Similarly, I have a cuckoo clock. I could watch the internal mechanism for hours.

Given my skill with 3d model creation, i'd be more likely to create something that would hurt me than inflicting harm on someone else. Mostly when I take that razor sharp tool to remove anything from the build plate, but also just my awful measurements and tolerances.

How long before power is available on the job site? I have been involved in building houses and the power panel is the first wall to be built so that power is available to the crew. Could you strap the device to a tree and power off of a car battery until the on site power is available?

Using a large external power source with a power on/off timer, running only during daylight hours could save lots of watts.

I've looked into solar for a bird house camera and it was not a trivial project when you get to the short winter days and potentially cloudy skies.

I had to double check that I didn't write this because those words could have literally come from my fingers.

I've run the gamut with these apps and none seem to really work I've even tried a few paid ones. These days, if you're not in my contact list or you don't provide caller ID, I don't answer.

I've been doing street complete for over a year now and didn't know how much I would enjoy it. It's also doing something for the community of people who use open street map data (usually hobbyists or folks looking for an alternative to the privacy violating giants). I feel proud of my work when I see my contributions on OSMAnd+ or when I post a picture of a place and somebody can use that data to contribute to the map.

Perhaps I've been naieve.

This has been happening for a while. Most starter homes in the US are townhomes, detached townhomes or small single family homes in a denser neighborhood. Through the years, the building code has changed bit by bit to make those homes unaffordable. It's similar to how you can pay half the price for a car in Mexico; there are much less mandated safety features. In houses, there are new energy codes (good for the environment) additional safety features like fire sprinklers and other similar things. Additionally, labor is more expensive, appliances and building materials are more expansive.

On the other side, you have people who have lived in their house for decades. The house (actually land) value has increased steadily and maybe they've kept it up, remodeling or putting in an addition. Now their kids are all moved out, they've retired and they're ready to downsize, but the house they bought so long ago has appreciated and selling it to downsize would trigger a huge tax event on the appreciated value. They're better off (financially) to keep it, pushing new buyers to look elsewhere.

It's a complex problem intermixed with policy and also all the corporations mentioned elsewhere who have learned to profit from the broken system.

I have local incremental backups and rsync to the remote. Doesn't syncthing have incremental also? You have a good point about syncing a destroyed disk to your offsite backup. I know S3 has some sort of protection, but haven't played with it.

I have tailscale mostly set up. What's the issue with USB drives? I've got a raspberry pi on the other end with a RO SD card so it won't go bad.

This reminds me that I need alerts monitoring set up. ; -)

I'll have to check this out.

I attended some LUGs before covid and could see something like this being facilitated there. It also reminds me of the Reddit meetups that I never partook in.

That's something that I hadn't considered!

I wasn't aware of the untrusted setting. That sounds like a good option.

Yes. It's the "put a copy somewhere else" that I'm trying to solve for without a lot of cost and effort. So far, having a remote copy at a relative's is good for being off site and cost, but the amount of time to support it has been less than ideal since the Pi will sometimes become unresponsive for unknown reasons and getting the family member to reboot it "is too hard".

You're exactly right on both counts. When you hear it from politicians, the sound bite (byte?) is "to protect the children" which is ambiguous. I take it to mean to protect the data of my children, somebody else takes it to mean to protect my children from being brainwashed and the children running the social media companies take it to mean it's protecting their right to wealth. It's win win win!

If the US govn't were serious about protecting people, they'd implement GDPR and put data privacy into the hands of the individual.

One thing I forgot to add to this was a different article by the same author: https://pluralistic.net/2024/08/19/apologetics-spotters-guide/

Referencing a book, the article lays out the corporate BS playbook for pushing back on changes. In the anti monopoly ad space, they're currently running play 1: there is no problem, people want targeted ads.

I feel like the whole advertising machine needs to be reimagined. I'm not opposed to learning about new and better products, but I've been conditioned to immediately distrust anything coming to me in the form of an ad. Pair this with the mindset of advertisers that they can't do their job without stalking every individual and it's a recipe for a global-level human rights violation.

that could be, but reading between the lines, it seems that the judges have just been brainwashed to think like the media companies want. The article mentions "users WANT targeted ads" and yet when given the option, 90% of FB users shut off targeting.

