Raf Pauly
David HoIt's not fashionable to talk about consuming less as a climate solution because our economy is based on selling us crap that no one needs.
Mike Tyka@davidho we live in a world filled with Juiceros :-/. I once went to CES in Vegas and found exhibition hall after exhibition hall filled with startups selling solutions in search of problems. The slogan that stuck with me was "Making swimming pools fun again". They were selling an AI robot submarine to swim with. Late stage capitalism. 😔
@mtyka I just looked up what Juicero was. Omg. We could use that money for MRV of ocean CDR.
@davidho that's right: we could build a supercomputer and run large GCM ensembles at high resolution which will, after much power gobbling computation, tell us with very high certainty that the efficiency of Alk addition is 0.70-0.85 mol/mol. The Juicero of MRV, so to speak 😆
fluids_guru@davidho how about $8,000 fridges with LED panels and built in speakers? https://www.lg.com/au/moodupfridge
Charlie Stross@davidho I'm 99% sure that this thing toasts your bread using the waste heat from the GPUs it uses to mine the cryptocoins for its owners (who are not you), to the detriment of your electricity bill.
Nemo
Simon Jay (he/him)@davidho Yes. We need to make things justify themselves more and just stop permitting worthless things to take up resources by existing.
For evidence visit any poundshop (or local equivalent) and check out the childrens aisles - plastic tat with no intrinsic play value that will often not even survive being taken out of the packet. How can we allow this stuff to exist?
Trammell Hudson@davidho @cstross this reminds me of the classic joke about the difference between EE and CS majors when asked to design a toaster: https://web.cs.wpi.edu/~gogo/humor/hum_toast.html
emberquill 
@th @davidho @cstross As someone who works in a CS field, I can unfortunately confirm the accuracy of this anecdote. Several of my coworkers have the same tendency to massively overengineer solutions to potential future problems and inflate the scope of a project to a ridiculous degree.
I used to, but I've gotten pretty good at asking myself, "Is this really necessary?" whenever it feels like a project is growing too big.
Graydon@davidho "Climate solution" is "everybody has enough to eat after agriculture fails".
That's got three parts. First part is the abrupt cessation of all fossil carbon extraction to move the failure of agriculture as far into the future as it will go. Second is creating the post-agricultural food supply. Third is closed-loop machine culture ecology necessary to support the second.
Things are bad to the extent that they're not doing those three things. Consumption is not an applicable metric.
Titia Schuurman@graydon @davidho "post-agricultural food supply" was not an idea that had entered my mind, but I can see how it will be a necessity, if not everywhere then in a large part of the world, and when I think of it I can see examples already coming along. One is a Finnish start-up that is making food protein literally out of thin air, i.e. from CO2. It's still early days, but definitely interesting. And the project has attracted public funding, as it should. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_Foods
@titia @davidho That Finnish start-up is good news; thank you!
It's really difficult to find direct discussion of the agricultural consequences, I think because once you admit that this is a real risk the prefered policy line of continuing fossil carbon extraction becomes much less politically tenable.
My heuristic for awhile has been how many results are returned by searching for "potato greenhouse" with the quotes. Definitely a trend up over the last decade.
Mystery Williams@davidho at least most of us #glutenfree folks aren't going to be interested in this monstrosity.
Potato Enthusiast 🇵🇸@mysterywilliams @davidho weird. You can toast gluten free bread
B59R 🦈@davidho
Damn it! Humanity will become extinct. Sure.
No one, but really no one, needs this crap!🥴
Damn it! Humanity will become extinct. Sure.
No one, but really no one, needs this crap!🥴
Elizabeth Moore🇨🇦@davidho so you spend almost 400 bucks to get different kinds of toast. After the novelty has worn off, you go back to maybe one or two you really like. It’s like my car. I’ve had it for seven years now and I still don’t know all it’s in and outs.
MJ Ray
Canadian Curmudgeon@davidho I was bemused to see an electric kettle at the local Canadian Tire - most selling for $40-$75 CAD - priced at $250. I wanted to ask a staff person if this would boil my water any better than the $40 one.
MarjorieR@davidho where's the app?
For that price there must be an app.
Every appliance must have an app these days.
For that price there must be an app.
Every appliance must have an app these days.
Murf@davidho also why recycling gets so much more focus than the 'reduce, reuse' part of that triangle.
Alex Lubertozzi 🇺🇦@davidho I don’t think you really appreciate just how great your life can be when you own a $400 toaster.
Ben Taylor
Talkie Toaster
"Can I just ask one question... would anyone like any toast?"-Talkie Toaster ("White Hole") Talkie Toaster, or simply The Toaster, is a minor recurring character in the Red Dwarf novels and television series. Manufactured by a Taiwanese company named Crapola Inc., Talkie Toaster was an annoying, monomaniacal, artificially-intelligent electric bread toaster purchased by Dave Lister whilst on planet-leave at a second-hand junk shop on Miranda, along with robot goldfish and a pet cat. Despite...
