I was a Mint early-adopter, and some time before Intuit purchased Mint I was also a TurboTax online user. I liked using Mint mostly just to track my net worth / assets and did so for several years.
Fast forward a year or two, and Intuit had purchased Mint. A few months later I came to realize that Intuit was now creating TurboTax accounts for all existing Mint users without bothering to cross-reference existing account email addresses between the two databases. When I signed up for Mint originally, it was using your full email address as a user name. So now, I had a Mint account which was my email address, an old TurboTax account which had that same email address on file, but a different user name, and a new TurboTax account which WAS my email address, tied to the existing Mint account.
So what happened? I tried to log into Turbo Tax using the account I already had used for taxes in the past to import my Mint information, but I was told that email address is already in use by another TurboTax account - the one Intuit created for me instead of merging my existing accounts...
Several phone calls later, I was assured the only path forward was to start using the new account to do my taxes if I want Mint integration. I decline and asked why they couldn't just get rid of the erroneous new account they created for me and let me combine the ones I already had. I was not about to lose years of tax returns on my old account to start a new account without that information. They said it was impossible.
Ultimately, I decided I'd delete the old Intuit/TurboTax account and start fresh, to take advantage of the integration features. They told me they were required by law to keep my old TurboTax account data, but that I could change the password to something random/long and change the email address to something non-existent to prevent myself or anyone else from being able to log in anymore.
At this point, I was very annoyed, and chose a suitably-annoyed fake email address directing hatred toward Intuit, which I won't repeat here, but rest assured it included a reference to Intuit and non-standard sex acts. I also changed the password to a 64-character random string, which I did not write down. Fast forward a couple weeks...
Lo and behold, I tried logging into Mint a few weeks after changing my Intuit password and wouldn't you know, that account was inaccessible now, the exact opposite of what I was told they were going to do... Better yet, I couldn't reset the password because I had changed the account email address on file to the aforementioned vulgarity. Now you see where this is going... I called customer service, and the rep assured me she could help if I could recall the email address I had used... So, I apologized in advance, and proceeded to tell her the address was "Eff"IntuitInThe"A"@"eff"you.com (something in this ballpark, and edited for language).
Needless to say, we had a good laugh. I haven't really used Mint ever since, and have been considering deleting my account (if I can even do that without destroying my TurboTax account...)
Frankly I'm shocked at how anemic the radar chip demonstration and marketing materials are compared to what they demoed about the chip a few years ago.
Google had video showing how they could differentiate individual finger motion and motions like rolling 2 fingers together to adjust volume up and down.
What they're shipping with Pixel 4 seems to have exactly one gesture: swiping a few inches above the screen to skip songs back and forth or silence alarms and calls.
You know what else had this feature? The 2013 Moto X. And it didn't use a radar sensor, just a group of 4 light sensors, one at each corner of the face of the phone.
Granted, if what they demoed a while back is accurate, the radar chip is much more capable than a few light sensors, but what they're shipping and marketing is not that. Either they were not able to make the proof of concept work in a shipping device, or the final product is not as capable as it seemed.
Yup, agree 100%. We bought a 2014 Mazda 6, and while it has a touch screen, I find myself only using the control knob 99% of the time. It's vastly superior to any touchscreen interface I've ever used, and also far better than some of the mouse-like joysticks in some cars (think later 201X Lexus vehicles and such).
I don't disagree with your comments about tradespeople's hours, but I'm not sure I agree with the reasons. A lot of those long hours are due to taking on more work/jobs to make more money. That is probably somewhat due to lower income per job as a tradesman, and somewhat due to the desire to work more "overtime" to make more money, depending on the going rates in the area of work.
Moreover, it's been my experience that people in non-trade work (particularly non-exempt STEM workers) often work just as much overtime and don't even get paid for the pleasure. Granted, their base salaries are generally higher, but a tradesman working similar hours can approach or surpass that. (I say this is I sit at 2:40am waiting for code to compile...)
Non-sequitor: I misread that first word in your comment as "Transgenders" and was flabbergasted halfway into that first paragraph until I went back and re-read it :D
Welp. I recently completed an Arch-linux and PCEngines-based DIY router build and stumbled upon Shorewall as an alternative to straight-up IP tables...
I stumbled across a blog post that used Arch and Shorewall to roll a diy router. Any chance you used a blog post for inspiration and if so do you have the link still? I have been trying to find it ever since...
Nice write-up. I have a very similar setup, only I didn't delve into the netflow montioring/traffic shaping because it seemed a bit overkill for my needs.
Have you given any thought about what you might do with respect to Shorewall, given the this news?
