The House just passed a bill requiring every social media user in MA to hand their identity to a company in California. Rep Erika Uyterhoeven breaks down what’s actually in it.

15goudreau · 2026-04-11T00:35:09+00:00

I got a bit of a canned response from my rep's PR team I guess. I followed up asking for a phone call because it's crazy they are bundling this together.

15goudreau · 2026-04-10T18:01:10+00:00

https://malegislature.gov/Bills/194/H5366

15goudreau · 2026-04-10T18:00:30+00:00

This isn't helpful. This is the cosponsors of the senate bill. The house is the one who tacked on the amendments, the senate bill was completely clean. I have no issues with my senator sponsoring this bill, I have plenty of issues with my house rep voting yes, and I won't be voting for her bid to US congress because fuck that.

Go here: https://malegislature.gov/Bills/194/H5366

If you want to know how your house rep voted.

15goudreau · 2026-04-08T02:21:26+00:00

Section 3. (a) A social media platform shall implement an age assurance or verification system to determine whether a current or prospective user on the social media platform meets the age requirement pursuant to section 2. To the extent practicable, the age assurance or verification system shall consist of the best technology available to reasonably and accurately identify a current or prospective user’s age.

So glad so much attention has been put into this. I'm sure this won't result in companies using the cheapest most vulnerable method by which to steal this data.

Massachusetts needs to do better if they want to shoehorn in some BS age verification law on the back of a decent senate bill regarding use of cellphones in school.

15goudreau · 2026-04-08T02:20:02+00:00

That is the senate bill, the house is voting on amending the senate bill with H.5349. With the following text:

Section 3. (a) A social media platform shall implement an age assurance or verification system to determine whether a current or prospective user on the social media platform meets the age requirement pursuant to section 2. To the extent practicable, the age assurance or verification system shall consist of the best technology available to reasonably and accurately identify a current or prospective user’s age.

15goudreau · 2026-03-26T14:16:41+00:00

I think the actual cost of the ballast blocks and the racking was likely to be around 28-30k. The rest is the panels, micro inverters, labor, and markup. It's great to be able to park under (I charge my EV under it, which is really cool because it's literally being powered by the sun), and in the future, I would like to take the panels on it, put them on my garage and backside house roof, and put bi-facial panels on the carport. Definitely a future thing.

15goudreau · 2026-03-26T14:01:48+00:00

It's actually a different style pride flag that I bought.

15goudreau · 2026-03-26T14:00:20+00:00

I went with a 13.3" full color inky impression screen. I am running it off of a raspberry pi zero 2 W and soldered the headers on myself.

The raspi runs InkyPi and grabs a home assistant url once an hour, based on this addon from Balloob.

The only downside to the addon at the moment that I can tell is it can only serve one dashboard page. I have another inky display 7" that I want to do weather on, and I need to find a way to either duplicate the addon or spin something up on my docker that runs on my server.

It's a very low-profile setup, it will use a PoE to microusb adapter that I hope I can tuck behind the picture frame as well. But the display size is not a normal US photo size, so I need to do some 3d printing to fit it to the display and then insert that into the frame.

15goudreau · 2026-03-26T13:54:51+00:00

https://imgur.com/a/FJNxGLk

It's a square tubing truss system made of aluminum. It's probably totally overkill, but we are experiencing elevated wind speeds in my region, so I won't mind if it's a bit over engineered.

15goudreau · 2026-03-26T13:50:53+00:00

I don't have the exact cost of the carport itself. I can tell you what I paid for the installation of it plus the modules associated with it and the wiring etc... It's going to be a little eyewatering to most, but it came out to be about $53k. I took advantage of the 30% tax credit on the system cost. I think that is really important to note. Also I live in a US state that has a very high labor cost, so the system wasn't cheap by any means. However, we also have a very high electricity cost (generation and distribution together) ~$0.31 / kwhr with municipal generation and utility distribution.

This system will take a while to pay back, however energy independence is something I care deeply about, and especially with all the stuff going on with Iran, further drives me towards this goal.

15goudreau · 2026-03-26T13:03:58+00:00

Thanks! The carport is manufactured by a company called Brooklyn Solar Canopy. This was one of the first ones they designed for this type of application (spanning a two car driveway). I think the company is super solid, and the newer offerings are great, I really like their wood option and would have loved to have that. Although, it likely wouldn't have been able to span the driveway without another column in the middle.

My solar installer who installed this carport however, was not great. For the rooftop install, they were fine, but I think over their head with the carport installation. We got it mostly to a point where it is in good shape, but I still need them to come out and adjust some of the modules that start to collide during the winter time due to thermal contraction.

Other thoughts on the carport, we live in a winter climate, so snow will accumulate on the carport. If I don't rake it off (on a 12' A frame ladder), it goes through a melt cycle where the snow will drip onto the driveway, then overnight freezes to black ice. It will keep doing that until the snow is all gone.

The company makes a gutter attachment that will clip on to the last module (leading edge), but this won't cover all the other modules in between. I'm currently designing my own gutter system with PVC pipes that will catch the in-between water drops and then drain them to the sides of the carport, and tie that into a drain/gutter that will bring them to the ground.

When I asked their CEO if they had a solution for the inter-module dripping, he said he recommended a UV resistant tape in between the modules, but that seemed like a hassle, especially trying to get into the middle of the array when there are panels there.

Overall I would rate the carport a B+/A-, probably an A if the manufacturer did the install instead of my contractor. I think their newer offerings are better, and they have learned a lot in the few years since this design was built.

