corroded @ corroded @lemmy.world

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26

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405

Joined

2 yr. ago

Ebay might be owned by PayPal, but you are buying from real actual people. I've bought a lot of corporate surplus server equipment on Ebay. It's not coming from a random supplier in China or a giant warehouse in the US. Most of my money (minus listing fees) is going to a small business that refurbishes old equipment.

I have bought equipment on Ebay and driven to a small recycling company one city over to pick it up in person.

Here's an idea: Save your photos on your phone or computer. Back them up periodically. Send them over SMS or email to your friends and family if you think they're worth sharing. Stop relying on social media to give the the dopamine rush that you could be getting by actually doing something useful.

This may be going off on a tangent, but it seems appropriate here. I am sick and tired of hearing about every little minutia of clickbait bullshit related to Trump. If Musk wants to buy and tank TikTok, great. I don't give a fuck one way or another. Trump isn't buying TikTok, and I truly don't give a shit what his opinion is on it.

I want to stay aware of current events in my country. If the president signs an executive order, I want to hear about it. I don't want to hear about what his friends are doing. I couldn't care less who made his wife's hat. I'd rather watch paint dry than a video of him and his wife dancing. I hate that I know he consumes McDonald's slop and Diet Coke in the oval office.

People argue about how news outlets are biased right or left. The real problem is that news outlets are just entertainment outlets, and not legitimate journalism. I don't care if you're reading Fox News or CNN; you're still going to wade through a river of worthless celebrity worship before you actually find something of substance. Scroll down far enough, and you won't be reading about Trump any more. Instead, you'll be reading about which actors are fucking each other and the latest and "this year's hottest budget-friendly Temu styles that are now made of only slightly toxic synthetic fibers." If you're lucky, you might find an article about how some random nobody met another random nobody on vacation and got married. Good for them. I'm glad they're happy. I still don't give a shit.

The fact that this dickhead won't see justice is a major problem. The fact that the media is giving him a platform is more of a problem.

Technology exists to keep all your personal data exceptionally secure. Modern encryption is incredibly difficult to break (impossible really).

Humans are fundamentally insecure. Any time you read about a data leak, it's because somebody stupidly opened an attachment or fell for a scam. Any time someone gets "hacked," they didn't. They gave away their information. Human error and a lack of education are the problems.

I'm also in agreement with you there. I'd rather use Windows 11 than macOS, but that's kinda like saying I'd rather have a lobotomy with a short icepick instead of a long one.

Given that Trump is currently a civilian with no governmental power whatsoever (at least until tomorrow), I hope people see this as the blatant political theatre that it is. I also am 100% sure that they won't.

macOS

My pellet stove is a bit different. It has a built-in thermostat, and a combination rotary switch/potentiometer to control the temperature. This switch has a single wire that tells the controller to shut off the stove (wire is shorted) or control the on/off set points based on the resistance. I just leave it at "fully-on" and use a normally-closed relay to control it. When HA wants to turn on the stove, it just switches the relay to open, which tells the stove to start up and continue running until the relay is closed. The built-in thermostat just switches the stove on/off, so I'm essentially just disabling that and offloading it to HomeAssistant.

I also have a fairly complex automation for my stove. I'm using it to heat a large workshop, but I generally only use my shop on days I'm not going to work. On my off days, HA checks my location (from my phone), and if I'm home, it'll heat up my shop in the early morning so it's already comfortable when I wake up. It's tied into my occupancy sensors, so if the ambient temperature is below a set point and somebody is in the shop, it'll maintain the temperature even if my schedule doesn't mandate it. It also takes into account outdoor temperature, and it overrides everything and heats up my shop anyway if it's at risk of freezing (frozen wood glue doesn't work very well). I also monitor run time, and it'll send me a notification when it needs to be cleaned. I use 18 hours, though; with my stove, I think if I let it go to 150 like yours, it'd be a fire hazard.

I hadn't thought of monitoring pellet level, but I really like your idea. I think a beam sensor at the bottom of the hopper might do the trick. It wouldn't give a level, but it work to let you know when it's empty. I'm also wondering of you could install an IR emitter and photodiode on the hopper door facing downward and calculate a fill level based on how much light is reflected back. Maybe a series of contact switches from top to bottom. It'd definitely be a fun project.

