This is a long form post. It includes lots of images. If you're viewing on a microblogging platform such as Mastodon, you may wish to click through to read it properly. That said, here goes.
Like many people, I have a bunch of smartphone stuff, or so-called "Internet of Things" devices. Some of them use proper smartphone protocols such as Zigbee or Thread, via a hub. Others connect directly via WiFi or Ethernet.
These things can variously be security risks (the recent story about toothbrushes making a botnet was fake, but illustrates the threat vector), or massive privacy invasions if they can just randomly probe stuff on your network (hi Alexa).
So I wanted a VLAN to segregate my stuff off. Of course, this also requires a bridge with a firewall between your LAN and IoT VLAN, which many people use their router for. I wanted a separate bridge though, for the learning exercise, for compartmentalising things, and also to reduce the traffic load on my router.
I was considering writing a long post about how to create VLANs and what they are, but this tutorial as
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This is a long form post. It includes lots of images. If you're viewing on a microblogging platform such as Mastodon, you may wish to click through to read it properly. That said, here goes.
Like many people, I have a bunch of smartphone stuff, or so-called "Internet of Things" devices. Some of them use proper smartphone protocols such as Zigbee or Thread, via a hub. Others connect directly via WiFi or Ethernet.
These things can variously be security risks (the recent story about toothbrushes making a botnet was fake, but illustrates the threat vector), or massive privacy invasions if they can just randomly probe stuff on your network (hi Alexa).
So I wanted a VLAN to segregate my stuff off. Of course, this also requires a bridge with a firewall between your LAN and IoT VLAN, which many people use their router for. I wanted a separate bridge though, for the learning exercise, for compartmentalising things, and also to reduce the traffic load on my router.
I was considering writing a long post about how to create VLANs and what they are, but this tutorial assumes you already know that, and how to do it. For my purposes, I created a VLAN tagged 10, a new WiFi network (2.4GHz only but no reason you couldn't enable 5GHz if you wanted) tagged with that VLAN, and forbade it from accessing my router.
In fact, the only places VLAN 10 can go are the backbone between the switches and access points, and the one port we are going to put out bridge on. That one allows both untagged and VLAN 10 traffic.
So now I need to create the bridge. The VLAN as set up has no DHCP server and no route to the Internet. If you join the VLAN's SSID, you will not even get an IP address at this point.
This is where the bridge comes in, and I wanted to build one using a spare Raspberry Pi 4 and OpenWRT. The nice thing about OpenWRT on a Pi 4 is that it's really lightweight. You can get away without a fan. I just stick heatsinks on the chips.
Anyway, the first thing to do is flash OpenWRT. There are instructions for getting an RPi 4 build here. Note that you don't need the USB Ethernet driver; we're going to build this using only the builtin ethernet port in a "router on a stick" configuration.
If you ask me nicely, I might give you a binary of my custom build, which has a bunch of nice stuff added to it.
Anyway, flash the Pi, and DO NOT CONNECT IT TO YOUR NETWORK. This is because, by default, the OpenWRT build is running a DHCP server. I assume you probably already have one of these on your LAN. You don't want another one.
Instead, get your laptop, or whatever, anything with an ethernet port, disconnect it from your local network, and plug it directly into the VLAN bridge, AND ONLY THE VLAN BRIDGE.
If, at this point, you can see your home network or the Internet, you are doing it wrong.
Power up the Pi, and wait a bit. Then navigate to:
http://192.168.1.1/
In your web browser. You will be asked for a login. The default username and password is root/root. Change it (system - Administration).
Now navigate to System - System and change the name of your device. I called mine "VLANBridge". Hit Save & Apply:
Now we need to stop that DHCP server I just talked about. Go to "Network - Interfaces" and you'll get a list of network interfaces. There may be a "Wan" here. If so, delete it. Then click the button to edit the settings for Lan:
You'll be presented with a bunch of option tabs. Under General settings, you want to change "Protocol" to "DHCP Client":
Under "Firewall Settings", make sure it's in Firewall zone, "lan":
And under DHCP Server, click "Ignore interface", and then under IPv6 Settings, just disable everything:
OK, you're good. Save everything, then on your laptop, pull up a shell and do:
ssh root@192.168.1.1
Enter the password you just set, then once logged in:
shutdown
Wait until everything stops. Power down the Pi, unplug it from your laptop, then you can connect your laptop back to your own network.
