dual_sport_dork 🐧🗡️

I personally do not trust ISP provided routers to be secure and up to date, nor free of purposefully built in back doors for either tech support or surveillance purposes (or both). You can expect patches and updates on those somewhere on the timescale between late and never.

Therefore I always put those straight into bridge mode and serve my network with my own router, which I can trust and control. Bad actors (or David from the ISP help desk) may be able to have their way with my ISP router, but all that will let them do is talk to my own router, which will then summarily invite them to fuck off.

Likewise, I would not be keen on using an ISP provided router’s inbuilt VPN capability, which is probably limited to plain old PTPP – it has been on all of the examples I’ve touched so far – and thus should not be treated as secure.

You can configure an OpenWRT based router to act as an L2TP/IPSec gateway to provide VPN access on your network without the need for any additional hardware. It’s kind of a faff at the moment and requires manually installing packages and editing config files, but it can be done.

It does, but in mildly corpo-speak:

I didn’t say you were. I was just mentioning that there are still a few stalwarts out there actually trying to do it right. Admittedly, probably not many.

Not my web site.

Our privacy policy is one paragraph long. We don’t share any information with anybody. And if we can at all help it, we don’t collect any identifying information on you whatsoever. In one case we can’t help it – If you actually buy something, you’re going to have to admit your name, contact information, and shipping location to us. Other than that, I literally could not give less of a flying fuck.

My analytics are interested in what users are doing in general, not what a particular merely pseudoanonymous individual is doing specifically.

We have a spam… ahem, email marketing list, also. I’m astounded at the proportion of users who deliberately check that check box that says, “Yes, please send me spam.” (It’s unchecked by default.) The month before last I didn’t have anything particularly compelling to market, so I didn’t spam anyone on our list.

I realize the way my particular business operates is a minority, but there it is. (Oh, so you have an Etsy shop or something and you’re pretending to be Mr. Big Time Businessperson, you say. Er, no. We did $5.4 million in sales last year, a significant portion of which was online.)

I’m not saying nobody has that requirement, I’m just predicting that most people actually don’t if they sit down and think about it for a minute.

Also, what jaroni just said about cover art and position saving is still patently false and has been since, like, 1994.

Artwork

Yes they can, via images embedded in their ID3 tags. This is supported by a huge array of players in terms of both physical hardware and software.

Keep your place

Yes they can, via many players (including both VLC which is what I use, and also my car stereo).

Sync across devices

This much is true, at least in the players I use. There’s probably a solution with some specific player somewhere.

But specifically for audiobooks, I don’t… need… to play across multiple devices. I listen via only two methods: My headphones (which are driven by my phone) and in my car (which works with my phone). I only actually use one player. It goes with me everywhere. Ours go with most of us everywhere; we’re naked without 'em.

If your use case requires a networked solution, you do you. I’m just saying, don’t automatically get blinded by how the Streaming Era has kind of fucked up everyone’s brain.

Edit: Downvoting me doesn’t change the fact that what you said was false.

Yes, I am aware of where this is posted and am prepared for my inevitable crucifixion as a result of this observation. But, like… is this really a problem that requires a self hosting solution? That seems like quite the overcomplication to me unless you absolutely require access to your entire selection on multiple devices that will have 24/7 network connections for some reason. I imagine most people actually don’t. And if you do, a simple file share is probably a less convoluted solution, and surely already exists on the server you already have.

MP3’s take up negligible amounts of storage space on modern devices and can be played on anything, and can be easily taken with you anywhere including out of network range.

I guess teaching people how to drag-and-drop audio files onto their phone and open them with VLC would be a much shorter article.

(Ed: Punctuation.)

You’re in the same boat as me, except swap 70’s for 1920’s. I have to tear down all the plaster – not drywall, actual literal plaster, on lath – to get at the ground floor wiring. I decided it’s fine where it is for now.

You used the magic word, “modern.”

Lots of houses in this world are not modern, and some of them are old enough that they were retrofitted to have electricity, as mine was, rather than even being built with it to begin with. And done so in a haphazard manner when electrical codes were either much more lax than now or didn’t exist. And further when the expected power draw for a household was considerably lower, because basically all of it in the 1920’s or whatever was only used for lighting and we didn’t have all of our current appliances, TV’s, computers, 3D printers, or even indoor space heaters.

So moaning about what ought to be rather than what is really doesn’t accomplish anything, especially in OP’s case.

My small house has basically the entire ground floor wired to only two 15 amp circuits.

I can only conjecture it must have cost a mint.

Crikey. I have to wonder what that ~2TB unit must have cost in 2016.

Interesting that the one has such large capacitors in it. I imagine that is as last-ditch effort to keep the board powered long enough to finish flushing all of its caches in the event of a power failure.

Or someone running a couple of 3D printers.

We’re talking about opening the door, not starting the engine.

…Or if there were an alternative option that didn’t rely on software and electronics is my point.

Cars have had electronic remote keyless entry for decades. It’s not new. Some of them even have phone apps that duplicate that functionality. No one but Tesla has been stupid enough to remove the keyhole, though.

If it’s implemented correctly, a physical metal key does not require electricity or a functioning computer to work, either…

As if I needed yet another reason to never ever own a Tesla.

My car has this crazy technology in it: You can stick the key in the door and twist and it’ll unlock. Even if the network is down or the battery is dead. Arcane, right?

Yeah, they can fuck off. When their opening salvo was threats and legal bluster, I don’t see why anyone should trust an alleged olive branch now. The right thing to do was not to send this email second.

I have to work with Haier in my business now as well ever since they bought GE. They’re a shitty company that goes back on their word constantly (at least within the B2B space), and nobody should be giving them one thin dime.