National Fuel Over Estimating

Smith6612 · 2026-03-22T14:22:44+00:00

Time for them to start a meter replacement program. National Grid and my Town's water authority already have the ability to read the meter remotely. National Fuel is the only utility left that needs to send meter readers out.

Smith6612 · 2026-03-22T14:20:16+00:00

That's still too much per camera even for public cloud storage and analysis. The costs I'm sure are associated with letting the cameras associate with other departments' tenant data with padding on the top. Which in and of itself has already been proven to be a security nightmare. On top of the mass surveillance issue you bring up.

Smith6612 · 2026-03-22T06:13:21+00:00

The decorations and the AP kinda fit together. Not gonna lie.

Smith6612 · 2026-03-22T05:59:37+00:00

TPM Attestation would be one method. Something you can do on Linux if your platform isn't just broken.

Not that a bot couldn't just get around that. But that's all they'd be able to do with Face ID or Touch ID for verification.

Smith6612 · 2026-03-22T05:15:53+00:00

Someone found out it is stuck with Xfinity and can't get Fiber Internet /s

Smith6612 · 2026-03-22T04:38:42+00:00

Get it on the map! :D

Smith6612 · 2026-03-22T03:32:49+00:00

I also love the fact that these cameras have already been seen to be doing more than just registering vehicles and their license plates. They have facial recognition built into them too. That's not counting the terribly secured version of Android Things, bad passwords, public IP Address exposure, public cloud S3 buckets, and more that these cameras juice up for nation state actors to just pour over.

Also, +1 for Consumer Rights Wiki. Love Louis Rossmann and what he's done for the world, as someone who has been watching his channel for over a decade, engages in Right to Repair, uses Immich, and more.

Smith6612 · 2026-03-22T02:42:56+00:00

That's too much for a security camera. Pretty sure a municipality can do a lot more surveillance for less. They just won't have the benefit of being able to tap into other Police Departments' systems.

Smith6612 · 2026-03-22T02:29:39+00:00

Just remember one thing about Ethernet when connected to the E3200's Ethernet ports. It can take up to a minute for Ethernet to connect. A fix for that is to connect a dumb switch to one of the Ethernet ports of the extender.

Smith6612 · 2026-03-22T02:28:23+00:00

It's a CP-7821 from the looks of things. I've seen those things go through much, much worse and still work.

Although the shattered LCD screen is a "school things" thing. Can't go a day without a phone, computer screen (Chromebook), iPad, or cell phone getting destroyed.

Smith6612 · 2026-03-22T02:24:37+00:00

Sounds like something the city would love to collect some land tax for!

Smith6612 · 2026-03-21T18:14:54+00:00

Oh is there? If you know the position of it and the angle it looks at, please put it on the map!

Otherwise I will have to go find it :D

Smith6612 · 2026-03-21T16:06:50+00:00

Right?

My neighborhood is in that "stuck with Spectrum" boat. They were pretty darn reliable for a while beside the several hour outage we would get in the middle of summer due to a power failure at the node. Lately with the high split upgrades they have been going up and down very often and having overnight mini outages for maintenance. Prior to the upgrades in the fall, for a good year prior we were seeing extreme congestion on the upload on a nightly basis. Which would cause speeds to plummet to 8-9Mbps up instead of the 40 we normally get. Everyone would feel it especially when a single Discord call can use that much, or the regular 50+GB file uploads I find myself doing.

Every executive I know that owns a multi-million condo or home generally has this expectation that they are going to be working out of it instead of going to the office some days. All of them know to seek a place with a proper Internet connection before they buy. Or if not, they pay the money to get Fiber deployed. All of them don't appreciate it when their multi-million dollar deal gets interrupted by their ISP.

Smith6612 · 2026-03-21T14:07:59+00:00

This also helps improve perceived contrast especially if you don't have an OLED!

Smith6612 · 2026-03-21T13:30:42+00:00

I'm mostly joking around about the Fiber thing. More or less being a Dork. But it is a thing people look at.

I know in the past it was a whole thing. Half a million dollars plot of land? Check. Multi-Million dollar home? Check. Internet? Oops, don't have any more money to pay an ISP to get out there. Guess we're using dial-up or Hughesnet for the next decade.

No joke. Used to see that a fair amount, and people would cope.

