Edit: This is a bonus check, he is not hurting for cash. He has a regular union pension plus social security.

My father is an expat living in the Philippines. My half-sister was dealing with his mail and financial stuff but has stopped/went no contact with him. I have no clue why, but I'm guessing they had a fight over something (I have zero contact with her). He is asking me to receive a paper union pension check and either take a picture and send it to him so he can sign it and use an app to deposit or forge his signature and deposit it. It's bank fraud and for 600 I'm not willing to risk the consequences.

He says the union won't direct deposit and it costs too much to send to him via mail or whatever. I asked why he didn't set up a remailing service and he said something about trust and thieves as well as not wanting to pay.

He was not in my life 98% of the time and had ample opportunity to handle things before moving. He moved there to be with his new girlfriend while still married to another Phillipino. He said It was no big deal they do it all the time. She went with him then came back and sold everything she could and drained the accounts. I told him then I wouldn't be dealing with stuff I have no legal standing in.

He tried guilt tripping me about the check and playing it off as no big deal and how desperate he is.

This is what I sent him:

​I want to address this clearly so we can put it to rest.

​When you chose to move overseas, I advised getting your affairs settled first, which included making sure that your banking and mail situation was handled properly. That was your decision to make.

​We haven't been in touch for months, and you chose not to reach out until an emergency landed on your lap. That was your choice as well.

​When things fell apart with your previous living situation, you expected me to step in and deal with things. I told you then I was done dealing with this kind of chaos. I have no legal standing to handle your paperwork, and I will not do so. You have not formally provided legally binding documentation giving me explicit power of attorney, so I cannot and will not touch any financial or legal matters for you.

​You have always spoken highly of the unions and their benefits. They have the capability to handle direct deposits or wire transfers the same as any other business. They are on your side, not mine. You and the union created this administrative issue, and you will need to work with them to resolve it.

​My life experiences have taught me that family obligations do not override legal boundaries or personal safety. I will not commit check fraud, forge a signature, or take and transmit photos of negotiable financial instruments. Family, money, and legal issues do not mix, and I will not risk prison time or a federal banking violation over $600. There are people who get paid to deal with this type of thing.

​This situation cannot be my responsibility to fix. I wish you the best in figuring it out directly with the trust or finding someone who can assist you.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/52120691

I had an old Google Pixel 3a XL sitting around and decided to see if it could handle running as a fully offline, self-contained web server.

I flashed postmarketOS 26.06 (headless Alpine Linux base) to it and set up a portable media node that broadcasts its own Wi-Fi AP, serves static pages, and streams video over a captive portal - no cell data or upstream internet needed.

Quick Hardware/Tech Stack Breakdown:

• Device: Google Pixel 3a XL (2019)

• OS: postmarketOS 26.06 (CLI base with OpenRC)

• Networking/AP: hostapd for the AP, dnsmasq for DHCP & wildcard DNS routing

• Firewall: nftables redirecting port 80 requests to trigger the captive portal popup automatically

• Web Server: Lighttpd handling HTTP requests and MP4 video range requests

Performance & Power Draw: Under a test load streaming 720p video to 4 concurrent devices, total CPU usage averaged around 5% (load avg 0.51). Power draw stayed around ~2.4W off the internal battery, with temps holding steady at 54°C.

Why build this? Mainly as an offline entertainment and information node. I run a non-profit foundation providing SCUBA training to young survivors of childhood abuse, and having a tiny, battery-powered web node lets us provide offline information and videos to people while traveling. I will also be able to use it to provide training videos if I am teaching in a location that does not have internet access available.

I wrote up a complete overview covering the setup, and performance metrics if anyone wants to replicate it or build something similar. Over the coming weeks I will be posting configs and some other information to Github with a link from my site.

https://www.muttmutt.us/geeky-stuff/portable-web-server-on-an-android-phone-for-offline-access/

Happy to answer any questions about postmarketOS setup or the networking config!