OK, now take the Pi which is now configured as a DHCP client and plug it in to the router port you intend to use. Configure that port to allow both VLAN 10 and the default LAN.
Power up the Pi. Now go to your own DHCP server and assign it a static IP address on your LAN.
Now the next bit is going to either be very easy, or very difficult, depending on the capabilities of your router. You will need to set up a new static route to the IoT VLAN so that stuff on your main network (like your phone) can still talk to it.
Now I'm going to assume that out IoT VLAN is 192.168.10.0/24. This means that the router needs to advertise the static IP address you just assigned as the destination for that route.
If your router can't do that ... well, you're gonna need to go away and solve that problem. It's beyond the scope of this article. If it's an ISP supplied piece of crap, put it into "modem mode" and get a more capable router.
I actually use OpenWRT for this as well, and it makes it really easy, It's just this:.
Assuming you've done all that, let's go and log in to your VLAN Bridge. Presumably it isn't using the static IP address you've assigned it yet. Find where it is (or browse to either:
http://VLANBridge.lan/
or
http://VLANBridge.local/
... one of them will probably work, and reboot it. It should now come back up with the IP address you assigned.
Log bak on. It's time to create the VLAN interface.
Navigate to "Network - Interfaces" and select the "Devices" tab. Add a device configuration.
The device type is "VLAN (802.1q)"
The base device is "eth0"
The VLAN ID is "10"
And the name is "eth0.10"
Probably go ahead and disable IPv6 as well for shits and giggles. Probably doesn't matter much. Don't touch anything under "Advanced device options", because there are dragons in the and they will break something if you bugger about with them.
That's created the VLAN Ethernet device, sharing the main ethernet port. Now we need to create an interface. Navigate to the "Interface" tab and select "Add new interface" at the bottom.
Under Name, we want "VLAN". Protocol is "Static address", and Device is "Software VLAN eth0.10". We then get to configure it. We'll get a page like this:
A couple of things to note: the IPv4 address and net mask are standard. The IPv4 Gateway is your Internet gateway on your main LAN. Mine is 192.168.1.1. Yours may be something else. Enter the right value, or nothing on your VLAN will be able to find the Internet.
Under "Advanced Settings", just make sure that "Use default gateway" is checked.
Under "Firewall Settings", assign it to the new firewall zone, "VLAN"
DHCP settings are nice and standard. The lease time may be a bit short. I set mine to "24h". These are the DHCP settings for your IoT VLAN, not your main network.
As before, go disable all the IPv6 stuff. Probably doesn't matter.
Save and apply. Now go to "Network - Firewall" and replicate this setup.
What's important are that you have two Zone forwarding rules: one from lan -> VLAN with "accept, accept, accept" and VLAN -> lan with "accept, accept, reject".
The last bit is what protects your main network from IoT things being naughty.
We're getting there. Now we need a few custom firewall traffic rules. Click through to the "Traffic Rules" tab and clear out any rules which are already there.
There are two rules you absolutely want. The first is to allow DNS queries to your local DNS server, which will likely be your router. I have two DNS servers locally: one on 192.168.1.1 and one on 192.168.1.3. I want to add them both. Here's what that looks like:
The next rule we need is a catchall-rule for denying access to any local subnet, other than stuff we explicitly allow.
Note that the order they are in matters. You can drag them up and down with the little hamburger icon next to "Edit".
OK. Save everything and we should now have a working network. There is one more thing we need to do, but I'm going to come to that in a minute. First let's test what we have got.
Take one of your devices and connect to the new VLAN SSID you have created.
Do you have Internet access? You should.
Can you ping devices on your main network? You shouldn't be able to.
Can you ping the device on your VLAN from your main network? You should be able to.
If it's not working, check your managed switch settings. You may be blocking packets at the hardware level.
If it's working, then well done!