Ben@davidho + 8€/month subscription - but you get an exclusive (AI generated )podcast with recipes?
🇨🇦 CowMan 🇪🇺 🇺🇦 🇲🇽@davidho but if it decreases bread wastage due to sub-optimal toasting, particularly on high numbered bread types...
Ferrichrome@davidho Currently using a toaster from my grandparents basement that is probably decades old. They need to invent this crap so people think they need something “better”
Tarh@davidho You can't burn a picture for that price. It should integrate lasers for custom toasting
hapbt@davidho you can ask about it all you want, 1% of the population has convinced everyone around with nearly religious fervor to sacrifice everything on the altar of 'the economy'
monorail times@davidho @lisamelton 34 different bread types?
TransitBiker@davidho best shitoaster.
turmacarFortunately the perfect toaster already exists:
http://www.automaticbeyondbelief.org/
Chris L-W👻🚫@davidho unless this toaster has the ability to materialize the desired bread out of thin air, toast it, and turn it into a sandwich or meal for you, it is not worth that price tag
Miakoda 
@davidho @alpine_thistle
Never once in my life have I ever thought "I sure wish my toaster was more than hot wires next to bread". Not one damn time.
Never once in my life have I ever thought "I sure wish my toaster was more than hot wires next to bread". Not one damn time.
@davidho will it only toast authorized bread?
Tim Ward ⭐🇪🇺🔶 #FBPE@davidho Apparently this is all you need: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1OfxlSG6q5Y
The Antique Toaster that's Better than Yours
You can support this channel on Patreon! Link below That title isn’t hyperbole or clickbait nonsense. This really is better than your toaster. At least, I ...
LisPi@TimWardCam @davidho Bonus points for being entirely analogue and relatively easily maintainable/repairable.
@TimWardCam @davidho Relatively easily repaired though, you just need a replacement filament of the right metal & dimensions.
That's nowhere near as hard as repairing a broken CPU or reverse-engineering whatever server this probably relies on (local storage we can't rent-seek? Perish the thought), breaking the encryption it uses and spoofing keys so you can use your own local server.
@TimWardCam @davidho I've got plans for a few similar projects in the bottomless limbo of my "todo eventually" list.
For outdoor stuff it gets a bit complicated as weatherization in Canada gets complicated.
Freeze/unfreeze cycles mean ingress protection is mandatory, rather than just strongly recommended, which has done quite a bit for keeping me lazy.
@lispi314 @davidho The electronics and all the sensors are in the greenhouse, apart from the thermometer measuring the outside temperature.
There's an unexpected benefit of the humidity sensor - when we're away from home we can see when (whether!) whoever has promised to water the plants in the greenhouse whilst we're away has actually done it.
rēd ⭐@davidho ...our version of a #smart #toaster / #coffeemaker is one with a manual switch to make sure is 'off' when not in use! 😁
Paul Chernoff@davidho @lisamelton Not only is this ridiculous but I wonder if it is any good. @siracusa , do you want to test one?
John Siracusa
Dzso@davidho I'm out of touch, are toasters like this really being sold these days? 😫🤢
Downbytheseasid@davidho seem to remember a Cory Doctorow novel included a ‘smart’ toaster that would only accept bread from one particular brand.
Kevin Karhan 
I choose you FLATEV!! - Kickstarter's Artisan Tortilla Making Robot
Anreji 
@davidho it's not even good if anyone wonders: https://youtu.be/UJ-KZzVUV7U
Eric G.@davidho I'm particularly impressed by the toggle that will remove all the gluten from my toast.
John Cutting@davidho
Saw a product like this on a wedding registry. I showed it to my partner and we decided not to attend. Ridiculous consumption
Saw a product like this on a wedding registry. I showed it to my partner and we decided not to attend. Ridiculous consumption
der.hans@davidho and if the license server goes down does that become unauthorized toast?
Just a Pumpkin
Brent, in a jar
Led By Gilded Fools
hlfshell@redgranola @davidho @pluralistic this remains one of my favorite stories from Doctorow.
As for the toaster... What's even worse is video reviews show it can't even completely toast bread. Double offensive.
geographile@davidho
I don't know how #degrowth can work within #capitalism. Worse, I don't know how it can work within #democracy. I am open to #ideas.
I don't know how #degrowth can work within #capitalism. Worse, I don't know how it can work within #democracy. I am open to #ideas.
Social Justice Warrior🦍@vegafjord I have not yet explored that idea but I will look at it more closely in 12 hours or so.