Sylvain Miermont @miermont@qoto.org
- Topics of interest
- electronics, open hardware, communications, energy, climate, mobility
- Location
- Grenoble, France
- Other account
- @miermont@mastodon.social [mostly fr]
Extremely online electronics engineer, PhD in #microelectronics (low-power digital systems architecture), #LoRa pioneer.
Co-founded a #hackerspace, co-founded an industrial #company, interested in #manufacturing (traditional and distributed), frugal innovation, durable and resilient sociotechnical systems.
Joined Oct 2022
Sylvain Miermont
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Future generations are going to look at this generation’s laxity with genetic data and privacy in the sane way we look back at smoking, Jim Crow laws and fossil fuels.
You can’t change your genetic data like you can a password and once it gets out it not only affects you both your relatives and your offspring.
You carry a gene for a chronic disease that’s inherited? Now insurance companies know that about you, your kids and grandkids.
Unbelievable privacy self own.
Sylvain Miermont
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A new report from the International Energy Agency admits that high-tech fixes to the climate crisis like carbon capture and hydrogen fuels are not living up to the hype and will deliver less emissions reduction than previously predicted.
Sylvain Miermont
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Never forget that when Seoul, Korea removed the Cheonggyecheon expressway in 2003 and replaced it with a restored stream, 1000 acre park and improved transit, not only did it transform the city’s public life & economic success, but the traffic got better.
The traffic got BETTER.
Sylvain Miermont
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In a lot of ways, Facebook has a classic IBM problem
1. Won big early, and accumulated a war chest that let them absorb hits instead of adapting
2. Facilitated genocide
Sylvain Miermont
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Yes, it's a long train ride, but I have commented on 2 reports, cleared a week's worth of emails and now I'm going to enjoy a delicious vegetable Bolognese with a fine beer and read my book in the @diningcar while speeding through northern Germany at 200km/hr.
Later I will review a paper.
Sylvain Miermont
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My #CDR friends on twitter got mad at me for pointing out that the four regional Direct Air Capture (#DAC) Hubs under the Inflation Reduction Act (#IRA) specify a minimum CO₂ removal capacity of 50,000 tonnes/year.
Hence, each DAC Hub is a #time #machine that takes us back only about 40 seconds a year!
It's important to point this out because some people think CDR is a replacement for #decarbonization and that can never be the case.
https://www.energy.gov/oced/four-regional-clean-direct-air-capture-hubs
Sylvain Miermont
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🚨 BREAKING: We have sent a letter to decision-makers across Europe.
Along with 80 organisations, our demands are simple:
1. Ban private jets
2. Ban frequent flyer programs
3. Tax frequent flying
More in 4 languages here: https://stay-grounded.org/ban-private-jets/
Sylvain Miermont
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NEW ANALYSIS: Heat pumps have seen huge growth in Nordic countries.
Heat pumps sold over 30 years contributed to a -72% drop in CO2 emissions from heating in Finland, -83% in Norway & -95% in Sweden.
How has this been achieved?
My piece for Carbon Brief.
Sylvain Miermont
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“The team ran a regional climate model simulating the Chicago metro area and three types of #roof: cool (painted a heat-reflecting white), green (vegetation) and solar panels.
[All] three types of roofs reduced the near-surface temperature and AC consumption demand during daytime hours when air temperature is the highest. Cool roofs reduced the near-surface temperature by 1.5 degrees Celsius, followed by 1.2 degrees for green roofs and 0.6 degrees for solar panel roofs.”
https://techxplore.com/news/2023-09-roof-material-cool-air-energy.html
Sylvain Miermont
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The level of enshittification of the Internet from LLMs is truly spectacular.
Search for anything (in my case my ice maker doesn’t produce ice correctly) is now an exercise in futility.
Wonder if we can ever dig ourselves out of this level of shit.
Thanks, tech bros. Really super awesome stuff.
Sylvain Miermont
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As the #ClimateCrisis deepens, many scientists try to fly less, if at all. Supported by e.g. @StayGrounded_net, www.flyingless.org, and the 'green offices' of many universities.
The Kiel Institute however threatens to fire social psychologist Gianluca Grimalda because he refuses to fly. Read & spread his story! 👇
« You're not doomscrolling, you're hopequesting.
You need those tiny pieces of joy from seeing friends and strangers share their art, their good news, their wacky unique selves.
We need light to live.
