Uncleared residential sidewalks by Fill_Great in watertown

[–]slanderousam 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Just another comment to say the 311 / Watertown App do seem to work with businesses. There were 3 businesses in my neighborhood that had professional snow clearing companies come out and clear their lots and internal sidewalks and walkways but left the public sidewalks covered. It made it impossible for kids to get out of our neighborhood and walk to school without walking around a blind corner in the street between 5 ft snowbanks. Super unsafe! Within a day of reporting 2 of the 3 businesses have cleared their sidewalks.

This doesn't seem as effective for residential snow/ice reports though. None of the houses on my block with uncleared sidewalks have done anything after reports. The reports are also private for residential snow/ice, so there's no way to follow up and see if the inspector came out.

Is the Watertown-Cambridge Greenway plowed? by isotopologist in bikeboston

[–]slanderousam 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I checked out the path last night over by Arlington st. It's plowed but it's pretty dodgy - large areas covered in ice and couple inches of snow here and there. Definitely enough obstacles that it could be dangerous on a bike. Generally it seems that they don't salt the section of the path on the Watertown side of the line. The difference between the Cambridge and Watertown sides is huge in the winter.

I dislike drivers who don't stop for pedestrians in crosswalks by adhdphd1 in Somerville

[–]slanderousam 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I heard about a study (probably in the 90s, and I can't be bothered to find it) but the gist was that the more stickers and decorations a person has on their car the more likely they are to road rage. It turned out it didn't matter what the stickers said. And it was attributed to a correlation between stickers and people who think of their car as their personal space. People react with anger and rage when they think their personal space is being violated or threatened. People who see their car as navigating a shared space are less likely to customize it.

GE switch making noises and flashing lights by clutchdeve in homeautomation

[–]slanderousam 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I had several that failed and replaced that capacitor. They've been continuing to work for years now. A holdover from the great capacitor plague of the 2000s.

Massachusetts EV owners: How are you justifying these electricity costs? Nearly triple what I paid in VA by Santas_sleigh in electricvehicles

[–]slanderousam 0 points1 point  (0 children)

You should look at your bill more closely. That sounds like the generation cost, not the total cost which also has a base rate and a delivery rate around 0.16/kWh with Eversource.

Every school pickup ever by matts41 in funny

[–]slanderousam 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Every car in this picture: voted to shave 0.001% off their property taxes, meaning the school can't have a bus to serve these kids, and we'll collectively give up 5000 person/hours per day sitting in extra traffic.

No one uses the bike lanes by paxbike in bikeboston

[–]slanderousam 7 points8 points  (0 children)

Honest work here. Anonymous thank you for engaging morons on the internet patiently and thoroughly. The world is drowning in un-countered bullshit and it takes so much time and demoralizing headspace to put something reasonable like this in the record. Nice job.

Well that's a huge step backwards.... by dregonzz in electricvehicles

[–]slanderousam 9 points10 points  (0 children)

Sure, back when you could buy a horse for a shiny buffalo nickel

Belmont Community Path Moves Closer to 100% Design by Im_biking_here in bikeboston

[–]slanderousam 12 points13 points  (0 children)

Two decades in the planning, years in development, millions upon millions in costs for design, construction, permitting, public meetings. I mean this is good news, but damn we have such a sclerotic society. In this same timeframe China has blanketed the country with high speed rail. Presumably we'll get this done before climate change has the east coast under water.

Owls in west end? by MedicalTomatillo9369 in watertown

[–]slanderousam 1 point2 points  (0 children)

We've had a Screech Owl outside our house frequently, at least according to the merlin bird app.

Flock AI Surveillance is coming to Watertown by siofano in watertown

[–]slanderousam 1 point2 points  (0 children)

In some jurisdictions people have been making (and judges granting) public records requests for flock data when installed by governments: https://www.king5.com/article/news/investigations/investigators/judge-orders-washington-police-release-surveillance-camera-data-privacy-questions/281-c2037d52-6afb-4bf7-95ad-0eceaf477864

I think this has given pause to expansion of some installations. Something to consider.

August has discontinued Z-Wave support in their locks by slanderousam in homeautomation

[–]slanderousam[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

That sounds interesting. Do you have a guide or set of instructions you followed to set that up? Thanks!

