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Really living this new podcast miniseries by @Paris Marx and Tech Won't Save Us, on data centers and their catastrophic effects.

(But as an Oregonian: Paris, "The Dalles" rhymes with "pals", not "balls"!)



I previously installed the .deb version of Firefox on my #Ubuntu desktop and did my best to switch my .desktop files and move my profile, because of a bug in the snap.

Somehow, the .desktop files I deleted have returned, and running firefox, which was previously successfully launching the .deb, is back to trying to launch the snap.

Whaaaaaaaat is this. Fucking stop.

in reply to Spencer

@Spencer Ubuntu does some crap where it puts firefox in a snap in apt, yeah
in reply to Spencer

Yeah they seem to have did the same when it comes to #Ubuntu Server and snaps.


Oooh, it's heating up!

Another product has entered the #HomeAssistant #VoiceAssistant ring, this one from FutureProofHomes. They advertise 4 microphones, a NeoPixel LED ring, music playback, 4 buttons (including a hardware mute), and a couple general-purpose sensors (humidity, temp, lux). The HAT can be attached to a Raspberry Pi or their Core Board, which contains an ESP32 chip.

To be honest, that's more or less my ideal feature list for a voice assistant satellite, and the form factor is great. I'd be shocked if Lewis from Everything Smart Home didn't also have his own device in the works, and of course, Nabu Casa is developing their in-house version, so between these and the ReSpeaker Lite, we're suddenly looking at 3-4 local-only voice assistant kits on the market by the end of the year.

It's an exciting time in the local #SmartHome community!

reshared this

in reply to Spencer

Good. I played with the ESP S3-box thing, and it just wasn’t good enough to be usable. I think it was a problem with the microphone quality. Oddly, using the tiny M5Stack Echo gave better results for me. In the end I put them all back in the “maybe this will work in the future” drawer and went back to the Google speakers to control stuff.
in reply to ZS

I had largely the same experience with the ESP32-S3-BOX-3. Cute proof of concept, but nowhere near reliable enough for regular usage.

ZS reshared this.



Iiiiinteresting. Seeed Studio, who make a pretty ubiquitous dual microphone/audio-out array called ReSpeaker, have announced a new array that can be used with an #ESP32 microcontroller. They specifically advertise it as being compatible with #HomeAssistant.

At $35, this might be a model of what an affordable local-only voice assistant box could look like. I doubt the ESP32 has enough resources to be used as a music streaming target (via something like Snapcast) at the same time, though.

reshared this

in reply to Alexey

Official hardware coming this year is confirmed! It was first reported (that I could find) by The Verge in April, and further commented on at the end of the Voice Chapter 7 livestream.
in reply to Spencer

Yes, I know, but the fact that seed studio will be producing it is inevitable.


The more I play with them, the more I just think #ESP32 devices are really neat.


Hey Netrunners, when you think of Classic NBN Shit, what comes to mind?

Not in gameplay, in flavor. Just NBN Things™, baybee.

#netrunner

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in reply to Spencer

Putting ads on the moon.

Whenever I see the real life companies doing like drone advertisements or whatever I’m like “that’s some nbn shit”

in reply to bdorfman

also: the orginal astroscript

(DC comics obviously an NBN subsidiary doing some stealth marketing for their business)

in reply to Spencer

The most likely real-world inevitability of all the corps. Ready Player One if IOI wins.


Man, I've had my #hamradio Technician license for something like two years, and I haven't even gotten on the air once during that time.

Just so much else going on in my life.

Unknown parent

in reply to Spencer

That shows that our hobby is near the top of the Maslow pyramid of needs.

First come many other important things.

Perhaps even other hobbies, if they immediately bring more joy (feeling joy or satisfaction is also more higher up than e.g. getting shelter and of food, or caring for offspring). Even sport is for many people higher in up, perhaps for it's health, endorphine release or social aspects.

en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maslow…



I'm surprised to discover that it's not easy to find caps for tactile switches that are made of, say, polished aluminum, or some other lightweight and cheap metal.