There is something else we want to do. It's optional, but you will likely want it. A lot of smartphone stuff is found by systems like Alexa, Google Home, and Apple HomeKit, via multicast DNS (mDNS). Now stuff is going to be on a different VLAN, this won't work.
Fear not! We can fix it. There's a package for multicast DNS forwarding in OpenWRT based on Avahi.
The tutorial is written for an older version of OpenWRT, and the way Avahi is packaged has changed.
If you go to "System - Software" and then hit "Update Lists", click on "installed" and then type, "avahi" into the filter.
You want to see this, AND ONLY THIS. If these packages aren't installed, install them. If there are any others installed, remove them. These instructions are current as of OpenWRT 23.05.0
You will also want to ensure the "dbus" package is installed. Once you've done that, follow the tutorial but ignore the bit that says to type:
opkg update
opkg install avahi-daemon
You will need to add a firewall traffic rule, to allow multicast DNS to propagate, as per the tutorial. Here's my rule, which allows propagation in both directions.
And here's the order I have my rules in:
And that's it. I think I have remembered everything I did. If you try this and it doesn't work for you, ping me and we'll see if I can work out what I've forgotten. Now your network is set up, you should be able to start moving your IoT stuff over.
NB: I checked and that isn't even showing the intro paragraph on Mastodon. It's a tutorial for building a VLAN bridge. If it interests you, you'll likely need to click the link to show it natively on my server.
Sometimes we forget that the IEEE defined some frame types, such as Pause, that have particularized rules regarding whether they may cross a bridge or not.
Whaaa... ?Gobsmacked, followed by a few minutes thought and search. Ah. (NB: Sometimes when faced with abbreviations and #TLAs which clearly don't mean What I Think They Mean, I can't be bothered.)
Imagination on overdrive for a few moments there, though. Bombs may have been involved.
@greygirl27 ah yes, 'both sides'. One side harassing and abusing the very small number of trans runners who happen to be fast enough to be the fastest in their age category at a few (but nowhere near all) events (whilst the vast majority of these records are not held by trans runners). Sell transphobic t-shirts and harass volunteers. The other side: existing and running whilst trans (and in accordance with parkrun's rules).
2009: Harriet Harman is squeamish about trans women and so lets the Equality Act get drafted in a sloppy and ambiguous way.
2010: The coalition government passes it and can’t be arsed to read the damned thing, despite trans people (and I was one of them) waving frantically at MPs and senior civil servants.
A decade of dominoes fall…
2025: “I know he was goosestepping past the water cooler yelling ‘Heil Hitler’, but the courts have decided that the Equality Act means we can’t fire him.”
Oh, here’s another fun “ticking time bomb that trans people were ignored about”.
The UK’s same sex marriage legislation modifies the gender recognition act with what came to be known as the “spousal veto”. The rationale, in the act, for this necessarily implies that a same sex marriage is worth less than a mixed sex one.
I want it on record that I, and several other trans people, spent much of 2011 and 2012 frantically warning cis gay MPs and Lords about this, and they did not do a damned fucking thing other than brush us off.
So it’s sitting there, an unexploded bomb against same sex marriage in legislation, waiting for some TERF to set a legal precedent in some fucked up way that will ruin marriage for same sex couples in the UK, the same way they’ve now made it basically impossible to fire raging bigots because of wiggle room in the equality act.
And I know that self interest is insufficient to overcome squick about trans people, but that’s not on us.
THEY WERE WARNED.
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Oh, here’s another fun “ticking time bomb that trans people were ignored about”.
The UK’s same sex marriage legislation modifies the gender recognition act with what came to be known as the “spousal veto”. The rationale, in the act, for this necessarily implies that a same sex marriage is worth less than a mixed sex one.
I want it on record that I, and several other trans people, spent much of 2011 and 2012 frantically warning cis gay MPs and Lords about this, and they did not do a damned fucking thing other than brush us off.
So it’s sitting there, an unexploded bomb against same sex marriage in legislation, waiting for some TERF to set a legal precedent in some fucked up way that will ruin marriage for same sex couples in the UK, the same way they’ve now made it basically impossible to fire raging bigots because of wiggle room in the equality act.
