Mister_Snuggles

I recently discovered that the Files app on iOS/iPadOS can connect to SMB servers, so my solution is to just use the NAS that I've already got. Windows, MacOS, and Linux can also connect to SMB just fine and I'd be shocked if Android couldn't also do this.

Rule 1: There are user accounts, but they're local to the NAS. I think it meets this one.

Rule 2: Setting up the NAS is likely out of reach for many non-technical users, but using the files app and doing stuff in it is perfectly reasonable. Partial marks here.

Rule 3: It's consistent in the sense that every platform uses its native file manager to connect to the NAS and manage files. Managing files on each platform is different, but you're already dealing with that difference. I'm calling it a pass.

Rule 4: The NAS is the junk in the middle, so this is a fail.

This really feels like a game of whack-a-mole.

Personally, I think DoH was a mistake. Instead of the network admin configuring the name resolution services (via DHCP, for example) each app has a hard-coded list of IP addresses that it will use to resolve hostnames. Instead of a system resolver that does the job we now have a resolver, complete with hard-coded server configuration, baked into various applications/devices.

I'm a bit confused by this comment. The assembly instructions[0] clearly show screw holes on the back of the unit and it appears to even include a template for putting the screw holes into the wall you're mounting it to. It doesn't look like the holes would be suitable for mounting under a table though, they'd probably prefer that you replace the table with a STARKVIND.

[0] https://www.ikea.com/ca/en/assembly_instructions/foernuftig-...

I’ve got two of the table version and find the heights to be fine. The one in my living room, used as an end table, seems to be slightly higher than my non-IKEA end table. It’s definitely not a table for doing “stuff” (working, eating, etc) at.

The other one is in my home office and serves mostly as a step to help the cats get to the window, the short height is a definite benefit here!

Right now the air quality sensor is in the basement, and the purifiers I'm comparing it to are upstairs. It's not a fair comparison, it just "seems" to be reporting using a different scale.

My plan is to put the sensor near one of my STARKVINDs and see how the numbers compare. This will tell me if they're measuring the same thing and reporting it at the same scale. Once I understand what the sensor is telling me a bit better, I'll put it in a more useful place. Your suggestion of putting it closer to where you sit is a very good one.

I really like this purifier's big brother, the IKEA STARKVIND, which is available in both regular[0] and table[1] versions.

The table version is nice because, assuming you place it somewhere you want a table, it takes up no room. The regular version is awkwardly large, so placement is a bit more of a challenge.

The killer feature for me is that its air quality measurements and controls are all exposed via Zigbee, and it works very well with Zigbee2MQTT and Home Assistant.

Related to this, IKEA has recently brought out the VINDSTRYKA[2] air quality sensor. Unfortunately the PM2.5 measurement (as reported by Zigbee2MQTT/Home Assistant) doesn't seem to match up with the same measurement reported by the STARKVIND. To be fair this is just a feeling, I have NOT conducted head-to-head testing.

[0] https://www.ikea.com/ca/en/p/starkvind-air-purifier-white-sm...

[1] https://www.ikea.com/ca/en/p/starkvind-table-with-air-purifi...

[2] https://www.ikea.com/ca/en/p/vindstyrka-air-quality-sensor-s...

> There is not an easy, straight-forward way to download your archive from iCloud.

I use PhotoSync[0] to copy photos from my iPhone to a NAS. It's an excellent program.

It will even download photos from iCloud as needed and can do format conversions. I run it every few days to push new photos to my NAS so that I've always got a local copy (these also get backed up to Backblaze B2 nightly). The format conversion lets me keep HEIC+JPG pairs of my photos, so I have the original and something that's more readily usable.

What I really want is something that will do the same thing, but with iCloud Drive. I keep a bunch of stuff in there and it bothers me that I don't have a reasonable way to back it up. Apple's recommended methods[1] leave a lot to be desired.

[0] https://www.photosync-app.com/home

[1] https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204055

Unfortunately in Edmonton, the LRT is largely on the honour system. There are no fare gates, turnstiles, etc, to derive an accurate count from. Any passenger counts presumably come from statistical sampling or from checking fares as they exit the system (this is an occasional enforcement activity, not an everyday occurrence).

