Aotearoa Weekly Kōrero 8/7/2024

Welcome to this week’s casual kōrero thread!

This post will be pinned in this community so you can always find it, and will stay for about a week until replaced by the next one.

It’s for talking about anything that might not justify a full post. For example:

Something interesting that happened to you
Something humourous that happened to you
Something frustrating that happened to you
A quick question
A request for recommendations
Pictures of your pet
A picture of a cloud that kind of looks like an elephant
Anything else, there are no rules (except the rule)

So how’s it going?

63 comments

I've been looking at our electricity usage and discovered our meter stopped reporting it's usage a few months ago - that really skews things!
I chucked in a manual reading which wasn't too far off their estimate, but I'm irked that 'something' has stopped talking. Gave it a few pokes to see but no new data. On the ph to provider now, jooyyyeeee. Powershop really do have some strangely funky hold music, it's quite enjoyable - pity it's mono and basically 8kHz or whatever the phone lines do to muddy everything!
Also, is it just me or have many of the gentailers stopped publishing their actual rates / seeking new customers?
My son bought a cold home last week which is working it's way through the house. Sucks...
- A few years back we would jump broadband and power companies every 12 months because there were always great signup deals. These days it's really hard to find great deals! Plus the move to having plans between providers all slightly different so you can't directly compare them.
  We also have a cold going through the house. My brain hasn't been working since last week so I'm guessing my body is fighting (and maybe losing) a battle against the cold.

Hi everyone! My big news is when I got my last covid jab I bounced back from it in just over a week. Didn't mention it earlier in case I jinxed myself. This is the first time ever that it hasn't knocked me back hard.
So I sort of feel like this year I've got an extra 6 weeks in the year!
Used some of it to visit family for a week. Also, got to hang out with a really cute dog. I love how earnest dogs can be about stuff, it's really endearing.
- Exciting! I guess practice makes perfect.
  Maybe they mixed it up wrong and forgot to put the vaccine in? Just kidding 😋
  
  That seriously did cross my mind when I found I wasn't bed bound! I did get the dead arm and that hard sore red patch around the site though, so they definitely injected me with something!
  But yeah super happy about it. 😃

Someone gave me a tandem kayak! It's a Sisson Southern Light, a very old design, and possibly older than me. It needs a few maintenance items, a few scrapes being painted over, and some new lines, but is overall in amazing condition.
The hull length is 6.2m, with the rudder adding further to that. I plan to take it out Sunday.
- Awesome! My mother-in-law calls tandem kayaks "divorce boats".
  
  I've heard that one a few times before actually, it's not entirely unfair either.

I know a few people around here are running Home Assistant and the like. I'm keen to put in a few cameras, preferably not cloud connected but that can connect to Home Assistant. I'm planning on adding object detection via coral.
I'm thinking cameras powered by PoE. Anyone got suggestions for outdoor cameras?
What about a switch that outputs PoE and doesn't cost thousands? Maybe something like this? Though I don't seem to see good bang for buck switches where they are all PoE, they seem to just do half of the ports PoE though 8 PoE ports seems like it would be plenty.
And on another note, any suggestions for a network level VPN client? That is, for connecting the home nenetwork to an external VPN server (one that handles hundreds of Mbps, preferably wireguard). Is something like this appropriate? It's CPU is only 1Ghz so I worry it will be slow.
- I have a poe managed ubiquity switch and use reolink Poe cameras and reolinks Poe doorbell. Home assistant has great support for reolink; It's also local. I have home assistant save the streams on motion detection to a network mounted drive in home assistant
  
  That's awesome, looks like PB Tech have a huge range of Reolink!
  But with choice comes more questions 😆. PoE means you don't need separate power for the camera. But it looks like they sell solar powered wifi ones. Is there a benefit of using PoE instead of wifi+solar?
  
