beala

I'm very confused by the 1.3x number.

I just had a board (PCB only, no PCB Assembly) made at JLCPCB for $62.91. That's 10 bare boards and a stencil, including shipping and tarrifs. This is a fairly simple 4 layer board, 50mm x 50mm.

I uploaded the same project to your site and I'm getting a quote for $620.26. That's after marking everything as DNP, so it's also just a bare board. No stencil I guess.

To be fair, the JLC board took two-ish weeks to get here. But even with the fastest JLC option (2-3 days) and fast shipping (2-4 days), I don't see how $620.26 is competitive. Am I misunderstanding?

Update: And holy moly. I just noticed the $620 quote is for "any origin", and if I want "USA only" it's $1,697.00!

I've been having a lot of fun experimenting with Meshcore and Meshtastic. What started out as just connecting a few data lines, turned into a trip down the RF rabbit hole.

That's a great find, but afaict that model doesn't have VNA capabilities, does it? However, if you also stumble on a spectrum analyzer at that second hand store, you could combine them into a scalar network analyzer.

This is great news if you're a mouse with diabetes.

No, numbers stations are not permitted on amateur frequencies in the US. There are some notable cases of foreign governments setting these up and interfering with amateur allocations [1], but there's not much the FCC can do about that.

[1] https://www.arrl.org/news/russian-buzzer-disappears-chinese-...

> Voice encryption/scramble on Amateur-Band's is not allowed, everything else is ok.

It seems like you're saying voice encryption is not permitted, but data encryption is? This is not true in the US. Any encoding used for the purpose of "obscuring meaning" is not permitted on amateur frequencies. Even using code phrases like "the eagle has landed" is arguably not allowed. There are some narrow exceptions for things like satellite control codes, but nothing that applies to hobby mesh nets.

Here is the relevant Part 97 rule: https://www.ecfr.gov/current/title-47/part-97#p-97.113(a)(4)

> No amateur station shall transmit: [...] messages encoded for the purpose of obscuring their meaning, except as otherwise provided herein; obscene or indecent words or language; or false or deceptive messages, signals or identification.

It sounds like GPS, and thus a GPS-based stratum 1 server, uses these time servers, but they were successfully failed over:

> Jeff finished off the email mentioning the US GPS system failed over successfully to the WWV-Ft. Collins campus. So again, for almost everyone, there was zero issue, and the redundancy designed into the system worked like it's supposed to.

So failures in these systems are potentially correlated.

The author mentions another solution. Apparently he runs his own atomic clock. I didn’t know this was a thing an individual could do.

> But even with multiple time sources, some places need more. I have two Rubidium atomic clocks in my studio, including the one inside a fancy GPS Disciplined Oscillator (GPSDO). That's good for holdover. Even if someone were jamming my signal, or my GPS antenna broke, I could keep my time accurate to nanoseconds for a while, and milliseconds for months. That'd be good enough for me.

On my iPhone, I can see the size of my iCloud photo backups. Settings -> Apple Account -> iCloud -> Storage.

Weirdly, that number is different than Immich’s estimate of my photo library (95 GB vs 150 GB), but perhaps good enough to get you in the ballpark.

I self host an Immich [1] instance to backup photos on my iPhone. It’s OSS and has a level of polish I’ve rarely seen in free software. Really, it’s shockingly good. The iOS app whisks my photo off to my home server several times per day.

What I’m not sure about is how to backup things like iMessages, Notes, and my Contacts. Every time I’ve looked, it appears the only options are random GitHub scripts that have reverse engineered the iMessage database.

1. https://immich.app/

There’s an infamous case of xerox photocopiers substituting in incorrect characters due to a poorly tuned compression algorithm. No AI necessary.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JBIG2#:~:text=Character%20subs...

I don't understand why people downvote questions like this rather than just answer the question. It's a perfectly reasonable question imo given that it's not clear how this feature is being disabled. It appears that most of this is based on reddit speculation and the OEMs don't provide a definitive answer.

Meta: recently it seems like the community has been way too loose with the downvote button, but I'm not sure if I'm just noticing it more because it's getting on my nerves, or if there has actually been a change in behavior.

