a1studmuffin

a1studmuffin , 27 days ago

Wow, it's pretty wild they didn't even attempt to encrypt or protect this data, even if it is local to your machine. What a treasure trove for malware to sift through.

a1studmuffin , 19 days ago

Is it? I skimmed the GitHub source code and couldn't see anything involving encryption, but it's totally possible I missed something. Perhaps just accessing the database from python is enough to decrypt it.

a1studmuffin , 1 month ago

The author had so many things to highlight that they didn't even mention "as of August 2024" being in the future, haha.

What a trainwreck. The fact it's giving anonymous Reddit comments and The Onion articles equal consideration with other sites is hilarious. If they're going to keep this, they need it to cite its sources at a bare minimum. Can't wait for this AI investor hype to die down.

a1studmuffin , 1 month ago

Uh oh!

a1studmuffin , 1 month ago

Has anyone tried self-hosting on a NAS or similar? I'd be interested to hear the practicalities of it, I imagine it's not exactly set or forget, and the realities of the enshittified internet present some obstacles, like ending up in spam filters etc.

a1studmuffin , 1 month ago

I did some more research after your comment and it does indeed sound like it's not for the feint of heart.

Spam seems to be one of the biggest challenges, both incoming and outgoing. For incoming, it's a constant arms race with spammers to circumvent spam filtering techniques. But at least that's something you have control over, you can just turn off your spam filtering and ensure you receive all important email. The real problem is ending up in other people's spam filters, which you have very little control over once you've decided on your mail server domain/certificate.

The crux of the issue seems to be that SMTP is ancient insecure tech designed for an innocent era when email was for universities only. We desperately need a more secure open source email protocol designed for the modern era, but capitalism isn't having it - instead we've got corporations wrestling for control of the next big thing with proprietary protocols... Discord, Slack etc. And big tech companies that continue using SMTP (Gmail, Outlook etc.) simply treat any servers outside their sphere with a high level of suspicion.

a1studmuffin , 2 months ago

Ah, that's interesting and makes sense. So I guess your best option (if you must use WeChat) is to use the international version of the app with as many permissions disabled as possible.

Or maybe look at the Matrix WeChat bridge? https://matrix.org/ecosystem/bridges/wechat/

a1studmuffin , 2 months ago

I'll level with you... I've never used Matrix either. 🤣 But all the cool kids around these parts recommend it, and I fundamentally agree with the cause of the project and saw they had the WeChat bridge, so thought I'd mention it.

a1studmuffin , 2 months ago

I feel like you could totally change the switch resistance with magnets. Electromagnetism goes both ways... apply a variable current to a coil in each key that repels it from or pulls it towards the base?

a1studmuffin , 2 months ago

... isn't that the point of mechanical keyboards?

a1studmuffin , 2 months ago

AliExpress is the worst at this. Which category should I disable? AliExpress, aliexpress, Chat or message push? And even if I figured it out, there's no way to stop store spammers from sending you useless messages constantly, detracting from actual sellers with questions.

a1studmuffin , 3 months ago

It might stop the heat though if he's a US puppet to appease congress.

a1studmuffin , 4 months ago

Also losing camera quality and banking apps/NFC payment sucks. Absolutely not the fault of LineageOS though, they're doing the best they can within the constraints.

a1studmuffin , 4 months ago

No fear-mongering here, I ran LineageOS for years as a daily driver and these were the problems I encountered. Your mileage may vary.

a1studmuffin , 4 months ago

As an engineer who's spent a good chunk of his career working on stuff that got cancelled, it's really not that bad. You're generally paid well and looked after, learn a tonne on someone else's dime, have good job prospects, a strong network of talented colleagues, plus most engineers are there for the team problem solving and challenge anyway. The final product release is just the cherry on top.

a1studmuffin , 4 months ago

Instead of trying to make a full electric car, I'm surprised Apple and Google aren't focusing on making a smart AI "head unit" that's compatible with third party car manufacturers. The head unit would control all aspects of the car through the CAN bus and also take camera/sensor inputs from the exterior of the vehicle, and be responsible for things like self-driving, lane assist and all those difficult AI-based features.

