• 0 Posts
  • 29 Comments
Joined 3 years ago
cake
Cake day: February 19th, 2021

help-circle











  • Ooh, I know this one! Here’s what I did to get it working and set so it survives a reboot:

    1. In a terminal, run sudo arandr
    2. Set all of the monitors to 1080p
    3. Close arandr
    4. Go to Settings > Display
    5. Rearrange monitors in correct order if necessary
    6. Set the each monitor to the correct resolution and frequency, applying the settings after each update
    7. All monitors should now work, BUT they will not survive a reboot in Pop-OS 22, because the GDM3 login screen will NOT have this information, and will reset everything. So we must copy the pop-os monitors.xml file to the gdm3 config directory:

    sudo cp ~/.config/monitors.xml /var/lib/gdm3/.config/

    Note: You may need to do this as sudo -i

    1. Reboot, and all 3 monitors should be loaded in the correct positions, at the correct resolution at the login screen

  • You may want to give it another shot. They’ve been working pretty hard to move away from config files - much more is done via the GUI these days to make things more user-friendly.

    The devs have also really been focusing on voice this year as well - it’s been really interesting to see what they come up with. A few releases back, they released an update that allows you to give voice commands to HA via a landline phone hooked up to a $30 VoIP box. There is also support now for Espressif’s new “S3-Box” devices, which have small screens, a speaker and a few microphones for under $50 - this does require messing with yaml files at this point, but I should be able to finally ditch my Echos soon!



  • You can easily have a smart home without any data leaving your home network.

    You need three things:

    • Home Assistant software (free and open source)
    • ZigBee (also free and open source) smart devices made by companies that comply with the ZigBee protocol
    • Most importantly, a ZigBee controller.

    There are several options available (Deconz Conbee II, etc), and this device gets plugged into the same machine Home Assistant is on, and it allows HA to control your ZigBee devices directly. No “hub” sending your data to a cloud server, everything is done on your local network. If the devices comply with the protocol, you don’t need their hub, even if they say it’s required.

    I use Hue bulbs, but have no Hue hub. I use many Aqara devices, but don’t have an Aqara hub. It’s pretty great and works very well!





  • For a long time, the US actually had something called the “Fairness Doctrine” which required broadcasters to present matters of public interest in a way that was fair. So if you had a guy on a show that said the president was a lizard person, that show also had to have someone on to refute that opinion, or the media company could lose their broadcasting license.

    The Fairness Doctrine was repealed by the Reagan Administration in 1987, which immediately resulted in the rise of conservative talk radio, who could say whatever they wanted without having to present the opposing viewpoint, and they didn’t have to worry about losing their license.

    The rise of conservative talk radio led to Fox News, which led to the election of Trump.

    Interestingly, less than a year after the repeal of the Fairness Doctrine, a conservative political nonprofit corporation was formed called Citizens United, led by a man named David Bossie. The goal of this organization was (and remains) the creation of media that supports their goals of restoring “traditional American values”, which consists entirely of right-wing documentaries and attack ads.

    In 2008, Citizens United made a documentary called “Hillary: The Movie”, which was basically a movie-length attack on Hillary Clinton, who had announced in 2007 that she was going to run for president in 2008.

    At the time, there was a law called the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act, which essentially banned any attack ads that name a federal candidate from running within 30 days of a primary election or 60 days from a federal election, if the ad was funded with money from a corporation (including a nonprofit) or union.

    The Citizens United nonprofit corporation knew this, and sued the Federal Election Commission, arguing that not being able to show their attack ad was a violation of their constitutional right to free speech, which, very importantly, had only ever been interpreted to apply to human individuals, not corporations.

    The Supreme Court was dominated by conservatives in 2010 (and still is), and they ruled that corporations did in fact have free speech protection, that not allowing attack ads funded by corporations that were not required to disclose the source of their funding before elections was a violation of the constitutional rights of corporations, and subsequently nullified the part of the law that prevented Citizens United from showing their attack ad, while also removing almost all limits on the “speech” that corporations could engage in without repercussions and also happened to confer legal “personhood” to corporate entities.

    Incidentally, David Bossie (President of Citizens United) resigned from Citizens United in 2016 to take a job as deputy campaign manager for Donald Trump’s presidential campaign.