Even assuming the worst - that is, that Shorewall development completely stalls - the firewall is fully functional for me and I haven't hit any show-stopping bugs, so my plan is to continue using it until it breaks somewhere down the line. After the many years of development that've gone into Shorewall, the dividends it pays now are the years and years of hardening that have let it age into a solid, reliable tool. My needs aren't really pushing the envelope of what Shorewall can do (just a home network gateway), so my hope is that I won't bump into anything esoteric in the meantime.
The Arch Wiki is pretty awesome, generally, and I used this pretty heavily as a reference. I will say, this was not 100% perfect and I had to use some other outside sources, but most of the info is here.
I did consider writing my own step-by-step post (if for no other reason than for me to not have to remember it), but haven't gotten around to it yet.
I've never installed Arch and know virtually nothing about it but often the first link I click after googling is the arch one, their documentation is fabulous and pretty often bang up to date (Since I track Fedora N/N-1 the package versions are usually close enough).
I've been running Arch as my main home server for going on 11 years now. I love it. In that time span, the biggest hurdles have been the sysvinit/systemd transition and a handful of issues with mongodb feature deprecations that required manual intervention.
My original impetus for using it was to "re-learn Linux" after a hiatus out of college, and because it's not as bloated as something like a full Ubuntu install, but doesn't require the full compiling of packages like Gentoo, it seemed like a good choice. Unless I want a GUI right out of the box, I don't use anything else.
Yeah I know a bunch of programmers who love it, I use Fedora out of inertia, when I got the Ryzen at work it was very soon after they launched and they had better out of the box support so I switched to it from Xubuntu and liked it enough it stuck.
With the exception of safety features (think blind spot monitoring, backup cameras, lane keep assist, parking sensors) and mobile connectivity features like bluetooth, frankly I'm getting tired of all the crap they're throwing into vehicles these days for many of the reasons you mention.
It seems every manufacturer or parent brand has their own infotainment system, NAV, etc. and you pay the price for it when you buy the car. And god forbid you want the upgraded safety features or leather seats, but don't want any of the other bells and whistles, because you can't have it without tacking on $4000 for the "technology" package.
My ideal car these days is one with the safety bells and whistles, limited luxury features (automatic and heated/cooled seats, climate control), but without any complicated infotainment beyond bluetooth/Android auto/Apple Car Play connectivity. There's no reason to have redundant technology built into cars by companies that aren't as good at it when we have perfectly capable, and generally more up-to-date mobile devices with us at all times.
Is anyone making reasonably well-appointed vehicles without throwing everything and the kitchen sink in there?
>Is anyone making reasonably well-appointed vehicles without throwing everything and the kitchen sink in there?
No. Honda, Toyota, Fiat, GM, everyone seems to have the same problem. For what it's worth, FiatChrysler and GM have at least had the sense to set higher requirements for vendor/suppliers than Toyota.
Specicially, after Toyota's "unintended acceleration" issues (mostly floor mats, some APPS/Pedal issues) it was discovered that their ECU taking accelerator pedal position (I'm not sure if it was the PCM/ECM specifically) had over 12,000 GLOBAL VARIABLES! Let that sink in for second.
After a code audit by iirc UPenn the bug was not found, but that wasn't a glowing review, it was ad admission it was impossible to prove/disprove.
Edit: I take that back. There are Chinese brands I drove in Malaysia and export-only Nissans that while being wholly illegal in the US or Europe are still barebones vehicles.
I've read the audit and basically it was done by a guy with no clue about the automotive world. He compared the code with the one made at nas. In the end they indeed did not find the root cause, but they had to say something as they are the "experts". So they pointed at "bad practices" like global variables.
What if i tell you that a pretty big chunk of the cars on the road are running software which are using global variable as means to exchange data between modules ? Well, that's how it is done and it isn't less safe. The last SW i worked with had 20000 global variables and 60000 parameters that the calibration guys could fiddle with.
Serious suppliers are applying safety standard and methodology and are not rushing the FMEA. Countless times my customer cursed at the safety guys for postponing the SW because they were not finished with testing, but this very same customer never had to stand in court for a safety issue with the SW, and so are many other carmaker.
When the Toyota pedal issue came out, we just could not believe that Toyota did not have the gas pedal override by brake safety in their SW.
honestly, in the context of an embedded system, I'm not bothered by this.
I'd expect to see very little dynamic resource allocation, so you could probably put a permanent name to almost every byte of data in the system.
Remember, once it's compiled, everything's a global anyway, especially on chips small enough to not be set up with a strong multi-tasking and memory management model.
