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spdrun
ParticipantThe “cloud” is a retarded paradigm for home automation, and I would never have cloud-enabled spyware devices anywhere that I live. IPv6 will come sooner or later. This has a large enough address space to give every house in the world a few quintillion static IP addresses.
No need for a cloud server when your device can just connect directly to any device in your home via SSL or other encrypted link.
Why the fornication would I need to go through Google’s servers to talk to my thermostat if I can connect to it directly with my smartphone? (Some mechanism for initial discovery via being on the same WiFi network would be easy to implement, or a central server could act as a mediator rather than storing and transferring actual data.)
As far as your question about cameras, something like this plus a NAS drive would be easiest to set up…
Or buy a used Mac Mini and any IP camera, put free security cam software on the Mini, hide the Mini somewhere, while setting it up for remote access.
ParticipantRecording everything on an internal DVR that runs on a seven-day (or 30-day reduced framerate) loop is one thing. Preferably a DVR with an air-gap firewall, read: no Internet connection. It’s enough time to save footage if a crime is reported, but the footage isn’t kept for life.
Giving the data to third-party scum like Dropcam (and by extension Google and the NSA) is unconscionable, and any property manager doing so deserves to be sued into bankruptcy and jump under a bus.
Recent events (JLaw *ahem*) have proven that cloud services — even those run by the largest firms — are NOT secure and subject to abuse.
ParticipantWhy the bleeding fornication would anyone voluntarily use a device that uploads pictures of the inside of their own home to a third party that they don’t personally know? Dropcam feeds are encrypted in transit. They’re NOT encrypted at rest on their kloudkrap servers. Having several cameras using your WAN link all of the time would also probably hog bandwidth nicely.
If 1984 comes, it will be with the sheepsumers’ consent in the name of security. Jeebus H. Dancing Xhrist — it’s not that hard to set up a hidden digital DVR that doesn’t have the same level of creepiness as something like Dropcam.
Wireless cams are under $100. A Mac Mini or similar with big HDD can be had for $250 used, and can be easily hidden. You don’t even need bespoke DVR software. Newer Trendnet cameras will dump directly to an SMB share!
Lastly, is there really a point in putting cameras in a condo? Judging by some friends’ experience with San Diego police, they probably have better things to do than look for housebreakers. Their response was “tell it to your insurance company.”
ParticipantIf purchase prices are driving rents to unsustainable levels, this is going to end in pain.
ParticipantIt’s very local. I’m trying to rent two places about 30 miles apart on the East Coast. One has many interested parties at 15% more than last year’s price. The other has a pathetic trickle at last year’s rent.
August 30, 2014 at 9:24 AM in reply to: OT: The first Made in China car coming to North America….. #777743ParticipantI’d say that messing with the results of a testing company run by insurance nannies is not only honorable. It’s commendable 🙂
ParticipantIt really depends on the OS and OEM in term of updates. If you have iPhone 4, you can’t install iOS7, which means a bunch of apps are off limits to you.
This is why closed ecosystems are vile and Stallman was right in vilifying Jobs in the end. Android is definitely less bad in this respect. I have a handset that runs Android 4.1 (don’t want to upgrade to 4.4 because of its asinine treatment of SD storage, so I’m holding out for the next version that is supposed to fix some of that), and I can run 99% of apps even though it’s a two-year-old OS.
Though I have to say that other than Maps and Talk, I don’t use a whole lot of Google apps.
ParticipantRegarding cars, anything made after about 2000 is pretty low-maintenance. Electronic ignition with coil-on-plugs, no cap, rotor, or wires.
If anything, modern cars with multiplexed wiring are getting harder to maintain and are less reliable. Witness the Chrysler “Totally Integrated Power Module” debacle recently. And I can’t even imagine what’s required to upgrade an entertainment system on a modern rolling iPad where those functions are tightly integrated with the car’s electronics.
They might be a few MPG more efficient, but building a car also costs a lot of energy. You actually save more energy keeping cars about 10 years, since energy cost of manufacture is significant.
Why does a gas dryer provide a better QoL, BTW? I grew up in a house with a clothesline, strung between a tree and the back steps. It was mounted on pulleys, so you could stand on the steps and hang an item, yank it a bit, hang, yank. Not slower than loading or unloading a dryer.
ParticipantWhen I read “growth”, I think “festering tumor.”
Money is only important in a relative sense. What fucking use is it if it’s all being eaten up by costs of living? The ideal is a low cost-of-living to GDP ratio so most people can live with minimal fuss and effort. Preferably in an area that isn’t a complete festering pesthole, as most “low cost” parts of the US are.
