I found out I can automate my 5,12kWh house battery through local-only RS485 connection, and directly setting registers using ModbusTCP from Home Assistant. I then drafted an automation with hysteresis and damping that tries to aim for Net-Zero export/import (pv surplus/grid). It appears to work!
What brand/make of battery is that? I'm tentatively interested in home battery storage, but definitely not interested in shit that requires an app, an internet connection, and shitty saas spyware...
MARSTEK VENUS E 5.12kWh. Got it in August 25 for 1050,00 EUR. It is awesome how open it is designed, I was able to activate and automate it without adding it to my local network (wifi) or using the Marstek App even once. I wrote a blog post here [1].
Thanks for the kudos. Just note, I will add an update tomorrow - I optimized the automatic, it is now working pretty well. Before it was "overshooting" and the battery fed into the grid, or went into standby too often, just to start discharging again.
I would never use what is proposed by OP. But, in any case, Linux on ZFS that is automatically snapshotted every minute might be (part of) a solution to this dilemma.
As I mentioned in another post: By 2026, you'll need two phones. My current setup:
1) An unmodified iPhone SE (2022 model) with OS support until 2032. This runs all my authentication, banking, health, etc. It is in airplane mode 99% of the time unless I need it.
2) The second is a Pixel 9a with Graphene OS for daily use, routing and internet access.
This is expensive, but I found it to be the only viable solution to this problem.
Do you guys wear cargo pants to carry all these extra devices or are belt clips coming back into style?
If I could get away with carrying a tiny device again instead of lugging around a brick I would, but the world has made it as inconvenient as possible not to.
A BlackBerry from 15 years ago weighed just over 100g and did 80% of what your modern-day pocket computer can.
When a bank eventually requires a more recent phone to work, they will carry three phones, one for that one bank, one more for the rest of the banks, and a personal one.
Then they might move somewhere else with different banks and different hardware requirements, they will carry 5 phones.
I've never used a Blackberry but it was much more efficient for me to input text (an essential task for a communication device!) on non-iPhone-style phones with physical buttons.
Nothing useful to add except, god I miss my Bold 9700. Every time I slip on this stupid touchscreen keyboard and make a stupid typo on this stupid phone I howl inwardly and wish pain and endless torment upon everyone who took us down this path away from light and goodness. Grumble grumble
The fun part for me is that an old dumb phone could replace, like, 50% of my smartphone usage, if I could use Telegram on it. We even still have 2G networks with no plans to shut them down. So, a J2ME Telegram client has been on my list of potential future projects for quite some time.
It did, and some of the things it was more effective at.
I remember BlackBerry OS 4.x (?) had a built-in password manager app and this was in the mid-2000s. By comparison this was added to iOS 18 in 2024.
What it wasn't good at was things like games and toxic consumer rich media bullshit. The industry saw dollar signs with iOS and Android and never wrote apps for the ecosystem.
Remember the days when Instagram was iOS-only?
But here we are, resigned to typing on glass for the rest of our lives because some hippie burnout thought it was a good idea.
>An unmodified iPhone SE (2022 model) with OS support until 2032
What makes you think it'll be supported for a decade? Looking at the past models, the support period is around 5-7 years. If you count security updates that might get you to 10 years, but at the 7-9 year mark apps will eventually refuse to update because you're not on the latest ios.
By the time that iPhone SE 3 finally goes unsupported (even the iPhone SE 2 from 2020 has yet to lose support) you'll just buy a cheap refurbished iPhone 16e. Old-gen iPhones are widely available and quite cheap.
i think most here if not all, people complaining by predatory practices of not supporting or liberating your device to whatever you want, are not worried or effected by monetary reasons
for my smartphone usage, i could still use my iphone se (1° gen) perfectly fine and that would include writing some pieces with garageband; which got deprecated and non-download-able because newer versions weren't aimed to my iOS version. heck the vast majority of smartphones aren't compilling software with local hardware (nor i know why someone would do)... guess we could stop with processing power advancement of 2015 just fine to run Whataspp and Instagram. producing hardware is costly, not everyone has a decent job nor minerals are infinite and have no ecological impact
You will also need to accommodate the banking apps updates, banks will not support very old versions of their apps( very old varies but probably about a few months ). Beyond that the new versions may require hardware support that may not be available in a decade old phone.
Funny - in some ways I have the opposite. In my version:
The iPhone SE would be the one I use for calls, SMS, etc. It has the SIM card.
The Pixel 9a would be used for everything I don't need a data plan/SIM card (browsing etc).
My needs are a bit different from yours. I like to separate telephony and communication (i.e. WhatsApp, SMS) from everything else. This way, if I want quiet, I just turn that phone to airplane mode. I really don't want to get random pings while I'm doing "real" stuff on my phone.
More painful to manage turning it on/off than to simply leave it in my car.
