I have a internet thermostat (not Nest). It normally uses a cloud server, but the low-level JSON interface is well documented, and it even lets you change the server URL. If the company goes out of business, I should be able to hack up my own in a couple of days.
One reason to have it is if it has a sensor that knows if the door is open. People have been known to go on trips and forget to put the door down as they drive off. (it happened to the people across the street from me about 2 months ago!) So not only can they confirm that they left the door open, they can also tell it to close from hundreds of miles away.
Hint: it's not so much an internet-connected garage door opener as it is an internet-connected garage door closer.
Ya know, most garage door openers can be operated with just a relay to simulate pressing the wired button. The hard part is adding a sensor to tell you the door position. After that it's really no different than any other kind of IoT device.
While I do have some problem with wire fraying, I was not one of the mouth-breathing fools who wrapped the wire around the pop-out legs. The problem I've had was with the later right-angle connector versions. Apparently that kitchen-appliance-tier rubber insulation doesn't take well to bending when left plugged in all day, every day, while you have the computer in your lap and move around, and it eventually cracks open due to bending angles that "normal" insulation wouldn't care about. When I get some free time for it soon, I'll pop open a tube of silicone and get down and dirty with it.
And when it does come time to get a USB-C charger, I'll be fine with that. Its really only Magsafe 2 that I have been avoiding. USB-C seems to be pretty good technology in multiple ways, but the most recent laptops could have used at least two more of them, or a pair of USB 3 connectors.
Yes, but then I'd have to get one of those Edison Cylinders in the first place. At least they're not full of empty space like most tower computers, so they take up less space. And I'm pretty sure you still can't get them for $600 or less yet.
To be fair, touchscreens are lame on anything but a tablet; it has been known since the days of the light pen (remember how successful they were?) that, surprisingly, people's arms get tired trying to lift then up to a vertical screen.
That being said, why the fuck don't we have a MacPad Pro already? (aka the Mac equivalent of Surface, running OS X, not iOS)
Hooray! Maybe next year there will be a Mac that I can consider worth buying again! Also, they should be using the current most recent generation Intel chips by then. But nah, they'll probably just fucking solder everything down again. Because to the post-Jobs Apple, "Pro" apparently means a fancy-pants artist who wants curvy thin stuff with no seams that can impress people, not an engineer or architect, or even someone in the music or film production business, who wants to get shit done.
Meanwhile, I will stick to my accumulated pile of MacBook Pros and Mac Minis from the 2010-2012 era. And also the corresponding stack of Magsafe 1 chargers and Thunderbolt adapters. I even bought a USB 3.0 ExpressCard adapter yesterday.
Amazon Cash will be available at brick-and-mortar retailers across the U.S., including CVS Pharmacy, Speedway, Sheetz, Kum & Go, D&W Fresh Market, Family Fare Supermarkets, and VG's Grocery.
Wow, out of all of those, only one exists here in Texas, and that's only because CVS bought out Eckerd a while back. I've barely heard of Sheetz (only enough to have already had a giggle at the silly name) and never heard of any of the others. Way to "across the U.S.", guys. Not that I want to use this anyhow.
A while back, maybe a year and a half now, ATT shut down their own outbound mail servers that allowed you to send mail with any From address as long as you were on one of their IP addresses. Now to send outbound mail, it has to go through the Yahoo outbound servers (the old server names have a CNAME to Yahoo's servers) with your ATT username and password, and the From address must be registered using Yahoo Mail configuration. And now the outbound mail servers are controlled by a direct competitor! Outsourcing! Brillant!
Maybe it's time to get outbound port 25 unblocked on my static IP block. (I run my own inbound SMTP, and have since 2000, but so far I've been happy to forward outbound mail through the ISP.)
I think they will keep the domain name around for at least a few years, no point in letting some squatter get it. Many years ago, I was surprised that american.com was owned by Cisco, and not by the airline company. They must have swallowed some other company that used it.
