kbuck

I bought a Home Assistant Voice Preview Edition to try out. It's surprisingly good, but still falls short when compared to Google Home speakers:

- Wake word detection isn't as good as the Google Homes (more false positives, more false negatives - so I can't just tune sensitivity).

- Mic and speakers are both of poor quality in comparison to Google Home devices.

- Flow is awkward. On a Google Home device, you can say "Okay Google, turn on the lights" with no pause. On the Voice PE, you have to say "Hey Mycroft [awkward pause while you wait for the acknowledgement noise] turn on the lights" - it seems like the Google Home devices start buffering immediately after the wake word, but the Voice PE doesn't.

- Voice fingerprints don't exist, so this prevents the device from figuring out that two separate people are talking, or who is talking to it.

- The device has poor identification of background noise, so if you talk to it while there is a TV playing speech in the background, it will continue to listen to the speech from the TV. It will eventually transcribe everything you said + everything from the TV and get confused. (This probably folds into the voice print thing as well.)

On the upside, though:

- Setting it up was really easy.

- All of the entities I want to control with it are already available, without needing to export them or set them up separately in Google Home.

- Despite all of the above complaints, the device is probably 80-90% of what I realistically need to use it day-to-day. If they throw a better speaker and mic array in, I'd likely be comfortable replacing all of my Google Homes.

Works for me? Check the little "more info" button - it sounds like your browser is rejecting the TLS certificate, not completely unable to connect.

Mysa thermostats - don't integrate well with Home Assistant and can't even reliably follow schedule.

Every Samsung phone I've ever owned - great hardware, but the software is a mess, especially with all of the Samsung apps that duplicate the Google apps.

Sony smart TV - was excited about running Android TV apps, but the onboard hardware is so bad that everything lags, and I actually ran out of space after installing 10-20 apps (it only has 4GB of flash storage). Also, its Ethernet adapter has a hardware bug that occasionally freezes up my entire network by spamming it with flow control frames.

I was very happy to find that there are similar libraries for Mitsubishi units as well:

1: https://github.com/SwiCago/HeatPump

2: https://github.com/echavet/MitsubishiCN105Esphome

I've got this running on several units and it works great. If you buy ESP32 development boards with pre-soldered pins, you can even build the boards without soldering.

Or attach an ESP32 to the boiler's control board that closes a dry contact circuit...?

I'm especially curious about which ones are earning "life-changing" money for their authors. I couldn't find an easy way to list Substack newsletters by subscriber count, though. (By revenue would be even better.)

Roblox | Senior Software Engineer | ONSITE (San Mateo, CA, USA) | Full time

We are hiring systems engineers experienced in C++ to work on the game engine that powers our platform, supporting extensive user-generated content from 2M+ developers. We have three roles we're actively hiring for:

Senior/Principal Software Engineer - Network Transport: https://careers.roblox.com/jobs/5499152

The Engine Networking Team pulls the players together by ensuring the communication of the game state to all. You will help the players experience the game as a nearly synchronous world.

Senior Software Engineer - Foundation: https://careers.roblox.com/jobs/5377484

The Foundation team works on the building blocks of Roblox itself -- core C++ libraries. Your work will touch every part of the engine, from threading and memory management to physics and scripting.

Senior Software Engineer - Engine Reliability: https://careers.roblox.com/jobs/5555964

The Reliability team works to ensure that the Roblox Engine is as stable, reliable, and debuggable as possible. You will work to ensure that Roblox delivers world-class user experience while also supporting internal developers to root-cause issues and prevent recurrence.

You can install the microcode driver to have Linux provide the updated microcode, if you'd like. (Depending on your distro, it might already be doing it.)

https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/developer/articles/t...

Some (all?) Trane heat pump models are re-branded Mitsubishi units.[0] Not sure about Carrier.

[0] https://www.metahvac.com/

I think the big issue is the different "tuning" for each heat pump system. For example, a heat pump water heater needs a different maximum temperature than an air conditioner, and has much different cycling behavior. This leads to very different design decisions, including refrigerant choice, pressure, compressor type, whether the refrigerant loop is even serviceable, etc. (Some appliances operate at a refrigerant pressure so high that they require being fully assembled at the factory, which would be a non-starter for a manifold system like we're discussing.)

I think this might eventually become a thing once science gets us far enough that there's an "obvious" refrigerant choice for most applications, but we definitely aren't there yet. There are hundreds of different kinds that perform better or worse in different applications.

AFAIK all of the big commercial systems that do multiple different types of heat transfer use water to do it, thus bypassing the entire refrigerant selection issue. Right now the most advanced we can do is VRF ("Variable Refrigerant Flow") systems that can individually select air handlers for cooling or heating (i.e. move the heat from one room to another). These are still commercial units and not really available for residential installs.

MrCool has a DIY cassette that is designed to fit between residential joists: https://mrcool.com/diy-ceiling-cassette/

No idea if it's any good though, and I don't really like the big logo and big black IR receiver.

Just because a device isn't cloud-connected doesn't mean it isn't designed for planned obsolescence. For example, the ongoing cheapening of major appliances, or the DRM applied to printer cartridges and coffee pods.

This is a legislation problem IMO: companies need to be held to reasonable expectations when they sell a product. My ink cartridge shouldn't say it's "empty" when the page counter reaches 100 [and it's still actually full]. Neither should cloud devices go to the landfill because the company selling them decided that they don't want to support them anymore.

