@MechMK1 I also took a few days off, so I was not often here the last days.

Not that I would like to compete with our master troll.

I have a question that might get an answer here:

My flat got robbed last week, so I was wondering about video surveillance for my next flat (I already was looking for moving elsewhere). I'd like having alerts on my smartphones when the cams detect movement, but without having to send my video stream through a third party (but I can rent a server).

A quick search revealed that my search won't end quickly. Do you have any suggestion?

@A.Hersean Robbed as in robbed at gun point, or simple theft?

Simple theft. I was not present. Lot of stuff stolen (except for the main computer and the NAS), no destruction.

@A.Hersean zoneminder comes to mind

zoneminder can execute commands when movement is detected, and there are lots of ways to send alerts to smartphones... I am currently using gotify... it's small, self-hosted, and works well

Thanks, I'll look into it.

PIR and magnetic sensors on the doors and windows are great too... an esp32 wired to some switches can detect when something is tripped and send alerts

the ESP is easy to program, and there are lots and lots of code samples on github

I once wired an Arduino, a PIR sensor, a relay and a strip of leds to illuminate the path from my bedroom to the restroom, so when we got outside of the bedroom the sensor detected us and turned on the leds... it was way better than be blinded by the corridor light

Doing some domotic while I'm at it is a nice idea.

it's a nice idea...

I bought a couple sensors, a few ES32 boards, but haven't found where to buy some time to wire them up

3 little kids and home-office don't give me enough time to much

You can't buy time for yourself, but you can buy someone else's time

just watched a nice video on Bayes' Theorem that starts as a math explanation and ends with a life lesson

@nobody I live on a small apartment now, so there's little to automate. and the kids would tear down any wires anyway

I dunno why people ever need home automation anyways

I can't even think of anything useful I could automate in my home

I can wire an ultrasonic sensor under the kid's beds and have a speaker scream "get back to bed!" if the room is dark and one of the kids leaps out

@nobody My future place has app/wifi controlled aircon (ewww, but its central and cheaper to run) - which can be timed, which is nice.

or a kill-switch for the microwave that is wired to a camera and detects if one of the kids is microwaving air again

@ThoriumBR Ha, that's interesting. I'll try that one day, but with the aim of scaring someone as hard as possible

@ThoriumBR Wouldn't it be easier to have a microwave with a safety preventing it to run while open?

or people neglecting the plants around the house

it does not run while open, but it have an one-button 30 second cycle... so the smaller kid loves the beep of the microwave turning on and the fan noise...

I moved the microwave up now, but now he carries anything that he can step into so it can reach the button

I see...

@ThoriumBR oh god, looks like having kids is not easy

That's why I don't want kids

(not just because of microwaves)

But kids are cute! Well, at least babies are.

kids are nice...

the smarter they are, the more trouble they give

if I have trouble with 3, I imagine @ConorMancone with 7... or 8... I lost count

@ThoriumBR 7 or 8? Wow, managing them must be a nightmare... or an extremely interesting intellectual problem depending on how you look at it

I think 2 is ideal: they learn how to share and how to take things from one another, they learn how to fight themselves and defend themselves, and you have mental energy and time to take care of them... 3 is stretching a little but it's doable most of the time

4 and over is too much for me to manage

@ThoriumBR I had three siblings. I wonder why I didn't learn how to fight or defend myself, and how to take things from others

my kids fight all the time... me and my brother did the same

Well, I did fight with one of my brothers, but not too frequently. Maybe because I knew I couldn't win a fight against him

here the smaller (almost 3 yo) is the one that picks most fights

Does he win?

nope, but he tries

@ThoriumBR Haha, a priceless quality. I guess I was hardwired from birth to give up when I thought something was too difficult...

@ThoriumBR 5 :) Although my wife is 9 weeks pregnant now (farther along then all our miscarriages), so maybe we'll finally be up to 6 early next year.

I usually got out of trouble by trying to predict when trouble was coming and being out of the way... so in school I would stay far away from bullies as much as possible, and walk closer to the teachers when that was impossible

A large family can definitely be exhausting, and isn't for everyone, but I think it works out great for the kids. The other night my 2 year old had a line of 4 siblings lined up to give him a hug before he went to bed. He's not going to make it to adult hood without knowing that someone loves him, lol!

@ConorMancone my wife have a friend couple with 8... they post nice looking pictures of dinner on instagram, and she says she wants that kind of dinners with the table full of children

and I remember her of all the cooking before and all dishes after and she says I am not letting her have fun

and I suggest her to take the kids of the neighbors for a week so she can experience that in "demo mode"...

