batmaniam

joined 2 years ago
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[–] [email protected] 9 points 18 hours ago (1 children)

As someone who is generally on the more prepared side, the use case for most stuff falls far short of "doomsday". There is a ton to be said about things that are just generally useful in adverse situations. I've lived through a dozen or so storms that took out power for a few days (longest I think was 2 weeks). It's usually not a complete blackout everywhere.

Point being: I can see it being useful to have a bunch of info in something easily portable to say, double check breaker wiring helping your friend fix some stuff after the storm. Look up the emergency AM/CB/NOAA radio freqs. I have a lot of the resources on this thing on a server, but that's not mobile and would eat a lot of power just booting up. To package it nicely in a form factor like this would probably run me just about $189.

But the overall point is I think this falls on the extreme end of practical preparedness but I can absolutely see the use. Honestly the most practical thing on there are the books. Again, usually if a community gets hit bad you wind up with people that have power having a bunch of people stay over. Being able to allow multiple people stuff to read would help kill time.

All of that being said, its a distant second to the critical items that, again, have a huge range of uses: A solid first aide kit, 2 weeks of food (even if it's not awesome). I realize that's a luxury for a lot of people, but money is much better spent there first.

Strayed off topic a bit, but it's because while I don't think it makes a lot of sense to plan for SHTF scenarios, I do think we're going to see a general decay (but not elimination) of public services/utilities and an increasingly pissy climate. I think it's important for people to not fall into the bunker-prepper fantasy OR write off being more prepared than they're accustomed to.

[–] [email protected] 22 points 1 week ago (13 children)

Usual: If you voted 3rd party or didn't vote, you signed off on our current reality.

But you're not wrong, and I have plenty to disagree with AOC about, but they're all conversations for a better time; done and done.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 week ago

"The road to wellsville" is hilarious, and over the top, but the parts you think are artistic license probably aren't.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 week ago

hahaha see! All kidding aside as long as you have an RO system you're probably fine. I went for years making a gallon or so at a time with a sink adapter and collecting rainwater, but my background is in water and control systems, so I got bored and took it to far.

If you DO go for a full bog, I recommend those concrete mixing tubs you can get at home depot, and some bulk head fittings from amazon. A few things to watch out for are:

  1. Sizing plumbing to avoid siphoning/annoying gurgling
  2. slime mold/algae abatement.

I have all my "residents" in individual pots with sphagnum, so there's quite a lot of water, and lots of room for algae growth. I'm in the process of replacing one of the bays (the mixing bins I mentioned) with an artificial media I can grow a living moss bed across (no sunlight to the liquid phase means no algae), but I've noticed that does encourage slime molds. It also encourages fungus gnats but it being a carnivorious plant bed... that hasnt been an issue.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 1 week ago (3 children)

Don't listen to OP. This a gateway plant. Before you know it you'll have an artifical bog with automated RO systems and misters. Stay strong.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) (1 children)

I can only hope, meet me at the corner of hollis and morris.

edit: seriously, from someone from a border town, we stand on guard for thee.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 weeks ago (3 children)

I can't stop laughing, it's like every inhibition has died.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 weeks ago (5 children)

THANK YOU. I know I can scroll through it, but I get tired of waiting.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 weeks ago

Its a cheat code. It doesn't fix things but it helps everyone put the guns down and remember they're on the same side. Mix in when things are also good and it's aces. Just never forget it only works as long as you both do the other work.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 weeks ago (2 children)

Then you're doing better than most of us! I was worried I was to preachy lol.

Oh also, never underestimate the value of little things on the way home. Been friction at home? Spend $5 on some bath salts. If you guys are on the same page with the big stuff, the little stuff goes a long way. Shit saves marriages and heart attacks lol

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 weeks ago (4 children)

Mimicking what others said here, but there is one very important thing: you and your wife need to be on the same page on this.

Owning a business involves your whole family, you can get better at it, but there's no way around it. Whatever your reasons are for taking this path, make sure they understand. When there's friction and you need to prioritize the business it will help a lot. The key that helping is to have it be a "we" decision though. You may reach a point where one of you wants to continue and the other doesn't. You will fight about it. But fighting about if this is getting you where you want to be better than an alternative path is a lot more productive than just fighting about stress.

Re: time: I always say that it's usually not the hours (although sometimes it certainly is), it's that you're never really off. You'll start to fall into rythem and realize what is critical and what can wait. It gets easier but it never gets easy.

For construction in general, without knowing the type: be very careful to set yourself up for success. Do not get saddled with loans for equipment that you don't need. Do not be afraid to rent on a per job basis for a while. If it helps you avoid oversizing/buying the wrong piece of equipment it's well worth it.

Grow your client base intentionally. You're going to have shitty customers. My best friend does a mix of residential, muni, and private. The shit developers have pulled on him is astounding ("I need to sell a house before I can pay you"). They will grind you on bills because they know their ongoing expenses are less than yours; you'll cave if they wait. Make liberal use of late fees (usually capped by state) and property leins. The art of "playing the game" and not getting rolled over is hard learned. When you get good clients that pay their bills on time and don't grind, do whatever you need to keep them. especially now, make sure there are material cost escalation and availability clauses in your contracts.

Last: avoid "the lifestyle". Do not judge your companys success on the fanciness of the equipment or what it's name is on. Judge it on the balance sheet. You have no idea what other firms books look like. Be intentional about your networking time. That vendor that hosted a golf outing, did you really get good connections out of it or did you go because you needed a break and could call it "work"? If it's the latter, would you have been more recharged taking a break with your wife around the house? Networking is intangible, you're going to be the only one who can make that call.

You will fuck all of this up, thats how you learn. But you CAN do this.

 

Hi All,

Looking to steer into HA, but have some questions on how data is handled.