There is a pilot project[0] to put turnstiles/gates at two stations, but this is to keep the homeless out of the stations, not to count passengers.

[0] https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/edmonton/transit-turnstiles-o...

This is only 20% of cash fares paid at LRT stations. It wouldn’t count those who used a bus pass, paper ticket (these are sold at many retailers, not just directly by Edmonton Transit), or those who paid on a bus and are using their transfer to ride the LRT.

At my last job, I built a tool to produce standard documents from our green-screen system that held the client data.

The users of the green-screen system would tell it to print a document by picking which template to use from a menu. The system would generate an XML file in a directory that was shared out via Samba. A VB6 program watched that directory for these XML files to appear, when one appeared it would figure out what the relevant template was, use COM automation to tell MS Word to load the template, fill in the template fields, save it to that client's folder on the file server, then print (on the user's selected printer in the green-screen system) two copies (one for the paper file, one to mail) and an envelope.

There were a bunch of weird word processing practices that made it slightly worse than it already sounds. Each letter that was sent out was actually made of a letterhead (one for each location we operated) and a body with the standard text for various letters we sent. The body would sometimes contain links to other documents (e.g., forms we were requesting someone to fill out), the program would follow these links and print those documents too, but only one copy as we didn't need a bunch of blank forms on the paper file.

There was also an Access database used by this VB6 program to maintain various bits of configuration data - mappings of document codes to filenames, mappings of green-screen printer names to Windows printer names, etc. Access gets a bad rap, but it made maintaining that configuration data a breeze.

It was horrific, but it saved everyone an incredible amount of time.

In FreeBSD, this problem was solved with libxo[0]:

    $ ps --libxo=json | jq
    {
      "process-information": {
        "process": [
          {
            "pid": "41389",
            "terminal-name": "0 ",
            "state": "Is",
            "cpu-time": "0:00.01",
            "command": "-bash (bash)"
          },
    [...]

It's not perfect though. ls had support, but it was removed for reasons[1]. It's not supported by all of the utilities, etc.

This seems to be a great stop-gap with parsers for a LOT of different commands, but it relies on parsing text output that's not necessarily designed to be parsed. It would be nice if utilities coalesced around a common flag to emit structured output.

In PowerShell, structured output is the default and it seems to work very well. This is probably too far for Unix/Linux, but a standard "--json" flag would go a long way to getting the same benefits.

[0] https://wiki.freebsd.org/LibXo

[1] https://reviews.freebsd.org/D13959

It is, but honestly this feels pretty weak.

There are already a bunch of Zigbee energy harvesting switches on the market that work well. There's the Hue Tap that I mentioned, plus other commenters have pointed out other ones.

If you replace the "one or two RF power transmitters to power up all switches inside the house" with a Zigbee gateway you've got a packaged solution that you can buy right now.

The rest of the article talks about sensors, "seamless automation", etc and feels like future thinking (i.e., they don't have a solution here but they're working on it), but also feels like more already-solved problems.

For example, lighting driven by occupancy is something you can easily do by adding a Zigbee motion sensor to the system.

HVAC zoning is also a thing, but a lot more complicated as it requires dampers and needs to be designed as a complete system. You can't simply open the dampers for just the occupied rooms, you have to keep in mind that the furnace needs to maintain a minimum amount of airflow so that it doesn't overheat. You could also go with a mini-split heat-pump system where each major room (e.g., bedrooms and living rooms) will basically have its own HVAC system. I doubt that the costs of a zoned HVAC system would ever pay for itself in energy savings vs, e.g., an Ecobee thermostat plus sensors (another off-the-shelf solution that you can buy right now).

It feels like this is already a mostly-solved problem.

The wireless switches/sensors/bulbs are already handled by various things in the Zigbee ecosystem. RF energy harvesting is already a thing[0]. I've even got a Zigbee switch[1] that uses the energy from pushing the button to power its transmitter. Turning lights on and off based on occupancy is also a solved problem, as is HVAC zoning.

The only innovation here is to combine the various pieces into one package. Hopefully it uses an existing standard like Zigbee, ZWave, or Thread/Matter instead of inventing something new and incompatible.

I am 100% on board with anything that eliminates the need to change batteries in all of these devices.

