It may be cold, but the snow is lovely.
Cool project! I have to admit, this is the first I've heard of a cap being used to adjust the speed of an existing motor. My first thought was that it would consume lots of power in comparison to a triac dimmer just cutting off parts of the AC phase...
Yes, a triac will work to control fan speed but at a cost: audible buzz. This happens because a triac dimmer abruptly cuts off the AC power during the AC cycle and the harmonics from that high frequency edge creates causes the coil in the motor act like a speaker. You can sometimes hear the buzz in incandescent lights.
An alternative is to take advantage of inductive reactance using an LC circuit. In this case, our motor is the inductor. Adding a capacitor to an inductive AC circuit is like adding a resistor. It lowers the overall current and thus the motor cannot run as fast. And unlike a triac there are no audible side effects. Ceiling fans with a pull string often use capacitors for speed control. This is the source for the capacitors I am using. The down side is that the capacitors don't last forever and degrade over time, which is likely why these capacitors are easy to find.
There has been a lot of hype browser fetchers to prevent tracking. What bothers me is that preventing tracking isn’t all that complected. By default I block cookies from all websites and I’ve done this for most of my web life. That right there takes care of most of the tracking. I also disable Javascript on all websites that don’t need it. This is becoming harder and harder as more sites are relying on Javascript to run. Still, plugins like uMatrix allows you to enable Javascript and disable XHR (XML Http Requests). That helps prevent tracking. Sites like Amazon send XHR when ever you focus on a different tab and some sites send XHR to track your mouse movement. Even with XHR disabled, sites like Google will change the URL of links when you click them so they can track which links are clicked. And even with Javascript disabled, Amazon embeds tracking references into the URL of every link so even if you disable cookies and Javascript, they can still track you.
Now there are browser fetchers that specifically target tracking sites. They are just blocking cookies so nothing I haven’t been doing for years, and they fall far short of really stopping tracking. However, I’m concerned about this. The more browser fetchers are added to protect users from tracking, the more innovative companies tracking people will become. Right now not being tracked by the major trackers doesn’t take a lot of effort. But the more browser fetcher that are added to nuder these sites, the more crafty these sites will become. My toolbox of cookie and script blockers might not be enough in the future.
As a user you have no rights your browsing privacy on the Internet. Many of the companies on the net make their money from this fact. Google and Facebook/Twitter/Intsagram make their money from your digital footprints and they are very good at stalking you. Right now they let you seem them do it and have no shame. But if everyone starts trying to cover their tracks be assured they will just give up.
Looks pretty darn secure if you ask me!
Don't forget, it would be my pleasure to hook you up with some industrial grade adhesives.