From the article:

> This allows for some interesting new deployment models for DuckDB, for example, we could now put an encrypted DuckDB database file on a Content Delivery Network (CDN). A fleet of DuckDB instances could attach to this file read-only using the decryption key. This elegantly allows efficient distribution of private background data in a similar way like encrypted Parquet files, but of course with many more features like multi-table storage. When using DuckDB with encrypted storage, we can also simplify threat modeling when – for example – using DuckDB on cloud providers. While in the past access to DuckDB storage would have been enough to leak data, we can now relax paranoia regarding storage a little, especially since temporary files and WAL are also encrypted.

Seagate has a proprietary version of SMART called FARM. It’s supposed to be more tamper resistant than SMART, but it appears the fraudsters have figured out how to manipulate it too [1].

The best you can do is check FARM if available and perform a long burn-in with something like badblocks. Then compare the SMART data before and after the burn in. Checking the serial number against the manufacturers database if available is also a good precaution.

These are probably things you should be doing whether or not the drive is allegedly new.

[1] https://www.heise.de/en/news/Hard-disk-fraud-Larger-disks-wi...

I guess my head is still spinning.

I took a second look at ad blockers on the app store, and many report that they collect various bits of data. Are you saying that there's a special content blocker component to all of these that can't collect data because they're isolated by iOS? I'm not sure how anyone who isn't a iOS developer is supposed to navigate this. To uBlock's credit, their App Store page reports that they collect no data, but is this enforced by iOS? Or just a checkbox that the developer clicked?

Scrolling through the comments reading about all the adblockers that folks recommend makes my head spin. Why exactly should I trust any of these to have full access to my browser? Looking through the app store I see so many that are clearly trying to impersonate the well known ones by using similar names. It sounds like uBlock Origin Lite is trusted by many, but watch out for Ublock and 1Block, which are also top App Store results. Going off memory, the the chrome store is even worse. The whole situation is extremely sketchy. This is not even to mention supply chain attacks which could hijack even honest projects.

Personally I’ve settled on blocking at the DNS level with unbound and a blocklist. It’s not perfect but it limits the blast radius.

Terminal.shop lets you order coffee over ssh, which is kind of novel and fun. I did it, and the coffee was good! This post reminded me that they've gotten enough questions about security that they've added this to their FAQ:

> is ordering via ssh secure?# you bet it is. arguably more secure than your browser. ssh incorporates encryption and authentication via a process called public key cryptography. if that doesn’t sound secure we don’t know what does. [1]

I think this is wrong though for exactly the reasons described in this post. TLS verifies that the URL matches the cert through the chain of trust, whereas SSH leaves this up to the user to do out-of-band, which of course no one does.

But then the author of this article goes on to say (emphasis mine):

> This result represents good news for both the SSL/TLS PKI camps and the SSH non-PKI camps, since SSH advocates can rejoice over the fact that the expensive PKI-based approach is no better than the SSH one, while PKI advocates can rest assured that their solution is no less secure than the SSH one.

Which feels like it comes out of left field. Certainly the chain of trust adds some security, even if it's imperfect. I know many people just click through the warning, but I certainly don't.

[1] https://www.terminal.shop/faq

I posted this in a sibling comment, but I can confirm Beelink's EQ14 [1] works well with OPNsense (FreeBSD based instead of OpenBSD). The dual NIC model uses the Intel KTI226-V chipset which has rock solid FreeBSD drivers.

[1] https://www.bee-link.com/products/beelink-eq14-n150?variant=...

I use them interchangeably. Webster appears to back me up here. However, I only say earbud when referring to the type that's inserted into the ear.

I don't think I've run into any bugs, but there are also entire sections of the controller I haven't explored yet. I have a pretty typical homelab style setup with multiple wifi SSIDs for trusted devices and untrusted devices, and several VLANs to isolate them. I guess it's good to know rumors of Ubiquiti's death have been greatly exaggerated in case my Omada hardware starts acting up.

I've only been using it for a couple months, but OPNsense (FreeBSD based) is such a solid piece of software. I installed it on a cheap Beelink mini PC with dual 2.5 gb NICs and an N150 processor (model EQ14), and it's been reliable and a pleasure to use as my router. I have a TP-Link Omada setup which I've been pleased with, but I feel no need to purchase one of their gateways.