I think you're missing the point.of the essay. He seems to be saying that Apple has decided what content you should be viewing and that they have captured the "free market" because no amount of consumer crying will change it.

Consuming the content another way won't affect Apple in any way since they'll keep repeating their behavior. The author is saying that the government regulators need to get involved to restore your rights on what you can do with a device that you purchased. Near the end he even goes on to say that you (a consumer) have implicitly waived your right to sue Apple for this.

I guess the only option is to vote or maybe not use Apple products (but are the alternatives any better?)

I like the Van Halen brown M&M version. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/why-did-van-halen-demand-concert-venues-remove-brown-mms-from-the-menu-180982570/

Take some time and really analyze your threat model. There are different solutions for each of them. For example, protecting against a friend swiping the drives may be as simple as LUKS on the drive and a USB key with the unlock keys. Another poster suggested leaving the backup computer wide open but encrypting the files that you back up with symmetric or asymmetric, based on your needs. If you're hiding it from the government, check your local laws. You may be guilty until proven innocent in which case you need "plausible deniability" of what's on the drive. That's a different solution. Are you dealing with a well funded nation-state adversary? Maybe keying in the password isn't such a bad idea.

I'm using LUKS with mandos on a raspberry PI. I back up to a Pi at a friend's house over TailScale where the disk is wide open, but Duplicity will encrypt the backup file. My threat model is a run of the mill thief swiping the computers and script kiddies hacking in.

I've always been fascinated with the Holocaust and so when there was an interview with a Holocaust survivor on 60 minutes, I had to watch it. The woman said a bunch of stuff, but what stuck with me is that she said that, "people need to be given permission" to act badly. The episode showed previously undiscovered notes and pictures from one camp, showing officers having a picnic and enjoying themselves after a hard day of???

Her point was that these people were given permission. I now see it everywhere. Food fight in the school cafeteria? There were a few instigators who gave permission to the rest. A city protest that turns violent? Again, a few vocal minority of the group started the violence and then the rest joined in. I see it at work and I also see it on-line. Anonymity and lack of accountability also enhances the effect.

Whether the instigators are real or bots doesn't really matter because they "gave permission" to the rest to misbehave.

Found the episode: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/pictures-show-nazi-life-at-auschwitz-as-jews-died-in-gas-chambers-60-minutes/

I was about to correct you because I've done lyft on web, but it looks like it's not supported anymore.

https://ride.lyft.com/not-supported

You're doing God's work!

Over my career, it's sad to see how the technical communications groups are the first to get cut because "developers should document their own code". No, most can't. Also, the lack of good documentation leads to churn in other areas. It's difficult to measure it, but for those in the know, it's painfully obvious.

🤔

I haven't been out there in 15 years. I'll have to check it out again!

I don't know the legal side, but employers don't want you to talk about your compensation with anyone. Maybe it's legal, but definitely frowned upon.

Garden & walks fix a lot. Also, if you eat it off the plant directly, it doesn't count against your diet!

I wanted to quit nagging my kids to close the pantry door. It conflicts with the fridge door and they're both getting banged up pretty bad. I replaced one of the pantry door hinges with a spring hinge (and removed the latch mechanism from the handle) and now the pantry door closes on its own. Sometimes, I hear them fling the door open and hit the fridge anyways, but I giggle just a little when it bonks them on the head.

Consider what would happen if employees across the globe posted to an open database about their employer, position title, salary bonus and health care information. I'm sure we'd all be sued. How is this legal?

In the US, I've noticed several places, mostly restaurants that now charge a convenience fee for credit card transactions. Double bonus for cash. I've even started using checks again as they don't have a fee.

You don't even need to self host. Murena offers up to 1G (I think) of storage for free. I had that on one of my phones.

I use OsmAnd almost exclusively, but mostly as a navigation aid and not for finding places. I like to know where I'm going before I leave so I can plan the route and timing my departure. If there is a place or address that is not in OSM, there are various address to coordinate searches that I'll add as a favorite.

I am mapping cities as often as I can with StreetComplete, but most of my quests are about sidewalks rather than places. One day, I would like to learn more advanced skills so I can map a neighborhood or business.

