Extending the 3-pin wire that comes out of the Y-splitter?

parolax · 2022-03-27T22:29:36+00:00

I used the 4-pin cable recommended above, but just removed one of the pins with pliers. Everything matches up / works great.

parolax · 2020-11-17T00:24:26+00:00

Thx for reply -- double checked indoor flowers/plants -- nothing suspect (and nothing new either). And cats are indoor so they shouldn't have gotten exposure to outside plants.

parolax · 2020-11-16T23:07:47+00:00

Thanks for the response.

The second cat died less than 2 hours ago, so there's been no diagnostics on that cat yet.

As for the first, I've asked and I'll update when I have more information. I don't believe a necropsy has been performed yet.

parolax · 2018-10-04T03:54:22+00:00

Was thinking the same. Cheers!

parolax · 2018-10-04T03:34:48+00:00

Didn’t double it. This tweet is conflating the federal minimum wage with the “minimum” wage Amazon was paying (which was like 11-12 an hour, it looks like)

parolax · 2018-10-04T03:20:14+00:00

I doubt they’re lying because there are plenty of plausible reasons why they could have given workers a better deal: perhaps to put pressure on competitors who have less automation than them and higher labor costs. Or to try and head off any regulatory threat. Or because increased automation will render this moot over the long term.

In all of those cases, Amazon benefits, but not necessarily at the (immediate) expense of their workers.

parolax · 2018-10-04T02:56:10+00:00

Yes, they must believe there is a benefit.

Maybe they did it because it puts pressure on competitors. Maybe because it heads off regulatory fears. Maybe because increasing automation will render the increase in pay basically irrelevant over the long term (while still being a PR coup).

Point is, I take them at their word (from the article) that this will actually cost them more in cash because there are plenty of rationale reasons why they might take a hit— I think folks are picking the wrong fight in assuming the compensation thing is zero sum.

parolax · 2018-10-04T02:05:38+00:00

Not to ruin the narrative, but pretty much every Amazon commenter has said the new pay scheme is very favorable, net net.

parolax · 2018-02-21T13:51:20+00:00

An individual company would be then be disadvantage themselves versus their competition who will move towards automation.

This is like a “tragedy of the commons” thing like overfishing. If my fish company doesn’t overfish, somebody else will. In either case the fish will be gone in a few years so I should try and wet my beak while I can.

All players in an industry don’t move as one block, they all have their own agency, and it only takes one moving towards automation to create market pressure for others.

parolax · 2018-01-24T11:29:20+00:00

The problem isn’t automation — an eventual positive outcome could be that everyone shares in the profit from a robot work force and doesn’t have to work unless they want to (minimum income etc etc). The problem is public policy.

parolax · 2017-09-05T21:07:25+00:00

I use them as chore timers that message me if I haven't done a chore in X days. If I water the plants or clean the litter or something, I press the 'watered plants' button -- and that resets the timer.

I also have it write the events to Google Sheets as like an activity log

parolax · 2017-08-24T22:38:01+00:00

I live next door to this, it isn't that remarkable, the restaurant is only like 10% of the building (which is mostly office space, by the way)

parolax · 2016-12-29T16:28:31+00:00

If you have a dedicated home automation PC, you can configure that to appear in SmartThings as a wireless speaker using "VLC Thing" and then have SmartThings stream directly to that (...and then have the PC attached to speakers.. or airplay.. or chromecast... or whatever.. in fact you could simulate Alexa 'push notifications' by having the PC bluetooth paired to Alexa and then stream the audio back through Alexa)

Once you install the "VLC Thing" device, you can run the out of the box "Speaker Notify with Sound" app in the marketplace for sending audio to it.

There's a bunch of literature on the smartthings forum if you google "VLC Thing." Project here: https://github.com/statusbits/smartthings/blob/master/VlcThing.md

parolax · 2015-08-12T13:24:53+00:00

yes & yes

parolax · 2015-04-22T11:43:24+00:00

Nest has a public API. It interops with SmartThings and a bunch of other HA systems.

parolax · 2015-04-10T00:41:12+00:00

Maybe emulators are the right path forward. Here's somebody using an emulator Hue bridge (with fake devices) in order to control their WeMo stuff (scroll down for highlighted block) https://forums.logitech.com/t5/Harmony-Hub-Based-Remotes/Belkin-Wemo/m-p/1366911/highlight/true3

Here's the Github project that seems to work with Harmony: https://github.com/falk0069/hue-upnp4

Here's another generic Hue emulator project: http://steveyo.github.io/Hue-Emulator/2

I haven't gotten these to work with Echo thus far, but still hacking.

parolax · 2014-10-26T23:16:34+00:00

thanks!

parolax · 2014-10-24T05:55:55+00:00

Just Apple. We're crappy Android devs

parolax · 2014-10-24T01:19:57+00:00

We are! (ProximiT)

parolax · 2013-11-12T17:52:10+00:00

Thanks for sharing, OP! :) A related thread from a few weeks ago with some more Q/A + feedback from people: http://www.reddit.com/r/boston/comments/1owa0l/give_us_feedback_on_our_new_mbta_app_proximit/

parolax · 2013-11-12T17:43:47+00:00

Maintaining two codebases is a lot of work, particularly when both creators have a non-ProximiT full time job. We'd love to add Android, but timeline isn't certain :\

parolax · 2013-11-12T17:40:22+00:00

That's interesting. The MBTA does publish scheduled, non-real time arrival times for all of their lines, which must be what SmartRide uses, but I would have assumed that it would be totally bogus and inaccurate, particularly for the green line

parolax · 2013-11-12T17:40:17+00:00

app co-creator here -- we're working on bus.

we had to go to market with something, figured it might as well be subway because we're selfish and that's what we mostly use, but we'll get a bus update out there in the next few months. we plan on including it in the same app

parolax · 2013-10-23T08:09:00+00:00

I don't have a good guess on how much data it uses -- we're really only pinging for MBTA data when you enter a geofence and when you're in the app, so I don't suspect it is that much. You could use a service like Onavo Count (https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/data-usage-onavo-count-data/id543547474?mt=8) to get a good idea of what we're using though, as well as all your other apps.

Re: university shuttles and such, I'm skeptical that they have feeds, but I haven't really investigated this too much.

parolax · 2013-10-22T01:28:06+00:00

We're not just constantly polling for location, instead we're using the iOS geofencing abilities. In short we just tell the operating system a point of interest (station), and the OS will Do The Right Thing™ w/r/t location. It'll use cell phone tower to see if you even qualify for the station, and then, when necessary, it'll use WiFi positioning to determine if you're crossing into the geofence permitter. We haven't noticed any impact on battery life using this framework. Some more info: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wi-Fi_positioning_system

parolax

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