All the complaints about Ubiquiti in this thread from a few months ago dissuaded me from investing in their gear: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44746603

I ended up going with TP-Link Omada and have been happy so far (a managed switch and wifi 6 WAPs). I am a bit concerned about their security track record given how bad their soho products are, so I ended up sticking with my opnsense router at the perimeter as the first line of defense.

I’m curious to hear what you think you’re missing out on with Omada.

You can also block any arbitrary page element and that block will persist between page loads. I think it’s in right click menu. I used this to permanently block the YouTube chat feature.

It doesn’t seem like email scanning is necessary to explain this. It appears that simply having a “bad” subdomain can trigger this. Obviously this heuristic isn’t working well, but you can see the naive logic of it: anything with the subdomain “apple” might be trying to impersonate Apple, so let’s flag it. This has happened to me on internal domains on my home network that I've exposed to no one. This also has been reported at the jellyfin project: https://github.com/jellyfin/jellyfin-web/issues/4076

This is a pretty significant lift for most home networks, both in terms of cost and complexity, but I agree it’s the right way to go. If you’re upgrading to a PoE switch, you might as well go all the way and make it a managed switch.

I remember when USB first came out and there was a ton of novelty in powering all sorts of random stuff out of your computer’s USB port like fans and mug warmers. This has me wondering what sort of whacky stuff I could do with a PoE extractor/splitter. An ethernet desk lamp would be fun. I have 24 PoE ports on my switch and I’m only using three of them for PoE. Time to get creative.

I don’t follow. What part of this would a USB-C wall outlet solve? This would just be swapping a 120/240v cable for a USB cable, right? PoE reduces the number of cables, among other advantages.

Well this is disturbing. I guess my weekend project is running ethernet to my front door.

My problem is that the area around my front door where the doorbell is installed is solid timber, so it's not just a simple ethernet drop. I'm honestly not even sure how the builders ran the existing wire to that location. Maybe my only option is to add a second backup camera in a location where an ethernet install is easier.

Oops I initially posted this comment at the top level before I saw this thread:

I assume some of the concern around this is that folks don't want to live in a panopticon. If that's your objection, I can't really help with that. On the other hand, if your objection is that you don't want a backdoor built into your video doorbell (even one that you must opt into), I'm happy to report that there are good non-Ring options.

I switched to a Reolink video doorbell, and it has decent support for local-only operation. It has the ability to save footage to a local micro SD card, and if you're worried about someone stealing the entire doorbell and losing your footage, it also supports RTSP (a common IP camera protocol). You can even have it upload footage to a FTP server on a schedule. It also supports PoE if you're lucky enough to have ethernet at your doorbell, or don't mind doing the drop yourself.

Set up does require an app, but you don't need to use the app after that. Push notifs also require egress, but, iiuc, this is mostly because of how push notifications work. Push does NOT require a paid subscription.

I personally just use the app, but it's nice knowing that if Reolink tried to pull a fast one, I could just block egress on my VLAN and use it locally.

If you'd rather just go completely app-less, I imagine a dumb doorbell paired with an IP camera and a local ZoneMinder [1] install would provide most of the benefits of something like Ring. Of course, the tradeoff is you now have a second job being sys admin of your homelab. Pick your poison, I guess.

[1] https://zoneminder.com/

I've apparently flagged 6 articles and 1 post by accident.

That said, it's possible this is all accounted for in the system. Maybe the mods only get notified above some threshold and that threshold has been tuned to ignore the background noise of accidental flags. Adding a confirmation would lower the noise level, but perhaps not translate into any real benefit.

My current house is a new build. It’s a spec home, so customization was limited but I really regret not going overboard with the wiring. Next time I’m getting low voltage power to every window (electric blinds), coax and conduit to the attic (TV antennas and maybe ham antennas), Ethernet to the front door (video doorbell) and the eaves (networked cameras) and the ceiling in every room (WAP, presence sensors, probably lots of other things), and more circuits than I think I need to the basement (homelab). At the time, they were asking $150 per additional outlet, which seemed crazy so I got stingy. In retrospect, I wish I had rolled $10k in wiring into the mortgage. Oh well. Maybe next time.