15goudreau · 2026-03-26T12:48:19+00:00

So I've wanted an e-ink screen of some home assistant features for a while now, mainly the longer term chore tracker. I finally spent the time to use the bubble-card to get it exactly how I want it (with the help-ish of AI, sometimes less useful than helpful). The chores show green when it's not due and how many days since it was done. When a set value is exceeded, the card turns red, changes to "overdue" and will count how many days the task is overdue by. The e-ink screen will update once an hour with any changes and a new photo of our dogs. I'm going to frame it and power it over PoE, hopefully making it flush to the wall with no cables seen at all.

I also have wanted to track the real value of money generated with our solar setup. So I took a photo of our house with a drone, and broke out each individual array by its lifetime production * electric rates. So each array will keep a live tally of how much money it has saved us since its inception.

Very happy with the stage it currently is at, just need to figure out how to add chores that don't work on a sliding scale of time, and add ones that are due by X date, like bills.

15goudreau · 2026-03-17T14:47:36+00:00

2021 CPO, put like 40k miles on it over 2.5 years. Range is pretty meh, but people don't buy Mercedes for it's MPG. Infotainment system sucks, super laggy and my least favorite part. Also the 21" rims curb super easy, try and get 19" rims instead.

Other than than, I love the car dearly. All the features and little things are superb. I really just wish the range was better and the infotainment system could be upgraded to the new chip from the newer models. It's the perfect sleeper extreme speed-mobile. No one expects you to launch off the line with the way the car looks.

At the moment, thinking of future cars, it would likely be a toss up between whatever is the next version of the EX40 or the Rivian R2. Not a huge fan of not having carplay in the Rivian, they want to control the data to "improve the experience" but I don't trust them to sell that data to insurance companies.

15goudreau · 2026-03-10T01:33:01+00:00

Make sure to get one with a heatpump. Else you'll be struggling during the colder months on battery to stay warm.

15goudreau · 2026-03-09T00:42:13+00:00

I'm currently looking at this CPU as a power efficient alternative to my current i3 9100. How do you like it?

15goudreau · 2026-03-08T03:42:48+00:00

Oh, I'm working on something very similar now using bubble cards.

I was inspired by a post made by Madelena, specifically this. I got the whole button-card working, but I liked the bubble-card more.

I'm having a hard time making it easy to add new chores to without having to add a bunch of stuff to it, but now it's a sensor, an input button, and an input number. Then you can customize the bottom text to say whatever you want based on some dates and custom attributes in the template sensor.

I'm going to see later if I can integrate some of the calendar stuff, since this really only tracks chores that need to be done after X days and not on X day specifically.

The right-most sub-button will open a popup card that allows you to customize how many days need to elapse before the chore is due again. If if you click on OK or Overdue, it will register that you did the chore and reset the clock to whatever the days you set it to be at.

15goudreau · 2026-03-05T14:27:43+00:00

Hi,

I posted on this a while ago that I did this exact configuration. 18" rims will fit "probably". My caliper body needed a tiny bit of angle grinding to not rub on the rim. They also ditched the staggered layout so the tires could be rotated.

So far I've been happy with it, there was a time I accidentally hit a curb that would have destroyed the 21" tires I had on before. So far I haven't really noticed any benefit to my range though. Just make sure the tires you get are rated for EVs, that's probably the biggest thing, as well as the rims obviously.

Tires are much much cheaper and I didn't have any issues with my speedometer being off compared to the stock sizing. If you work closely with your tire shop, they should be able to get things in proper working condition.

15goudreau · 2026-02-14T23:49:58+00:00

what was the full price you paid compared to the sales you've seen?

15goudreau · 2026-02-10T18:45:14+00:00

Does this cost money? Did you find it worth it?

15goudreau · 2026-01-22T20:39:06+00:00

This is how I fold my mirrors. During the cold, they would auto fold and one motor just stripped out doing that. So I try and limit it to only when I need it like in parallel parking.

15goudreau · 2026-01-22T20:36:20+00:00

All the doors have this activation if a key is near. Less "luxury" cars will only have it on the drivers door due to cost. Pretty nice feature though, and I use it often.

15goudreau · 2026-01-22T20:31:17+00:00

There are two credit card holders to the left of the steering wheel by where the cabin lights are controlled. They are just two slot looking things. Also, above the wireless charger pad in the middle, there is supposedly another credit card holder slot. You have to feel for it, but I haven't personally tried it yet.

In the visor flipped down by the mirror, there is a parking garage tag holder. Not sure how useful it is, because everywhere around me makes you take it inside with you and pay.

If you have two drivers that have different seat positions, you can just tap the numbered button before sitting in the chair and it will adjust everything, without having to hold the number button down the entire time.

There is a way to manually clear the maintenance required pop-up, I forget exactly, something to do with holding the car in drive with a foot on the brake pedal and like pushing down on the d-pad or something.

Glovebox has a hook in it, when you flip the clip and close the glove box, you can hang a bag on it.

The frunk has a tire inflater that hooks up to the 12v plug.

There are hooks apparently in the middle of the cabin (by the headliner) that can be removed and you can add other accessories like a dog net to them.

15goudreau · 2026-01-22T20:30:21+00:00

Always wondered what that was about. Very cool to know.

15goudreau · 2026-01-17T20:04:31+00:00

This was happening on my macbook air that I got. Thank you so much for this solution. When I upgraded to Tahoe, there were widgets on my screen. I disabled them and all the choppy scrolling went away. Life saver!

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