And I know that self interest is insufficient to overcome squick about trans people, but that’s not on us.
Well here in baboon-butt red Utah a small minded white ass bigot just helped get a law passed forbidding trans people from using any restroom in a public building that doesn't conform to the sex they were assigned on their birth certificate.
This without any proof that trans people are in any way doing anything harmful in bathrooms other than - well, using them to go to the bathroom.
I'm gay myself, but when I go to a restroom I go there to pee or poop. That's it. And I expect to be left alone and have privacy. But who keeps wanting to get into our drawers and check out our junk? It's the straight bigots out there.
In most cases where I've felt threatened in public bathrooms it was by leering straight guys, not by anyone on our "side of the fence."
Anyway I don't envy the white "perfect" human who gets the job of checking out the sex designation on other people's birth certificates whenever they use a public restroom.
I read through the amendment to the GRA at legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2013/… but the understanding I took away from that is that the Spousal Consent provisions that are the subject of that amendment apply exactly the same to heterosexual marriages as they do to homosexual ones: the text just uses the term "protected marriage". I don't think it matters which piece of legislation that schedule happened to ride with, the schedule itself applies only to the GRA 2004 and doesn't distinguish types of marriage. IANAL though, of course.
You did mention however that the worrying bit comes from the rationale, which I unfortunately didn't find. Nonetheless, if it's in the rationale but not in the law, then does it matter?
An Act to make provision for the marriage of same sex couples in England and Wales, about gender change by married persons and civil partners, about consular functions in relation to marriage, for the marriage of armed forces personnel overseas, for …
@Kim Vandry Consider the context. There was no such thing as a “homosexual marriage” when this was enacted. In theory it applies equally NOW but as passed it was “protecting” the poor long suffering wives (and it was them, not the husbands, because I was in the room when the civil servant who drafted it said that she imagined what she would want and wrote that) of trans women from becoming “legally gay”.
Oh definitely! I have no trouble believing those were the people in the room, forming the momentum behind those changes. Largely that'll have just been due to the dominant demographic at the time of who was transitioning at an age old enough to be likely to have spouses who could get upset.
But there's clearly a massive gap between being upset and inventing the preposterous and homophobic notion of "legally gay"!
@Kim Vandry Well, that’s what they did, and the gay parliamentarians we told didn’t do anything to change it (some actually “accidentally” left the room when votes were happening), so you know, when this unexploded landmine eventually explodes … told you so.
@Kim Vandry To a degree. If there’s doubt about the meaning of a bit of law it’s sometimes permissible to look into what Parliament’s intention was to resolve the question.
@chiffchaff FWIW I adapted to mine so much the only time they're weird is if I do it deliberately. (Unless I'm looking down from on top of a mountain or something).
@Sion [main] @Sesquipedality @kæt Most things I do requiring near work can be done in the lower parts of the lenses. This doesn’t work so well for looking closely at fine print at awkward angles, like the RA dial on my telescope.
@sesquipedality My optician mentioned the existence of trifocals, apparently used by electricians, plumbers, etc, which become "close work" again at the top.
When I was working at Royal Mail I put my (reading) glasses on a string, but they got very bashed when I was wheeling trolleys round, etc, rather than reading addresses. In the end I left them on for walking short distances, but that wasn't good for my sense of balance. Luckily the glasses survived being bashed quite well.
@sesquipedality @chiffchaff A few years ago my optician (who kept telling me that my monitor should be placed low so that I had to look down at it) persuaded me to try varifocals. After a couple of weeks I took them back as I didn't get on with them at all, and had them replaced with monofocals. And I ignored his dreadful 'advice' about monitor placement.
UK employment law some time ago set a precedent that trans-hostile beliefs were protected in a workplace environment.
So I'm doing the Cassandra thing again, where once again we warned the rest of you that if you didn't push back, the shit flung at us would start hitting other groups.
Programmers: we are utterly Anglo centric. We work in English and only think about English. We require English naming conventions in name and address fields.
Also programmers: YOUR USE OF AN APOSTROPHE WAS ENTIRELY UNEXPECTED!
