targetdrone

I'm a brand new refugee fleeing reddit for the federation, and ended up on this server purely by the luck of the draw. So I don't know anyone here, or anything about any of you yet. And that's OK. It's nice to meet new people.

I do have my list of topics I'm OK with, and topics I'm not. I never want to see abuse depicted, whether real, simulated, AI generated, or hand drawn. That means no loli, no fascists, no gangsters. And I'm not particularly interested in being a part of a community that tolerates those topics, even under the guise of free speech. It's not that you're bad for wanting to discuss it, I just personally want no part of it ever.

If they aren't cut off at the source, that means I'll have to spend time hunting them down and blocking them. Ideally I don't want to have to do that even once, let alone on a regular basis.

One other thing to consider is the health of the admins. If the bad apples aren't defederated, the mods may also have to deal with that content on a more frequent basis. I'd rather they not have to spend their limited time and mental health on them either.

So they aren't defederated here, then I'll want to quietly move to a different server now, one where they aren't tolerated. I want to spend as little time possible being exposed to them.

In a few instances, yes.

• You might find the task of changing a password frequently to be so tedious that you install and learn how to use a password manager properly, and you use it to generate long random passwords that are unique to every site. Changing your password then becomes a few mouse clicks. This will greatly improve your passwords' quality, as well as your overall security.

• If a site improves their password hashing and storage systems, when you change your password the newer passwords will be hashed with the better algorithm. Yahoo has done this a couple of times over the decades. It's certainly uncommon.

• When a password has been breached but the loss has not yet been discovered or reported, if you happen to change it after the password has been copied but before it is abused by the thieves, you might dodge the bullet. The odds of this particular timing actually happening in a data breach scenario are pretty slim.

• The more likely case is that a password is shared with (or learned by) a coworker who abuses it. Rotating passwords in sensitive positions after a personnel change is a prudent policy.

Note that these two scenarios are literally the only justification ever raised in favor of password rotation policies.

• If you are informed that your password was compromised, change it as soon as you can. If you get lucky you might prevent a loss.

Otherwise it has no effect on Confidentiality or Integrity, and a slightly negative impact on Availability as people often forget their new passwords, or waste productive work time dealing with password changes.

I now have my washer and dryer plugged into smart outlets. I have an automation on each that is triggered by the power consumption of the outlet going over 100W for 5 minutes, then delaying until power consumption drops below 5W for 15 seconds. It then fires a notification to come move the laundry from the washer into the dryer; or to remove the clothes from the dryer.

No modifications to the appliances were needed.

I created a DateTime helper for watering our plants every 7 days, and an automation that triggers every evening around dinner time that checks the timestamp in the helper, notifying me to water them if the date has passed.

Whenever I water, the smart switch on the water pump triggers another automation that resets the helper's value to "now + 6.5 days". So I always get the reminder on the 7th day, and if I skip it, it'll nag me the next evening, and the next. If I water a day early, next week I'll get the reminder a day earlier, because it's been 7 days.

Someone recently posted the brilliant observation that NFC tags can be used to track your chores. So now I'm planning to slap an NFC tag on the furnace and create another helper to remind me to change the filter after 90 days. Eventually I can put NFC tags on all the things that need periodic maintenance, and just wave the phone at them when they're done.

Since this seems like a thing that can quickly expand, I'll have to figure out how to rework the automation scripts so I don't have to create two new scripts for every chore. But that's a problem for future me.

I went all in on Z-wave about 15 years ago (when it was the hottest game in town.) Both Z-wave and Zigbee are "non-routable" protocols, which means they can't talk to anything not joined to their local radio mesh networks. That isolation guarantees they're perfectly behaved local devices.

WiFi devices offer no such guarantees. Anything connected to your IP network has the potential to contact a cloud server. So the same restrictions don't apply to hubs like the Phillips Hue Bridges, which can (and do) communicate to their company's cloud servers, unless you do some fancy networking configurations to isolate them.

I don't attach any proprietary hubs to my radio network. Instead, I have a ZOOZ Z-wave USB stick in my HomeAssistant server, which serves as the hub for the Z-wave network. For Zigbee, I have a SkyConnect USB dongle, which also can not send traffic outside of the local network.

Just like the non-routable radio protocols, USB devices don't have access to a network. The only way they can violate your trust is if you run proprietary software on the host that contacts the cloud on their behalf. So I don't do that.

I trust Home Assistant to not communicate to the cloud unless I explicitly configure a connection. (You'll find many of the 3rd party WiFi device integrations depend upon cloud hosted APIs; Home Assistant does not hide this from you.)