Thanks. After your note I went back and re-checked with my friend. I mixed up his comments with those from another friend with a different setup. Updated my original comment.

I have a closet full of old routers (including Linksys), extenders, and switches to be able to handle dead spots. They all sucked. Then I heard about mesh routers when they first came out. Tried two, saw that they worked well, and got a third one. A few months later, a new ISP showed up in our neighborhood with unmetered Gig fiber and I happily drop-kicked Comcast to the curb. It was gratifying that the fiber connection came with a single mesh device of the same brand I already had. Since then, I’ve upgraded to the next-gen routers, and gotten a few smaller ‘wall-wart’ units for extending the range outdoors.

I don’t really have to fuss with configurations like I had to before. It’s amazing how much of a time drain it was to go screw around with settings when a new device came in that didn’t work, or to replace a router when one died. I haven’t had to do anything in years. Every once in a while, I go set up a DHCP reservation but that’s it. The firmware updates auto-install while everyone’s asleep and I get pretty decent bandwidth in places I had constant dropoffs. When I switched out the actual routers to the new gen, the whole thing took 10m and the whole network was down for maybe 2m while the new ones booted up. No end devices had to be modified or restarted.

Where the fiber comes in, there’s a single router node, with two Ethernet ports. One goes to the fiber ONT, the other to a 10-port gig switch where it feeds the rest of wired setups. Elsewhere, the farthest mesh unit has no incoming physical connection, but a small wired switch connected to other wired devices near there. I didn’t have to make any router configuration settings to make this work. Just plugged it all in. Common devices go on the main network, and janky IOT devices (and visitors) go on the guest network.

For external access for self-hosting, you can take a domain name and set up a free Cloudflare tunnel to access your in-home services remotely. Pay Cloudflare a fee and you get extra rules-based access control. The router also has a premium service where it comes with a family bundle of security software. One other thing I like is that the mobile app sends a notification whenever a new device joins the network, so if I see one I don’t recognize, I can block them. Hasn’t happened yet, but if it does, I’ll know to go rotate the wifi passwords.

Anyway, highly recommend mesh routers. I happened to get Eeros (before they were acquired) but there are a few other brands around. Some people don’t like that Amazon bought eero, but they appear to be left to run as an independent outfit. It has been pretty solid so far.

P.S. A friend with a more complicated setup than mine got Ubiquitis. It’s anecdotal, but he recently asked about switching away and I told him pretty much what I’ve written here. YMMV.

Edit: checked back with friend. He said he was very happy with his Ubiquiti gear. I mixed up his review from years ago with another friend’s networking setup.

We were waving iPhones feet away from the tag. It didn’t get picked up so we wandered out to the neighborhood.

My guess is, to preserve battery, iPhones wake up and scan for nearby AirTags only X seconds at a time (don’t have actual numbers, but guessing somewhere between 30-120 seconds). Whatever AirTag ID they pick up, they send anonymously to the cloud along with location. If the owner has the tag in lost mode and the ID matches, they get notified.

This means if you’re walking around with your phone and it hasn’t hit the scan window, you could miss the tag. This works in a high-density area like a city center with lots of phones waking up and scanning at different times, but not so much in low density places.

In that case, a GPS tag with cell modem might work better, but it’s a lot pricier and requires regular charging.

You’ve been using cheap cables.

Next step up is a JCAT: https://audiobacon.net/2019/11/02/the-jcat-signature-lan-a-1000-ethernet-cable/amp/

/s if not obvious.

An AirTag for my wife’s cat, along with a collar holder. She’s an indoor cat but REALLY wants to get out. We got it after reports of coyotes roaming around and attacking small pets.

One time she darted out a sliding door window, we tried to track her down. Went all over the house, then outside. Ended up driving all over the neighborhood. Nothing. Turned out the whole time she was hiding under a car, 20ft from where she got out.

Confidence in the tech is low.

First and last snowboard lesson. Long time ago. Never again.

Thanks for the tips. Will try again next week. It’s exciting tech, especially when modeling custom objects.

A friend gave me the best career advice years ago: make a personal portfolio site.

