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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 17th, 2023

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  • Good to know. But, so far we haven’t got DRMed cleaning tablets. So, when it asks to clean, throw in some random powder, push the button and let it do whatever it wants. I can’t see how they’ll ever know.

    It pisses me off. Because I’d happily buy manufacturer brand consumables if they weren’t such scumbag assholes with their pricing. I might even consider a small premium if the product is decent but not 400% premium just because it matches their brand.

    These assholes package up the same common salt-shaker-garden-variety-chemicals costing 1-2 cents per dose (which generic brands charge 10-20c / dose) and sell it for $1 a dose. Screw that.

    Anyways. Fight the power. :) Good luck.


  • Yeah you are a bit but manufacturers do like to ham up the warnings, so it’s understandable.

    I wouldn’t stress. They’re all so similar. The variations will need mostly proprietary differentiation nonsense.

    The sodium carbonate might attack copper and aluminium at moderate concentrations. I suspect the concentration would be enough to do mild damage if you left it a long time (ever run an aluminium pot, ice cream scoop or kitchen gadget through a dishwasher? You get that crazed grey look). But the chemicals and the duration of the cleaning cycle wouldn’t give it enough time to do meaningful damage.

    From a heath angle, the cleaning agents in these tablets are also reasonably mild (in the scheme of things). Probably better to err in the side of no serious chemical burns to customers’ throats (in case the cleaning cycle goes wrong). Sodium carbonate (washing soda) and sodium percarbonate are generally mild irritants - best if you don’t stick your eyeballs on genitals in a concentrate solution.

    But they’re not particularly nasty compared to things like dishwasher tablets.

    You’d detect the taste before you’d have issues.


  • You can find the general compositions of the powders and tablets from the safety data sheets here: https://www.cafetto.com/safety-data-sheets

    I managed to find a Breville SDS to compare (https://s3-ap-southeast-2.amazonaws.com/wc-prod-pim/Asset_Documents/Breville Eco Coffee Residue Cleaning Tablet SDS.pdf)

    But from what I’ve seen, they’re all pretty much the same - Washing soda and an oxygen bleach (some brands add surfactants).

    If you did it by approximate weight you’d be fine. But double dose probably wouldn’t make a difference either (the ingredients are easily dissolved).

    I’d suspect the tablets contain a binder that might make them slower to dissolve.

    If you want to get experimental, couch a spoon in one glass and a tablet in another and fill hald with hot water and see how long they take to dissolve.

    I’m curious, but probably wouldn’t be curious enough to do it. I’d just Chuck in the scoop and give it a wash cycle and maybe an additional rinse (wash without powder) until the final rinse water from the clean cycle looks clear and tastes ok.

    After a rinse or two I can’t imagine it’d be concentrated enough to case an issue from a tiny taste test (but I’m not a doctor, you do you).



  • In about 2014 we flew through an airport where some of these “customs” types shows was being recorded. They had signs up everywhere (I think in multiple languages) saying “episodes of _____ are being recorded here. If you do not wish to be recorded please talk to the crew” (or something like that).

    But who knows what they’ve filmed for their cut-away shots, from the far said of the arrivals hall.

    I guess you should expect shots of you walking to be ok. But probably have the right to opt out of having your “case” filled.


  • I worked at a take away shop in Australia (a Ma & Pa shop that sold fish, chips and pizza). The store was always closed on a Monday but the owner and a couple others would usually come on to do orders and prep.

    The main lights were always off and the chairs are stacked near the door so you’d have to push past them to get in. But every time, without fail we’d still get a half dozen people pop their heads in and asking “are you open?”.

    One day, the owner sliced his hand badly and had to rush to hospital. They took off so fast they forgot to lock the door and left the place unattended.

    When they got back (very late at night), there was precisely one drink missing from the fridge, and $3 left on the counter.






  • Yeah, it depends on what you mean.

    In many cases malware and phishing is hosted off other compromised sites. So, they build a list of Wordpress sites with vulnerabilities, and use the vulnerabilities to host their files on them. For example, imagine “legitimate-medical-site.net.com” is a real site. The attacker will use the exploit to upload malicious files in there somewhere like “legitimate-medical-site. net. com/qwertasdf/invoice.pdf”.

    If the site gets blocked or shutdown it’s no loss to them.

    Another technique, especially phishing wise, they will have a semi-plausible domain name (e.g. youbank-security-server .con). But they will register heaps of these. There are tonnes of top level domains that do next to no checking. These things cost a few bucks, so having it taken down is not a problem.

    The combination of burner sites and domains mean they have a window of opportunity to run their attacks and scams before other protections kick in.


  • We’ve had many of these. We just leaver up the boards and tear them out.

    You could plunge cut with a circular saw along the edge. Then work a chisel under it and just tear out the floor boards any way you can.

    Then for the screws, I either tear them out with pincer pliers for the shallow ones (you can get decent leverage with pincer pliers). Or just cut them flush with the joists and leave them there (quick work with an angle grinder and cut-off disc).

    PS. Sorry been trying to reply to you for a few hours but my client wouldn’t connect.




  • I secretly moved a bank of high school lockers about 1ft per day, every school day, for a whole year.

    They were pretty light - those steel “backpack only” sized lockers in a about a 3x4 arrangement. Some days I’d just lean on the end of them to nudge them over, but skipping doorways and around corners meant extra planning and often meant I had to come in to school early.

    The janitor caught me one morning. He agreed it was a funny prank and offered to help when we got to the staircase.

    By the end of the year the lockers had migrated up one floor and over to a separate building.

    I kept the secret for decades and only recently started telling the story.


  • Lexx is wild. I watched it originally on a pay tv channel that had cut the episodes up into ~25 minute blocks.

    I first dropped into late season 2 and occasionally I’d miss an episode.

    So, combined with the weird cutting, the no context and the standard Lexx craziness, I had NO idea what was happening. The whole thing was a fever dream. Highly recommend!

    I actually think it’s was the best way to watch it first go round! Then, when I came back and do the whole series in order and it was almost as much of a surprise.