of as many old app users as possible so they can save money on server and development costs, the problem is that even modern 2018 Leaf version still uses the crappy app and have 3G cellular which will fall back to the 2G side when the 3G goes (before the 2G cellular is fazed out) so to blame it on 2G is disingenuous as they still have to support the app for the 3G models and still have to use those on the 2G network as the 3G will go first. I looked at upgrading the module to a 3G or 4G but there is no point because even if you do that they are pulling the app functionality for the car rather than the signal.

    There is an ODB add on by open vehicles that will restore the service and is actually loads better but is a bit of a janky hack. https://www.openvehicles.com/ we may do this if we really miss the functionality and desire a £250 solution with a £2 monthly connection fee. We shall see.

    So Nissan maybe not evil. But certainly not being honest and transparent.



  • Personally being an owner I wouldn’t buy one, there are plenty of other electrics that are great. I did buy a newer version and sold it very quickly to buy a better car.

    Don’t get me wrong I love my leaf and it has done 65k miles and is still going strong even at 11 years old, but they are really lagging behind in tech compared to others. It’s like they got to 2015 and just stopping developing. They use a rapid charger that is fast disappearing in the UK (chademo) so long journeys or a quick top up are getting harder. If you want a cheap car to do 40-60 miles max a day for commuting then they are a great deal and cheap to own and run. 2 pence a mile for home charging at night. But for more than that maybe spend a little more or look at a Zoe or something else.

    Their newer versions are expensive in comparison to competitors and to still be using the exact system as the 2012 models but with new body covering is just a bit sad. They were a front runner that just never kept developing.