Posts
TIL: How to Wake up a Laptop without WoL
I've had a laptop that I've never been able to get WoL (Wireless or otherwise) to work, no matter what I tried. Recently realized that the Bluetooth keyboard I used was able to wake it with a key press though.
I searched and found an ESP Home project that will make an ESP32 emulate a Bluetooth keyboard - https://github.com/dmamontov/esphome-blekeyboard
Now for $6 of hardware, I can wake my Laptop up remotely via HA, whenever needed. Definitely recommended!
Did you hear what happened with the documentary on belt alternatives?
Filming is suspended, all their work is held up!
Would you prefer if games had a separate difficulty setting for boss fights?
I usually play games on "normal" difficulty these days, for a balanced challenge. However, I don't particularly enjoy boss fights, or at least I don't enjoy the extra challenge associated with them. Was thinking it would be nice if games had a separate setting so I could just set boss fights to "easy", while not making the rest of the game less challenging as well.
Anyone have good memories of (or still belong to) a gaming clan or guild?
Was thinking about this today, pretty unique time way back in my gaming past. Belonged to a clan that would play things like War Rock (old F2P game), Battlefield 2, early CoD games, etc.
It was really the only time I belonged to a gaming clan, and I remember (maybe through the lens of nostalgia?) having a great time with it. Someone was always on voice chat, I think we used TeamSpeak then switched to Vent, then finally Mumble?
I remember it being fairly small group, so everyone knew each other. There was also a really wide range of ages as well, so it was almost more like a strange family than a group of friends.
Just funny to think back, how frequently we all talked to each other, without ever having actually met in-person. Then it just kind of faded away slowly, I couldn't even tell you why / when I stopped.
Anyone else have similar experience / memories? Do you still belong to any gaming clans or guilds today (new or old)?
TIL: You can view long term statistics for sensors in Home Assistant
I had already tweaked my Recorder storage from the default of 10 days to 30, but was looking to view statistics for longer (e.g. a year). Maybe this is common knowledge, but I've use HA quite a while, and today I learned that many integrations have sensors that are already setup to store long term statistics for an indefinite amount of time.
Confusingly, these stats aren't shown anywhere in the default UI (as far as I can tell). Whether you go to the Entity properties, or the History page, neither shows these long term stats (just the shorter, Recorder ones). The only out-of-the-box way to view them seems to be with the "statistics graph" card.
To make it easier to view this useful info, stumbled on this awesome custom UI card. It let's you swap out the default "history" graph on Entity properties, with one that will automatically pull from "long term statistics" when you zoom out - https://github.com/alexarch21/history-explorer-card#overriding-the-ha-more-info-history
One thing to note is, setting this is all client-side, so you'll need to select the override option in each browser / mobile-app you use. Works great!
Hope this helps someone!
Liability for AI damages?
When the idea of self-driving cars first started becoming mainstream, I remember a lot of debate about liability. If an accident occurs, who would be at fault? I think a lot of those questions are still unanswered.
Fast forward and now we have software like ChatGPT. I assume they'll only become more capable (and connected) over time.
Which makes it strange I haven't really heard any similar discussion around liability. What happens when it makes mistakes or causes damage?
Maybe in people's minds it doesn't matter, because AI is either something that helps with homework questions, or something that's taking over humanity. Reality is probably in between those two, with much more mundane mistakes or damages done.
What happens when the first ransomware is deployed by AI, on behalf of a user who just wanted tips on how to make more side income?
Don't forget Temperature Sensors for your Fridge!
Learned my lesson after a trip last week... I have sensors for nearly everything, but somehow totally forgot about the Fridge / Freezer.
A power outage made my fridge lose it's mind and turn off cooling, even after it powered back up. Unplug / replug seems to have fixed it, but all the food was spoiled when we got home. Simple $10 temperature sensor could have saved everything!
TIL In Google Maps on mobile, you can tilt the view angle by moving two fingers up or down
I knew the tilt functionally had been there forever on Desktop, but no idea the gesture existed on the mobile App...
Any suggestions for a good city builder game?
I've always been a big fan of the Anno series, pretty much played all of them!
Recently tried the Steamworld Build demo, and it was great. Looking for something to scratch the itch until release though. I've heard Farthest Frontier is good, any opinions on that, or other recommendation?