First, I don't mean the opt-in on the scant analytics. HA is very clear about that which is great. Awesome clear policy.

Second, I understand that "integrations", which use a device manufacturer's/services software/infrastructure, are outside scope here (although I do have some questions).

My goal is to find and work a system where no one knows when my lights are turning off and on, and is only on my hardware. IE: If the internet went down, but I was still connected to local wifi, can my HA still work?

The answer seems like a strong "yes", but I want to double check. I also want to make sure if I do use an integration that there's not an avenue for telemetry beyond that integration. IE: I don't want Spotify to gain access to what temperature I keep my house just because I want to play music.

I also have questions about the mobile app, but if the rest is truly locked down, I can navigate that.

I currently have an automated bog garden, but how I did it isn't really scalable. It's all modbus components with values passed to a local server to generate a dashboard. I'd like to expand to more actual "home" automation, and this seems like a great tool!

Thanks for any clarification.

 

I'm considering spinning up a xteve instance to add IPTV to my server, and have some VERY high level questions. While I may purchase a subscription, my main goal is to implement a workaround I've seen where I can get RSTP fed into xteve and made accesible via the plex app.

I'm looking to do that RSTP work around for two reasons:

  1. It would be fun to add access to some camera feeds (fish, bird feeders, etc) for some people who use my plex.
  2. I occasionally put up broadcasts via owncast. Half the people that would like to see those broadcasts are capable of using plex, but stumble around with VLC (and them being able to use plex is a minor miracle in the first place).

So I'm confused about how a few scenarios would be handled:

  1. Owncast broadcasting a channel on plex via xteve, with ZERO other available channels. How are multiple simultaneous viewers handled (as in, whats the experience like on their end)?
  2. Owncast broadcast as a channel on plex via xteve WITH additional channels available through an IPTV provider. If one user puts on the owncast broadcast, and the other puts on some other channel, does it switch for both of them? Boot one out?

Thanks for any input. I'm not really at the point of trying to technically implement, just looking to generally understand how all this funnels.

 

Hi All,

I'm screening a large media library (20TB) wherein some files got corrupted when I did a transfer via filezilla (by my guess ~10%). The corrupted files display with a green "filter" over every frame (when played via plex and a number of local video players playing the file directly).

I'd like to screen the library, and want to write a script to get an average color reading.

Are there any libraries that would let me return a value AND specify how many frames I want it to take the average of? Because of how consistent and defined the issue is, it's really not necessary to average the whole file.

It would also be great if it automatically skipped non-video files, but I imagine a simple "try/except" would be fine.

My skill level here is best described as "high level hobbyist". I'm familiar with what I need to do iterating over the folder etc, but would prefer not to learn how to pull specific frames from a video container unless I have to.

Thanks for any help!

 

Hi All,

About a year ago I transferred all my files to a new drive. I used filzezilla which did mostly ok-ish, but I didn't notice that some of the video files were corrupted. Random files will have a green tinge to them (like someone put a green filter over the lens).

It seems random, although if it's a series it's usually the whole series.

I've been replacing them as they come up, but I was wondering if anyone had any bright ideas to expedite the process.

Thanks for any help!

 

I was wondering if anyone bumped into this. I noticed random jumps (1-3seconds) in playback when playing original quality. Definitely not buffering or performance lag, just an actual playback error. Jump was at the same spot anytime I loaded the media and regardless of what time I loaded it to.

Which is curious because on playing the file with a different media player on the box it was on, zero issue what so ever.

Disabling direct stream option (under debug) resolved it, and there doesn't seem to be much of a performance hit, I'm just curious what's going on here.

 

Running Bookworm, Plasma DE if that's relevant.

Background: I'm learning here. Decent amount of coding and embedded hardware experience but I'm usually missing one or two key concepts with this stuff.

Getting a box running, and wrestling with NVIDIA drivers. I successfully installed the driver (I think), but now lightdm isn't working. From what I read it appears there's a common issue around a race condition where lightdm tries to fire up before the drivers ready, so I need to add the nvidia driver to initramfs.

Can anyone give me some pointers? Specifically while I get the above:

  1. I'm not sure what modules need to be added and if they're named something specific for debian vs other distros
  2. The correct file to modify
  3. The correct format/syntax that needs to be added

I've found lots of examples, just none specific to debian, and screwing around at this level I don't want to bork something enough I need to do a bare install.

Thanks for any help!

 

Can anyone point me in the right direction here? I have a pretty beefy PC I use as a server and HTPC. 24 2.5ghz cores, 64gb ram, kind of a crappy video card, debian 11. I just migrated all my stuff over and stress tested it supporting 8 different transcribed streams simultaneously (mix of in/out of local). That worked great.

BUT, the video playback is choppy (as in frame skipping) and out of sync when I'm running the HTPC program. Oddly using the web client on the same machine avoids that issue.

Any thoughts? I'm wondering if it might be that it's an older TV it's plugged into and there's some issue there. Thing is, like I said, the webclient its worlds better. Webclient seems to have some issues but I'm pretty sure that's just due to the TV.

Any pointers are helpful! I'm OK at this stuff but very much learning.

 

Basically title. I remember reading about it back in like 2018, I even remember a company that would provide crypto based on the amount of traffic you let through. Just curious if that ever saw any growth.

Everything I google keeps bringing up things on the darkweb. The goal of this was explicitly to go "ISP-less". Like they envisioned mesh net covering giant swathes of space.

 

Hi All,

I mostly grabbed this as a place-holder because this is a community I'll miss from reddit. I'll post some of my bog gardens after I can give them a proper hair cut.

If anyone wants to take on any mod responsibilities now or in the future just reach out. I imagine it'll be a while before there's anything really involved though.

Glad to see there's already some posts :)

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