I hate that TERFs have taken phrases like, "women and girls", "suffrage", and "equity" and made them into the feminist equivalent of countries with "democratic republic" in their names.
@arroz in nearly 30 years of ignoring letters, we did actually get an inspector once. Was really nice and apologetic, actually, and seemed delighted and surprised we didn't try murder them. I'm sure plenty are arseholes, though.
It’s the “we can apply to court for a search warrant” that particularly irks me. Yes, and I could apply to court to get a search warrant for your knicker drawer. Not getting it though, am I?
@Ryan Frame the thing is, everything in that letter is a lie. They send them to all properties without a licence, but they imply that they have powers that they don’t have, and they pretty much never follow up.
If they ever actually send anyone, you just tell them to go away.
You know, we should really invest in this licensing scheme in the US. So much more opportunity for swatting with no-knock raids. Seems like a no brainer politically.
@joshie 🏳️🌈 They have no procedure for keeping track of people who have contacted them so the only thing that stops the letters is a TV licence. Or possibly a harassment lawsuit. Dunno if anyone has tried that.
Pretty sure I got badly glutted earlier. Immune system throwing a shitfit, joints sore, and my breath stinks. Have calmed it a bit with acetylcysteine, but just gonna have to ride it out. 😞
Reading the sentencing remarks. The girl, Scarlett Jenkinson, appears ti be using this whole procedure as a way to build her “brand” as a serial killer for the instagram generation.
that seems like a mistake, if she branded herself as Defender Of The Wymen she would be celebrated by the terfs and Starmer would argue Sunak’s not doing enough by merely pardonning her and not giving her a CBE
Not pointing at any specifics here, but once upon a time there was a political party, and it talked great words about the values it stood for. It had a constitution about how its policy was decided, democratically, by its members. It said what its values were as they pertained to workers rights and individual liberty.
And it was all lies, because ultimately its constitution meant nothing. It gave the illusion of democracy, but what the party did was ultimately decided by three people over drinks one evening in HQ. Its professed values about how individuals should be empowered, and workers protected, turned out to be the exact opposite of how it behaved when it conducted its own business.
And for a long time, it didn’t matter, because times were, at least in the party’s part of the world, relatively benign.
But when the bogeymen came to tear apart everything the people had taken for granted, to the cheers of a baying mob, all the words of the hypocrites meant nothing. They expected others to play by the rules that they themselves ignored.
And so
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Not pointing at any specifics here, but once upon a time there was a political party, and it talked great words about the values it stood for. It had a constitution about how its policy was decided, democratically, by its members. It said what its values were as they pertained to workers rights and individual liberty.
And it was all lies, because ultimately its constitution meant nothing. It gave the illusion of democracy, but what the party did was ultimately decided by three people over drinks one evening in HQ. Its professed values about how individuals should be empowered, and workers protected, turned out to be the exact opposite of how it behaved when it conducted its own business.
And for a long time, it didn’t matter, because times were, at least in the party’s part of the world, relatively benign.
But when the bogeymen came to tear apart everything the people had taken for granted, to the cheers of a baying mob, all the words of the hypocrites meant nothing. They expected others to play by the rules that they themselves ignored.
And so they were utterly unequal to the task of fighting the monsters.
And the tragic thing is, I could be talking about any number of different political parties in any number of western democracies, and everything I wrote above would still apply.
At this point, the British court system is actively transphobic, acting as the judicial arm of a state that seeks to eradicate trans people, especially women.
When the law is unjust, it must be ignored. Resist transphobia.
It is disappointing to see the Open University back down in the face of obvious justice denied.
I suspect actual judges might have applied the law. Employment tribunals are generally one Employment Judge (not a very senior member of the judiciary) and two lay members, one from an employer's organisation and one from a trade union.
Agreed, but you need to appeal the right cases. I suspect Phoenix is not the right case cos of various facts. I hear the OU had pretty good trans lawyers on their team. Appeal wouldn't just be £200k+, low-success-chance, but endless time and ongoing stress for the OU witnesses & staff.
Forstater's appeal success means Forstater is now binding and the TERFs are super smug about it. That employer had shite policies which left the door open for legal awfulness.