Companies foisting negative externalities on us (like more e-waste) in exchange for more profit are a blight and should be treated (and prevented) as such.

What do you mean by a "mesh-oriented obfuscation"? My best guess is: serving a different subset of the VM detection code to each client?

Site appears to be down. Mirror: http://web.archive.org/web/20230206232359/https://eulawenfor...

Anything dense (e.g. lasagna, meatloaf, etc.) is good for a lower power level / more time trade-off. It will end up more evenly warm without the edges exploding. I usually use power 3 or 4 for these dense dishes.

Panasonic "inverter" microwaves actually do reduce the power output. It's one of my favorite features. On power level 1 you can actually soften butter without melting random pits into it.

Unfortunately, at least on my current model, the UX to access this feature is very bad: repeatedly pressing the "power" button until it reaches the desired level. I've had other microwaves where you just key in the desired power after pressing "power", and much prefer that method.

I don't know whether Panasonic has licensed this to any other manufacturer.

Good. Spam calls and texts are a blight, and nobody was doing anything about it until regulation kicked in.

Last year, after receiving several spam texts from numbers that were registered to Bandwidth.com (which was already difficult to discover), I sent an abuse report. I was not only told that Bandwidth.com couldn't do anything about it (other than forward the report to the reseller), but also they couldn't even tell me who they were reselling services to due to privacy reasons, and did not even know who the end customer was. They advised me to contact the police... To report text message spam.

On most (all?) carriers, you can forward spam SMS messages to 7726 ("spam" on the keypad) to report messages as spam.

That said, I've got no idea if they actually do anything actionable with this data. It certainly doesn't seem to have reduced my spam volume. Now I just let Android Messages filter the spam out.

Assuming you're using Chargepoint level 2 chargers (3.3/6.6kW AC, not DC fast chargers), they are reporting energy delivered. There is no data channel to report energy stored; only level 3 (DC fast charge) charging ports establish a data connection.

FYI, it looks like you've been shadowbanned ever since a rather uncivil comment in 2013. Most of your recent comments are dead, the rest I assume someone hit "vouch" for.

Cloudflare won't tell you the abuse contact or the origin IP, they'll just forward your entire abuse report verbatim to the hosting provider of the booter, who will either ignore it or forward it (also verbatim and unredacted) to the operator of the booter. So nothing happens from the abuse report except that you tell the booter operator exactly who you are.

How many "stressers" do you think the feds don't have time or motivation to care about getting subpoenas for? Because I can guarantee you there are more than the "four dozen" taken down here, and the vast majority have their identities and infrastructure protected by Cloudflare -- who also profits from their existence.

Blind forces you to sign up with a work email address (matching domain name) and verifies the address. I'm not sure Glassdoor does any verification.

If you really need to verify that the user is an employee, validating an email address at the proper domain seems to be the best option, IMO. If you don't want the privacy implications of storing the address, just don't keep it around (make sure your logs don't have it either).

8.8.8.8 and 4.2.2.1 have strict rate-limits configured that make them uninteresting/unsuitable for reflection attacks. The real issue is misconfigured resolvers exposed to the internet, not intentionally-provided recursive resolvers.

If you'd like to have a private DNS server, it's fairly easy to set up your own recursor. (Just please don't expose it to the whole internet.)

Same here. Other people have probably collectively spent vastly more than 2 years' time mitigating and recovering from attacks launched by this guy's service. As a previous victim, I'm still glad to hear there are at least some consequences involved for booter operators.

Check out Synology NASes (and now they make a router too). Basically exactly what you describe.

Easier inventory management for stores like Best Buy. Instead of having to carry SKUs for the T-Mobile, AT&T, Verizon, etc. carrier-locked variant of each phone (which, I'll admit results in some combinatorial explosion), they can carry 1 SKU for each truly different hardware configuration. Then it magically "becomes" an AT&T locked phone when they insert the SIM in the store.

If you buy it subsidized or through a carrier payment plan, this works as intended (and they'll refuse to let you have the phone before the SIM is inserted). If you meant to buy an unlocked phone, you've been given an annoying lesson to buy directly from the manufacturer.

The phone wasn't remotely locked; Best Buy's entire new iPhone stock uses "flex activation" which will automatically lock the phone to the first SIM card that's inserted. Fi's primary network is T-Mobile, so for a Fi SIM, this means T-Mobile.

The blame here lies on Best Buy (for not making it clear that this occurs) and Apple (for designing and supporting "flex activation" -- which will still carrier-lock the phone even if a MVNO SIM, such as a Fi SIM, is inserted).

This is due to buying the phone from Best Buy. Best Buy's new Apple phones (even if claimed to be "unlocked") are configured to automatically carrier lock to the first SIM inserted. Fi's primary network is T-Mobile, so they lock to T-Mobile.

See the many complaints in these search results: https://duckduckgo.com/?t=ffab&q=best+buy+lock+to+first+SIM&...

The "live feed" on the home page of this site seems to be filled with some spammer's posts, who is, terrifyingly, requesting human kidneys in exchange for payment.

The orders are partially filled (either on the buy or sell side).

What this means is that the shares eligible to transact do so immediately, and the remaining shares sit on the order book and wait for someone to be willing to trade at that price.

There is a specific option that you can set (usually called "all or none") that will prohibit partially filling an order and only allow it to execute in entirety.