I'm scoping out materials for a #DIY #electronics project, and I'd love to have something with a slightly nicer feel than plastic.



Hey, fellow therapists and counselors of the Fediverse! Where are you at?

I'm low-key looking for a server where I can set up a professional profile, but I'm also just interested in saying hi. 👋🏻

#therapist #therapists #counseling

in reply to Spencer

you’re so welcome! I think connecting with other therapists is always a good thing to do.


my kingdom for a file-based #selfhosted wiki with Markdown support and a clean, modern UI 😭


When I upgrade my #HomeServer next, I'm going to be moving to a Docker Compose-based system rather than the current #YunoHost system I'm running. I have some learning ahead of me, since I'll need to brush up on port forwarding and DNS, and have never used Docker or Docker Compose, but as I've thought through the questions I want to answer for myself, I've been... a little surprised at how few lingering question marks I have.

Is it really going to be as simple to get going as I think? 🤔

in reply to Spencer

it will either be incredibly trivial or soul-crushing;y complicated.


"A new Home Assistant voice control hardware device running Home Assistant’s local smart home voice assistant is planned for release at the end of the year."

There it is!

#homeassistant #SmartHome

Knut Branson reshared this.



Salem, Oregon politics; sarcastic exasperation
Oh good, looks like #SalemOR is now gonna have our own mini version of #Spokane's Mayor Woodward for a bit. Great.


Hey community! I'm looking for a #selfhosted alternative to Google Photos for my family. I'm interested in something with an easy to use UI, automatic face tagging, multi-user support (including shared albums and, if possible, automatically sharing photos of designated faces), and a good mobile app that supports automatic syncing with device photos.

I think I've narrowed the options to #NextCloud Memories and #LibrePhotos. Does anyone have any experience with using either as a Google Photos replacement? Can you speak to how you like them, how you decided on them, or anything that might help the choice?

in reply to Spencer

Hot damn, I was aware of Immich, but didn't realize it was this popular! My concern with Immich right now is its warning that it's still under heavy dev and shouldn't be relied on as a daily driver.
in reply to Spencer

I don't know if you're still looking, but #immich immich.app/ is a good looking solution that is being backed by Louis Rossman's. Billionaire Buddy as a #selfhosted #googlephotos #alternative


Dang, what a Thursday surprise: Home Assistant has released an application that seamlessly integrates with the HA platform and enables music playback from multiple streaming services (including a local media library or self-hosted music server) to multiple target devices.

I strongly suspect that in the next year, we'll see the Home Assistant team announcing their own, local-only smart speaker device: something that can integrate with Home Assistant, process spoken commands (using Voice Assistant), and play back music (using Music Assistant). It seems to be what the organization has been building toward.

#homeassistant #smarthome #selfhosted #SelfHosting

reshared this

in reply to Spencer

As it turns out, when I posted this, it had already been reported that Home Assistant plans to release their own local smart home assistant by the end of 2024, which makes my prediction much less impressive.

In my defense, I plead ignorance.



@Bonfire This is certainly just a minor quality-of-life thing, but does Bonfire support adding custom emoji/emoticons? If not presently, might it in the future?
in reply to Spencer

currently we support displaying custom emoji but adding your own is still to-do: github.com/bonfire-networks/bo…


a social network I knew implemented federation and then nobody could use the letter E
in reply to Spencer

federation? hard NO from me. the idea that someone else runs my server is just not okay with me.


I once saw one of those helpful single-purpose webpages, in the same family as the Motherfucking Website series, explaining that when you ask for technical support, you should ask for what you want to do instead of how you think you'll do it. It probably had some catchy name or phrase.

I can't find it now, though. Anyone happen to know what I'm talking about and have a link?

reshared this

in reply to Spencer

Not the site you’re looking for, but near and dear to my heart: nohello.net/
in reply to Spencer

how the FUCK did you dig up a 160 day old toot to reply to?

(This is me asking in amazement, to be clear.)

