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JoshuaRedmond | 4 months ago | on: Solar-powered QR reading postboxes being rolled out across UK

This seems like a good idea, but I hope it doesn't stop the recent tradition of yarn-bombing[0] the postboxes[1][2]. The ones near me are really creative, change with seasons & national holidays, and just add a bit of British whimsy to day-to-day life.

(Looks like there's already some articles on this angle [3]!)

[0] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yarn_bombing

[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post_box_topper

[2] - https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-derbyshire-63833983

[3] - https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cly9q5jwv18o

JoshuaRedmond | 2 years ago | on: A custom Zigbee doorbell (2023)

Zigbee2mqtt has a huge number of supported devices (here's their official list [0]), which can also be expanded if the existing mappings don't work.

It took me a minute to find, but the full MQTT structure is detailed here [1], and then individual devices detail what they expose on their page (e.g. this [2] is a random Sonoff temperature sensor). This means that the topic "zigbee2mqtt/sonoff-temp-example" will just have a simple JSON message with '{"humidity":46.93,"temperature":21.73, ...}'.

Hope this helps!

[0] https://www.zigbee2mqtt.io/supported-devices/

[1] https://www.zigbee2mqtt.io/guide/usage/mqtt_topics_and_messa...

[2] https://www.zigbee2mqtt.io/devices/SNZB-02.html

JoshuaRedmond | 2 years ago | on: A custom Zigbee doorbell (2023)

Have you considered Zigbee2mqtt[0]? You'd be running an extra program, but the docs are really good, it's pretty lightweight, and MQTT is incredibly easy to talk to from python or basically anything else. It's compatible with HomeAssistant (which is how I use it), but can be used standalone without having to run HA at all. It also means you don't have to handle the weird idiosyncrasies between different manufacturers.

[0] - https://www.zigbee2mqtt.io/

JoshuaRedmond | 2 years ago | on: Spore Stats

Spore was especially interesting if you used the in game friend list. I had a great time experiencing worlds full of various creatures - a lot of which were from my artistically talented friend playing around with the creation tools. His experience was unfortunately ruined because the game decided that each evolution of my creature was distinct and deserved to be shown to him separately - it was like his whole galaxy was overrun with my (admittedly unimaginative) "wobba-pods" with just different variations of hats and facial hair...

JoshuaRedmond | 2 years ago | on: NewsNotFound: An open-source, unbiased news company

It seems to me that their view of bias is limited to a per-article approach. This could make it succeptible to broader narrative bias across stories - if, for example, the news sources are selectively only reporting on muggings when perpetrated by one race/nationality/immigration status/gender over another then it'll still give a false impression of attacks by those people, as it'll be completely blind to the lesser-reported cases.

JoshuaRedmond | 4 years ago | on: The myth of the driverless tube train

On your first point about PEDs, I think you've missed that there's an element of safety they offer that prevents non-accidents (often referred to as a "person under the train" or other euphemisms). These definitely happen on the DLR [0] , along with many other lines. Among other obvious repurcussions of these incidents, these often result in a line closure of at least a full commuting slot.

[0] - multiple incidents on this FOI request from 2012, and I'm sure there will be more recent data available https://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/persons_under_trains

JoshuaRedmond | 6 years ago | on: Credit cards have a privacy problem

I would guess that the money laundering potential is why it isn't around now - most stores don't let you buy a gift card with another gift card for the same reason (I've implemented this restriction in an e-comm site before). I might be wrong, but that's a potentially big legal hurdle.

JoshuaRedmond | 9 years ago | on: Input Mono – A Typeface for Code, from Font Bureau

I use the non-monospace Input Sans for my IDEs and personally absolutely love it. It's not really an issue for me that I'm losing out on vertical alignment, but there really is something to be said for being able to read code more like a sentence with recognizable word shapes.

JoshuaRedmond | 9 years ago | on: Lyft Is Said to Seek New Funding as Its Rival Uber Stumbles

I believe they meant that the driver gets paid less for each new passenger, but the old passengers are still at the slightly higher rate. A full car still gets the driver more money per mile, but each subsequent passenger is worth less to the driver. Presumably this is to make it so it's worth picking up the first rider, which might be the only rider you get for that journey.

JoshuaRedmond | 9 years ago | on: Amazon has made its first drone delivery to an actual customer

A lot of the valid issues people have with this concept is about the cost of flying a drone half-way across a city to deliver a single item, but I think that's just the way Amazon are pitching it at the moment. I think it's much more likely that they'll have a fleet of self driving vans with a few of these in the back - it pulls up to the end of your road/block/village and lets them loose for a few deliveries before moving onto the next place. Not quite as fast as the 13 minutes they're quoting, but much more feasible and potentially much faster than a bloke in a van.
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