m_randall
@m_randall@sh.itjust.works
- Comment on Wyze says camera breach let 13,000 customers briefly see into other people’s homes 8 months ago:
Not who you asked but I have a smartish home. There is no real need. It just affords convenience and for me lands pretty squarely in “hobby” territory.
My lights turn on prior to sunset, and turn off after I go to bed. My porch lights dim at 10pm so I don’t disturb my neighbors as much. I have additional states of lights that are predicated on various scenarios. In short, I never touch a light switch, I never walk into a dark house, and my energy usage is reduced.
My vehicle mileage and tire pressures are reported on a dashboard for me to monitor.
My network statistics are monitored and graphed.
Energy usage of electronics of interest to me are monitored and graphed.
I have a software defined radio that I’m able to use remotely. Using a smart outlet I’m able to turn it on and off remotely as well instead of leaving it on 24/7.
Unfortunately I have a camera that is cloud based my SO uses to monitor pets. Using a smart outlet I turn it on only when we are not home.
Some of this can be accomplished with less smart means, some of it can’t, but it’s been fun to get it all setup.
- Comment on What's Your Preferred Server Monitoring Method? 8 months ago:
I like monit. It’s simple to setup and pretty flexible.
- Comment on How do I learn about DIY modern electronics? 9 months ago:
A little bit of a different tack but check out getting into ham radio. There are a lot of kits out there that are reasonably easy to assemble and provide some good documentation on what you’re assembling.
And when you’re done you can talk to people all over the world with what you made!
- Comment on Discord is laying off 17 percent of employees 9 months ago:
Someone replied to me that you can run a bridge and never even know. I’m definitely trying it out now. Sick of all the nitro ads.
- Comment on Discord is laying off 17 percent of employees 9 months ago:
That’s great to hear. Somehow everyone and everything is on discord now and I really am not a fan of it what with all the pop ups and flashing shiny things to buy lol.
I’ll try to get my smaller groups on matrix
- Comment on Discord is laying off 17 percent of employees 9 months ago:
As far as self hosted I’ve heard a lot about matrix but haven’t tried it. Maybe I’ll give it a shot this weekend.
There’s also telegram, slack, etc if you want something else commercial.
- Comment on People who order "a decaff coffee with an extra shot" - why? 10 months ago:
It’s a shot of espresso which is only about 2oz (60ml). I’m guessing people are ordering a latte or cappuccino or something similar which is milk and coffee. The extra shot will make the drink have a stronger coffee taste.
- Comment on YouTube is deliberately crippling Firefox on ARM systems 11 months ago:
I tried it a few months ago and bought it before the trial was over. Took some time to build trust but it’s still on par with google if not better.
(My account probably looks like a shill for them but I swear I’m just a happy user)
- Comment on Google has sent internet into ‘spiral of decline’, claims DeepMind co-founder 1 year ago:
The few times I wasn’t sure I did the same search in google and got similar results so I’m 100% happy.
They even have some nice features like location aware searching, instant answer results (eg a box to convert currency), etc.
Additionally you can weight or even blacklist domains so you can completely remove results from Instagram.
- Comment on [seeking solution] self hosted search engine 1 year ago:
Huh…so there’s currently no open source search engine out there? I see a few crawlers, and some UIs the crawlers can use but no one project consolidating the two.
- Comment on Google has sent internet into ‘spiral of decline’, claims DeepMind co-founder 1 year ago:
At the risk of sounding like a shill sure! (I’m not, just a happy user)
Kagi is a paid search engine. They just introduced a 10/month plan that made the news which led me to their trial. I signed up a day later.
Because I’m paying money I have the feeling that I’m not the product unlike other free search engines. There’s likely no nefarious manipulation of search results and it’s refreshing to see new features rolling out.
It’s not all roses tho. Your searches are now tied to you and who really knows what’s going on with your data behind the scenes. Everyone needs to make their own decisions based on their priorities.
- Comment on Google has sent internet into ‘spiral of decline’, claims DeepMind co-founder 1 year ago:
This is what led me to Kagi. It’s been so liberating.
- Comment on good alternatives to raspberry pi which are cheap and efficient? 1 year ago:
You alluded to this already but ESP32 et al is really awesome but they (and arduino) are microcontrollers, not mini pcs like a raspi which have very different purposes.
You CAN run a webserver on a microcontroller but you’re essentially writing a program to do so. On a raspi you’re installing a full OS and then installing apps (nginx, Apache, jellyfin etc).
Conversely raspi has GPIO which can be used to easily interface with electronics just like the ESP32 but now you’re stuck maintaining a whole os to make your LED blink.
- Comment on VR still makes 40-70% of players want to throw up, and that's a huge problem for the companies behind it 1 year ago:
It’s well suited for anything where you’re seated, eg racing sims, flight sims, euro truck sim etc.
If you’ve got any interest at all in those genres give it another try and it’ll be hard if not possible to go back. Digital Combat Sim in VR is a whole nother game.
- Comment on Easy peasy 1 year ago:
I’ve been with digital ocean for more years than I can remember. I love Digital Ocean. Their core product is great, great UI, API, and their new products have been great as well. I’m using their K8s managed install for a year or so now on a product with no issues.
I believe they have 1 click installs for Wordpresss.
Here’s a referral code for $200 over 2 months if anyone wants to try it:
- Comment on How do you wrap your head around large established software projects in order to contribute to them? 1 year ago:
It’s easy! Don’t. It’s not possible to do.
Focus on one small area instead of the whole project. If there isn’t a “beginner” ticket selection then find one (or give yourself a goal). Figure out where that code is and start playing around with it.
As you branch out and work on more and more tickets you’ll gain more and more experience. You’ll understand how different blocks and systems interact and gain a better overall understanding of the code base in general but you’ll never be able to keep everything in your head. It’s just not needed.
And I don’t think it’s been said yet but as a former vi guy a good IDE was a huge boost to productivity. Ease of navigation around the code, intelligent searching, etc really helped out in the exploratory phase.
- Comment on Hiw do you observe your server funktions? 1 year ago:
I’ve used monit for maybe 2 decades now. Works great and simple to use.