This way the car manufacturers could focus on what they do best (building safe reliable hardware) and outsource all the hard AI software problems to tech companies who specialise in this area.

a1studmuffin , 4 months ago

Couldn't agree more, but I'm just highlighting it seems like a much more profitable and attainable commercial goal for them in the short term than trying to enter the vehicle manufacturing space as a competitor. The fact there's an awesome open source project tackling this idea already (thanks for the link - I didn't know this existed!) says it's viable.

They've already dipped their toes in with Car Play/Android Auto and have the relationships with third party vehicle manufacturers, so this seems like a logical next step. Perhaps that's what they're actually doing by shifting their car team to AI.

a1studmuffin , 4 months ago

It's the most Los Angeles solution to a problem I've ever seen. Meanwhile London has had its underground trains since 1863.

a1studmuffin , 4 months ago

WhatsApp is closed source, and obviously it must be able to decrypt messages for the end user to read them. Anything could happen to the unencrypted data at this point. Therefore it's less secure allowing conversations to flow into that app.

a1studmuffin , 4 months ago

Thanks for clarifying, my bad!

a1studmuffin , 4 months ago

We should see an improvement in game quality for the platform once last-gen sales drop off enough that developers only need to target current-gen.

Right now any game that comes out for both PS4+5 is bottlenecked by PS4 memory and performance, with only easy wins taken for PS5 like higher quality assets and faster IO/FPS.

Designing a game for current-gen platforms from the ground up is when we'll start to see some more impressive features, but there's still money on the table for PS4 so it'll be a few years (IMHO) before we see PS5 exclusives as the norm.

a1studmuffin , 4 months ago

We don't even need to choose! Just use hours, months, years, decades! But no, Barbie movies.

a1studmuffin , 5 months ago

Glass arrived on the scene in 2013. Since then recording in public has become much more normalised... smartphone camera use, cars with dashcams and CCTV/face recognition have all increased in popularity. YouTubers, live streamers, creators etc. If it were released again today, I'm not sure it would achieve the same hatred it did back then, at least on the "creepy camera in public" point.

a1studmuffin , 5 months ago

The simplest automations are the best. An hour before I typically get up, if the bedroom is too cold, turn on the heater.

a1studmuffin , 5 months ago

It's a Mitsubishi Heavy Industries split system. The two options I had were an IR blaster or a DIY ESPhome-based module plugged directly into the unit that controls it over the SPI bus. I opted for the latter as it gives full status info in addition to control.

I've also got a Samsung unit in another room that I can control. For that one I use SmartThings... not ideal as it goes through the cloud, but I'll take what I can get.

If you've got an old-school heater, you might have luck with some of the smart thermostats designed to be retrofitted into old houses.

Edit: just looked up your heaters online. Since you've got a lot of them, and they look pretty old, I'm guessing the smart controllers are just acting as relays. So yeah perhaps an ESP32 relay module would be the way to go! Once you've got the code working for one, you could roll them out to the rest. You'd need some confidence working with relays and electronics of course.

a1studmuffin , 5 months ago

"Am I so out of touch?"
...
"No, it's the customers who are wrong!"

a1studmuffin , 5 months ago

Remember when light bulbs used to last decades? A phone battery that lasts that long is incompatible with capitalism.

a1studmuffin , 5 months ago

I'd much rather they invest efforts into supporting customisable phones. Instead of just releasing a few flavours of the same hardware each year, give us a dozen features we can opt into or not. Pick a base size, then pick your specs. Want a headphone jack, SD card, FM radio, upgraded graphics performance? No problems, that'll cost a bit extra. Phones are boring now - at least find a way to meet the needs of all consumers.

a1studmuffin , 7 months ago

That's an antitrust case if ever I saw one.

a1studmuffin , 11 months ago

Q. How do you know an open source project is written in Rust?

A. Don't worry, they'll tell you.

a1studmuffin , 11 months ago

And it's so nice having zero dependence on the cloud. If the internet drops out, everything still works, including the mobile app.

a1studmuffin , 11 months ago

It's up to you to make it cloudless, but Home Assistant is the only solution I know of out there that even allows this possibility. I refuse to use anything in my home that requires a third party app or cloud connection (aside from initial pairing so I can flash it with ESPHome or some other local-only firmware). Admittedly it complicates things, but the payoff is so worth it.