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Submission + - Asl Slashdot: How Hard Is It To Have a Smart Home That's Not 'In The Cloud'? 1

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: It's beginning to seem like everything related to home (and much other) automation is basically remote control 'in the cloud' feeding information about you to somebody's advertising system. In principle, this should not be the case, but it is in practice. So how hard is it, really, to do 'home automation' without sending all your data to Google, Samsung, or whoever — just keep it to yourself and share only what you want to share? How hard would it be, for instance, to hack a Nest thermostat so it talks to a home server rather than Google? Or is there something already out there that would do the same thing as a Nest but without 'the cloud' as part of the requirement? Yes, a standard programmable thermostat does 90% of what a Nest does, but there are certain things that it won't do like respond to your comings and goings at odd hours, or be remotely switchable to a different mode (VPN to your own server from your phone and deal with it locally, perhaps?). Fundamentally, is there a way to get the convenience and not expose my entire life and home to unknown actors who by definition (read the terms of service) do not have my best interest in mind?

Submission + - Ask Slashdot: Alternatives to "atomic" clocks 2

Submitted by Tony Isaac
Tony Isaac writes: "Atomic" clocks that you can buy in stores, synchronize time using the WWVB shortwave band from NIST in Boulder. The problem is, this signal is notoriously weak, making these clocks very sensitive to interference by other RF or electronic devices, or less-than-ideal reception conditions. In many locations, these clocks are never able to receive a time signal, making them no better at timekeeping than a cheap quartz clock. There are other ways to synchronize clock time: NTP over WiFi, GPS, or cellular. The cheapest clocks that use NTP over WiFi cost around $400. Really??? And while there are plenty of GPS-enabled smartwatches in the $100 price range, there don't seem to be any similar wall clocks. Are there any reasonably-priced wall clock alternatives, that use something other than shortwave to set the time?

Submission + - ARM64 vs ARM32 -- What's different for Linux programmers? (edn.com)

Submitted by DebugN
DebugN writes: When ARM introduced 64-bit support to its architecture, it aimed for Linux application compatibility with prior 32-bit software on its architecture. But for Linux programmers, there remain some significant differences that can affect code behaviour. If you are a Linux programmer working with — or will soon be working with — 64-bit, you might want to know what those differences are, and this useful EDN article says it all.

Comment Re:How much would NoScript mitagte the FF Vulns? (Score 1) 237

by whovian (#49304829) Attached to: Every Browser Hacked At Pwn2own 2015, HP Pays Out $557,500 In Awards

This is true, I was amased at how much crap ghostery caught. At first I thought that a common news website would have ads from two or tree domains and a couple of analytics scripts from third parties, it filters around 50 different stuff from third parties, the chance of any single one of them being compromised is pretty big...

Sometimes it seems there is more tracking going on these days than providing content. Up-to-date Ghostery on this machine claims to have blocked

Advertising 978 trackers: blocking all

Analytics 317 trackers: blocking all

Beacons 380 trackers: blocking all

Privacy 19 trackers: blocking all

Widgets 290 trackers: blocking all

Comment Re:You know? The ass long time in summer? (Score 3, Insightful) 388

by Mercury (#48804307) Attached to: UK Computing Teachers Concerned That Pupils Know More Than Them

That only works for the cases where the teachers are paid for that time in the summer.

Often, that is not the case, and instead they are working another job to replace the paycheck that stops coming during that period.

It's easy to blame the teachers for this, but I try not expect people to spend a quarter of the unpaid time I see teachers already spending doing class prep, let alone more.

(I'm sure that there are teachers that don't spend that time. I'm also sure that there are teachers, somewhere, that actually get paid for that time. But the ones I know personally already spend huge amounts of completely unpaid time on class prep, and often are just left out in the cold entirely during the summer unless they are teaching summer classes.)

Comment Re:What about Oregon and Washington? (Score 1) 368

by whovian (#47657387) Attached to: Comcast Drops Spurious Fees When Customer Reveals Recording

I interpret this the same way. It doesn't say "recorded by us" or "recorded by us exclusively" but merely "may be recorded."

In fact the phrase "may be recorded" is open to interpretation and can mean both "we might record it" and "we give permission to record it."

  Still, I wouldn't put it past some company to try the "you recorded us illegaly" tactic.

I take their "may be recorded" as telling me what the company consents to my doing.

At other times, companies are providing caveats, fineprints, and EULAs. Should phone calls be any different?

Comment Not so stupid, just not ready yet. (Score 1) 406

by Mercury (#47618861) Attached to: Idiot Leaves Driver's Seat In Self-Driving Infiniti, On the Highway

The real value of a self-driving car is just that, fully self-driving.

It's having something that can drive while you're asleep, reading, or maybe even working on your laptop.

It's something that can drive your 10 year old to school, drop them off, and then drive back to the house so that other people in the household can use the car.

And just as importantly, it's something that someone who is not fit to drive-maybe for medical reasons, maybe because they have not slept in 24 hours, maybe because they are drunk-can use to safely get where they need to go.

So no, the danger of salf-driving cars isn't that people will decide not to be in the driver's seat, the danger is that both automakers and regulators will try and give us supposedly self-driving cars that can't handle those cases, and then be surprised when things go horribly wrong, or when people just don't see the value in buying one.

Personally, I plan on ownning a true self-driving car very soon after I can buy one that can do the driving when I can't, and I bet that the vast majority of legally blind adults with enouh money will be right along there with me. But that won't happen anytime soon when people are acting like you need a driver for it to be safe.

Comment It has to beat my $30 Timex. (Score 1) 427

by Mercury (#47321979) Attached to: Ask Slashdot: What Would It Take For You To Buy a Smartwatch?

The #1 priority, it has to be at least as good as my $30 Timex at what that $30 Timex actually does.

I could live with the battery needing charging every week, but not more often, half the point of my watch is being able to tell at a quick glance how much longer I have to sleep. (Without putting my glasses on, thanks, a clock on the night stand really doesn't help here.)

Better programmable alarms, alarm noises, and vibration alerts than I can get with a simple watch would be good.

Beyond that, give me a good heart rate monitor, and other basic sensors, and a good API to play with it all.

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