And we find it in each other. »
Sylvain Miermont
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Sweden's organised crime makes more money from running private health clinics than from selling drugs, warns the agency for fighting economic crime.
So will the right-wing government now send in the military to stop privatisation?
https://sverigesradio.se/artikel/varningen-gangkriminella-driver-vardcentraler
Sylvain Miermont
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Supporting Ukraine is a once-in-a-generation chance to make the world safer. Ending that support is recklessness for which we will suffer in all the conflicts that the Ukrainians are preventing or making less likely. Let us help those who help us.
I have also added a WN30 remote temperature sensor to the system to monitor the temperature inside the fridge and it made me realize quickly that our fridge is dying and can't maintain a temperature below 10°C which is not at all acceptable for food safety.
I plan to add a second one to monitor the freezer separately.
Overall, I'm quite pleased by the Ecowitt system so far. It's basic, mostly unencrypted, open-ish, low-cost and low-friction.
New weather station installed at the family home. Hardware is by Ecowitt, it's quite low-cost, I'm curious to see how robust it is.
For Europe they recommend to order the 868 MHz version but because it's low-power and each sensor sends only a few bytes every minute, I've chosen to order the 433MHz version. I have thick walls and metal shutters to go though, so I thought it would help to use a lower license-free frequency. So far, it's working great.
The GW2000 base station (connected to the internet router) gives temperature, humidity inside the house and atmospheric pressure. I have chose the GW2000 because it has an Ethernet port and can be plugged into my router instead of the cheaper GW1100 that can only work through wifi.
The sensor on the left of the picture is a WH32 outdoor sensor giving temperature and humidity, it's under a radiation shield. The one on the right is a WH40 rain gauge with additional protection against birds. In the future I plan to install a wind speed and direction sensor (WS68 most probably) but they will be separated from the rain sensor and mounted on the roof, a must to get accurate wind measurement as the garden is full of trees and big shrubs.
Ecowitt has several "all in one sensors" but they won't work for me: if I put them on the roof, it becomes hard to clean the rain gauge regularly (and this is more or less mandatory), if I put them in the garden the wind measurement will be garbage.
All data is pushed to https://www.ecowitt.net/ in my private account and I can decide to share some of the channels on the public map.
Sylvain Miermont
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#Google is trying again to convince you, YES YOU, to contribute for free to Google Maps.
Please don't.
It is 100% #proprietary, Google has full control over the data you added and people can only access Google Maps over proprietary channels where Google dictates the rules. This gives them too much power.
Contribute to #OpenStreetMap instead, it's a project by the community, for the community.
Sylvain Miermont
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After basically the whole #Microsoft #Azure cloud was hacked (see list of related sources on https://karl-voit.at/cloud/ ), the first follow-up incidents went public caused by missing containment actions:
60,000 emails were stolen from 10 #USA #StateDepartment accounts
https://www.reuters.com/world/us/chinese-hackers-stole-60000-emails-us-state-department-microsoft-hack-senate-2023-09-27/
If you didn't understand until now: basically EVERYTHING at Microsoft got hacked and Microsoft can't (or won't) get rid of the intruders. Everything authenticated by Microsoft is tainted. Even #Windows auth.
Sylvain Miermont
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Science is not democratic, but it can be democratized. Scientific findings won't be decided by a majority of votes, but public participation could help political decision makers and the scientific community to choose the right direction for scientific endeavor. The suggested #scicomm reading on this topic is "Democratizing Science", an open-content book by Paola Mattei.
Sylvain Miermont
boosted
For me, right to to repair isn't just about ewaste, and preventing corporate gouging.
It's about mental health. Being able to fix your gadgets is therapeutic. Empowering. Good for the soul.
In a world full of complex technology it's easy to feel small and helpless. And maybe I'm too much of an idealist, but I think that if everyone could experience the joy of fixing or modifying a gadget now and then we'd all be a little more open minded, a little more daring. A little harder to push around.
- Topics of interest
- electronics, open hardware, communications, energy, climate, mobility
- Location
- Grenoble, France
- Other account
- @miermont@mastodon.social [mostly fr]
Extremely online electronics engineer, PhD in #microelectronics (low-power digital systems architecture), #LoRa pioneer.
Co-founded a #hackerspace, co-founded an industrial #company, interested in #manufacturing (traditional and distributed), frugal innovation, durable and resilient sociotechnical systems.
Joined Oct 2022