I had an old Google Pixel 3a XL sitting around and decided to see if it could handle running as a fully offline, self-contained web server.

I flashed postmarketOS 26.06 (headless Alpine Linux base) to it and set up a portable media node that broadcasts its own Wi-Fi AP, serves static pages, and streams video over a captive portal - no cell data or upstream internet needed.

Quick Hardware/Tech Stack Breakdown:

• Device: Google Pixel 3a XL (2019)
• OS: postmarketOS 26.06 (CLI base with OpenRC)
• Networking/AP: hostapd for the AP, dnsmasq for DHCP & wildcard DNS routing
• Firewall: nftables redirecting port 80 requests to trigger the captive portal popup automatically
• Web Server: Lighttpd handling HTTP requests and MP4 video range requests

Performance & Power Draw: Under a test load streaming 720p video to 4 concurrent devices, total CPU usage averaged around 5% (load avg 0.51). Power draw stayed around ~2.4W off the internal battery, with temps holding steady at 54°C.

Why build this? Mainly as an offline entertainment and information node. I run a non-profit foundation providing SCUBA training to young survivors of childhood abuse, and having a tiny, battery-powered web node lets us provide offline information and videos to people while traveling. I will also be able to use it to provide training videos if I am teaching in a location that does not have internet access available.

I wrote up a complete overview covering the setup, and performance metrics if anyone wants to replicate it or build something similar. Over the coming weeks I will be posting configs and some other information to Github with a link from my site.

https://www.muttmutt.us/geeky-stuff/portable-web-server-on-an-android-phone-for-offline-access/

Happy to answer any questions about postmarketOS setup or the networking config!

I see posts on here all the time asking for help with legal, workplace, housing, or consumer rights issues, but the original poster leaves out where they live.

​Since Lemmy is a global platform, an answer that is 100% accurate in the US might be totally wrong or useless in Canada, the UK, or the EU, or even between different US states. Something like tenant rights or consumer laws (like optometrist prescription rules) changes completely depending on jurisdiction. Without knowing where someone is, commenters either give bad advice based on their own country's laws or waste time asking "Where are you located?" before they can even answer.

​Obviously, privacy matters, and no one should feel forced to give away their exact city or dox themselves. Stating just a country, state, or province keeps you anonymous while giving people enough context to actually help.

​Should communities encourage or require basic location tags for advice posts, or is there a better way to handle this?

Long story short I'm in the process of building an outdoor air quality, temperature, humidity, pressure, and motion sensor setup for my front porch. One is the PM1006K which is a cheap (10.00 on Amazon) pm2.5 sensor. It's supposedly used in some consumer air filter systems and a review said it worked with ESPHome... well it does after a ton of poking and prodding with a little flogging of the wires.

The link is to the github page where I have the final product posted. I know there are better sensors available but they tend to run more and the really good ones use a laser sensor and burn out over time so it becomes an ongoing (some only last 8000 hours) expense.

This one is a DC01 Infrared PM2.5 Air Quality Sensor. And I'm pairing it with a DHT22 for temperature and humidity, a BMP280 temperature and barometric pressure sensor, an MQ-2 + MQ-7 + MQ-135 for hazardous gasses and smoke, and a BH1750 light sensor, a AM-312 + a HC-SR04 for motion detection. All running on an ESP32-S3 which is also acting as a Bluetooth Low Energy proxy.

All the code will be able to be found at https://github.com/nightshade00013/MuttMutt-ESPHome when it's 100% completed. But being the pm2.5 working correctly was a huge step in the right direction. And the main reason why I am posting this now so others who are interested in building a cheap sensor can get started.

The premiere is at 3:00 PM Central (US)! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hwz-jhTsils

This is the first of a series of dives I did while in San Miguel de Cozumel, Mexico from April 1st to April 23rd 2026.

I know a lot of Lemmy users don't do YouTube but give me a chance. Being in the water has been life-changing for me. I’m a survivor of childhood abuse, and healing is still happening - day by day. I want to share that with other survivors, especially teens and young adults, by offering free training and a basic gear package.