  Just to second this - I've upgraded all but one camera to Reolink RLC-810A a few years back and they're rock solid. All offline (no internet, but connected to Home Assistant on a separate LAN), all powered by a cheap unmanaged PoE switch from PB Tech. (Edit: this one).
  They're recording 24/7 to their local memory, but I almost entirely use them via Home Assistant's ability to pull a JPEG directly from the camera (because it takes a fraction of a second at 4k vs the unbearable pain of waiting >10s for video to buffer even at SD resolution).
- From what I've encountered, that CPU will probably be just fine unless it's doing a lot of other stuff too.
  I've also noticed that PoE switches that aren't crippled sme how are rare as hens teeth for consumer grade gear. I.e. only some ports, or only support one of the protocols,or are themselves really picky about supply voltage.
  My only recommendation is to take the time to figure it all out: and if a fact is omitted assume the worst.
  
  Thanks for the reply!
  From what I’ve encountered, that CPU will probably be just fine unless it’s doing a lot of other stuff too.
  I had a bit more of a search around, and it seems this specific UXG-Lite is giving people speeds around 30 or 40Mbps. For a whole of network VPN, that's nowhere near fast enough! I'm looking for 200Mbps, preferably more.
  This one claims 393Mbps with wireguard. I was earlier reading that you should look for a dedicated VPN box not a wifi/all in one thing but this seems to be pretty good value for money if it works. I don't need the wifi as I have a couple of mesh access points but I'll take it if it's there.
  I was looking at Ubiquiti as the wifi mesh is an Amplifi one but searching around it seems all the Ubiquiti gateways have really bad VPN performance.
  I’ve also noticed that PoE switches that aren’t crippled sme how are rare as hens teeth for consumer grade gear. I.e. only some ports, or only support one of the protocols,or are themselves really picky about supply voltage.
  My only recommendation is to take the time to figure it all out: and if a fact is omitted assume the worst.
  I'm not sure I have the knowledge to figure it all out 😆. How will I know if it's going to be picky about voltage? What PoE protocols should I be looking for, I didn't realise there were options 😆
- I have a Ubiquiti Dream Machine SE, which has POE built in, but your option would be the next simplest option.
  All the Ubiquiti gear is very well priced, and dead simple to use, I plan to add some cameras at some point to the system.
  
  Do you use the Dream Machine as a VPN client? I see mixed information online as to whether you can use it as a client or only as a server. If I could knock off two birds with one stone that would be great.

The annual fucking of Wellington commuter trains by icy overhead lines has begun. If only there was some kind of power source nearby that could be tapped into and used to deice the lines...
- Other options are a deicing spray, like what is used on aircraft, both at airports and in flight, or some type of heater that has a heating element directly on the wire.
  Turning an old unit into a deicing train wouldn't be massively difficult, I would think.
  
  I'd love to write the business case for a deicing unit.
  
  I'm wondering about the heating thing. The cables already carry current. Normally for electric heating you'd have electricity going through a wire with high resistance to make the heat. So you'd think you'd run such a wire along the length of the cable. Putting fan heaters everywhere isn't going to be efficient, you need it on the wire in the place it's needed.
  But if it's on a live wire, can that work? Or would it just become part of the larger wire and not heat up as the electricity flows through the path of lower resistance? Plus the risk of the pantograph damaging the heating wire.
- I guess the question is how to efficiently heat the lines. Not really feasible to install fan heaters all the way along. Heating up the wire itself may not be that easy.
  I went looking and found that some solutions are to either use a specially equipped ice cutting diesel engine, or some trains have a separate pantograph (the thing that goes against the wire) that is designed to scrape the ice off just ahead of where the power collecting pantograph is. Some interesting bits in this blog post.
  It links through to this page that has photos of the ice cutting pantographs, though not in action.
  
  Oh neat. Unlikely to happen here, I think.

Does anyone know what happened to kbin.social its been down for weeks and im missing my UFC threads.
- After a lot of research I can say no one knows, Ernest who runs and develops it hasn't been heard from, and it may well be dead. Ernest had health issues he talked about last year, and there has been no activity on the Kbin code since last year. No one else has access to do anything with the site. Many people are giving up.
  Were the UFC threads specifically on kbin.social? Or just something you accessed through Kbin? A team forked (copied) the code and have been developing Mbin as an alternative to Kbin. You can see servers here, including many that used to run Kbin. That won't help if the UFC stuff was in kbin.social magazines, though. I didn't work out where the UFC content came from.
  
