Also, check back in a month. Sometimes a domain squatter will just never at, hopin to flip it before the registrar takes it back

The problem is buying means nothing about whether it is legit or whether a company decides they want it. It only means you reserved it. Any disagreements are hashed out after the fact in court. It’s not a game that individuals can afford to win vs a corp

Step 0). Decide if there’s anything you dont want on a common server.

I realized long ago that my projects sometimes stall out partway through. However some things need to just work, regardless of where I am in a project. HA is a great example of something that manages itself (so less advantage to the VM) and that I want always available, so even if I decide to go down a route like you are, HA stays independent, stays available

I’m not entirely sure what those movies are like, and don’t want to know, but ……

My Mom watches horrible Hallmark stuff constantly. As far as I can tell, every movie has the same plot, they are low quality, etc. The thing is they are simple feel good movies for her. She finds them relaxing and gets good feelings from them, perfectly appropriate for “entertainment “.

If there is any parallel here, my point is that you don’t have to appreciate them for your Mom to. Why does it matter whether you agree with the movies or not: do you love her? Do you want to help her with entertainment that makes her feel good /relaxed/entertained?

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2013/nov/21/information-commissioner-investigates-lg-snooping-smart-tv-data-collection

https://www.cnet.com/news/privacy/samsungs-warning-our-smart-tvs-record-your-living-room-chatter/

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2022/jan/29/what-your-smart-tv-knows-about-you-and-how-to-stop-it-harvesting-data

Yes, you should not be thinking about security in terms of an outside intruder here. Think about untrustworthy or potentially compromised devices.

• WiFi smart devices are notorious for calling home, possibly collecting data, even if you’re trying to use them locally.
• There have been botnets from unsecured video cameras, and even some compromised from before import.
• TVs report back what you’re using them for and when, even playing through hdmi, and some have been caught listening in to your private conversations.

How do you prevent these from happening, or limit what they can do? One way is to put them on a separate vlan without internet access (your HA or other hub can listen on multiple VLANs and be the gatekeeper) and without access to your computers.

That being said, for similar requirements, I found managing the more complex network to be too much hassle, and went back to a simple flat network

Remember that once you give the password out, they likely have the password from now on. They will always have access until you change the password.

No, a lot of local traffic is not encrypted, especially residential. No, residential probably doesn’t use much authentication or separation of privileges.

Yeah, if we focus on high value items, it becomes much simpler. But what if there’s a disaster like a fire? One shirt is too cheap to worry about but having to replace all your clothes is expensive, so what’s a practical way to inventory that?

Looking at my home automation stuff, really the only expensive thing is my smart thermostat and it’s nit that expensive. However all the devices add up to several thousand dollars.

Maybe there’s a sense of type and volume or something, and video or photos, that would be sufficient to inventory everyday stuff

Actually, I’d also wonder how far insurance “replacement value” stretches. So many things I got on close out deals where the nearest remaining similar brand is several time the price

I wonder if something like a picture or video is sufficient to inventory quantities and general cost, such as clothes. The number of t-shirts I have changed over time, but a week worth of Carhartt adds up

Seems like a lot of pluses

I’ve been wondering about that, since my Firestick became so shitty that I actually prefer streaming apps on my TV. Most of my devices are already on Apple, so how about this one?

• I like fewer ads
• if it’s like the Apple TV app, there’s too much pressure to buy stuff I’m never going to buy.

So, on the home screen, can you tell which Videos are to purchase without clicking into them? Are things you subscribe to easily distinguishable from god forsaken ad infested ones?

Sounds more like a “bait and switch”, or your friendly neighborhood dealer saying “first hit is free”

I guess, but shouldn’t it be a fundamental configuration to only see things whose language you know?

This is an excellent take and I love the idea.

However what about the counter example of car dealerships? Isn’t that the same model as theaters separate from studios? Yet car dealerships have degenerated into a morass of sleazy scam artists who most of us would do better to avoid. I’m a Tesla fan partly because I don’t have to deal with a dealership. How do we either fix car dealerships or prevent theaters or streaming providers from going down this path?

I’m fine with subscription models for audio and video, since the goal is a continuous flow of new entertainment

Not for software. I want to own my software. These days it’s mostly operate since so many are too difficult to own (you want me to subscribe to Office? LoL, I “own” LibreOffice)

Yeah the foreign films coming up are the worst. I’m sure it’s great for the people who speak those languages but I don’t generally find it entertaining to watch with subtitles. It’s annoying when they keep coming up on recommended and even worse when it takes more clicks to see the language then to just start it.

Somehow Netflix thinks I speak Norwegian and I didn’t see a way to turn that off

Anyway -1 premium account, when they started down their path to enshittification

Then you get “Kia Boys” videos. A simple mechanical key really has not been sufficient for over a decade

As does my fire stick, and even my Vizio smart TV … all except the Apple Arcade

I’ve bent thinking about moving in the other direction. I try to avoid privacy abuse of the SmartTV and Fire Stick is being enshittified, so what should I use? AppleTV seems interesting to try plus games may be fun

If it’s been a while since you checked, it’s worth checking again. RPi has been becoming more available over the last month or two, and I was able to get one of the new RPi 5!