@pdcawley I grieve for my UK friends. We have plenty of dysfunction and scary crap in the states but at least we’ve managed to undo some of it the last four years.
@petealexharris @ajlanes Interestingly Phoenix was in the Times last week moaning about how no ex-colleagues from OU have talked to her (I don't think anyone likes her, funnily enough).
Phoenix also whined that the GC Research Network has run out of oomph and blames "TRAs" & OU of course, but not herself for being the only one obsessively bigoted enough to care, not doing the work from new job cos it was prob only ever a "do thing to get challenged & initiate legal action for".
I haven't seen any sensible trans-clued people's review of it and I'm wary of the Guardian for hosting/promoting transphobia/transphobes.
It's a shitty 150 page read. I don't know how you can force people to be nice to you when you're an obsessive bigot. Open letters about uni stuff happen ALL the time. ET said the letter writers did it to get at Phoenix not the GCRN but they barely knew Phoenix so that's an Assumption...
I've had a quick read but given I am an OU law student, I don't particularly want to stick my head above the parapet with a proper analysis as the VC's statement has made me worried about backlash. And as you say it's 150 pages so LONG. Generally, the impression was of a tribunal that did not understand academic politics and was quick to believe every allegation made even without any evidence to back it up. (See, for example, paragraph 85)
There was also a strong undercurrent that the tribunal believed in forced work in an academic context (e.g. paragraph 56, which stated the OU should have compelled academic staff to organise a conference promioting aims they did not believe in) and had misunderstood the law. (E.g. 560)
I don't think the judgement would necessarily stand an appeal. But the OU are likely worried about cost and reputational risk against an extremely well-funded opponent with extensive backing from right-wing media. Nevertheless, the statement from the VC was clearly panicked and unnecessarily obsequious towards transphobic views.
I think that's a fair overview. I'm not even a law student, just a disability-law nerd.
I don't think you can appeal mis-facts in a judgment if you just a rando witness and not sure even if you're Claimant/Respondent.
I wonder how much was cis white lady tears by Phoenix getting sympathy from the ET panel and the OU witnesses being perceived as unsympathetic cos they didn't cry (I know one of them, they're fucking livid). It becomes a DARVO.
@NatalyaD @ajlanes Well yeah it was obviously exactly that. What research was expected to come out of it?
Intellectual enquiry can be into new understandings of things, or the psychology of why people hold to their views, but it can't simply seek to re-affirm a mainstream view. That's not research in any meaningful sense.
Only imagine my surprise that someone who doesn't understand that turned out not to handle robust criticism well and became unpopular with her colleagues.
@petealexharris @ajlanes Phoenix is whining that in criminology there's ~300 academics in the field (seems an under count) and she's been ostracised by them.
That's cos most criminologists follow the Actual Evidence not some "I get to wave my trauma to be a bigot" like Phoenix did. Also there are already prison policies (not always followed) which Phoenix-and-friends (there's a disturbing children's TV prog title) never talk about either.
My Fediverse app of choice, @Mona app is gradually decaying so it copes less and less well with Friendica. I’ve coped with it being unable to parse notifications on my phone for a while but it’s stopped being able to do it on the desktop either. I asked them about this problem a while back and they said it was Friendica emitting notifications in the wrong form. I lack the cutlery to investigate further so… anyone suggest a good Fediverse client for iOS and MacOS that works nicely with Friendica?
Building out an IoT VLAN with an OpenWRT RPi functioning as a VLAN bridge (via a single Ethernet port).
Getting mDNS proxying working was a PITA. Everything you can Google is out of date, so you have to poke round a bit. Firewall rules take some getting right too, especially if the bridge isn’t also your internet gateway (it’s not).
Still, it’s working, and I’m quite pleased. Can’t AirPlay across it yet, but that’s a project for later.
Sarah's Theory of Modern Politics: When we were young, some of us liked to build sandcastles. Others liked to kick them over.
The Republicans, UKIP/Tories, AfD, Chega, and so on, are the people who kicked sandcastles over, asking for the votes of people who kicked sandcastles over.