As far as influencing the world, better to live in the world and enjoy life than try to change the world.
I don’t see deflation as a threat as much as a wonderful thing when it corrects things that were initially overpriced. And I’m glad that the Fed is under pressure to end QE now and not listen to liberal garbage like Paul “let’s inflate a housing bubble in 2002” Krugman.
Ah well, maybe I should just move to Poland or Czech Republic. Prague and Krakow are both beautiful cities, per capita income is half to 1/3 that of the US, so I can live decently on US rental income, or like a king if I find a job over there.
Participant“CLOSE THE LEFT SIDE DOOR HAL!”
ParticipantYeah, legal liability would be the biggest obstacle. But what about this? Limit autonomous cars to 20-25 mph, a speed where most crashes are survivable.
Have an automated network of medium speed (read: 80-100 mph) electrified rail transit (that won’t interact with other people/cars as much and is confined to a fixed track, so isn’t as prone to crashing) for longer trips between cities. If the vehicles don’t need conductors and engine drivers, they become much cheaper to run, and thus can be smaller and more frequent. You should be able to reserve an autonomous car that would pick you up at the other end…
Or the other option is self-driving cars that can drive onto a guideway and be separate from traffic AND collect power for longer distances. But that comes with the problem of not being able to move around much within the vehicle, unlike a larger train-like vehicle where you can get up, pee, buy a sandwich, etc.
Basically, go back to the horse/buggy and train paradigm that prevailed till the early 1900s. Except with much faster/more frequent trains and air travel to link more distant points.
ParticipantInteresting article about young Americans on the “treadmill”:
ParticipantUnlike you spd, I can separate my own desire to buy cheap from the needs of the economy.
The US economy needs more growth and the EU desperately needs growth.
The EU opted for austerity and reform but they killed growth. As you know, growth compounds over the years. EU standard of living are falling behind and they will have a hard time catching.
Unlike you, I don’t give a flying tinker’s damn about an sham economy whose only goal seems to be to keep people on a treadmill.
Most “growth” is fucking bullshit anyway. Unless it’s an electric car, are we really better off driving cars that are new vs 5-6 years old? Are we really better off having the latest and greatest iToy vs keeping our phones 3-4 years? Are we really better off with 2000 square foot houses vs 1000 square foot apartments and wasting energy with power dryers vs hanging laundry on a balcony?
Why is innovation for the sake of innovation needed? Does it really make people happier? Life expectancy in most EU countries is very similar to ours. Yet people work less and have more free time. If anything, their standard of living (as far as having more time to themselves vs owing it to the company store) is higher than in the US, since free time is the one commodity you can’t easily make more of. Level of paranoia is also less since non-Anglo countries aren’t as poisoned by the American media. Imagine kids in San Diego walking to school without parents starting at age seven or eight.
Let prices deflate to the point where people can survive on a 30-35 hr per week average work week, with civilized amount of vacation REQUIRED for ALL workers, not just those who “earn” it. Nationalize health insurance to reduce fixed costs of hiring. And have a happy society vs one that’s obsessed with things built in 3rd-world shitholes at 50 cents per hour.
Isn’t the idea that everyone of working age should participate in the economy at forty or fifty hours per week really arbitrary? And a means of social control! If you’re slogging nine or ten hours a day, answering email after hours, commuting two hours a day, come home dog-tired to take care of your family, where’s the time to protest or even read much? And if you go to a protest, you might end up with a criminal record that effectively bans you from working … and there are the student loans and mortgage to pay.
Basically, the average American doesn’t know how much he/she is being held by the short hairs, and the bankster swine at the Fed are just perpetuating that. It’s the same thing as artificial shortages in the former USSR, except that instead of waiting in bread lines, we’re waiting at the office or in traffic on the freeway. MURKAH! YEAH! RAH-RAH!
ParticipantLots of talk and not much action from ECB. Hope QE3 will be long over before they do anything, and that we’ll have a blip of rates well above 4.5% to kick property markets back to the curb where they belong. ARF-ARF! OCTOBER, BABY, *YEAH!* BRING IT!
Love that everyone is whining about stagnation in Phoenix right now and that overpriced crap in SD is sitting rather than selling (as it did last year) 🙂 Smells like … opportunity.
http://www.azcentral.com/story/money/real-estate/catherine-reagor/2014/08/23/ariz-homebuying-slide-forces-builders-deal/14484841/
http://www.sgvtribune.com/business/20140814/southern-california-home-sales-fall-median-price-drops -
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