A Reddit Refugee. Zero ragrets.

Engineer, permanent pirate, lover of all things mechanical and on wheels

moved here from lemmy.one because there are no active admins on that instance.

  • 12 Posts
  • 56 Comments
Joined 11 months ago
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Cake day: December 22nd, 2023

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  • Relays operate by flowing current through a coil. The coil generates a magnetic field, which attracts a ferromagnetic plate that then closes contacts. Without current flow, no relay can operate.
    This coil has a standard resistance/impedance based off the length of wire coiled, ans is engineered depending on the size of relay, designed operational voltage, etc. This cannot be modified.

    With a series of solid state op amps, one could turn a "no current/infinite resistance" signal into a relay switching effect, but it would require some other outside power source to run the relays or mosfet switching. Seems complicated. Maybe look for a "solid state relay" or "digital relay", I've not ever used one though.
    I know you weren't operating a car horn directly through a relay coil either, so there must definitely be some other relay or more likely a BCM computer with a MOSFET on board.

    What year/model of car? Is there any chance you can locate a oem wiring diagram to understand better how the horn system works? In older cars, the horn is a ground-switched circuit, where the horn unit is always hot +12v and then it is directly connected to ground through the steering column when the contacts on the horn pad are pressed together. No intermediate relay. On a system like this I would connect the relay effectively "in parallel" with the horn, with one side of the coil on +12v hot, and the other on the non-grounded, switched side of the horn pad. This way the horn and coil sit at the same potential and no current will flow anywhere except the horn pad ground circuit when pressed.

    I cannot guarantee any newer car uses a system remotely like this though, especially through a computer so YMMV.

    And realistically you could in a pinch pull coil power from the horn itself. Just connect a wire to either side of the horn so your relay coil is in parallel, one side switched and the other side always hot/ground. This may/may not be safe though as the horn circuit will likely be in a relatively large fuse and it'll be impractical to relocate the relay or run an additional 14 feet of small gauge sense wires from the cabin to the front of the car.






  • If there is any game you legit shouldn't pirate if possible, Factorio is one of them. Wube is one of the most based small independent developers out there, their code quality, optimization and game design is second to none, they have a super active community that the developers themsleves often participate in, and their game is very reasonably priced for the thousands of hours you can dump into it. The account requirement for the official mod portal is maybe the only slightly anti-user thing they've done.

    Oh noo, your still working 3rd party mod downloader makes you enter in mods one at a time instead of grabbing a whole mod pack?

    No offense, but I think this is a personal skill issue. If it were any other company doing it sure, but don't take Wube to task over it just because you're mad it takes an extra 5min to install a large mod pack via a 3rd party loader that I'm sure they've intentionally not blocked.


  • Not just you. Low(er) quality downloads are still a huge part of the torrent scene, see how popular most 720p YIFY uploads are even though their encoder quality is pretty garbage. Most people in general want a fast download and are viewing on a small laptop or even phone screen and don't give a rats ass about fidelity, LQ works perfectly fine for this. Even I'll grab a LQ once in a while if it's something my girl and I want to watch that night and I didn't plan ahead.

    The desire for high quality uploads is more for people running home setups like Plex, where it's better to keep a HQ source file and have it transcoded to lower resolutions by your home server setup as necessary. They generally aren't storage constrained as an 8tb hard drive for a normal PC is fairly cheap these days. I'd wager maybe <30% of torrenters actually go after ultra HQ uploads based off seeder numbers.

    Personally I stick to stuff that is at least 1080p with HDR and H265 encode preferred, because I archive most everything I download due to similar problems with internet speed. Over maybe 12 years of torrents I've amassed a hair over 5tb of content, and that's a LOT of movies l, it all fits on a single $120 external HDD.






  • Adobe is lax about it because they care about being the industry standard monopoly. When more people use their software and become proficient in it, more companies want to buy it so they have better hiring prospects, and Adobe wins.

    The stories I've heard about most CAD companies, especially Dassault, is that they don't generally care about the pirated software, and if they do, the worst they'll do if you're just a hobbyist is send you a "cut it out dude" cease and desist.

    The problems arise when you start using their software for anything that makes money, like sending models/drawings to other companies/clients or whatever. If youre trying to run a business with pirated software they will absolutely pin your ass to the wall with lawyers and go after every cent you earned using their software PLUS the cost of a full license PLUS whatever damages they feel like pulling out of their ass.