[0] https://www.mouser.ca/new/e-peas/e-peas-aem30940-rf-energy-h...

[1] https://meethue.co/products/philips-hue-tap/

Yup, this is exactly where I get to when I try and fail to get UniVerse.

What's the trick to making that form work? It won't accept my @gmail.com address, and I don't really want to use my work email address and potentially mis-represent things. Especially since my work used to use one of Rocket's products.

My first job involved working on a Pick system. The system started life on a Prime mainframe and was migrated to UniVerse on Solaris.

I seriously miss it.

Every once in a while I try to get back into it. Usually it takes the form of trying (and failing) to get a demo/personal version of UniVerse, but lately I've been poking at ScarletDME a little bit. I'd even pay money (not much since this is just hobby stuff, but some) for UniVerse, but even the cost of it seems to be a closely guarded secret.

There were two things that pushed me to the SLZB-06:

* deCONZ was slow to get new device support and I had purchased some devices that weren't supported (Ikea STARKVIND) at the time. I think this has been improved since I last used it though.

* The SLZB-06 can be powered by PoE which gives it a lot more flexibility than anything connected by USB. Also, since it's not USB-connected, it's a lot easier to deal with (no need to figure out USB passthrough, etc).

I started with a Conbee plus deCONZ and it worked very well.

I've since switched to a SLZB-06[0] plus Zigbee2MQTT and it's incredible.

[0] https://smlight.tech/product/slzb-06/

Mine are basically under every water-using appliance, plus some extra ones in the basement in places where there is a risk of water ingress.

I've also built a sensor (HC-SR04, ESP32, ESPHome, Home Assistant) to monitor the water level in my sump pit so that I can make sure the pumps are working.

I don't have any Aqara motion sensors. I do have two Ikea ones though and they work fine.

One is in my home office to turn the lights on and off, it works fine and I've never had problems with it not detecting me. It's not instant, but always responds within a second or two.

The other one is sitting by the cat litter boxes and is used to trigger an automation involving an air cleaner. It senses the cats at a range of about 1.5m just fine.

The next thing I'm interested in is the crop of mmWave presence sensors. There are a lot out there and I'm not sure if there's a clear winner in this space yet.

All of my Xiaomi stuff is Zigbee and runs through Zigbee2MQTT, I'm not too concerned here since there's no Xiaomi stuff that's capable of connecting to anything except my Zigbee adapter.

I find that the battery life seems fine, but I haven't tracked it closely.

I have noticed a difference between Duracell coin cells purchased at Costco and Amazon Basics coin cells. The Amazon Basics ones didn't last long at all, the Duracells seem much better.

The newer dimmers (STYRBAR) use AAA cells instead of coin cells, so I'd expect them to last a lot longer.

I've got a bunch of Xiaomi Aqara Zigbee water leak sensors and they have alerted me to leaks which could have caused a lot of damage if not caught right away. The siren on this Ikea one is a very obvious improvement and the price seems to be in line with the Xiaomi sensors that I currently use.

The motion sensor looks like a decent improvement on the existing one. I have to admit that I don't have the battery life issues that many people seem to have with the current model, but I've only got two of these sensors so maybe I got lucky.

The door sensor looks weird though. It seems a lot larger than the equivalent Xiaomi Aqara sensor. Maybe it uses AAA batteries instead of coin cells or something.

Generally speaking, I really like the Ikea Zigbee stuff. Everything I've got is well-supported by Zigbee2MQTT, including OTA updates. Most of my Ikea stuff has never even been paired to Ikea's hub.

I'm torn about refills to be honest.

One of my first tasks at my first job, like 25 years ago now, was to scrape crud off of a LaserJet 4 fuser. My boss explained that they tried using remanufactured toner cartridges to save money, but they found that these would deposit crud on the fusers. Thanks to tight budgets, we ended up scraping the crud off of the fusers using a screwdriver and only replacing the fusers if they were too far gone. They had switched back to HP cartridges before I started there, but the results of the remanufactured cartridges were still around for a few years.

We also used a product called Rubber Renue to rejuvenate the pickup rollers/pads as a bottle of that stuff (which lasted a LONG time!) was significantly less expensive than the maintenance kit that contained the new rollers.

