That’s the dream. After years I finally got serious about learning/implementing VLANs and have begun to isolate everything out/properly firewall them. Most of the smart home stuff is already Z-Wave/Zigbee, but the few devices that aren’t are mostly already migrated onto a dedicated IOT network, as is the hubs, where only devices that have business talking to each other can even see one another.

I have yet to play with tailscale, but it’s on the list.

I like smart home stuff. I hate my privacy being invaded. It’s a very thin line to walk.

A company recently released a product that promises to be Matter compatible. By the time the product arrived, they edited their product description to say it worked with Matter if you bought their always online hub, created an account, let their hub talk to the internet, and then installed their internet-connected plugin to Home Assistant. (So it’s not that HA talks to these devices, or that it talks to their hub. It logs into the company’s servers to get the current state of the device.)

I wrote a review outlining this. An AI bot sent me a message offering me additional products from this company. (Ha!) And included the line “We strictly adhere to data protection regulations” … in the U.S?

Laughably misleading.

I’m in IT, but not that kind of IT.

Last week I afflicted myself with the Location Services are turned off bug by installing the 23H2 update to duplicate an issue a user in my work area was having.

When I called desktop support, we could not replicate the issue after he remoted in.
He closed the Remote Desktop connection, and the issue reoccurred.
He remoted in. The popup vanished as soon as he connected. We couldn’t replicate the issue. He seemed dubious now. He disconnected. It occurred. I got a screenshot. He reconnected. We looked at the remote connection settings. Remote connections were set to override location. Disabled that. Issue presented. We both had a good laugh.

I know. I was just seeing if you would notice. awkward laughter

(But thanks, I was trying to wing the conversion and started off with 3.3ft =1m and then did the numbers meme while my fingers typed gibberish.)

I have an FDM printer (Ender 3 clone) that is mostly 2020 aluminum extrusion as the frame. A few years ago I found some 2020 on sale and built a set of shelves for my wife’s plants out of it. (Now - I know. It’s not the most economical use of materials, but it was the middle of winter, and I didn’t want to go work in the garage. Plus the 2020 was on sale.) It’ll support a slew of plants over a 4-foot span (~1.2m) without any sagging or other concerns. It can be wobbly side to side, but that’s a matter of bracing and connectors.

Many years ago, I discovered that my then-employer’s “home built” e-commerce system had all user and admin passwords displayed in plaintext at home/admin/passwords.

When I brought this to the attention of leadership, they called the “developer” in and he said “oh, well, that’s IP locked, so no one on the web can access it!” When I pulled it up on my phone, he insisted my phone was on the work WiFi, despite it being clearly verifiable that was not the case. (The same work WiFi that had an open public connection, which is the one my phone would have been on, if it were on it…)

He did fix that, but many other issues remained. Eventually a new COO hired someone competent as his ‘backup’, replaced our website and finally suggested he pursue other employment opportunities before he could no longer voluntarily pursue them. (There was concern he might sabotage.)

He’s a sweet guy. … Mostly. Very much in need of a lot of attention. Sometimes he just sits next to you on the couch and puts his paw on you if you’re not giving him enough attention.

Here he is posing with his sister as a prop:

This made me laugh so hard one of the dogs came to check in on me.

Oh, snap, bringing me the magic I need, but didn’t know to look for.

I’ve been refusing to update because of video station. Looks like I’m saving your comment for later.

The advice I needed and have not been able to find. I could kiss you. Or at least give you a fond nod.

But then, as now, it won’t understand what it’s supposed to do, and will merely attempt to apply stolen code - ahem - training data in random permutations until it roughly matches what it interprets the end goal to be.

We’ve moved beyond a thousand monkeys with typewriters and a thousand years to write Shakespeare, and have moved into several million monkeys with copy and paste and only a few milliseconds to write “Hello, SEGFAULT”

But now Reddit will know every subreddit you visit will be entirely your choice. Removing the random button improves the quality of user analytics.

It also allows for algorithms fined tuned to keep you engaged not to be waylaid by some random sub that gives you a “well, that’s enough internet for today” moment.
Purely speculation, but would not be surprised to learn that subs that don’t encourage more scrolling or interaction (subs that are reading heavy, or direct people off site and keep them there) are shown less frequently than others. A random button breathes life into subs like those, whereas an algorithm-driven feed would slowly strangle them.

You’re one of the founding members of the greater Seattle area polycule, aren’t you?

Well, I just realized I completely goofed, because I went with .arpa instead of .home.arpa, due to what was surely not my own failings.

So I guess I’m going to be changing my home’s domain anyway.

That’s the reason I killed IPv6 on my network.

Only when it’s traumatizing.

Things that seem to go well and then later need intervention are the worst.
Suddenly I’m Gandalf: “I have no memory of this place.”

I’d get a better ROI from selling my old account to spammers.

A hairy network issue!

Switch, wig out

The switch (that I’m returning today, after it failed completely yesterday evening) is a bit fancier than your average switch. It kept reverting to default settings, including its default IP address - which meant it was not using the same set of networking instructions as my router, preventing everything it was connected to from accessing the internet.

I had a switch wig out today and whatever it was doing poisoned all the dhcp leases on the network as they came up for renewal (assigned IPs on the wrong subnet - even though it wasn’t supposed to assign IPs at all). It took me a very long time to figure out, because not everything failed at once. Plus, even after I’d swapped the switch, some devices just started working, and others needed their leases reset manually. An hour in, my wife was in the fetal position clutching a squishmallow.

Even though Reddit knew that r/Place would attract an obvious message, what’s left after it’s done?
Reddit has already shown they’re contemptuous of their users and do not care about their opinions.

Is a protest that boosts site engagement really effective to a site that exists because of engagement?

I don’t think I’m being cynical when I say I think bringing back r/Place was a means to juice their numbers - a way to cover up falling user engagement.
My suspicion is they’re trying to buy time to come up with a better plan. r/Place represents another month of fooled advertisers.