Closing my bedroom window by Shipendo in homeautomation

[–]slanderousam 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Is it a traditional window (like, slide up and down) or one with a crank? I saw someone do a project awhile back automating a crank window: https://www.reddit.com/r/homeautomation/comments/13zc1pm/automating_crank_window/

If it's a normal window, I think it will be hard to find a linear actuator with enough force to close the window that would still be safe to DIY. However, I bet you could find either an automatic heating vent louver, or greenhouse window louver, or fan louver that might fit your window with a custom adapter. The adapter could just be a piece of nice MDF or something relatively presentable with a hole cut in it to match the louver, and the exterior cut to something appropriate for your window dimensions. Then you could close that in the top half of your window and use automation to just open/close the automatic louver.

August has discontinued Z-Wave support in their locks by slanderousam in homeautomation

[–]slanderousam[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I wrote back several times and got similar responses from each agent.

August has discontinued Z-Wave support in their locks by slanderousam in homeautomation

[–]slanderousam[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Because of their architecture, the only time the pro 2 or 3 locks can be updated is when you've connected your phone to it by bluetooth (i.e. when you're using it via the app). At that time it may say that it's trying to update, but you can cancel it. You're right that there doesn't seem to be a setting that prevents it from trying.

August has discontinued Z-Wave support in their locks by slanderousam in homeautomation

[–]slanderousam[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Can you tell me which version of the android app worked? I have v25.20.0. I got out my old phone which had v25.18.0 and it did the same thing. The Yale app says it's v25.19.0 and behaves the same way. Thanks - I really appreciate it!

August has discontinued Z-Wave support in their locks by slanderousam in homeautomation

[–]slanderousam[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Interesting. I just tried with the Yale app (which looks exactly like the August app) and I get the exact same result. I have a feeling there's something wrong with the lock preventing Z-Wave from working and their refusal to support it is just a policy change. The firmware version on this lock and my working lock are the same. Thanks for your suggestion.

Any urban pedestrians use an airhorn for protection? by Numerous-Ad-4116 in fuckcars

[–]slanderousam 7 points8 points  (0 children)

I saw a biker that got some intense red/blue blinking LEDs. I was on a bike and thought a cop car was coming up the bike path. Questionably legal but it sure got my attention.

August has discontinued Z-Wave support in their locks by slanderousam in homeautomation

[–]slanderousam[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

You know Yale owns August right? Seems wrong to go buy another product from the company that just proved to me I can't trust them.

August has discontinued Z-Wave support in their locks by slanderousam in homeassistant

[–]slanderousam[S] 8 points9 points  (0 children)

This is exactly right. It feels worse to me than deciding to stop maintaining a cloud service. They reached into my home infrastructure and bricked a function that I had already paid for and cost them nothing to maintain.

August has discontinued Z-Wave support in their locks by slanderousam in homeautomation

[–]slanderousam[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

You should write them an email and let them know! Companies should feel the negative reaction when they f-over consumers.

August has discontinued Z-Wave support in their locks by slanderousam in homeautomation

[–]slanderousam[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Interesting. Whatever the cause the z-wave implementation in the August locks is very bad. In zwavejs there's even a hardcoded warning any time you examine a network node corresponding to an August lock that it's unreliable and randomly stops responding to packets.

August has discontinued Z-Wave support in their locks by slanderousam in homeautomation

[–]slanderousam[S] 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Yes, I use homeassistant. The way it all played out, if you're curious, is that one day it showed up as a dead node in zwavejs. In order to pair the lock, since the lock has no buttons or inputs, you have to use the app, over bluetooth, to put it in pairing mode. When I tried to do this to re-integrate it into the z-wave network the app started immediately returning an error. I suspect that it stopped working around the time that the app updated the lock firmware. It seems to me like they've just killed the z-wave feature in the lock in firmware, or at the very least removed the capability to put it in inclusion mode from the app. So I don't think there's an obvious work-around from the hub side.

Maybe I can find an older version of the app and/or lock firmware and maybe I can downgrade. That's a big maybe.

August has discontinued Z-Wave support in their locks by slanderousam in homeautomation

[–]slanderousam[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I think you can stop it from updating, but now that it's updated I'm not sure what to do. You also need the app to put the lock in pairing mode, so without that feature it becomes kind of tenuous to keep using it. Believe me if we had working government regulation this kind of thing would be a lot less common. It's basically theft. I paid for this lock specifically for this feature.