He said nobody really reads through resumes anymore. A portfolio with lots of screenshots or photos, and a very short paragraph works best. Also tack on a resume for those who ask for it.

Organized by category, date, or whatever makes sense. You can use a blogging engine like Wordpress, or a static hosting platform like Jeckyll or Hugo. Assign it a simple domain (like .work or .portfolio). Keep it updated with latest clippings.

Then whenver someone asks, just point them at the site. Print it on a biz card, make custom stickers, etc.

If you want free hosting, check out Github Pages.

AOL.

If only for their resilience.

I tried it with a stock image of red, see-through dice against a solid backdrop. It removed the background, then generated a 2D cutout surface with the dice images projected on the front. Didn’t have time to try any more, but this one result was no good.

https://www.gocomics.com/calvinandhobbes/1991/11/29

I have many friends who won’t get off Twitter becauee they follow journalists and subject-domain experts and are addicted to realtime, breaking news.

If large news-gathering organizations mandate their news staff to have presence elsewhere, or provide tools to let them simultaneously post and engage in other places, that will go a long way toward breaking the bottleneck.

I intentionally kept historical imports out, since Reddit is blocking APIs under the guise of limiting AI scraping.

My main point was setting up an easier way for low-tech mods to set up a parallel community, then nudge users to move over.

Could there be a one-click way to automatically ‘import’ a Reddit subreddit over to a Lemmy community? Meaning, create it, import the sidebars, welcomes, rules, graphics, etc. so it looks familiar to regular users. If not, at least a step-by-step tutorial on how mods could do it.

Another option would be to provide something like a crossposting Chrome or Firefox extension that lets people simultaneously post content to both Reddit and Lemmy. Give them a smooth transition path.

Lastly, the Bluesky concept of ‘pluggable algorithms’ is one way to make it so users can choose whatever sort works best for their interests.

AWS bread and butter is EC2, S3, and Lambda.

The reason AWS is focusing so much on Gen-AI is because they’re in the shovel-and-pick business during the gold rush. This guy’s beef should be with the over-excited gold speculators, not the general store purveyors of denim and panning equipment.

They all add donors to lists and send them solicitations based on the premise that a former donor doesn’t need as much convincing for their cause. It’s fairly easy to unsubscribe as soon as you get the first message, but by then your email may have already entered a partnership pool, so you’ll start getting similar solicitations.

Best way around it is to use an email anonymizing service, or one way phone/text numbers. Or you can treat it like a game and donate under username+charity@mailservice.com, then watch how many more messages you get to that specific address.

To answer your main question, eff.org and msf.org are pretty good charities. You can also check https://www.charitynavigator.org/.

If it’s purely political orgs, local groups are less likely to have aggressive fundraising arms.

Think where you would like to be when you’re thirty, then work backward to now and figure out what you need to do to get there.

Also, don’t be afraid to take chances.

Years ago, I used to live in a neigborhood just down from what they called ‘the projects.’ Those who couldn’t get into Section 8 housing would spill over onto the streets. One time we had a pretty harsh cold snap. Several people died. A few of us started buying tents, sleeping bags, and blankets from Costco and handing them out to those camping on the sidewalks or side streets.

Now, we live in an area that has pretty good food and housing non-profits, so we donate to them every year. I generally don’t give to individuals, hoping our donations, aggregated with others, will reach more people in need.

During COVID, a local non-profit with an urban garden set up an outdoor fridge and pantry for those sleeping around the perimeter. The non-profit would load it up with any excess produce. But word got out and people started donating, usually leftovers from restaurants. We started going to discount grocery stores and buying bulk foods and stocking up the fridge once a month. Took the kids and had them do the stocking up, just to normalize it.

We’re beyond lucky not to be in that situation and feel strongly that we should help where we can. Paying it forward and all. I don’t think anyone who is pinched should feel bad, but those who can afford it, should.

We’ve never mentioned any of this to any friends or family. I only bring it up here, hoping more people feel inspired to step up.

Poker. And proper bluffing.

That I know how to fix problems with their printer. That includes members of my own household.