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Joined 3 years ago
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Cake day: June 17th, 2023

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  • Smart home stuff can be done right.

    • You need to focus on the use case. Is what it is doing actually necessary? E.g. smart lights are amazingly useful, smart washing machine? Why?!?

    • The S in IoT stands for security. Smart devices need to be treated as security risks. Mine have their own WiFi to play on. They don’t get to play with my important devices. Also, internet access is a privilege, not a right. ZigBee is often superior to WiFi too. Control the bridge and you have absolute control of their internet access.

    • Open source for the win. A lot of IoT options can run open source firmware. This helps break open the black boxes and let you see if they are doing bad things. Home assistant, EspHome, and Tasmota are the big 3 to look into.

    • If you’re not the customer, you’re the product. Google etc sell smart speakers at a loss. If you must have them, treat them as actively hostile. I’m still trying to find a good alternative to some of their functions, but getting there.



  • It also needs to be somewhere geologically stable. You really don’t want erosion cracking open the storage. That limits the options.

    It’s also worth noting that habitability can change remarkably rapidly. E.g. the Sahara went through a green period. It ended about 5000 years ago. The reverse can also happen.

    The mindset being used is also layered defense. We need to make it simultaneously understandable, boring and off-putting. Putting it somewhere inaccessible also helps.


  • NFTs were (is?) to copyright what Cryptocurrency is to money. A decentralised system, without requiring a central organiser.

    With cryptocurrency, the token was the money, and inseparable from the Blockchain. With NFTs it was the equivalent of a recept, not the item.

    Basically, NFTs tried to replace copyright etc. However, they have no enforcement ability beyond that of local copyright enforcement. At that point, you might as well just use local copyright directly. No need for a middle man.