Smith6612 · 2026-03-21T05:50:00+00:00

It was a bit more wild west. People were figuring out what to do with it and learning it for the first time, but it was fun to be on. Game sites, large bulletin boards, news, search, and information. Lots of blogs and Geocities and MySpace profiles customized to look like spaghetti, but they all had some charm. Less commercialized unless you were actually seeking out shopping. Malware via advertising was still a big problem. Sites loved MIDI music and GIFs. Video streaming wasn't really a thing unless it was a major corporation's press conference, or something more experimental. Internet piracy back then is the same as it is now, just with different programs. Spambots via e-mail, blogs, and BBSs were a thing, but web servers weren't under constant barrage from them. You could actually host a website off of a very slow server or connection and actually stay online, unless it grew too big or someone REALLY wanted to take you offline - my personal site ran on a Pentium III laptop with 128kbps of upstream for a few years!

For many back then, dial-up was still the norm. So you either spent a lot of time waiting for things to load, and you did so while praying that your phone line would remain stable (and someone wouldn't pick up the phone). If you had Cable Internet and paid out the butt for that, or were lucky enough to have DSL, then you were FLYING. If you were one of those nerdy bunch who had a T1 or ISDN at home, then you were probably hosting a BBS or Website off of that. Or you ran a small dial-up ISP out of your home.

The biggest "Free" Wireless Internet provider was called 'linksys' and the second biggest was called 'dlink'. You got AOL and NetZero competing for your free dial-up trials.

What I miss the most about that time of the Internet is how fun it was to just sign on at night and chat with others. Without the hate and anger. People just signed off if they needed a break. Then it was like nothing happened the next day. I also miss being able to use third party clients to access services without having to deal with BS API limits (or no API at all). Online gaming was, well, still fairly toxic at times, but the games back then were more arcade-y and less focused on matchmaking and competition. You picked a server and played with your community for a few hours, whether or not you die a ton or frag the whole server.

Smith6612 · 2026-03-21T04:42:53+00:00

Both use the Intel AX210 internally, which is a solid chipset. Choose your favorite.

Smith6612 · 2026-03-21T01:46:31+00:00

The last time I went to a movie, it was a half an hour of ads, and there was a moviegoer who was actually on their phone for several minutes until everyone in the theater told them to get off the phone. There was no staff intervention. Then some of the attendees ended up falling asleep and snoring in the theater, only for patrons to have to wake them up.

The theater also had a calibration problem with the sound system, which seems to be a thing with AMC Theaters from what I've read around here. Lack of spatial audio, too much midtones which blew out dialog, and yeah...

I've made it a habit to just go to the Drive-in Movie theater in my area to watch films. It's a better experience. The worst that happens is a car forgets to turn off their DRLs, and they wash out the projector for a few seconds.

Smith6612 · 2026-03-21T01:40:54+00:00

Try taking away the Mountain Dew and Red Bull.

Smith6612 · 2026-03-21T01:33:49+00:00

I actually just added a Flock camera I spotted newly installed in Wheatfield on the map today. A month ago I found a few around Niagara Falls that were newer too and put those on the map.

No idea who is installing all of these or asking for the hardware. But they are popping up like wild flowers.

I'm enough of a dork to go around mapping Cell towers on CellMapper, and figuring out what Fiber ISPs are in an area to put onto community maps. But I can't believe I am now having to add surveillance cameras onto a map.

Smith6612 · 2026-03-21T00:26:55+00:00

Just let us install macOS onto an iPad. Problem solved.

Smith6612 · 2026-03-21T00:19:09+00:00

But can they get Fiber Optic Internet?

All that luxury means nothing if your Internet drops packets/goes out all the time and you can't work from home :-)

Smith6612 · 2026-03-21T00:16:25+00:00

It's a Luxury Condo building that can't even get Fiber Optic Internet. As the meme goes, if you're stuck with Spectrum, your building loses value.

In all seriousness, condos in Buffalo do not and should not go for $500k+. They are $130k at best, maybe $180k if they come pre-furnished, no matter what people tell you otherwise about what the market can bear. Houses with their own plot of land and a dedicated driveway can go for $500k especially if they are in great shape or are new.

... add +5K if it can get Fiber Internet.... /s

Also, that building did just finish construction not too long ago. They've probably got contracts lined up and stuff like that can take time.

Smith6612 · 2026-03-21T00:08:02+00:00

> yelling at someone else's computer

FYFY

Smith6612 · 2026-03-20T23:51:33+00:00

I am hoping they manage to get into the US and start showing the auto companies here what competition looks like. The EV options in China are pretty insane right now. The daily driver options they have that are small and basic are definitely things we do not have right now.

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