"We have to kick over your sandcastle so we can sell the beach to our friend's sandcastle company, and you'll be able to buy ready-made sandcastles from them instead. We're only laughing and pointing at you because you haven't worked out how much better that market-based solution is for your sandcastle enjoyment."
Yup. Approximately 20-25% of the population are permanently fuelled by hate and a desire for revenge on a world that they imagine has always treated them unfairly. But, dangerously, in the present era their ranks are swelled by those whom the world has genuinely treated unfairly. The selfish ultra-rich are unwittingly creating a powder keg. They won’t care until it blows up.
Imagine being Elon Musk, or Donald Trump, or Boris Johnson. You have more money than you know what to do with. You could literally afford to go to whatever paradise you want and spend the days of your one life doing whatever you please.
They came so tantalisingly close to having more fulfilling and carefree lives than 99.99% of humans who have ever lived, but instead they want the masses to fear and adore them.
And they are utterly miserable, because nothing will fill the void, and the more they try, the more they debase themselves in front of billions, and the people they most need to respect them probably think they’re losers.
Idiots. Fools. Losers.
Musk is the worst of them. Read some Iain M Banks books, didn’t understand any of then, decided to save the world by becoming a solar power and electric vehicle magnate with space colonies.
But instead he is approaching old age as the proprietor of a bankrupt nazi chat room, and none of his kids will speak to him.
How can you have so many advantages and yet fuck up so amazingly completely?
I wonder whether one day we will look back on these people and know that, as well as being shitty as people, they also didn't have anywhere near as much actual money as they claimed; that it was mostly a shell game.
His wealth isn't enough for a personal space program, but it's enough he's free from ever having to worry about money again as long as he doesn't waste it on crap like super yachts. Now he has multiple homes across the world and spends his time travelling and enjoying himself. That's a much more mature approach and I would wager he's far, far happier than Elon Musk will ever be.
I suspect the advantages are part of the problem. They make it hard to see how tough it is for everyone else to do things, and that is easily translated into blaming them for being useless.
I've recently been doing some cognitive behavioural therapy care of the NHS, with a particular emphasis on activation (getting up and doing things) and self esteem. The last session is this coming Thursday. I think it's been net beneficial, in the sense that it's given me space to talk about things and think about things, and acquire a few more tools to manage my mind.
And the past week or so working for Hughes Hall to understand their Linux and database systems has been a big boost; it's clear that I'm actually pretty damn good at doing this kind of stuff and people seem impressed as if I'm working some kind of deep magic. And yet somehow when I'm sitting here alone it all feels like some kind of illusion in the face of that sense of stuckness and uselessness and yearning. Which I know is lies. I can effect change, I am capaable, I am cared about.
Could all be hormones. My tits are aching with another growth spurt.
Finally got myself an official Pi 5 power supply, so hopefully the thing won't just randomly die under load any more.
Raspberry Pi Foundation love making videos about their "not invented here" approach to power supplies, but guys, you actually suck at it and your continued inability to implement USB C Power Delivery (and PoE) sensibly is getting fucking old.
USB C has this annoying rule that the downstream has to ask for power before the upstream provides anything above 100mA.
The workaround that I used with RPi4 was, I'd use some noname Chinese 3A USB 2 charger — USB 2 doesn't really know or care about this particular rule, the cheap chargers just provide 5V at whatever amperage they can put out — and an USB A <–> USB C cable to connect that 5V 3A to the RPi.
Because of the recent developments at the Raspberry Foundation, I don't think I'll be getting any RPi5:s, so I can't test it myself, but I think odds are good that this approach still works.
oooohhh but if we implement USB-PD and use anything >5V then we would have to add another voltage regulation stage and ooooohhh woe is me
i understand their "lets not add cost for a feature only 2% of users might actually want" philiosphy, but yeah no fuck off pi foundation. power delivery is not one of those things worth saving 12 cents a board on
@joshie 🏳️🌈 Particularly because it ONLY works with their PSU. It will boot up massively degraded from anything else, but at less capability than a Pi 4 (like, it will disable USB boot and if you force enable it, it will randomly die from lack of power).
And don't get me started on the PoE hats that scream and function as heaters when the pi shuts down.
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