  It was a community on kbin social but i think someone made a Lemmy community for mma to replace it.

Finally got annoyed enough with google at a glance and it's inaccurate weather that I downloaded Nova launcher so I could banish the widget. I hadn't bothered before because the latest Android versions had most of the same functionality
- I'm a weirdo and so I use a launcher called KISS. There are different options but how I have it set up, it's mostly a clear screen except a search bar at the bottom with some favourites pinned above it. Then if you tap the search bar, it fills the screen with a list of the most commonly used apps. Or you can tap a button on the side of the search bar to see all apps, or start typing the app you want.
  I also have gestures set up, so I swipe different directions on that blank home screen to open different apps.
  I was previously using Pie Launcher, where there are no apps or widgets on your screen until you tap and hold and a circle of your pinned apps appear, then you swipe to the one you want to open. KISS was a bit less frustrating for others to use, but still a bit haha.
  I love it though. For a long time I had the NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day on my wallpaper, so having a clean home page meant I could see the picture really well.
  
  Oh wow, I forgot about APOD!
  I loved some of their colourised nebula images
  
  That sounds fun actually.
  I just have some folders with frequently used stuff, and one whole screen devoted to a non crap weather widget (Weawow) a search widget, and Agenda Widget.
  I use persistent notifications for a few things, and occasionally apps get promoted to the home screen temporary, for example when I go to the USA in September I'll dig up the airnz app out of the app drawer.
  Some of that's general laziness but also at some point I just lost interest in customisation for the sake of customisation and I tend to only go looking for options when I'm annoyed with something or if the amount of slack I can gain from customising will outweigh the effort.
  I had the same background picture for like 6 years. Got bored enough during lockdown that I changed it, but then had to redo my colour and icon scheme.

Went to see Twisters. Needs more tornado, less pointless romance.
- Seems to be getting decent reviews. Was the plot decent?
  
  Depends on what you consider decent. Plucky science girl has bad tornado experience, 5 years later she returns at the behest of an old friend. She's there to science but hello loud but attractive rival storm chaser. The plot you would expect from this set-up ensues.

What would your ideal hold 'music' be?
I've always hated these things and think music is a terrible choice as it can only ever reinforce the 'middle of the road' tastes (something I have big problems with in NZ).
But the ringer sound just reduces your brain to mush after a few minutes as well...
Would silence work, with the occasional 'you're _n_th in the queue' update? I think that's my best choice
- Not silence, then people will think they got cut off.
  Ambient and soothing sounds. Like waves on a beach or something.
  
  Yes! Beach waves and bird noises or something? Sounds great!
- Probably lofi or classical music but silence also works well.
- I like music. You can put the phone down and still hear the constant "still on hold" sound, when it stops you know it's being answered.
  Given to me it's a tool for that purpose, the actual music doesn't really matter as long as it's constant and lound enough. Probably best not to be any music I like, I'm never waiting on hold for good reasons so best not to associate songs I like with a bad experience.
  
  I hate how the music gets stuck in my head or has associations I'd rather not mix with my displeasure when dealing with.
  That and my cynical view of aussie companies trying to look local using kiwi music (while the call taker is wherever is cheapest)

Reminder, the canvas event starts tomorrow (Friday, I believe it starts at 4pm NZ time), and runs through the weekend.
Here's the current plan: https://canvas.fediverse.events/#x=162&y=344&zoom=18&tu=https%3A%2F%2Flemmy.nz%2Fpictrs%2Fimage%2F497358ad-b655-4ae1-9e42-ea70c303a63e.png&tw=114&tx=100&ty=300
You will be able to sign in using your lemmy account. You enter your lemmy account name and it sends you a message to prove it's you so you don't have to enter your password. Then you can place one pixel every X amount of time. I'm not actually sure what the time is this year, last year it was about 30 seconds I think but you had to wait longer to change pixels that had already been placed previously. And last year it let you stack up to I think 6, so you come in every so often and place your 6 pixels.
Tomorrow I'll create a post for discussion, and you can also join the Lemmy.nz matrix chatroom.

63 comments