I don't think it's so much that Zigbee is a gamble, but that buying off-brand cheap Chinese devices is a gamble.

Like another commenter said, you get what you pay for. I have some Phillips bulbs that have seriously been working well for a decade, long before I even knew about HomeAssistsnt or even knew what Zigbee was, other than that's what the Hue bridge used.

Part of the problem is that more obscure Zigbee devices can sometimes only be found from companies with names that look like somebody just mashed their hand on the keyboard. For something like a relay or a mmWave sensor, you're likely going to be trying to pick the best of a few questionable options unless you build it yourself. Alternatively, sometimes it just doesn't really matter. I have a cheap temperature sensor in a storage space. I don't care if it occasionally drops off the network; it's just there to satisfy my curiosity.

I wish it was that simple. I don't remember channel numbers offhand, but I mapped out my WiFi and Zigbee networks to be non-ovrlapping. I don't have any neighbors close enough to even register an SSID, either.

The weird thing is that location doesn't seem to matter. I have a few Aquara devices spread out across several hundred feet. The one that's close enough to connect directly to my controller is actually the least reliable.

I use one for the same thing! I have a pellet stove, and I set the knob to "on," then installed a relay in line with the knob. HA monitors temperature with another sensor and switches the pellet stove as needed.

I've got another two connected to solenoid valves, and another in a custom lighting system. They've been rock solid for a year or two.

The wide input power range is really convenient, too. Depending on what you're controlling, you can probably either just power it off the same supply, or grab any random adapter and hack off the barrel plug.

That's interesting. I first set up Aquara door sensors on all my doors. Every single one has dropped off the network and required re-pairing multiple times. I've started just replacing them with Thirdreality door sensors when they drop rather than re-pairing.

I wonder if my controller or my Zigbee integration has something to do with it?

Does Thirdreality make a UK plug? I can't find one on Amazon but that might be because I'm US-based. Out of all the plugs I've tried, theirs have been the best in terms of reliability.

Private entities have the right to decide what is or is not acceptable content on their platforms. Consumers also have the right to choose which services they want to use.

I encourage everyone to stop using anything involved with Meta. I personally have a list of Meta domains blocked on my home network.

If enough people did this, the problem would resolve itself.

I am virtually never out of town, but if I was, then no, I wouldn't worry.

If there was a technical problem that left my servers inaccessible, then oh well. It's the same scenario as if I had shut them off. I'd fix it when I get back. This has never happened, though. I've had VMs crash, but I have never had a situation where any of my servers were completely inaccessible.

The only situation I can think of where I'd need to immediately shut down a server would be a drive failure in my ZFS array, but the chances of this happening in conjunction with a loss of connectivity are exceedingly unlikely. If it was a major concern, I'd write a script to power down the server when a drive fails.

I use a mmWave presence sensor and PIR motion sensor in each room. I've found that mmWave sensors tend to give false positives and motion sensors don't work too well when a person is at rest (say sitting and watching TV). Lights come on when the motion sensor triggers, then they shut off when the presence sensor has been idle for a set time, usually 5 minutes. This works perfectly for me.

I have a Rachio irrigation controller. I'd recommend OpenSprinkler to avoid being tied to a "cloud" service, but I didn't know that when I purchased my Rachio.

One of my irrigation zones feeds into my greenhouse. It splits off to two solenoid valves. When it's time to water my plants, HA triggers that zone through the Rachio integration and opens the appropriate solenoid valve that connects to my emitters. If my humidifier gets low, then it does the same thing but opens the other valve.

That's really interesting with your TV. I would actually expect power consumption to increase with 1080p since it's having to upsample the input to match your native resolution. Unless you're playing 4k content on a 1080p panel, in which case it makes more sense.

You didn't mention it directly, but if you want to access any of your hosted services remotely, you will almost certainly want some kind of VPN solution. I host a few things over HTTPS,, but there's no way I'm exposing anything critical directly to the internet.