Over the years, I've spent far too much time with different solutions for managing notifications, etc. Turns out simply keeping the older phone after buying a newer one was the easiest approach. No downsides so far. The old phone has the SIM card. The new one doesn't.
Looking at the phone, disabling the lock, swiping down, and pressing "Do not disturb" is a lot more than just not looking at the phone.
Also, that's only half of it. I have to move it out of "Do not disturb" at some point. Or set a timeline for it. Why should I when I just don't need to?
Also, it's been years since I used "Do not disturb". Does it show notification icons in the drawer on top? That's a definite no-no.
There are enough non-shitty banks and credit unions, at least in the US, that you should be able to easily switch banks to a better one. They have no moat.
FWIW my US bank works on GrapheneOS and they refund all ATM fees, so you can use any ATM you want. The only issue I've run into with them is they have a Zelle integration which is only available on the phone, and on GrapheneOS it just loads to a blank white screen. But that seems to be Zelle's fault. The bank is Charles Schwab if anyone is looking for a currently-compatible-with-GrapheneOS bank in the US.
It's true that GrapheneOS is not rooted, and, unlike other non-rooted custom ROMs, allows re-locking the bootloader. But, whether a banking app will work depends on what level of Google Play attestation they require. While most banking apps work fine on it, a significant minority do not.
Yeah I wish we could do without a bank in modern life. When bitcoin first began I was really in support of it because I saw potential in freeing us from the dark stranglehold of the banking industry. Everyone just manages their own digital money.
But nope the cryptobros just turned it into another pyramid speculation scheme and the governments ruined the customer independence with their KYC stuff. Now it's just an online version of the old system where the exchanges are the new banks.
I might be paranoid, but I like that my bankcards are in a metal case (I got it because it's water/dustproof, but I like the bonus) and I like that Wallet only activates the rfid for a second, then I'm no longer broadcasting.
And adding to this: using the card gives me peace of mind because it never runs out of battery. If I only used my phone for payments and it died while I was out, I would be screwed. Can't call a friend, can't pay for transit, I guess I'm walking for hours to get home? Since I use the card to pay, if my phone dies, the worst thing that happens to me is I might need to look at a physical map to figure out which train to take home.
Since 2018 you can still use tap when your iPhone battery has died. It works for transit passes, keys, and some payment methods. They call it Express Cards and it will continue to work for ~4 hours after your phone has died. iPhone's keep a "Power Reserve" for NFC when dead.
If you have a lot of resources to protect against or known risk, you segment.
For example, do most daily transactions at one bank, and keep the rest at another.
This happens a lot in companies and government - you outsource payable operations to different division of government or a contractor. Hire one to do custody of money, another to process disbursements.
In fact, a smartwatch might be the ideal "second personal portable computer that's just for auth and banking" that is being proposed by various commentors here.
Requiring that everyone carry a smartwatch (or other smartwatch-based compute nugget) around to participate in civic life is a bit less onerous than requiring everyone carry around a smartphone; smartwatches are both cheaper and smaller.
And, to me at least, smartwatches are much more of an appliance than a smartphone is. Nobody's really begging to sideload apps onto their smartwatch, or to install an alternate launcher onto them, etc. Smartwatches just kind of "do what they should obviously do given the hardware design and HCI affordances" — kind of like a calculator.
As a bonus, unlike smartphones, most smartwatches to this day still aren't independently connected to cellular networks; so the average wiretapped smartwatch can't be used to surveil your location and activities in quite the same way that a wiretapped smartphone can.
Yeah, in low-fraud scenarios it's a very good idea. Otherwise, though, you have the problem of what happens when a robber takes it.
I'm thinking a ring type device might be better--put a pulse oximeter into it, you unlock it with your phone, it remains unlocked only so long as it gets basically perfect data from the oximeter, locks if it fails for a second. Thus said robber can neither snatch your ring nor cut off your finger and use it. I like the metal mesh straps that can hold my device very snugly against my skin without being tight and that would be good enough, but a looser strap would not.
The smartwatches I've owned with payments support (Pixel Watch series) automatically lock when they are not worn, presumably using the heart-rate sensor.
I wonder if this makes room in the market for some simpler device for payments. Something like a wearable that you can tap-to-pay and has the signed software attenuation but nothing else so you can't be tracked using GPS.
Heh yeah, my comment does kinda scream credit card. What I really mean is something programmable for narrow use-cases like multiple forms of payments, transit, or other stuff like building access.
Long ago we used to have ‘mini’ credit cards. You could get a two-thirds size magstripe card from some major banks that’d go right on your keychain. Discover had a cute little bean keychain with a flip-out magstripe card (the Discover2Go) as well.
At the same time there was also the Exxon-Mobil Speedpass RFID fob, and I remember there being a huge discussion about “the battle of the keychain” and whose payment instrument would win being on your keys to be used the most alongside your loyalty cards.
