I used to frequent a bar where the staff had Java Rings to authenticate with the register. Touch the ring to the register, enter the order, done. Sadly the bar no longer exists.
I'm finally wrapping up a little webdav tool that's been on my todo list for years. It's just a simple tool to copy directories over webdav. I tried using Cadaver but I kept running into strange errors with it. And this one ties in with an unusual authentication setup. Might open source it, haven't decided yet.
Also dicking around with DMARC tools. Was unhappy with all the existing tools, want something simple I can run semi-locally for a bunch of low volume email domains. Haven't decided yet how that will turn out, still in the reading specs & tinkering stage.
> Also dicking around with DMARC tools. Was unhappy with all the existing tools, want something simple I can run semi-locally for a bunch of low volume email domains.
That’s a rabbit hole on my list to go down - recently set up DMARC for some domains I am hosting emails for and the XML reports that now end up in my inbox were… refreshing to see in 2025 :)
I was rather happy with my old, dumb Roomba. It just bounced around until things were clean. No cloud required. No mapping. No AI marketing foo. Seems like all the newer alternatives want internet access and send maps of your premises to some cloud somewhere. Seems completely unnecessary to me.
Roomba couldn’t remember map, so when you wanted to clean part of the apartment you had to build barriers or just walk with it. It also got lost way too many times.
As for the Chinese products - look at Valetudo. If you write about cloud and privacy considerations then you are already aware enough to just flash it and you have local, cloud-free, GREAT product.
I still have one like that, and it runs mostly fine, but is partly held together by duct tape these days. Not replacing it as long as I can keep it running.
Especially considering that story some year ago about photos taken by Roombas that had been uploaded to the cloud and leaked.
Are you implying that internet access is required in order to have "smart nagivation" and obstacle detection? If so, could you clarify what you think the connection is?
No, I'm implying mapping is useful. I'm certain you can have local only mapping. But OP seemed to put the mapping as well as the rest of the features in the "unnecessary" bucket and my problem is that I consider mapping super necessy.
Maybe mapping is very useful to you. The lack of it hasn't bothered me in the slightest. You also don't need mapping (or internet access) for obstacle detection. But I find that the old dumb roomba's bumpy nature is a good motivator to keep my place somewhat free of obstacles, which has other benefits.
I like being able to tap my phone a couple times and tell it to clean out e.g. the area around my cat's toilet, or my kitchen floor after I spill something, etc...
You can still find ones that don't need to be registered online and will work without WLAN or app. They will not remember the room layouts and you won't be able to lay virtual fences, but apart from that they work fine.
This seems to happen quite often. Not just with Apple, but also with Google. In spite of this obviously insane behaviour, EU governments want to rely on Apple and Google for smartphone-based electronic government IDs.
Mouth breathing is not a cause of sleep apnea, but it can be a consequence. Bad pillows and bad sleeping positions aren't causes of sleep apnea either, but some people do have "positional sleep apnea" where the apnea is (usually) much worse on the back and much better on the side.
One can also have sleep apnea without ever experiencing hypoxia. Drops in oxygen saturation during hypopneas are very minimal, and pretty much nonexistent with respiratory effort related arousals (RERAs). Not breathing is bad, but for many people with sleep apnea, the problem is the constant arousals and the lack of decent sleep, not a lack of oxygen.
I recently attended a security training where the trainer had a slide showing how Linux has more CVEs per year than Windows. He used this as an argument that Linux is less secure than Windows. People lacking basic knowledge about statistics remains a problem. Sigh.
Unfortunately the security community is filled to the brim with incompetent schlubs chasing a paycheck and many of them find their place as trainers. Those who can't do, teach.
> reinvented everything they enabled, but properly this time
"Properly"? I'm not convinced. Browsers have grown incredibly large and complex. Every plugin it replaced by JS-based APIs has become a security nightmare in almost exactly the same way as the plugin based approach. Browsers have a lot of features, but if they were implemented "properly", the user would have far more control than they do now. The cynic in me thinks that many of these features are mostly there to facilitate ad-tech and user tracking. From fingerprintable canvas to access to devices.
I'm getting the impression you're conveniently ignoring how piss poor HTML/AJAX/JS capabilities were back then, or even how slow internet speeds were.
Applets could do things that JS could not. Some bank applets did client side crypto with keys that were on the device. Good luck doing that in JS back then. My bank's applet could cope with connection losses so I could queue a payment while dialup did it's thing.
> An aspiring teen could set up an RPi that modifies headers for all traffic on the network that the parental units never even know about.
Who cares? Why is this an issue? An aspiring teen can (and will) do many things their parents don't know about. It's part of growing up. Making air tight surveillance systems to prevent teens from talking to friends or looking at boobies is many a bridge too far.
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