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Joined 2 months ago
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Cake day: July 15th, 2025

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  • Yeah, that’s annoying for sure. I just bought a handful of cables of known specs that “do it all” and it’s been pretty smooth sailing.

    They’re all 3ft or 6ft, 100 watt e-marked, and video capable The only one that’s not is my 10ft one - it’s “only” 100 watt rated but doesn’t do video and is limited to USB 2.0 speeds. I only use that one as a power cord for my laptop, though, and it’s bright red so it’s not like I’m gonna mistake it for anything else.

    So far, I haven’t had a need to upgrade anything to the new 240 W spec since I rarely use more than 65W.


  • I"m not so much against it (it was good enough in its time). I’ve just come to appreciate the mostly “universal” aspect of USB-C and being able to grab any cable from my bag without looking or digging and have it be the correct cable (all my cables are 100W and video capable, so no matter my need, it will be the right cable).

    In a lot of ways, I now see anything with less than USB-C as being like the old, oddly-sized barrel jack connectors. Yeah, it works. Yeah, it’s fine. But it’s also now an oddball cable I have to carry around.

    I’m old and resist the future in a lot of ways, but USB-C isn’t one of them lol.














  • Heat pumps move heat. In the summer, it’s pulling heat from inside and moving it outside and the opposite of that in the winter.

    Basically, the temperature differential is what makes the difference. The larger the differential, the more energy it has to use.

    In the winter, when it’s 30 degrees (F) outside, and you want it to be 70 inside, that’s 40 degrees it has to move. In the summer when it’s 90 degrees outside, and you want it at 70 inside, that’s only 20 degrees.

    Air source heat pumps, as the name implies, pull heat from (and exhaust heat to) the ambient air. When it’s really cold in the winter, there’s less ambient heat to move inside, so it has to run longer. Some (all?) heat pumps also have an auxiliary resistive heating element to make up the difference which lowers efficiency quite a bit.

    Granted, newer heat pumps can work well down to lower temperatures without having to engage the aux heat than the older ones I’m familiar with, but in a nutshell, that’s why they can potentially use less energy in the summer.