🤔

Aging helps. I’m not sure how or why, but these days, I couldnl’t care less about what strangers think of me.

I am consistently disappointed to see the top posts say to not buy a car whenever news like this comes out.

Your post at least provides an alternative.

I think your comment is the key. Many others tell what to do, but yours addresses the core in that you won’t be happy unless you decide or allow yourself to be happy (perception).

I used to mock those people who would say things like “smile in the mirror and tell yourself that it’s going to be a great day”. Later in life, I figured out that that’s what they needed to do, so good for them. For me, it’s something else. I need to be around nature to ground my feelings. Other times, it’s physical cardiac exertion, like a bike ride.

Medication can help if there’s a real medical problem, like depression. Self medicating can be dangerous.

That is the plan. Imagine an app that can provide personalized pricing to extract just less than the amount that would cause you to go elsewhere?

It knows when you get paid and can splurge. It knows when you are drunk or high and have less self control. It’s the digital pricing tags at the grocery store, but personalized to you (and not with your best interests in mind).

If it helps quell any anxiety, the ring cameras are not made of quality components. A neighbor with a south facing camera said that the camera was there when they moved in, but the lens is so sun damaged that you can’t see anything. It was installed maybe 2 years ago. They said that they only use it as a doorbell now.

As mentioned in another post, a malicious neighbor could blast UV light at the cameras day and night for a while to make the camera mostly ineffectve.

I’ve done this same thing. My dad lived on the other side of the country and it was a way for me to “take him out to eat” at a restaurant that he loved but was too expe dive for his tastes. Another time, I bought him a round of golf at a nice golf course that he would not treat himself to. He did not “believe” in gift cards wither, but on both occasions he mentioned that it was as if I took him to eat/golf and it was a nice gift for the guy who has everything.

No outrage, just a reminder to encrypt, VPN or whatever to protect yourself from surveillance.

I don’t like your phrase, “incompetence of those who designed the backdoor”. I was not in the room, but in my mind, the execs said “build a back door for the govn’t” and the engineers said “you can’t do that JUST for one party” then the execs said “do it anyways or get fired, we’re getting fistfulls of cash to do it” and the engineers said “I enjoy feeding my family, it’s your company anyways” and did it.

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.