@ThoriumBR Nobody ever bothered me at school. I'm not sure why

I was small, weak, terrible soccer player (and that is a sin for a Brazilian), and the smartest on the class... so the bullies were tough, strong, good soccer players and got bad grades...

on physical education we were REQUIRED to play soccer, and my team always hated me because the team that got me would almost always lose

my brother was one year younger, as weak and smart and terrible as me, so we could not defend each other...

@ThoriumBR :sniff: :sniff: You can play on my team.

later on high school I got really tall and played volleyball pretty well (for the school), and everyone wanted me to play on their team

but I choose to play on the team with most girls

I was good at basketball too... my brother was almost as tall as me, and I had a friend very tall too, so 3 of the 5 tallest guys on the school were part of my team... good times

@ThoriumBR I was (am) terrible at football too. But I was taller than almost everybody else in my class. I found that my height (basically just my longer legs) was an advantage against others if I played as a defender.

So for most of my time in school, people considered me at somewhat better than an average player. Then in the final years of highschool, my height stopped increasing and others started catching up, so everyone found out I was an imposter

@ThoriumBR Actually, I think one of the reasons I was never bullied was that I was smartest in class (well, not smartest, I just got the best grades). And the bullies knew they needed my help to get a passing grade :)

here in Brazil kids can pass even with failing grades

teachers prefer to give them marks they don't got than to endure them another year

That's one of the things that was very different here- there was no passing grade. If you did well, you left school with good grades. If you did badly you left school with bad grades. And those with good academic performance typically stayed till 18 and went on to Uni. Those who didn't do well often left at age 16 to join a trade

So teachers typically split their effort accordingly

now there's no failing grade at all, so when some kids leave high school, some are barely literate...

math skills are terrible too, basic arithmetic are a strange topic for a lot of kids

@ThoriumBR but also here, a sports scholarship will not save you from having to succeed academically. It may just pay fees

here there are 2 kinds of college: free and paid. Paid you have cheap ones, and expensive and good ones. free is free but there's an admission exam that is very difficult to pass.

Happily universities in Scotland are free for Scots

so if you had paid high school, you have a nice educational background and can jump to free college... if you had public school, you barely know basic math and the name of your country and have to pay for college, or go straight to market

And many of the best schools are free - the private schools typically charge for networking and contacts but aren't necessarily better academically, and are sometimes much worse

the vast majority of people on public college came from private schools

I got public school and got into public college, but was because I am a nerd and spent more time on the library than on the courtyard

there aren't sports scholarships because kids that want to play soccer (the only sport down here) aren't interested in education

In my county there was only public/free/council school, but I had lovely teachers who liked the fact I was interested, so they taught me as much as they could, even in their spare time

we don't need no education

no dark sarcasm in the chatroom

teacher leave us kids alone

all in all we are just another packet in the firewall

Talking of education - has everyone signed up for virtual Defcon? discord.com/invite/defcon

@RoryAlsop didn't knew it was running... thanks for the heads up!

I have a question though. I am always paranoid about race conditions between "time of installation" and "time of update". For linux, I don't care too much because I suppose (I hope) that there aren't any remotely exploitable vulnerabilities in recent releases. So I just download the latest release, turn on the firewall, and do the updates. For Windows I'm much more paranoid (there have been several serious vulns recently)

what I'm doing is downloading a recent Win release (May 2021), and then downloading the latest "cumulative updates" (end of July I guess). I'll apply such cumulative updates offline

I guess that's the right approach

@RoryAlsop I get "invite invalid" :(

Meh, just remembered, my internet connection is limited, so I can't waste it on watching defcon talks anyways

@reed if you are behind nat, your router have UPnP disabled and you don't navigate while updating, I believe you are safe

@ThoriumBR, in my threat model my local network can't be trusted

so your approach is good... download the fixes and apply them offline

and most people should not trust it either. Most home routers (often provided by ISPs) are crap, and in the LAN you will often find crappy IoT devices, machines run by family members or people with less security awareness (P2P downloads, warez, etc.)

that's why my approach is to not rely on the security of the LAN

here we only have linux devices, a chromebook, and unrooted android devices

so the lan can be trusted

@ThoriumBR chromebook ... trusted ... hmmmm

I trust it more than an unpatched windows...

@RoryAlsop Do you have something against Chromebooks?