This entry was edited (1 year ago)
in reply to genehack

It only took a couple of minutes of scrolling through my posts on my server. It was lunchtime and my daughter was napping. I was very motivated. 😅
in reply to Spencer

My first wife was a reference librarian, and early on explained to me the concept of the "reference interview”, which is how they handle this problem.

Customers come in asking about Y; a significant part of the reference librarian's job is playing Q&A to tease out the X that they actually *want* to know.



fucking ghouls
in reply to Spencer

Not that I never shop there—just that they particularly seem to want to cultivate the "liberal darling" image.
in reply to Spencer

@Spencer This rings true to me, the façade looks very progressive, I’ve only heard about their union-busting practices today from this thread.


Finally got my #3Dprinter back up and running, after a ridiculously complicated saga installing a BL-Touch probe.

My first test print failed due to what I think is under-extrusion, although I'm not certain of that.

God, I want to be done troubleshooting and just have a machine that works again.

#3Dprinting

in reply to Spencer

@Spencer Maybe the real 3D-printed treasure was all the fiddling we made along the way?


@HydroponicTrash It was great to hear you on It Could Happen Here! I saw the episode on my podcatcher and was like, "I think I know who this interview is with..."


Pet peeve: Podcasts with dramatic shifts in volume between segments.

I'm looking at you, S1E102 of Live Like the World is Dying.

in reply to Spencer

I envision a podcast where the editor thinks making it louder or softer is equivalent do putting a "bum bum BUUUUUUUUUUUUUMMMM!!!" sting in there. And wants to make sure the audience understands that this next segment is a real twist! 😜


@Bonfire Is there a target release date (or even a window) for 1.0? I'm planning to make some changes to my home server this year, and I'd love to install a release version of Bonfire as part of that.
in reply to Spencer

we’re working on the last few milestones towards 1.0 at the moment github.com/bonfire-networks/bo… and hope to have the RC1 (release candidate) ready soon, but the honest answer is “when it’s ready”


I have a lot of aspirations for 2024, but they all largely have to do with building things.

Learning how to make and repair instead of buy and replace feels like such an important set of skills at this stage in my (and the planet's) life.



When you ask a business for some form of compensation because they screwed up, how do you like to phrase it?

I'm realizing I hold back on doing this, usually simply settling for them doing what they were supposed to in the first place, because I don't have a script that works for me. I don't want to be a dick, but there are times when a business misses the mark enough that I want some form of making-it-right, and I don't quite know how to phrase that.

in reply to Spencer

@Spencer The way I've been doing is listing the exact issues and comparing them with the expectations based on an invoice or a reasonable time frame.

Here's my last emails in a support conversation that started about a coffee table with a foldout surface which mechanism failed 6 months in:

So far only small arms have fallen off from the lifting mechanism (on the other side too since I submitted this request). However, I couldn't find a way to secure them back in place since they don't use regular nuts and bolts.

Either I would need guidance on how to fasten the small arms again (both the one with the spring and the one without) or a complete replacement of the lifting mechanism if it isn't possible/wanted.

If neither are possible, I would like a significant refund, we were only able to fully enjoy this coffee table for less than a year which wasn't the plan for this piece of furniture.



I've got a bunch of hardware upgrades for my home server waiting to be installed, and I'm wondering if this is a good opportunity to switch from #YunoHost to a more hands-on system, like Proxmox + Docker.

Advantages: More flexibility in what I can host, not having to wait for apps to be packaged, ostensibly more control

Disadvantages: I haven't the slightest fucking clue how to set up or admin a server like that and don't even know where to start 😬

Can't say I'm eager to spend hours monkeying with configuration and trying to wrap my mind around networking, but I also would love to have more control over my server...

#SelfHosting



decades from now, future anthropologists will be fascinated by the association between images of young women studying in front of a window and downtempo music


Today I pitched a name for a Jinteki agenda in the upcoming #Netrunner set that I think is rad as fuck.

If it makes it in, I'll let you know.



