rmuk

When did they stop pretending that they were the good guys?

I hike a lot and use Organic Maps, which is a front end for OpenStreetMaps. Far more detail available on OSM, plus you actually get to choose what's on display, rather than Google arbitrarily deciding that a road/track/landmark aren't important enough to mention.

In the UK we had the Data Protection Act before GDPR, but it was so full of words like "reasonable" and "appropriate" and "balanced" that is was basically homeopathic; I wouldn't be at all surprised if this story was from the UK. I'm so glad GDPR got in before Brexit.

I've been saying for a long time that "winning" is the key thing amongst his fans, and their ilk elsewhere. They don't care for making the world better, for righting wrongs, for anything other than winning. But to win, you need two things: a game to play and an opponent to lose - and they're really good at changing those things at a moment's notice, like a near-defeat chess player flipping over the board. Even when they run out of games to play, they can still win because your exasperation is a victory to them: maybe we are all poorer and the world is more dangerous and the existential threat is real and we're all affected, but look how worked up you are! Haha! God you're so triggered! You pleaded and begged them not to burn it all down, but they sniggered and did it anyway. Yes, they also lose, but they'll just laugh at your frustration and rage, pretending that was the game all along.

Remember that documentary about them? https://youtu.be/6PY8C1KmNwM

The solution in my experience is to not bother with any kind of IP connection and try to find a serial port. If you can connect via serial odds are the protocol will have been reverse-engineered already. A cheap microcontroller can get it talking to Home Assistant and then you've got a well-maintained, self-hosted and open source way of controlling the system on your terms.

Well, no. It all works and even the shittiest no-brand Chinese tat can reliably run a whole home with an EV or two. The systems I've been involved with have either paid for themselves within a couple of years, or are on track to. The problems here are nothing to do with solar and everything to do with poor quality IoT.

I've set up a few solar systems (and, I agree, it's a pretty ambiguous name). Generally speaking, they're devices that include an MPPT charger (which regulates the power coming from the solar panels), battery charger, and inverter (which produces mains AC), often with a bridge rectifier that also allows the system to accept input from the grid, and a second inverter to supply power back to the grid. It a lot of kit in a compact package, so it's unsurprising that they come with apps to allow them to be monitored and configured and, sometimes, support for automation in, say, Home Assistant.

And let me tell you: the majority of these things are fucking horrendous. I've lost count of the number of cheap Chinese units - with brands like LCERRZOPX and JRXYLNG, or provided whitebox so a fly-by-night European companies with a name like TotalCharge Voltacon Solutions can silkscreen their own logo on - which are guilty of every IoT sin imaginable: no local API or connectivity; plaintext communication to a data center in China; apps that force you to sign up and sends your credentials in clear text; apps that have not been updated since they were released in 2013 and crash constantly; no interface other than that fucking horrible app; and so on. This might seem like a minor thing, but if you're depending on these things to run your entire house, you need access to that information, but I have to plead with people not to buy them because they're €50 cheaper than the equivalent from a reputable brand. These devices are susceptible to anyone with a copy of Wireshark, let alone the manufacturers or Chinese government, and they're just waiting to be exploited.

Incidentally, if anyone is looking at buying something like this, I can't recommend Victron highly enough. Aside from their kit being high quality, you can access every feature using Bluetooth either from their own app, or a number of other apps that support their published protocols including, of course, Home Assistant.

Yeah, maybe you've never met an Apple Fanboi before but I promise the Apple logo is basically a religious symbol to them.

That's illegal in the EU - the opt-out must be the default option and, if it's not automatically enabled, must be the easiest option - but then that gets flaunted by the scummier websites.

They don't use pounds in the EU, so it'd be kilos of Euros.

I've refined your idea into just launching a Magic 8-Ball into LEO and call it an orbiting data centre. I'm estimating my IPO at nine hundred quintillion dollars.