They already got rid of the extra bandwidth during the digital transition. Stations in the same area can now occupy adjacent channels (analog needed at least 1 channel of spacing to avoid interference), but they reduced the band by 18 channels (52-69 were removed), so there is roughly the same maximum channel capacity for TV in the US.
At least with fat PS2s, they might just need the "white gear" adjusted. Sony used a cheap nylon gear for (IIRC) a lens height adjustment, and it would go out of adjustment with time.
Back in the early 2Ks, I had to go to the San Jose area for a few days training for work. I was quite stunned when I turned on the TV in the hotel room at 6AM to see that traffic was already bumper-to-bumper on the freeways. Now I've recently moved back from Austin to San Antonio, where Californians would kill for even its rush hour traffic. But if they got homesick, I think there's a section of Loop 1604 that they could try.
I guess if you live in one of those new euroblocks that have turned so many main streets into canyons, but definitely not if you have to take Mopac or NW 183. If your work is on the other side of town, you're just fucked.
But that requires a bunch of electricity, much more than solar panels and batteries can easily supply.
There were plans to put the VASIMR engine on ISS, but they didn't happen. It would have used batteries charged by the ISS solar power to provide 15-minute burns.
The lumpy gravity field shouldn't be *that* big a problem.
It has nothing to do with ISS, and everything to do with the mass concentrations on the moon. There are only a few inclinations with stable orbits. The others will decay in weeks to months.
To be fair, you don't need to change inclination to enter LTO, you just need to boost at the right point in your orbit. However, I think you would reach the moon at a corresponding inclination unless you do something to change it, and mass concentrations in the moon may make the resulting orbit unstable. (there are only a few stable inclinations for low lunar orbit, the rest will decay in days or weeks)
Slashdot Mirror
I have a internet thermostat (not Nest). It normally uses a cloud server, but the low-level JSON interface is well documented, and it even lets you change the server URL. If the company goes out of business, I should be able to hack up my own in a couple of days.
One reason to have it is if it has a sensor that knows if the door is open. People have been known to go on trips and forget to put the door down as they drive off. (it happened to the people across the street from me about 2 months ago!) So not only can they confirm that they left the door open, they can also tell it to close from hundreds of miles away.
Hint: it's not so much an internet-connected garage door opener as it is an internet-connected garage door closer.
Ya know, most garage door openers can be operated with just a relay to simulate pressing the wired button. The hard part is adding a sensor to tell you the door position. After that it's really no different than any other kind of IoT device.
Yep, that 700MHz is some sweet spectrum.
While I do have some problem with wire fraying, I was not one of the mouth-breathing fools who wrapped the wire around the pop-out legs. The problem I've had was with the later right-angle connector versions. Apparently that kitchen-appliance-tier rubber insulation doesn't take well to bending when left plugged in all day, every day, while you have the computer in your lap and move around, and it eventually cracks open due to bending angles that "normal" insulation wouldn't care about. When I get some free time for it soon, I'll pop open a tube of silicone and get down and dirty with it.
And when it does come time to get a USB-C charger, I'll be fine with that. Its really only Magsafe 2 that I have been avoiding. USB-C seems to be pretty good technology in multiple ways, but the most recent laptops could have used at least two more of them, or a pair of USB 3 connectors.
Yes, but then I'd have to get one of those Edison Cylinders in the first place. At least they're not full of empty space like most tower computers, so they take up less space. And I'm pretty sure you still can't get them for $600 or less yet.
Or you could just not get a puppy, I've never seen any other small animal teething or have as many issues as puppies.
To be fair, touchscreens are lame on anything but a tablet; it has been known since the days of the light pen (remember how successful they were?) that, surprisingly, people's arms get tired trying to lift then up to a vertical screen.
That being said, why the fuck don't we have a MacPad Pro already? (aka the Mac equivalent of Surface, running OS X, not iOS)
It's almost like Apple suddenly made a lot of new product announcements after months of silence. Nah, it totally must be /. shilling for them.
