Miscellaneous
[…]
Shoots from the base of the tree are pruned so that the trunk stays straight.
[…]
The technique results in a harvest of straight logs without having to cut down the entire tree. Although originally a forestry management technique, daisugi has also found its way into Japanese gardens.
Daisugi
Not the most exciting narrators, but… Quite cool!
Would this scale and can we use this elsewhere to avoid cutting down trees?
I specifically disagree with his stance on free speech, because I think that it depends on your interpretation of what free speech means. If you allow the most intolerant voices to be as loud as they want to, you’re going to shut down voices of different opinions as well. So allowing free speech by just allowing all speech is not actually leading to free speech, it just leads to a cesspit of hate.
I think that is a very uniquely American idea of creating this marketplace of ideas where you can say anything you want completely without limits. It is very foreign to the German mindset where we, in our Constitution, our number one priority is maintaining human dignity. And so, hate speech is not part of the German concept of free speech, for example. So I think that when Elon Musk says that everything’s gonna be allowed, or whatever, I generally disagree with that.
Source: Time.com interview with Eugen Rochko
Recently visited Ikea and had to get a Christmas star-light like I used to have during my childhood.
Most of my (non-track) light at home is smart using either a TP-Link Kasa smartplug or Philips Hue (and I want to avoid adding more brands, more apps, and more shit). However, Philips Hue is quite $$$ and not always all that easy to get in Singapore (shady retailers, limited stock, not many options).
I knew that Tradfri was technically compatible with the Hue Bridge, but never made the jump as I just wanted things to work (don’t want to mess around with lights). Until today. Figured I may as well give it a go.
Surprisingly, everything worked out of the box. I had to do a factory reset (not sure if that’s because I kept the light on for ~10 minutes before trying to set it up, or if this was a returned product as clearly the box had been opened before)…
Side note: it requires a modern firmware (and I assume all lights being sold today have said firmware, but if for some reason you end up with old stock, you may need to update). To update you need the Ikea Bridge though (or... apparently the dimmers/buttons may work as well -- did not test).
All the controls are working as well (dimming, changing colours, etc).