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Joined 11 months ago
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Cake day: August 16th, 2024

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  • In my experience, Zoomers largely lack a lot of computer skills (specifically in troubleshooting), but, for me the huge difference between them and the older folks has been that the older folks will say things like “I’m just not a computer person ::laugh::” and refuse to be shown how to do anything whereas the Zoomer just doesn’t know, yet, but are more than willing to learn.

    ETA: NOTE: that’s just the generalized trend … some of the most knowledgeable technical people I’ve met are Boomers and some of the best computer techs I’ve worked with have been Zoomers.






  • He can only pardon federal crimes. In most states, governor’s can pardon state crimes … some states have different processes and some don’t allow it at all.

    Pardoning is typically also an admission of guilt…ie you’re guilty of the crime, but your sentence is completed, so you still have it on your record.

    With that said, I have absolutely zero clue how all that works with these blanket pardons where they’re just given out to thousands of people at once.


  • @AbraNidoran@beehaw.org already took care of what SMART means and is good for, so, I’ll address what the spirit of your message instead.

    For me, _almost _nothing in my house phones back anywhere with telemetry. Sure, anything that uses WiFi needs the network to run, but almost nothing has access to the actual internet because it’s on a VLAN that specifically blocks internet access.

    If you plan out the equipment you buy, you can ensure it’s safe (the absolute easiest way to do that would be to only buy z-wave or zigbee equipment since by design that’s a completely offline ecosystem, unless you buy a controller for it that requires the internet). With WiFi, I basically only buy stuff that can be flashed to ESPHOME, which removes its online requirements and puts a completely different firmware on the devices … this is more work than most people would want to do though, but you can always buy devices that were already flashed by someone else. IIRC, there are even some devices that come that way from the factory and use ESPHOME as an option. Or, they’re devices where I bought the sensors and microcontrollers and wired them up myself and put ESPHOME on the microcontroller.

    For me, I love walking into a room and the lights turning on. If it’s night, the lights are red to not jolt me awake. Later in the night, they’re dim and a bit more orangey rather than bright white. These are QOL improvements that I would not want to go back to not having.

    My garage doesn’t have any of the standard RF “clickers”/4-digit-code-panels connected because they’re garbage, but I have a relay sitting on it that I can remotely trigger and open the garage. I have motion sensors so that if no one has been in the garage for the last 5 minutes and the door is open, it’ll close the garage door (this was because people kept forgetting it was open.) I have sensors to let me know when the windows are open at the same time as the heating/air conditioning to try and prevent burning money. None of this is internet enabled, but it is controllable over my network and my network is accessible over my VPN.

    If the humidity is high in the bathrooms, it assumes someone is taking a shower and turns on the exhaust fans if they’re not already on. This can help prevent mold from growing. There are some real benefits to things being smart and I do 100% agree with you that apps that send data to companies on when we’re home/away and all that are BAD, but, if you plan ahead you can have your cake and eat it too, but the number of choices for equipment you’ll have will be lower, but at least your stuff will keep working regardless of internet access and regardless of whether the company that made the equipment is still around or not.


  • I have my bathroom fan turn on if the lid has been open more than 45 seconds … some things you just don’t (yet) know you need to be smart :-D

    For me, all of our lights are smart (some bulbs with smart switches that talk to the smart bulbs and some just smart switches), but, everything needs to be able to function like it’s dumb … nothing needs an app to function. The wall switches will function as expected … home assistant adds additional functionality, voice commands add extra functionality, but, it all works as you’d reasonably expect it to if you just go and hit the wall switch.




  • My grandma quit using a program that basically attempted to break your habits.

    She did things like:

    -if you normally have a smoke break at noon, wait til 12:30. Tomorrow do it at 11:30 instead

    -If you normally use a lighter, switch to matches, tomorrow use a lighter.

    -On Monday, Wednesday,Friday switch to a different brand of cigarettes … next week go the opposite days.

    -Smoke, but every other drag put a pen in your mouth instead.

    -Only allow yourself to smoke half a cigarette and then chew a stick of gum for the rest of the time you would normally smoke

    -Alternate smoke breaks between smoking and chewing nicotine gum or using the patch (I don’t think she used the patch so I’m guessing on that one).

    And just a lot of things like that that didn’t specifically stop you from smoking, but attempted to stop it being a mindless thing that you just do on reflex without much thought and made it so before lighting up she’d have to think about what the current rules are … at a certain point, the habit has been broken and you don’t seek it… it worked great for her. Was a 6 month or so process and then she never went back once she finished her last pack.

    There was a whole program around it with those types of rules and things you’d do and time restrictions on certain days and stuff … sorry, she passed a few years back and I can’t ask her the name of the program.

    Good luck! Just remember that even if you lapse, any length of time that you’re able to smoke less or stop smoking all improve your overall health! Even if you have a setback, any time that you stop is still a win!



  • From their webpage … sounds pretty cool:

    Sway is a tiling Wayland compositor and a drop-in replacement for the i3 window manager for X11. It works with your existing i3 configuration and supports most of i3’s features, plus a few extras.

    Sway allows you to arrange your application windows logically, rather than spatially. Windows are arranged into a grid by default which maximizes the efficiency of your screen and can be quickly manipulated using only the keyboard.


  • You’re Welcome! An extra safety measure might be to do a clone on all your repos to ensure you’ve got a local copy of them all and absolute worst case you’ll have a couple of levels of backup plans, but up until pretty recently they were pretty much the same app just re-skinned, so, I think you’ll be fine.