Not the entirety of F-Droid being suspect, but the package available in the default repo on F-Droid is being updated by this dodgy person while the other versions are not. If they are uploading malware or making dodgy changes anyone who previously installed Syncthing-Fork could get this new version from the dodgy dev without notification.
This is why free software is so important. The company can just lie to you about their product and for some reason it isn't illegal. I really want to have a dishwasher and washing machine with an ESP32 controller and free software to control it, ideally with Home Assistant integration, but at this point I can't find anything.
I just bought a few bulbs from Aliexpress which came preloaded with ESPHome and got set up in about 2 minutes per device. They cost about $15-20 per bulb (AUD) and I am very happy with them.
I can see why you would feel that way but I came to a different conclusion. I agree with much of what he says given his position and circumstances.
The project is open source and anyone is welcome to fork it. He is not making something which will make money, provide a living, and secure his station as an open source guru. He is making something because he thinks it should exist and because he finds it interesting. He is not making something for end users, it isn't for them, it is for people who have enough interest and knowledge to figure it out given the massive leg up he has provided already.
This means he does not do a bunch of things that would pull beginner users in. For example, there is not a simple GUI installer for this. He doesn't sell kits to root your device. He doesn't sell little server boxes based on a raspberry pi. He doesn't have an app for quick discovery and configuration. All of these things would entice beginners and therefore induce them to install unsupported firmware on their several hundred to over a thousand dollar robot vacuum.
This would be hell. Each user with a new and unique way of not understanding the instructions would come up with new failures in an area where bricking your very expensive machine is easy. Can you imagine how much of a dick he would have to be to say "Nah, this is super easy, come give it a go" when the outcome would definitely be causing at least some people to lose hundreds of dollars in a few minutes? That would be him acting like a dick.
What he is doing has a second function. I have just ordered my first custom PCB. I have some components on the way and will be doing my second major electronics project once the parts arrive. I am much more experienced on the software end of things so I get all of the basics around using a terminal etc but now I am learning about using the UART interface and while it is a little bit sink and swim I am at a level where I understand how far outside my knowledge base this is and can take a reasonably informed risk. I am learning and growing and I am actually really excited. If it doesn't work I will know enough to be helped through by the community but my expectation is I will fail at first and maybe take a few weeks to figure it out. Because of that expectation I am not doing this after my last vacuum broke and now I just desperately need this to work, that would add so much stress, instead I am doing this in the least stressful and most enjoyable way possible.
If I had been correctly scared off early I wouldn't have lost a bunch of photos accidentally wiping a drive while installing Linux for the first time, so I would have used virtual machines for longer, but I also would have eventually gotten there. I got there by losing some data, but if I had a community around me it would have been better. He actively encourages community building and sharing knowledge. I think that is cool and would be an awesome outcome. I know I will be posting about my spare adapters once I am done making them to see if anyone else wants to learn how to do it.
I cannot deal with TVs in the background for this exact reason. Either I have something on or I don't, but never in the background. I can't and won't try to watch any sort of sport for this reason. That said, lower divisions may be a good option for you. Local groups are more likely to have less advertising and especially less video ads.
This whole article is full of links to other articles many of which are editorials and behind paywalls. It is also full of generalities and has a derth of actual measurable claims. How much is too much? If people are overshooting their protein allowance by 55%, what is that allowance and why is that the allowance we are measuring against? There is little discussion of the context of protein consumption. Are we talking about someone with kidney issues? Are we talking about someone with diabetes? Obesity? Bone mineral loss? Muscle loss? Injury?
This is a very general article to the point of uselessness. It also says almost nothing but takes a lot of words to do it. Not worth your time.
I have just purchased a Dreame L10s Ultra and have had the PCB for a breakout board made and components for setting it up ordered. In a few days I should get the last bits and I will be able to root the device and have it connect to Valetudo managed through Home Assistant. Fully local operation with basically the same features but none of the privacy issues. As soon as I can get it connected I will be able to use it just like a robot I actually own should without some random third party being involved in every single operation.
Basically no difference. You may get some small differences in synthetic performance benchmarks but for web browsing and video playing it should be negligible.