Jeff? Is that you, son? I told you that it was nonnegotiable, now get off the internets, I'm expecting an important telephone call and don't want you tying up the lines.

While there are a lot of good technical suggestions here, I've found that a conversation goes a long way. In my experience, when talking with loved ones, explain your emotions. Not "I hate this" or "the governments are listening!", but those core emotions. "Having a device in my room that is always monitoring me makes me feel anxious and I don't feel comfortable in a place where I should feel safe." Make sure that the dialog is calm and remains about your feelings until you know that you're being heard. If you aren't, try other phrases or examples.

Once you've established your feelings, address their concerns and feelings (active listening). It sounds stupid at first, but it works. "I hear that you are frustrated when I don't come down for dinner immediately." Finally, propose some solutions that meet everybody's needs and that the parties can select one to try out for a week and evaluate it's effectiveness, trying new things until a mutually beneficial solution is found.

Good luck. Please post the outcome!

It's going to boil down to your definition of "justified".

In my experience, almost all confrontations between nations comes down to resources or access to resources. In this case, I read an opinion article suggesting that Russia wanted access to the Black Sea for access to or less expensive transport of oil. I also read that Russia was displeased with Ukraine's strenghtening alignment with the USA.

Another perspective is that Ukraine used to be part of the USSR and Putin, whose popularity was waning, wanted to "make Russia great again" by reuniting the USSR under Russia control.

Back to my original point, was it "justified"? Not in my opinion, but in the minds of some Russians, Ukraine is acting very "un-Russian" and so they must be put in their place or taught a lesson.

Another observation of mine is that countries continue to behave like toddlers in the sandbox. They don't talk out their differences, they take the toy that they want, regardless of who has it and if things don't go their way, they throw sand.

I'm not as enraged by this as most, but I think the true test will be to see if this feature is disabled by default in future releases. If they actually do listen to their users, that's better than any of the other big players.

I read a bit about the new "feature" and it seems to me that they're trying out a way to allow ad companies to know if their advertisement was effective in a way that also preserves the privacy of the user. I can respect that. I did shut it off, but am also less concerned because I have multiple advertisement removal tools, so this feature is irrelevant.

The fact that it's enabled by default isn't comforting, but who would actually turn this on if it were buried in about:config? In order to prove its effectiveness to promote a privacy respecting but advertisement friendly mechanism, this is what they felt that they had to do.

Of course, I could easily be all wrong about this and time will tell.

I don't know if this applies directly, but in my early days of hosting a server for fun, I installed a telnet server because my phone didn't have SSH at the time. I forgot to close it when i was done and someone got in and installed a password sniffer. This was a Slackware box, IIRC. My only indication that there was a problem was that the "." & ".." directories didn't appear from an "ls -Alf". I pulled the network cable and booted to a boot image and discovered that many key system utilities were replaced with imposters that would mask that there was an intruder. The '"ps", "ls" and other utils were symlinked to the "..." dir in /usr/local/lib.

I didn't trust anything on that server and nuked it. Now, anything that's internet facing is built from ansible and the config is stored in a repo and the repo is backed up on a drive that's physically disconnected except when backing up. I've messed up the initrd from time to time and it's usuall easier for me to reimage than try to fix it.

Thank you for a thoughtful post with citations and quotes. After reading the whole page by Mozilla, it seems like they're taking steps to show advertisers how they can get what they want while preserving people's privacy. I can live with that. They're trying to build a win-win scenario.

I'll still block ads. I'll still reject cookies, but I feel like it's a reasonable feature THAT I CAN SHUT OFF. I'm still in control of my browser! Great!

Look at the strangler pattern in microswrvice architecture. Applying this to your scenario, set up a front end to YouTube, cache the results locally (probably host in a place that allows it). Also host videos from other platforms like peertube. Once you have a lot of users, slowly prioritize "free" videos over YT content.

It's not likely to happen, but it's the pattern that FB uses to present news. First they showed a link to the story and you'd click through, then they required more of the story, then when all were hooked, they demanded the whole story to be displayed, effectively stealing all the users and the ability to advertise.