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alex_dev's comments

alex_dev | 3 years ago | on: Launch HN: Electric Air (YC W23) – Heat pump sold directly to homeowners

Agreed. As someone in the market for a good heat pump, I'm already turned off by this offering. I don't want more features (air quality module) that are more points of failure and complexity. I just want an efficient heat pump that'll work reliably for a long time, integrate well with HA, and won't cost a kidney to install.

alex_dev | 3 years ago | on: Tailscale SSH

I appreciate that Tailscale runs the DNS server so it's one less thing for me to manage. Similarly, the built-in LE is just icing on the cake as it's one less thing to think about. Once https://github.com/hassio-addons/addon-tailscale/pull/89 is merged, running Home Assistant on a VPN with a LE certificate, would be such a quick setup for anyone.

Indeed, you can do all that yourself as you point out. Just last night I manually created a public domain to point to a ZeroTier address and ran the Lets Encrypt addon in Home Assistant to generate a certificate via the DNS challenge. Didn't take long, but there were many steps involved (creating a Google Cloud service account and configuring everything).

alex_dev | 3 years ago | on: Tailscale SSH

I've been having trouble adopting Tailscale. As so many others say, relying on another identity provider is unfortunate - I, too, worry what happens when Google decides to lock me out because some algorithm decided my account is fishy.

The biggest blocker has been the issues with the Android client. I'm either hitting https://github.com/tailscale/tailscale/issues/915 or https://github.com/tailscale/tailscale/issues/4611, but neither issue appears to have a fix coming soon. Whenever I am on my carrier's network, my phone's internet stops until I disable Tailscale - that's just a show stopper from using TailScale.

So instead of developing this SSH feature, I would have preferred to seen them work on their bug backlog.

In the meantime, I'm experimenting with ZeroTier. While it doesn't have the ease and cool magicDNS+LetsEncrypt feature, I think I'll survive with something more reliable.

alex_dev | 3 years ago | on: Grafana releases OnCall open source project

One of the most frustrating aspects of being a software engineer is dealing with others that love to over-engineer. Unfortunately, they make enough noise that complex solutions are necessary that it gets managers scared about taking any easier, simpler solutions.

alex_dev | 6 years ago | on: How to Measure Indoor Air Quality with a Raspberry Pi, RuuviTags and PMS7003

Agreed. Having to set up a raspberry pi or some other microcontroller is time consuming and the end product is ugly. I would like something small that connects to WiFi that operates off battery or could be plugged in permanently.

I recently purchased Wyze's sensor starter kit and have been quite impressed. The contactless sensors are tiny and have decent range to the corresponding bridge. Now Wyze just needs a documented, public API.

alex_dev | 8 years ago | on: An alternative to burial and cremation gains popularity

> "Not everyone feels this way. Some critics recoil, in part because the effluent is released into local sewage systems."

Don't people know what happens to the body's blood during embalming? Goes down the drain.

I've already told my family that this is my preferred burial method.

alex_dev | 9 years ago | on: Google is acquiring Kaggle

Last I heard was Kaggle runs atop Azure and is heavily a C# shop. It'll be interesting to see the transition to Google Cloud if that's the case.
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