Hooray! Maybe next year there will be a Mac that I can consider worth buying again! Also, they should be using the current most recent generation Intel chips by then. But nah, they'll probably just fucking solder everything down again. Because to the post-Jobs Apple, "Pro" apparently means a fancy-pants artist who wants curvy thin stuff with no seams that can impress people, not an engineer or architect, or even someone in the music or film production business, who wants to get shit done.
Meanwhile, I will stick to my accumulated pile of MacBook Pros and Mac Minis from the 2010-2012 era. And also the corresponding stack of Magsafe 1 chargers and Thunderbolt adapters. I even bought a USB 3.0 ExpressCard adapter yesterday.
Shame on you. Kelsey Grammer's name should be capitalized. But I will admit that he isn't much of a problem these days.
Isn't that the game from Harry Potter?
Amazon Cash will be available at brick-and-mortar retailers across the U.S., including CVS Pharmacy, Speedway, Sheetz, Kum & Go, D&W Fresh Market, Family Fare Supermarkets, and VG's Grocery.
Wow, out of all of those, only one exists here in Texas, and that's only because CVS bought out Eckerd a while back. I've barely heard of Sheetz (only enough to have already had a giggle at the silly name) and never heard of any of the others. Way to "across the U.S.", guys. Not that I want to use this anyhow.
A while back, maybe a year and a half now, ATT shut down their own outbound mail servers that allowed you to send mail with any From address as long as you were on one of their IP addresses. Now to send outbound mail, it has to go through the Yahoo outbound servers (the old server names have a CNAME to Yahoo's servers) with your ATT username and password, and the From address must be registered using Yahoo Mail configuration. And now the outbound mail servers are controlled by a direct competitor! Outsourcing! Brillant!
Maybe it's time to get outbound port 25 unblocked on my static IP block. (I run my own inbound SMTP, and have since 2000, but so far I've been happy to forward outbound mail through the ISP.)
I think they will keep the domain name around for at least a few years, no point in letting some squatter get it. Many years ago, I was surprised that american.com was owned by Cisco, and not by the airline company. They must have swallowed some other company that used it.
They already got rid of the extra bandwidth during the digital transition. Stations in the same area can now occupy adjacent channels (analog needed at least 1 channel of spacing to avoid interference), but they reduced the band by 18 channels (52-69 were removed), so there is roughly the same maximum channel capacity for TV in the US.
Well then, it's a good thing this is only an April Fool's article, right? Right?
It's hard to get sexually harassed in a career that you don't even start in. Just saying.
At least with fat PS2s, they might just need the "white gear" adjusted. Sony used a cheap nylon gear for (IIRC) a lens height adjustment, and it would go out of adjustment with time.
Back in the early 2Ks, I had to go to the San Jose area for a few days training for work. I was quite stunned when I turned on the TV in the hotel room at 6AM to see that traffic was already bumper-to-bumper on the freeways. Now I've recently moved back from Austin to San Antonio, where Californians would kill for even its rush hour traffic. But if they got homesick, I think there's a section of Loop 1604 that they could try.
the 35
Nobody local calls it that except the immigrants from out-of-state. It's just "eye 35" to the locals.
Anyhow, you do point out the only way to get such a short commute in Austin: move to the corner of town near where your work is.
I guess if you live in one of those new euroblocks that have turned so many main streets into canyons, but definitely not if you have to take Mopac or NW 183. If your work is on the other side of town, you're just fucked.
But that requires a bunch of electricity, much more than solar panels and batteries can easily supply.
There were plans to put the VASIMR engine on ISS, but they didn't happen. It would have used batteries charged by the ISS solar power to provide 15-minute burns.
The lumpy gravity field shouldn't be *that* big a problem.
It has nothing to do with ISS, and everything to do with the mass concentrations on the moon. There are only a few inclinations with stable orbits. The others will decay in weeks to months.
To be fair, you don't need to change inclination to enter LTO, you just need to boost at the right point in your orbit. However, I think you would reach the moon at a corresponding inclination unless you do something to change it, and mass concentrations in the moon may make the resulting orbit unstable. (there are only a few stable inclinations for low lunar orbit, the rest will decay in days or weeks)