• 5 Posts
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Joined 3 years ago
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Cake day: June 15th, 2023

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  • Our household has solar panels, two EVs, and a heat pump located in the Midwest. We still have 1:1 net metering so its nearly the ideal conditions as far as energy harvest and economic landscape. I know this won’t last, but I’m enjoying for the years that I can.

    We also have a separate deductive meter where we can get about 25% discount on electricity that charges the cars. We only use it during the cold months because car electricity is free during the rest of the year from solar.

    We have a small electricity bill in November, then big beefy electricity bills and for when the our location on Earth its tilted away the sun for the very cold months of Dec Jan, and Feb. March we get a bill but its about 1/10 of the cold months, and then usually electric bill until November again.

    With the installation of our heat pump we cut off our natural gas connection. So the only energy bill we have is electricity during the cold months. No natural gas bill, no gasoline bill.


  • Much better pictures, thanks! I had suspected that both those ICs work together (and it looks like they do), but I couldn’t find any part that matches it in any searches. It could be a specialized ASIC they made, or they could have bought proprietary marked ICs specifically to prevent the kind of repairs you’re wanting to do.

    Apologies I can’t help further, you may be stuck buying a new board. Maybe keep the dead one around in case you need a replacement part in the future.



  • For others looking at this, the damaged IC is silkscreened as IC7 (red square in my edit of OPs pic). OP, the fuse on this board is the green SMT device (that I put a green square around). Here’s the sales sheet for that fuse.

    OP you gave a part number for the blown IC as HVS004, but from what little I can see in the picture I’m wondering if its something else. I’ve put a BLUE square around another IC8. I’m guessing thats in the same family, from where it is in the board. However, I can’t see what the part number is on that one. Can you share that one?









  • Marketing is a different kind of hard. Coding has logic. Clear inputs, clear outputs. Marketing? It’s storytelling, psychology, timing, luck — and most of it feels like shouting into a void.

    There actually is a bit more science behind marketing than your statement suggests. The Marketing Mix starts with the “four Ps”:

    • Price - How is it packaged/tiered/price? Is it a one-time fee? Is it a subscription? Where does it fit in the price compared to other products you’re competing with in the same space?
    • Product - What is it? What are its claims (things it delivers on)?
    • Place - Where can your customers get it? Console only? Steam? Played in a web browser? What regions of the world?
    • Promotion - How do people find out about it? This is mostly the part you’re talking about which include advertising, PR, influences, etc.

    For those you’re trying to reach, be able to answer the first 3 “Ps”. If your game is sold only on Steam, then you don’t care about console players. You’ve now eliminated a huge chunk of customers you don’t have to try to reach. What kind of game is it, perhaps an RTS? Then you’ve eliminated all players that only play FPV shooters and you don’t need to reach those folks. Are you going to charge $40 for the game? Then you don’t need to worry about appealing to gamers that only spend under $40 for games.

    All of this is a narrowing exercise to find where your customers are which lets you focus on streams or channels of communication specifically targeting those that would consider buying your game.







  • This is likely one case where capitalist polluters and leftist environmentalists are on the same side. Neither wants to see this plant in operation.

    Coal is an expensive way to generate electricity in the USA. Its a PITA to get the coal and deal with the tailings. Further with the death of coal power being obvious for decades, plant operators have put off maintenance again and again knowing that the plants closing is forthcoming. The forced demand from the government would require at least some of that expensive maintenance done to keep operating. Plant operators don’t want to spend that money for something that is going to be closed as soon in the years ahead as trump isn’t in the picture anymore.