I just learned @Bonfire has topics on their roadmap, even if it's not for their 1.0 release.

This is a killer feature for me and I wish more social platforms had it. The fact that it's on their roadmap, along with circles for audience management, makes me very excited to check them out (once 1.0 is out and available for YunoHost).

Cyber Yuki reshared this.

in reply to Spencer

Holy shit it already has circles??? 🤯
This entry was edited (1 year ago)


there's, like... not a day that goes by that I don't think about #Netrunner
in reply to Hypolite Petovan

Hush, you (said with friendly affection).

I almost put an ironic "I'm not sure this is healthy" on the post, but I realized I don't want to play that game. Having thoughts and interests is fine and it's not harming anyone (including me) to think about something I enjoy.

in reply to Spencer

@Spencer Of course not, I was just riffing on the specific way you worded your original post!
in reply to Hypolite Petovan

I figured as much! I was trying to contextualize without coming out swinging at you. 😊 No hard feelings on my end.
in reply to Spencer

The nice thing about that @spencer is #Netrunner rewards the obsession.

That, and the loads of really fun and nice people who share the obsession.



It never fails to amuse me when someone comes to a board games community with a post touting the passion-project game they've painstakingly designed over five years or whatever, they want to know how to get it published, and they get asked how playtesting has gone—

"What's playtesting?"

reshared this



I have discovered I don't know where the keys to my bike lock are. 😕


I've been working on building my own #Hugo static website for over a year. (Granted, it's the year I became a parent, and I've had a lot going on.) I want the satisfaction of a site I built by hand and understand intimately, but I'm also feeling the squeeze: I would like to have a website now, thank you—and I'm starting to reach the part of the project where I need to actually learn if I want to develop productively, instead of halfassedly copy-pasting things together and crossing my fingers.

Maybe this is my sign to turn to a simple off-the-shelf theme so I can get started and let the pressure off.

#indieweb

in reply to Spencer

as someone who also at times has spent way too much time fuzzing about with details: get *something* online first IMHO. And the great thing about your personal site is that you only have to care about the bits you care about right now: If your mood shifts from "I want to fiddle with template design" to "I find design annoying right now", you can drop it and pick it back up later if you want. But having *something* online is important because it enables picking the next goal by mood.
in reply to Spencer

I've found #Hugo to have a significant learning curve. I started with my own theme and did struggle a bit building a mental model of it.
#hugo


Thanks to technological issues today, a meeting I tried to have this morning with someone who was already frustrated with me and my office is now scheduled for next week.

I am ~70% confident I can handle that meeting in a way that helps them feel heard and on the same page, but I'm definitely nervous about it regardless.



I'm on the lookout for gentle instrumental #music I can put on for my daughter at bedtime. Piano, violin/viola/cello, acoustic guitar, flute—I'm open to all sorts, I'm just looking for a slower tempo and a relatively subdued soundscape.

Any recommendations?

in reply to Spencer

Moby's "Long Ambients 1 - Sleep" is pretty good for this.


It's November 4 and it's 61°F here in the Willamette Valley.

This is so not okay.



Today's the first day I've felt an autumnal chill in the air.


fuck yeah


I went to see a local community theatre's staging of A Gentleman's Guide to Love and Murder recently, which puts me in a terrible dilemma.

On the one hand, I would really love to write a review and put my critical thoughts into words. Art criticism is a hobby I don't often get to indulge.

On the other hand, damn near nobody who would read it here would have any context at all, unless they were familiar with the script.

This might just remain one I chat with my wife about. 😆

in reply to Spencer

@Spencer Just write it on your blog and link it here, that’s what I do with my ramblings nobody cares about!


I got an #AeroPress this weekend and made my first cup this morning, using James Hoffmann's recipe, and… yum.

Dang, I can make #coffee this tasty at home now?

in reply to Spencer

I love the Aeromatic app for different recipes to try:
apps.apple.com/au/app/aeromati…
in reply to Spencer

I had to make myself a second cup at lunch because it was just so goshdarn good.

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