The savings for that refill kit are significant, but I also don't want to potentially ruin my unicorn printer.

I feel like I bought the last good HP LaserJet that was ever made.

Many years ago, I spotted an HP Color LaserJet Pro m254dw online at Costco and bought it. It's been a fantastic printer. The toner never dries out, "empty cartridges" don't prevent it from printing. It is modern enough that I can use AirPrint to print to it, but old-school enough that it has an ethernet port. The supplies status page basically says "Just because it's at 0% doesn't mean you can't print, but maybe buy a new toner cartridge and replace it when the output gets bad." It didn't require any special drivers, there's no need to link an HP account, and it has a usable web-based management interface.

So far I have the following complaints about the printer:

* After some large amount of uptime (3mo? 6mo? I'm not sure) it won't respond to print requests. Rebooting it fixes the issue.

* Toner cartridges are expensive. I priced out something like $450CAD for a set of the three colour cartridges. I'm still on the starter cartridges and, even though they're "empty", the output quality is fine.

* The word "Color" in the product name is not properly localized to the Canadian market.

Obviously I'm grasping at straws as far as complaints go!

Honestly, this thing feels like I found a unicorn. I've been looking for a similar printer for my parents, but I haven't found anything from HP that ticks all of the boxes. The next one for them will likely be a Brother.

That's more about storage than RAM though. I don't think any iPad has 32G of RAM.

I've got a love/hate relationship with Transit.

The data is very accurate. I think they take the data that the transit agencies publish then layer on their own algorithms. Whatever they do, the predictions of when the bus will show up are really, really good.

The UI changed a while back and I really, really hate the UI. It feels like it would be more at home on Android, but I'm not an Android user so it just feels 'wrong'.

I really hate the Transit Royale thing, but only because my city decided that paying $75k[0] to make transit information more accessible to everyone wasn't worth it. They did, however, spend $70k[1] to do a podcast series about zoning. To be clear, the folks behind Transit deserve to get paid, this is a dumb decision on the part of the City.

[0] https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/edmonton/third-party-transit-...

[1] https://edmontonjournal.com/news/local-news/edmonton-paid-70...

I've been using Banktivity[0] for a while and generally like it.

Their subscription model is interesting. If you decide to cancel your subscription everything still works, but you don't get access to the connected services. The only thing I don't like is that you need to take a step to cancel the subscription, so if you want the software but don't want the connected services it's a bit of friction. I'd rather pay one price for the software (and I'm fine with doing this for every major version) with a separate subscription for the services set up separately.

That said, every piece of personal finance software I've tried has some bit of friction with how I want it to work.

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

In this case it might actually make it worse. Why are you suddenly, while in the US (for example), ordering physical services in India?

My bank locked my credit card once due to suspected fraud. I asked what triggered it and they said "You never buy gas on this card". This was 15 years ago and I'm sure the algorithms have only gotten better.

A different bank used to ask you to tell them if you were planning on traveling so that your card would continue to work, they stopped doing it and said that they had improved their fraud detection and this was no longer necessary. My guess is that they take the data provided by airlines[0] when you book a flight and use that to tell where and when you're traveling.

[0] https://www.marqeta.com/blog/data-details-what-is-level-1-2-...

I've been using Hammerspoon[0] to direct different links to different browsers. With a little work you can basically make links open in the right place every time, assuming that the applications are opening links in the system browser and not doing their own thing.

[0] https://www.hammerspoon.org/Spoons/URLDispatcher.html

My Asus router, when using OpenWrt, can't keep up with my internet connection, so I'm putting (admittedly minimal) effort into finding a suitable upgrade with the intent to keep the Asus as a backup.

I've also looked at installing OpenWRT on my USG, but only the snapshot version is available and the process is fairly involved[0] so I haven't really explored this.

At this point though, I'm not likely to go back to Unifi for routing. I needed to use the config.gateway.json (I think) workaround to add some DNS config[1] to my USG, whereas with OpenWrt I can do this entirely in the UI.

[0] https://openwrt.org/toh/ubiquiti/unifi_security_gateway_3p

[1] Just wildcard resolution so that *.internal.domain points to a reverse proxy server, nothing too extraordinary.