Someone put together a great locator tool

• https://rpilocator.com/

They look like they’re back, and at non-scalping prices

• https://rpilocator.com/

Of course I’m still waiting for my rpi5, pre-ordered in October for a No pvember delivery

Haha yeah, I was eager to watch the recent SoaceX test launch but their official feed required a Twitter account. So I patronized some random YouTuber instead

Never thought of it that way. Depending on your definitions, here’s a top 20 list that has SAP as the only European company. Asian ones are getting pretty common though

https://www.visualcapitalist.com/the-worlds-tech-giants-ranked/

I feel your pain

once the battery in my cell phone finally dies, the whole phone is essentially garbage

I don’t get this. I understand they aren’t user replaceable but surely you can get it replaced? Given how good batteries are, they easily last 2-3 years. iPhones are supported for 5-6 years so you only ever need one replacement

Getting my iPhone battery replaced has typically cost about $75, not all that different from a decade ago spending $35 for a user replaceable battery for a flip phone

One major difference now is that at least iOS gives me a good measurement of battery health so I can make data driven decision

I’m not surprised that 90% have a phone, but am surprised that’s specific to iPhone Where are you you Android people at?

And yet that could rule people like me out. I have a history of delivering longer than most developers have been alive, across many technologies, languages, toolsets, for several industries. My resume looks fantastic, and I can pull together a larger strategy and project plan in my sleep, and deliver a cost effective and quality solution.

However after jumping across all these technologies, I really rely on my IDE for the syntax. I’ll use a plugin for the cli syntax of whatever tool, framework or cloud service we’re using today.

I like to think I’m extremely qualified, but that programming test on paper will get me every time (why the eff is anything on paper these days), and certifications were a thing for early in your career

Severe sanctions on US tech giants

For the hell of it? Because they’re inherently evil? Protectionism am to develop local industry?

I’ve worked for a few, but not the consumer giants most people think of. I haven’t found them evil, and they support employees across the world.

I’ll go even further with developing countries in particular. From my perspective, entire software industries were built on multi-national funding, and we still pay better than local companies. The biggest change over the last decade or two has been switching models from cheapest outsourcing to employing local talent everywhere

As a guy, my manager kicks ass and we’re all extra motivated to make her look good. She used to be a peer but once she became manager, her true skills shone

Better yet, why are you not using a Date type? That’s very precisely defined, more scalable, and plenty of functionality for doing math or converting among time zones. You don’t have to care what time zone you’re in, and can give people the answer in any time zone

Any sort of “contract”with the user including ToS, licensing agreements, etc. These consistently violate contract law since it’s not a negotiation between peers, you don’t have an opportunity to read before purchasing, and there’s no direct quid pro quos for what you’re giving up. By all rights these should be unenforceable

I’ll go further and say some sort of OpenStack like thing should be mainstream. Why shouldn’t home computers by default be able to deploy cloud-like services?

I’m not sold on user replaceable phone batteries, but USB-C was a long time coming.

I just wish they had moved faster on USB standardization - I’m trying to switch but my phone and Kindle are my only USB-C devices. Either I need to waste functioning products by updating everything else or I still need chargers for older stuff back to mini-USB. It’d be nice to standardize on USB-C charging blocks but even that would mean buying new cables or adapters for four different USB form factors

I have been trying to do bonds with USB adapters

– If you’re doing it for performance, you should compare a low end 2.5gE switch and cards to all that complexity. Higher performance, simpler, more reliable

– if it’s to learn about bonding, consider how many you need and whether doing the same thing multiple times is a benefit

– if it’s for redundancy/reliability, I don’t think this is going to work. My plan is to build a cluster of single board computers and do everything in containers. Keep the apps portable and the hardware replaceable

I had the most problems with Ruby, or was that Rails. However I have to admit I gave up quickly. It left me with the impression the language itself doesn’t do much but the magic is all in the framework. You can’t follow the logic but have to know where things are, you have to know whatever assumptions the framework started with, but they don’t seem to be set anywhere.

That was the paradigm jump I didn’t make, didn’t want to make. APL was just so much more straightforward, because it was logical. Variants of C and Java are all pretty easy. PERL and Groovy have been two of my favorites except I’m a strong believer in strict variable typing. I have to admit Python took some getting used to, because who makes spacing part of your code structure these days: I thought we gave that up many decades ago. The COBOLs of the world are pretty focused - I’m not sure if even call them a programming language, but fairly easy to embed a query or report in a real language

They do have a point though. When we’ve gone through phases where the industry focuses on commenting code and other documentation, most of it is useless.

Code comments should have a reason, and are no substitute for readable code.

However you’re also right though that people jump onto “all or nothing”. I recently did a code Review that I held up for comments. In this case, they were doing something very atypical to get around a limitation so it was a clear case of comments needed. The next person through will say “what is this shit?” And “fix” it, without knowing there was a good reason

Apple keychain. Supposedly secure, extremely convenient, may be in the Cloud but not centralized - can’t lose everyone’s credentials at once.

The plug-in for Windows works pretty well too, although I wonder if that puts my confidential data at more risk

For me, the pi 4 4GB had been the sweet spot, however they’re saying pi 5 is roughly twice as fast, so I’m expecting 8GB to be the sweet spot

Pi 4 running Home Assistant.

A second one sitting in a box meant to be the first of a cluster, until they disapeared

Have you checked recently? According to the rPi locator, they’re starting to be available again

It’s working for me now. I guess it’s been a full day so they’d better be back up. I didn’t notice an outage yesterday but was not around most of the day to listen to music

I’ll also second the poster who suggested streaming an alternate way. I find the Spotify app a more convenient way to stream over Sonos than the Sonos app, and that might have worked.