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  • Showing only topics in ~life with the tag "technology". Back to normal view / Search all groups
    1. Want to automate my home with a privacy focus (but I'm a bit slow and need help)

      Hey folks - I've been wanting to go whole hog on automating my home, I read through this smart home automation - tips and tricks thread started by @Merry and had a lot of useful information. Some...

      Hey folks - I've been wanting to go whole hog on automating my home, I read through this smart home automation - tips and tricks thread started by @Merry and had a lot of useful information.

      Some of the things I took away from it:

      • Home assistant is pretty great (if you don't mind tinkering)
      • Getting something that will boot back up after a power failure is great
      • Use smart plugs / switches vs bulbs
      • Maintain it's usefulness if there is an internet outage

      Like I mentioned I'd really like for this to be privacy focused and mostly self contained. Sure I'd love to be able to control stuff from my phone while I'm home and also recognize that I'm home or away.

      I just am a bit smooth brained when it comes to even seeing "would something like this work with the wiring / circuity that I have in my home already?"

      If there are any good guides to follow or really specific advice / steps I could follow to begin this process I'd really appreciate it.

      25 votes
    2. How can I best keep my room cool in summer?

      I’m looking for advice about what sort of portable room cooling devices to look at and what pitfalls to avoid. Some context: Over the past few years I’ve noticed that I do pretty badly in the...

      I’m looking for advice about what sort of portable room cooling devices to look at and what pitfalls to avoid. Some context:

      Over the past few years I’ve noticed that I do pretty badly in the heat, especially at night. I live in Zürich, the concept of air conditioning has not yet arrived in this place. The prevailing wisdom for how to survive summer is to just make sure your house doesn’t get too warm in the first place, but my apartment is pretty badly insulated and during the worst weeks it doesn’t cool down that much at night either, so it’s been pretty bad the last few years. I’ve mostly just avoided being in my room whenever possible, but I do have to sleep somehow.

      The obvious solution to me is to buy some sort of air conditioning device, a topic I know basically nothing about. My flatmate has one for his room, of the “dangle a tube out of the window” kind, which seems to do an okay job, but it is extremely loud and quite bulky - neither of those are dealbreakers per se, but I’d happily pay a bit more money if that gets me something quieter. In addition, our windows are not sliding windows but ones that open like a door, so any device that requires me to poke something out of the window would probably need a solution for this as well. Any sort of permanent modification to the house such as putting a hole through the wall or the window glass are not allowed.

      So my questions are: What types of coolers should I look into, what types are best avoided? Any specific brand or model recommendations would also be appreciated. I looked at one electronics vendor’s website and found a huge range in prices from below 100 to over 1000; I don’t have a specific budget in mind per se, but unless it makes a big difference (e.g. in noise levels) I would rather stay below 500 dollars.

      31 votes
    3. What does it mean to friend someone online?

      Recently my daughter (third grade) has started learning to type at school. It's a Montessori program, so it's a pretty low tech environment overall, which I mention because I don't necessarily...

      Recently my daughter (third grade) has started learning to type at school. It's a Montessori program, so it's a pretty low tech environment overall, which I mention because I don't necessarily expect them to have a nuanced view of technology issues.

      One of the typing programs they use is nitrotype.com, which adds a competitive gameplay element. However, it also has mechanism to friend another player. Friends can only communicate with stock phrases, so there's not too much "Internet leakage" beyond being able to choose a username.

      I set it up for my daughter on her Linux Chromebook (I whitelist things I want her to have and everything else is blocked at DNS). Seeing her interact with it the first time, I realized that she spends as much time "adding friends" as doing the typing.

      On its face, this activity is pretty harmless. But I am worried about the patterns it might be creating for her. I'm worried about her uncritically engaging with the dopamine hit of getting a new friend. Or how it shapes her idea of how many friends she has or where idea of her self worth comes from. Or what she thinks friends are.

      So after that long preamble, here are some questions:

      • How would you explain "friends" in this context?
      • Would you distinguish them from other kinds of friends, either real or virtual?
      • Would you attach a moral component to the activity? E.g. that it is good/bad or helpful/harmful
      • How would you frame it to the teacher? Not so much in terms of whether or not they should do it in the classroom, but what kinds of conversations should they be having about the friends experience?
      • If I'm asking the wrong questions, what questions should I be asking instead?

      I'm really interested in seeing the perspectives people have on this. My own ideas are a bit murky, but I will put them down as a comment.

      37 votes
    4. Smart home automation - tip, tricks, advice?

      Next week, I will be closing on my first ever home (hello Michigan tilderinos!). One of the projects I want to tackle and work on after I move in is setting up a smart home ecosystem that is...

      Next week, I will be closing on my first ever home (hello Michigan tilderinos!). One of the projects I want to tackle and work on after I move in is setting up a smart home ecosystem that is sustainable long-term. I saw the open-source Home Assistant but I think I need to do more research on it and find compatible products. For now, my wishlist of projects are:

      • Controllable lighting from my phone or computer
      • Carbon Monoxide/Natural Gas detection
      • Water leak and usage monitoring
      • Thermostat

      Are there any other use cases that you use home automation for? If you use Home Assistant (or used it in the past), what are some things I should consider? Any products that you bought in the past and regret now?

      28 votes
    5. Advice on setting up home ethernet (with unused cable already in the walls)

      I live in a townhouse (built in 2002, if it matters for context) it has ethernet cables in the walls, that have apparently never been hooked up (yay futureproofing) they’re cat 5e cables (I...

