thehatfox @ thehatfox @lemmy.world

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468

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622

Joined

2 yr. ago

I have the G4 Doorbell, it’s worked well as doorbell and camera in both UniFi and Home Assistant.

I had no luck at all getting it to work with a chime though. I tried several different chimes and transformers and the chime would never work.

I ended up setting up automations to trigger device notifications and a bell sound on smart speakers to act as the chime instead.

I’m surprised they didn’t include an option to disable the backup encryption.

It’s a good feature to have but it’s probably overkill for users who only store backups locally. Encrypting backups increases security but also danger, lose the keys and lose the data. It should be up the user to decide on that tradeoff.

So the plaintiff’s are claiming Siri was recording them without consent, and that Apple were sharing those recordings with third parties including advertisers.

Apple claims they were sometimes wrongly keeping recordings for internal quality control/analytics but hasn’t admitted to sharing them, and have agreed to the $95m settlement.

The sharing with third parties is the most egregious part here, but it doesn’t seem to be addressed any further.

There are some Xiaomi Bluetooth temperature sensors available. I have a few of the LYWSD03MMC models. They are very cheap, have a LCD screen, and can also be flashed with custom firmware.

I have a few flashed with custom firmware and use them as general sensors around the home integrated with Home Assistant via ESPhome proxies.

I’m not sure how you could monitor them from both a phone and a Bluetooth proxy, but as they are so cheap and hackable they might be worth playing with.

For TVs now, by buying used. Help yourself and the environment by buying an unwanted "dumb" TV that's free of this sort of crap.

Or if budget allows, look at industrial displays.

Supply answers demand, is we stop buying junk smart stuff and take our money elsewhere the market will eventually follow.

A while ago a company patented a method using eye tracking to monitor whether TV watchers were paying attention to ads.

It can always get worse.

Zuck bending his own knee in the vain hope he won't get bent over Trump's.

Maybe he should have spent a little less attention on Caesar and tried to learn a few other lessons from history.

Cubic hands?

There were some polls asking why people voted for Brexit. Not only where there respondents wanting imperial measurements, there was even a small but significant group that wanted the return of pre-decimal currency, which was abolished in 1971.

For those not familiar with the UK’s old currency, it used to be 12 pence in a shilling, and 20 shillings in a pound, and with a variety of coins representing odd combinations of those.

Stone is only real used for body weights now, and mostly be older people. I see metric weights used a lot more in medicine and by younger folk now.

Some Zigbee smart plugs and sockets have configurable calibration settings. I have some SmartThings smart plugs that have calibration settings, and I think the new IKEA smart plugs with power monitoring have calibration settings too.

There are some resellers providing generic Wi-Fi smart plugs pre flashed with Tasmota and calibrated correctly. Not sure where you are located but in the UK I can recommend Local Bytes.

I've also seen people recommend Shelly devices for power monitoring for accuracy. The Powercalc integration developer used to recommend Shelly devices for measuring power use of new devices to create Powercalc profiles.

I wouldn't expect too much from accuracy from any of these smart devices though. They are intended for general consumer use to provide general ideas about energy use - they are not scientific instruments and probably shouldn't be treated as such.

If you are looking to monitor homelab devices specifically perhaps you should look at a more professional/enterprise PDU instead.

Remember that to properly calibrate any of these devices you will also need an accurate reference device to calibrate against.

Power costs vary a lot around the world, depending on where OP lives every little saving can help.

I’ve had this debate with myself a few times. In my country air ambulances (helicopters) are often funded by a charity, while normal ambulances are funded by the state. Such essential services shouldn’t be relying on charity to exist.

In work I’ve also been involved in providing services to major national charities, and I’ve often been shocked by the amount of waste and inefficiency going on behind the scenes.

That said I also know plenty of local charity groups that are well runs and make a big difference to the area. I’m not anti charity, but I think it does deserve more accountability.

That's a gross assumption that people care about any of this.

For any form of federated community to be sustainable, its users have to care about that. Otherwise those communities will eventually be consumed by whichever instance gains the critical mass to close itself off and become another Twitter or Reddit.

To achieve the benefits of federation, users must be educated on principles of federation, not be obfuscated from them. The question is how the Fediverse can do that.

Functionally it’s harder to accidentally press on the bottom.

Although it’s also now harder to intentionally press too. It looks like a finger can fit under there, otherwise you’ll be flipping it over to power on.

I expect (at least) one party will eventually adopt Rejoin as a distinguishing policy, and maybe sooner rather later.

But the appetite for Rejoin will probably depend on the shape of the UK economy and the political direction of the EU in 10+ years. If the Starmer project really has been delivering tangible growth by then, people may feel Brexit has (inadvertently) “worked” in the end. If the EU achieves greater and greater integration in the UK’s absence it may seem less palatable to enough voters.

Both of those are also going to be influenced by external factors like the direction of a possible Trump second term, the outcome of the war in Ukraine etc.

I don’t think it’s the first time for Amazon either.

Prague had a large pneumatic post system which operated for 100+ years.

Prague pneumatic post.

I honestly don’t know how they do it. Whenever I get handed someone else’s device without an adblocker I find it almost painful to try and use.

Years ago a Microsoft breakup was also once on the table, but it never happened.

I wouldn’t get too excited that regulators will follow through with this for Google either.