And I’m backing it with real work off-platform too:

www.muttmutt.us (my personal page)

www.doghousediving.org (where the foundation will live)

The foundation will do one main thing for me: help put me in the water so I can create more content and train others.

All it takes is you: watch, share, and help spread the word.

MuttMutt

P.S.

If you want to do what Vulfpeck did I won't mind a bit. It's not like Google is going to lose anything. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sleepify

I’ve never really understood the appeal of paying more for a shirt just because it has a brand like Nike or Adidas or something with another brand that sells a product printed across it when a plain, unbranded one costs less.

​If you think about it, walking around wearing a giant logo is basically acting as a walking billboard for that company. Usually, if a company wants to advertise on a billboard, they have to pay for the space. But with branded clothes, people not only provide the advertising space for free, they actually pay extra for the privilege.

​It feels a bit backwards to me. For those of you who prefer branded clothing, what makes it worth the extra cost for you?

Edit: I'm not speaking of sports equipment. Just clothing you would wear to the movies, the store, etc.

The Coral TPU driver has basically been abandoned by Google so if you are running a Linux kernel newer than 6.2 it will not function.

https://github.com/google/gasket-driver is the original driver which was archived on April 18, 2026

You can try the driver https://github.com/feranick/gasket-driver or https://github.com/dude84/gasket-driver-coral or search through the forks of the original gasket-dkms driver https://github.com/google/gasket-driver/forks

So in the future your options are to pin your kernel to 6.2, upgrade your hardware, hope that someone will keep a gasket-dkms fork updated for newer kernel versions, or make your own fork to do so yourself.

Male is on the left. Female is on the right.

Still taken from video while at Palancar Horseshoe, Cozumel, Mexico. Video of the event will be released at a later time on my Youtube channel https://www.youtube.com/@MuttMuttOutdoors

So I love DIY. I have built some crazy projects and while rebuilding a house while I live in it I have the opportunity to integrate some really cool things.

It's also getting to the point where I need to backup and document what I'm doing and how I'm doing it. As an added benefit I can easily share it with others. I'm currently doing a complete code rewrite so that I can have each device yaml pull from a single base configuration yaml file in a similar fashion as a secrets file and eventually contemplating a master IP file as well with a complete static IP setup.

Right now I have an example secrets file that I am using along with my base-config.yaml. I also have three projects included: my pulse output water meter configuration that includes the ability for a ESPHome usage alert, my 240V electric water heater controller, and the ESPHome configuration yaml that allows the dust integration of the CircuitSetup.us split phase energy meter. I have also included a prompt that you can use with an Ai to calculate the voltage and amperage gain calibration.

I will say that many of the projects deal with voltages and currents that are dangerous and should not be attempted without full understanding of proper electrical safety.

I've been using my water heater controller for over 5 years without issue. My energy meter has been in use for 3 years and my water meter has been in use for a little over a year.

I will also be including the yaml I'm using for some other projects and prebuilt devices I have converted to ESPHome in the future. My hope is that even if you don't use this for a project that is the same that the yaml will potentially help others with their projects.

Came around the corner of the reef after swimming under a shelf and this big green moray was just hanging around. Was amazing to see it sitting there out in the open though we probably spoiled its idea of grabbing a bite of some fish who happened to stumble upon it.

Taken off the north coast of Roatan, Honduras.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=znx0n5eiZzw is a video with the dive and more for anyone interested.

The best of MuttMutt Outdoors 2025 videos in 4K.

Taken on the Belize Barrier Reef.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mAtSXg0dDk0 is a video of the dive for anyone interested.

NAUI had the video and decided it was NON-ACTIONABLE 8 years later a 12 year old girl took her final dive during training with the same shop.

I can't even believe a shop can be so blase about someone losing their life and the investigation was completely botched as well. The shop in question also trained many members of the local investigation dive team, not to mention the logs from the instructor and student were never downloaded.