Nice. I would recommend measuring the usage not from what the device reports but from actually measuring at the wall socket. The conversion is likely meaningfully under the 95% efficiency of some tools and that waste is felt as heat. If you convert to 24V from 120V you will have a significant amount of heat as waste which is unreported in home assistant. If you have the option to use a relay it can actually turn the thing all the way off, allowing almost zero usage when not on, but it can be a little slower to respond.
Yeah, there is a massive difference between a 9 year old and a 14 year old. Someone who is 17 is not necessarily significantly different from an 18 year old, yet we have to draw the line somewhere. I think if you own and pay for the service it should be up to you at a service level, not up to the government to demand a random third party company be accessed to verify ID and so on. That third party company stands to make money while also being a wonderful target for hackers.
There are tonnes of ways but honestly, the easiest way is to do it at the ISP level. Have an internet connection you don't want used for adult material? Have an opt in service at the ISP to block XXX rated sites and maybe social media. If you are old enough to pay for your own internet you should not be required to jump through hoops to access what you want, but kids should not be thrown onto the internet without guardrails. Some kids will get around it but it would be an active choice, so most kids would not. And to be clear, this would be done at the ISP level where you already have verification of age built in to billing, so no additional privacy concern. Honestly, the fact that this is not the solution is what tells me all of this filtering is not about protecting kids, it is about centralisation and control along with pork barrelling for age verification companies.
Yeah, it is always fun having a climate destroying lie machine ruin the market for consumer products with an inevitable bursting of the bubble in a matter of months to years followed by a glut of products entering the market destabilising prices and likely killing smaller manufacturers, leading the further consolidation in the hands of the few remaining companies responsible for the bust in the first place. Capitalism is great. I love it. /s
Very nice, I love the overall effect. Once you have motion sensing are you planning on local reaction or more of a persistence approach? Like a motion sensor and then a timer for turning off or once someone enters the room keeping them on until they leave the room?
Honestly, I haven't tried backing up and restoring but it seems likely to work. I have however brought game files across and after copying them over I added them to Steam and the verified the files. It seemed to fix the permissions and ownership quite well, though that could have been luck.
Not necessarily. You don't actually need the fluid to be perfectly sealed out, just slowed down a lot. This means that you could run it open but with very close tolerances and there would be almost no leakage. You just need to make the gap small enough for the leakage to be trivial.
As for magnetic alignment, that is all about maintaining smooth operation without losing efficiency to friction. Instead of a guide with friction you could use magnetic attraction to keep things aligned.
I haven't seen anyone else pointing this out but in my moments of dealing with suicide I found greatest relief in helping those who were hurting. Your nephew is going to have a really hard time and his dad is going to be under a lot of strain. For the first month or so people will be there, trying to help. In three months people will have moved on but he won't have. It will get harder.
Being supportive after the first month and helping your nephews dad cope is the most directly impactful thing you can do. By that I mean offering to have your nephew over if that is suitable, maybe having a family get together and actively including both of them, and making sure the dad has some down time.
Obviously it is not your job and so on, he needs to manage his emotions and deal with his grief, but of all the ways someone could help giving your nephew another place to be for a bit of the time can be a massive help. It gives the dad a break, strengthens the bond between you and both your nephew and his father, and it gives your nephew a less stressed dad. It also let's you keep an eye out for trouble and makes you a trusted adult.
Yep, critical thinking enhances all other intellectual pursuits. It is so easy to fail at the critical thinking stage and go down a blind hole pursuing something absolutely nonsensical because you didn't check your basic assumptions.
I would want kids to learn about the Monty Hall problem, do a little Bayesian analysis, etc. I think they could learn through trying to smuggle some lies into a paper and then peer reviewing each others papers and finding the flaws. Kids are way more creative than they are given credit for and they would find ways of sneaking things through we wouldn't ever consider. Making it adversarial would prepare them for interacting with the huxters and frauds that make up a huge amount of modern life.
Not the entirety of F-Droid being suspect, but the package available in the default repo on F-Droid is being updated by this dodgy person while the other versions are not. If they are uploading malware or making dodgy changes anyone who previously installed Syncthing-Fork could get this new version from the dodgy dev without notification.