If they can send me over the second half of my thesis I would appreciate it enormously! 😀

The analytics tools that I am personally uncomfortable with involve dynamic, changing forms of data. I run GPSLogger on my phone (without a SIM card) and continuously log the GPS data to a text file. This data is then synced to my computer when WiFi is available. I can display this data on a map using gpx-viewer, and show very detailed tracking data of myself.

I have explored this map with some friends/family. They get to see a time-stamped movie of my life - my trips to work, to the shop, when I go out, if I go on a trip, etc. The data displayed in this manner is somewhat intimate, personal information. Anyone I have shown this to has said that they would not be so comfortable with such a map of their lives existing… Well, if they are carrying a active phone with a SIM card, it does.

To think that a company like Google can own such a map for a very large number of people makes me uncomfortable. On top of that, each of those map trajectories can be associated with an individual and their personality… They have the ability to pick out specific trajectories on the basis of the political ideologies or shopping behaviors of the personas behind them. This is extreme. I am of the opinion that the convenience afforded by a these technologies does not justify the allocation of that super-power to the companies that enable the technology.

A few years ago Facebook enabled a “Graph search” feature. This allowed users to create search queries such as"Friends of friends of X who like the page “X” and went to school near Z". That tool seemed super cool on the surface, but it quickly became obvious how something like that could be easily exploited. Later on in Snowden’s book I learned about XKeyscore from the NSA, which is like an extra-powerful no-consent-needed graph search that is available to some people. This is not just targeted ads.

I guess that what I am trying to convey is… For me, making the privacy-conscious choice is about not contributing to the ecosystem of very concrete tools that give super-powers to groups of people that may not have my best interest in mind. In my mind it is something very tangible and concrete, and I find many of those convenience tradeoffs to be clearly worth it.

Haha So True!

If you don’t mind sharing, please do!

I looked a bit more into it and discovered that some people do use UV lights for inducing stress responses on plants. Most of what I found is from cannabis growing communities that make use of the UV light to increase the potency of the plant. I don’t know how effective that is, but that did signal to me that some shops might sell UV lamps as grow lamps.

An example of a specific lamp I could find is the MIGRO UVB 310. If you follow that link and look through the images you will see that the bulb is clearly labeled with “UV BOOST”.

These lamps are meant to be used as supplemental inputs to stress the plant. It is not very likely that you ended up with such a lamp by mistake as it is still a niche type application. But it is good that you are making sure.

Does the bulb have some model written on it? If you tell us the specific model we may be able to find the properties of that light.

There is a good chance that you do not have a “UV lamp” but instead a purple grow light that does not emit a lot of UV. The purple grow lights have an emission that is tuned to the regions of the spectrum for which green plants absorb the most light - so, the lamp emits mostly in the blue and red, which is why they look purple. There is no need to worry about that light, it is perfectly safe.

If you do have a UV lamp and are using that lamp for a plant: Then we really do need more information to estimate the level of risk. Chances are that, if that UV lamp is harmful to you, it is also harmful to the plant, and it is better to swap it for some other type of lamp.

It is not very likely that you are using a one of the more dangerous UV lights - like a mercury-vapor lamp with a quartz bulb - which will produce smelly ozone and can burn your eyes if you stare at them. Those lamps tend to be specialized items that you are unlikely to end up with by mistake. More common lamps would be the blacklights with common variants that produce 365 nm or 395 nm light. Continuous direct exposure of moderately intense 365 nm carries a low risk inducing skin cancer and is better to avoid. 395 nm is relatively safe but I would still not want to expose my skin continuously to it as it may still cause oxidative stress to the skin. These are used ornamentally for making things glow, but they are not the best choice for plants.

Careful. Big Taxa doesn’t mess around.

Thank you very much!

Awesome work! Upgraded. Thank you!! 😄

Hahahahaha

In the 17th century, the distillation of an ammonia solution from shavings of harts’ (deer) horns and hooves led to the alternative name for smelling salts as spirit or salt of hartshorn.

Huh. That’s fascinating. Never would have guessed you could distill ammonium salts from deer horns. Very interesting article.

So far so good!

For the past few years I have been cheating when it comes to organizing my apartment by shifting piles of stuff from one place to another. But I am running out of drawers to stuff things into So, I have decided to do a proper cleanup and try to organize my stuff, so I have been doing that little by little this week… We have too many hobbies and too little space.

Workload has been alright this week. Enough entertaining work but no stress 😄

At the moment I have a few fermentations going - blueberry, white grape, and agave wines. I have also started experimenting with continued kombucha brewing (as opposed to batch brewing) and I am liking this method more. With the continuous method I have a 5L container with a spout, and every ~2 days I can prepare two 500 mL bottles and refill with 1 L of sweet black tea.

How’s yours?

Aah, congratz!! :D

Beautiful!

What does “rebloom” mean? Did it bloom twice in one year?

Thanks!

I have been away for some weeks for holidays. Has this happened often?

Good news! Just got a reply from them and they have increased the connection limit. They did not specify what the new number is, but hopefully it is high enough to not be an issue for the foreseeable future.

So, if you do run into other similar reports after this comment I would appreciate it if you tag me again.

Thanks!

Cost is not the bottleneck in this case… The problem is that I am rather ignorant about the options and their benefits/limitations. Moving the images the first time was painfully slow because of those same rate limits, and I expect the next migration to be the same, so I want to make a better choice next time and would rather find a solution with the current provider 😅

Thanks for the heads up. I am still trying to resolve this without a migration… I will try again to get a response from them as they have not replied in a week.

This is the current status:

• The instance is serving the images via object storage. Specifically, I am making use of Contabo to save and serve the images.

• I now know that the default limits are 250 requests / second and 80 Mbit/s: https://help.contabo.com/en/support/solutions/articles/103000275478-what-limits-are-there-on-object-storage-

• It appears to me like when the requests are exceeded, the “Too many requests” error is triggered and it takes a few seconds before the requests are accepted again. This can happen if few users access the front page at once as this will fetch all of the thumbnails and icons on the page.

• I have been in touch with Contabo’s customer support via e-mail. But they mis-understood my original e-mails and thought I was speaking about increasing the maximum number of images that can be stored (3 million by default). I have clarified that I want to increase the rate limit and have been waiting for their response for a few days now.

• The other solution would be to move the images to a different object storage provider. The migration is also limited to the 250 requests/s and 80 Mbit/s, so it will require turning off the images for 4 - 7 days while all the images are moved… Since I am not familiar with the policies of other object storage providers I would also need to do research to avoid falling into the same trap.

So, I am hoping that Contabo’s support will get back to me soon and allow me to increase the rate limits, as this would be the most straight forward approach.

And you are doing a great job at that! 😄

Very interesting article, thanks for sharing. I agree that it is a good one to pin!!

I have been reaching out to the object storage provider to see if I can increase the rate limits… Unfortunately I might need to change to a different provider to overcome this. Since the migration takes several days, especially so because of those same rate limits, I would rather avoid this…