captainastronaut

I am an information hoarder and liked the Foursquare swarm app for checking into restaurants and other interesting places when I travel, because I love seeing the pins on the map of the places I have been and remembering places later. I have scripts running to download my check-ins and store them in a self hosted map.

But I obviously don’t need to keep giving them my location data. Are there any self hosted alternatives with that kind of international database of places?

This weird situation created by cars that are mostly automatic but not quite fully automatic, have moved to screens for the dash or a permanently back lit dash, and increasingly bright DRL’s that pass for headlights in a lot of cities with sufficient street lights.

Having a car that is automatic in so many ways means drivers don’t have a habit of managing things manually. They probably have an automatic lights setting even and the driver doesn’t realize the auto setting has been switched off.

Having a dash that is always lit removes the obvious queue to a driver that they are driving with their headlights off at night.

And bright DRL‘s remove the obvious queue to the driver of a dark road in front of them.

None of these innovations is bad on its own. But the conflation of them all means about one in 50 cars I see on the road at night is driving with no tail lights on or any side markers.

Yes, they have reflectors and my headlights light them up so I can usually see they are there (in good conditions). But those lights are there to improve safety for everyone and it just really annoys me that this poor design choice seems to pervade so many makes models of cars. 😤

I don’t have a dirty mind… you do!

It’s a good caturday to sit in a windowsill and watch the world go by. #caturday

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/Mal8TrzgQaA

The TSA has attempted to roll out more facial recognition in airports but has so far been blocked from doing so. Clear is stepping in to gather all that biometric data for them, in addition to the fingerprints and Iris scans they already have, and provid it to TSA directly while making a profit on the side from doing so. 

“In the near future, Clear's new facial recognition system will electronically transmit members' digital identities to TSA's second-generation Credential Authentication Technology (CAT-2) scanners, Clear says.”

https://www.cntraveler.com/story/clear-at-airport-facial-recognition

They have not received any OSHA fines, but that’s because they haven’t submitted injury data to OSHA since 2016. But now employees are starting to self-report.

I really love this Kickstarter digital photo/art frame and even though the company shut down this week, I have kept mine alive and made it work really well, better in some ways than it did before.

Here's the post on keeping the EO1 alive in zombie mode. I hope it helps someone else not throw away this cool device! https://z32guru.com/tech-projects/electric-objects-eo1-zombie-mode

I also started/hosted a community for fellow EO1 hackers to help share knowledge on how the device works. https://seattlelunarsociety.org/c/electricobjectseo1

This is the best way I've found to keep my EO1 working, be able to update wifi settings, and push new images to it from a computer or phone remotely. "Zombie mode" keeps the body and OS of the EO1, but replaces the brain that controls image selection and slideshows with an Android app.

Here's a writeup of how I approached it:

https://z32guru.com/tech-projects/electric-objects-eo1-zombie-mode

A woman went to the emergency room, where she was seen by a young new doctor. After about 3 minutes in the examination room, the doctor told her she was pregnant.

She burst out of the room and ran down the corridor screaming.

An older doctor stopped her and asked what the problem was; after listening to her story, he calmed her down and sat her in another room.

Then the doctor marched down the hallway to the first doctor's room.

"Whats wrong with you?" he demanded. This woman is 63 years old, she has two grown children and several grandchildren, and you told her she was pregnant?!!"

The new doctor continued to write on his clipboard and without looking up said:

"Does she still have the hiccups?