      I live in a townhouse (built in 2002, if it matters for context)

      it has ethernet cables in the walls, that have apparently never been hooked up (yay futureproofing)

      they’re cat 5e cables (I checked on the cable sleeve, because I wanted to make sure it would support gigabit ethernet and not just 100mbit)

      behind each wall plate, the ethernet cable is just coiled there, not terminated in a connector and not connected to anything (along with coax cable and telephone wires which are hooked up to the wall plate, but which I’m not currently using at all)

      the cables run to a wiring box in one of the bedroom closets. here they are also just hanging around, unterminated and unconnected to anything.

      I have a rough idea of how to DIY this, but I've never done it before - the extent of my networking knowledge is layer 2 and above. so I'm looking for any protips of the sort that you figure out after doing it several times but that aren't obvious the first time you do it.

      right now, my shopping list is:

      • a patch panel (I’m eyeing this one) which will terminate the cables in the wiring box
      • a punch down tool (maybe like this one) for…umm…punching the wires, it seems like?
      • a gigabit switch (I have a spare 8 port one that I’ll use, there's only 6 runs of cable total) to go in the wiring box
      • a wall plate (like this) for each of the 6 endpoints

      I really only care about 2 of the 6 - the motivation behind this project is that my modem & router are downstairs, my home office is upstairs, and currently I run powerline ethernet between them. powerline ethernet isn't great, but it sucks especially hard when something like a portable AC unit is running on the same circuit, and that's currently making the internet speeds in my home office suffer. but the 6 cable ends in the wiring box are unlabeled, and so it seems easier to just wire them all up rather than play guessing games to figure out which of them are the 2 I care about.

      the main thing I'm unsure about is the termination of the cables with the punch-down tool. I've crimped ethernet cables, years ago, and hated it, due to having clumsy hands and large, ungainly fingers. this doesn't seem quite as bad, but I'm still cautious about having to do all this in the fairly cramped closet space, and with limited ability for "do-overs" due to the finite amount of cable installed in the walls. I'm thinking I may buy a cheap ethernet cable and sacrifice it for some test runs of the punch-down tool.

      26 votes
    6. Folks in the biotech industry, what do you do and what is it like?

      I've been doing a postdoc in molecular biology in academia for a little while now, and getting ready to take next step. I'm looking into industry careers, but it's difficult to know what they...

      I've been doing a postdoc in molecular biology in academia for a little while now, and getting ready to take next step. I'm looking into industry careers, but it's difficult to know what they entail since we don't often get exposed to them.

      If you or someone you know works in biotech, I'd love to hear about it.

      How did you get into it? What do you enjoy or not enjoy? Where do you see the industry heading? What are some of the positions like?

      15 votes
    7. How can an operations manager break into tech?

      I'm a few years out of college and just landed my first "career" job last fall as an operations manager at a non-tech company. I enjoy the work and am learning a lot, but the work/life balance...

      I'm a few years out of college and just landed my first "career" job last fall as an operations manager at a non-tech company. I enjoy the work and am learning a lot, but the work/life balance leaves a bit to be desired with very limited PTO days. My girlfriend and I want to move to the Denver area about a year from now and I want to try to get a job in the tech industry doing operations or project management.

      Have any of you been in my position before? What kind of jobs can someone with about 2 years of operations management experience find to get them on the project manager track at a tech company?

      7 votes
    8. Reduction of screentime leading to positive changes in daily life

      Hi, I think I have mentioned it here a few times, but I (used to) spend A LOT of time on my phone. I’ve tried to reduce it in the past with more or less success, and recently without any...

      Hi,
      I think I have mentioned it here a few times, but I (used to) spend A LOT of time on my phone. I’ve tried to reduce it in the past with more or less success, and recently without any university work (I finished all exams half a year ago) and varying amounts of work as a freelancer, it crept up to 6+ hours of screen time per day. (this is excluding watching stuff to fall asleep, which I want to reduce but I am taking one step at a time) - So it’s a lot.

      I tried a lot of stuff, reducing the hours, by setting limits for apps, turning off notifications, but that just leads to me extending the time by entering the password myself, or checking my phone more often because I am curious about whether someone texted.
      So last week Wednesday some stuff changed. I took my first long bike ride in a long time, and that day I felt really good, I still had 5 h screen on time that day though. The next day I turned off notifications for Whatsapp, but I left the indicator next to the app on, so I could see that I have messages quickly, I also decided to just force myself to wait a bit until replying to people. Also my girlfriend is the only one that knows my screentime passcode now, so I can't sneakily extend my app time

      That Thursday my screentime was 3h 16 minutes. I was hooked, I wanted to keep my time as low as possible. Since that Thursday, I have not hit the 4h screen on time once. Yesterday I was at 3h 59 min... it was an exhausting day though (Spending 1.5h at the waiting room at the doc) and I wouldn’t have blamed myself, but I still didn’t want to hit the 4h mark. Last Thursday my daily rhythm has changed quite a bit. I got Ring Fit Adventure this week, and I have done sports 4 times this week, I started to pick up playing guitar (literally got one yesterday) and ukulele again, and I just try to find stuff to do that does not involve my phone. I also played Persona 5 Royal on my ps5, I know it’s screen time but I feel less bad about it because I don’t take my PS everywhere with me, and these were the first days I have taken off in a long time… Next, I am trying to maybe work through my books that are on my backlog, finally finishing some more again. (my girlfriend gave me the book "South Sea Vagabonde, and I am meaning to read it, and I am also listening to the Audiobook "The Shallows")
      One change just caused so many good changes. I am stoked and looking forward to how low I can bring my average, I know 4h per day is still a lot for most people. I am aiming at sub 3h next ( I had that once this week).

      This scene from Bojack has been my mantra since then: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R2_Mn-qRKjA

      It really does get easier, too. Today I went biking and I managed to go much longer without breaks and I feel way less exhausted.

      I just wanted to share my experience somewhere, maybe someone else is on the same path and this helps.

      22 votes