They look it, but they aren’t. The RAM truck that has manual windows and manual door locks - has the same ABS/ESP, Radio Hub, body controller, battery modules, 7 CAN buses (2018+), three or more LIN buses, etc etc as the full load models.
Those aren't necessarily mandatory, but it certainly seems a lot of the safety tech is not available unless you also get things like that.
For reference, my wife and I bought a 2014 Mazda 6 Touring, which seems to be one of the few cars with a well-balanced mid-tier that doesn't cost an arm and a leg and still has good safety features (and did not come with heated/cooled seats).
Yeah, I got a 2015 Mazda 3 Grand Touring so I could get the heated seats, among other things (like xenon headlights, which are an important safety feature; halogen headlights should be banned, and the IIHS agrees with me).
But of course it also comes with a clunky and nearly useless nav system that costs a fortune if you look at the line-item cost. They only recently, finally, started supporting Android Auto.
Yep, I've been mulling some DIY work on replacing the headlights and adding foglamps... Despite appearing bright on my garage door, the actual street visibility of the standard headlights is pretty awful on this car.
I'm not sure about 2015 Mazda 3, but I know 2016 and later cars can be upgraded to support Android Auto for a fee at the dealer (I want to say ~$500, which may or may not be worth it).
The AA upgrade is available to all Mz3 vehicles starting with the 2014 model year, since that's when they came out with the MazdaConnect system. The Mz6 is similar.
As for foglamps, I have the factory foglamps on mine and they're completely useless; I can't see them at all. Maybe it's because my xenons are so bright, but regardless, I never use them.
It should be possible for you to swap in the factory xenons if you want, though you might have to set something with ForScan to allow it to work. Not really sure about that.
Good to know it's not just me. I've reluctantly been pulled into using the feed (as you say it has some nice features, and it's right there on my phone when I swipe right, so hard to avoid...), but this recent change has really put me over the top in terms of annoyance with Google's tracking behavior, especially in light of recent changes to Chrome.
I'm hoping it's just a bug/oversight, but I wouldn't put money on it...
Awesome project! I browsed through your headlessPi repo and saw how you configure hostapd and whatnot, but I'm having trouble seeing where you actually get the uap0 interface created. Have you tried this on a Pi Zero W yet?
My personal story on this:
I was a Mint early-adopter, and some time before Intuit purchased Mint I was also a TurboTax online user. I liked using Mint mostly just to track my net worth / assets and did so for several years.
Fast forward a year or two, and Intuit had purchased Mint. A few months later I came to realize that Intuit was now creating TurboTax accounts for all existing Mint users without bothering to cross-reference existing account email addresses between the two databases. When I signed up for Mint originally, it was using your full email address as a user name. So now, I had a Mint account which was my email address, an old TurboTax account which had that same email address on file, but a different user name, and a new TurboTax account which WAS my email address, tied to the existing Mint account.
So what happened? I tried to log into Turbo Tax using the account I already had used for taxes in the past to import my Mint information, but I was told that email address is already in use by another TurboTax account - the one Intuit created for me instead of merging my existing accounts...
Several phone calls later, I was assured the only path forward was to start using the new account to do my taxes if I want Mint integration. I decline and asked why they couldn't just get rid of the erroneous new account they created for me and let me combine the ones I already had. I was not about to lose years of tax returns on my old account to start a new account without that information. They said it was impossible.
Ultimately, I decided I'd delete the old Intuit/TurboTax account and start fresh, to take advantage of the integration features. They told me they were required by law to keep my old TurboTax account data, but that I could change the password to something random/long and change the email address to something non-existent to prevent myself or anyone else from being able to log in anymore.
At this point, I was very annoyed, and chose a suitably-annoyed fake email address directing hatred toward Intuit, which I won't repeat here, but rest assured it included a reference to Intuit and non-standard sex acts. I also changed the password to a 64-character random string, which I did not write down. Fast forward a couple weeks...
Lo and behold, I tried logging into Mint a few weeks after changing my Intuit password and wouldn't you know, that account was inaccessible now, the exact opposite of what I was told they were going to do... Better yet, I couldn't reset the password because I had changed the account email address on file to the aforementioned vulgarity. Now you see where this is going... I called customer service, and the rep assured me she could help if I could recall the email address I had used... So, I apologized in advance, and proceeded to tell her the address was "Eff"IntuitInThe"A"@"eff"you.com (something in this ballpark, and edited for language).
Needless to say, we had a good laugh. I haven't really used Mint ever since, and have been considering deleting my account (if I can even do that without destroying my TurboTax account...)