It seems a lot of the new ones have a cellular modem. On the surface it’s to let you remotely access the car or do a remote start. Even if you don’t pay to subscribe and use it for your purposes they can utilize it to transfer out the data.
Ditto. Mine was stolen out of my car 9 years ago and I still miss it.
I don’t think I realized that was a limitation because I’ve been using the Vaultwarden fork. https://github.com/dani-garcia/vaultwarden
Well said. I had hardware that was killed by “upgrades” or manufacturers discontinuing them from their cloud features. I now instal locally controllable hardware as much as possible and it has led to a much more stable and long term reliable smart home. Everything ties back into Home Assistant. The only remaining things I have with a cloud-reliant integration are the robovac our Nest Protect Smoke Alarms, and smart vents. The only reason they’re cloud controlled is there wasn’t a viable option that met feature and price point requirements. Everything else, (65+devices) is local Wi-Fi/Homekit ZigBee or Z-Wave
There’s a bit more to it than just the Central Perk part. They’ve recreated the apartments and a few other major scenes and have a lot of props from the show. We had just finished a rewatch of the show and found it pretty enjoyable on a rainy day in the city. I think we spent about an hour in there and came out with some cool staged scene pictures. I still thought it was overpriced, but didn’t feel ripped off.
I think about the Ameristan stuff and people being “facebooked” all the time since reading that book. In the time since I read it I feel like we just keep getting closer and closer to that reality.
I still miss my OG Pebble sometimes. My wife says her Pebble Round was superior for what she actually uses a smartwatch for vs the Apple Watch she now has. When her Round failed, support quickly - but erroneously - sent her a brand new Time Steel as a replacement. In the midst of us trying to get it swapped for a Round the company shut down. It’s always stuck with me that the customer service was so “good” that they burned through all their cash.
I’ve been on free Beeper since the summer and it’s my primary messaging app now. Support has been personal, quick, and far and above the support I get from a lot of paid services. I just hope they don’t run out of runway, because Beeper is the happiest I’ve been with my messaging setup since Hangouts. I gladly signed up for Mini yesterday and will be happy to retire the used iPhone 8 I was using to keep my Android # active on iMessage.
Per the Beeper CTO, evidently Beeper (cloud) isn’t using the Mac minis anymore for anyone who migrated to their latest bridge. It’s using the same solution, they just didn’t make a big deal out of it at the time. I’ve actually been on the new bridge since early November and haven’t had any issues. In my case the new bridge fixed an issue I was having with SMS forwarding from my iPhone.
A bunch of companies seem to be implementing that version (not being able to paste the 6 digits). It’s just asinine and makes me think less of any product / company using that style.
Personally I’ve been pretty happy with Unifi Protect. Reliably records locally but accessible remotely and notifications are quick within a few seconds. Cameras can connect to HA and support RTSP if you want to link them into Frigate.
Eh, that would require a propensity of people in my circle of friends/contacts to utilize WhatsApp. (Not going to happen, at least on my neck of the woods) At that point we’re going to use Signal which several of my friend and family do already. My wife uses an iPhone so having functional iMessage with her has been absolutely clutch.
The biggest disadvantage is you have to be added to chats via your Apple ID instead of your phone number unless you jump through some hoops to get your primary phone number registered with iMessage. I’ve been using this in some way shape or form for the last several years from Airmessage to Bluebubbles to Beeper with just my Apple ID. I used one of the tricks to register my primary “Android” phone number with iMessage earlier this summer and it’s been working great since. Just cost me a few bucks for an old iPhone 8 with a cracked screen and an old SIM. It just sits at my house and thinks it still has my primary number in it.
Same. Firefox Mobile had been a laggy mess when I used it a few years ago, but a combination of some really aggressive advertising and the announcement of manifest v3 caused me to give it another shot about a year ago. It’s a dramatic improvement in phone browsing.