This will be the answer as we move away from screens as phones. Smart watches have slowly edged in, but I foresee some 'no screen' being the answer to payments, access control, etc
that exists. It's called Felica, and it's used all over Japan. train passes, vending machine, convenience stores, many restaurants. Built into iphone and a few androids.
Note that the payments are tied to a card/chip but you can (at the moment) buy new card no id/registration required
Nice. We had this in the 90s in Holland. It was called chipknip. (Knip is old slang for wallet).
It was really like digital cash, the money was loaded onto a chip. So if you lost it you lost all the money. There was no pin code either, just like a real wallet. Unfortunately it was not really anonymous because the Dutch government are really into surveillance.
It didn't really last very long, it was only popular for parking machines. In those days 2G was expensive so validating transactions online was rare.
That's what I do too (not iOS + GrapheneOS but the result is the same) as I was tired of fighting to make my bank apps and itsme (digital identity app in Belgium) work on my rooted phone.
Everytime I have to use a stock phone I'm appalled at the ads and I have absolutely no trust in any US or Chinese manufacturer. So I use them only for banking and digital id because that's presumably not what they actually care about.
It's not that expensive, I think many people have an old Android phone lying around, it doesn't have to be up to date.
It is very ironic that the solution is using an old, insecure phone full of unpatched holes for all important banking and id business, because that one is vendor-allowed while your state-of-the-art GrapheneOS is not.
If only banks cared about state-of-the-art security.
In reality, banks couldn’t care less. They only care about checking boxes and don’t consider where these boxes come from; every unchecked box is a risk.
Did the latest sham "security audit" say that root is bad? They'll block it.
My job's SSO moved to provider that either required an unrooted phone or a reliable Voice auth.
For 2 years the voice authentication worked fine (they call me, I type in a number) on my regular rooted phone. Then one random morning I just stopped getting the phone calls. "Network said no".
Complete lock out, nothing I could do except go out and panic-buy an unrooted phone not running Lineage and using a modern Android version. (I tried my older unofficial lineage phones without root, and no dice.)
I opted for a good phone I could postmarket later, but gosh did it set me back almost 1/5 of my monthly salary.
I run a proxmox server on my home Lan with all the services and storage I want, including a wireguard server. My Android phone can then connect to my home LAN services from anywhere in the world (my ISP provides static public IP addresses).
My Android device is then a simple terminal to all my "stuff". It can be locked down as much as they want it to be, as long as it can run WireGuard. I have no use for a rooted phone. In fact I want it to be as hardened as possible in case of theft.
Pretty much the same setup here. Pixel 9 Pro GOS + iPhone 15 (USB-C everything!). The iPhone is a Canadian model that retains the SIM slot.
Most of my banking apps work fine on GrapheneOS, but I've adopted this because I'm confident they'll eventually break. And access to Apple Pay is nice.
Carrying two phones is annoying, but, agency over my main computing device is worth the price.
Wow, my comment has really taken off! In both directions! Let me clarify some things.
- I bought the iPhone SE 2022 second-hand for 150 EUR. I think this is a fair price, but it's still expensive given that I leave it lying around 99% of the time, which I still feel is a waste of resources, regardless of my motivation.
- My main reason for having two phones is pretty simple. I think browsing and daily internet use just don't go together anymore with authentication, banking and health. I also didn't want to carry a critical key to my digital infrastructure around with me every day, especially in bars (etc.). Having a separate phone helps me to treat different aspects of my life differently. No worries, I don't have to carry two phones with me all the time.
- Yes, I do other things to generally reduce my digital footprint: I use different browsers for different things, such as admin work and social media (in those rare cases where I still use it). I also self-host behind VPN and have moved many apps to my internal stack, which gives me better control over what communicates with what. For example, I use WhatsApp Bridge so I don't have to use the app directly on phones anymore. I self-host Invidious with privacy-redirect for Fennec for YouTube, etc. Over time, all of this has slowly helped me regain my freedom, and it actually feels liberating.
I do something similar but it's iPhone SE plus olympus camera plus laptop. The laptop is where all the libre software lives, and the camera is (of course) for taking pictures with. I don't use the phone for anything except boring essentials, for the most part.
How is a pixel with grapheneos not a secure device?
Ps no it's not rooted but it won't pass full play integrity so it will usually be treated as such.
Also, a properly configured root is not a weakness just like having a computer where you don't log in as admin unless you really need to can be just fine.
I used to get a physical security key from my bank. Perhaps I should get a bank device with a touch screen for banking only and they could then stay the hell off of my personal phone.
> As I mentioned in another post: By 2026, you'll need two phones. My current setup:
Cheers, maybe by 2027 unattested devices won't be allowed on the internet. It's not a solution. The problem didn't exist a few years ago, the idea that it will not continue to its inevitable conclusion within a few years without real solutions is laughable.
Wait until Graphene is classified as a hacking tool and Estonia convinces the EU to fine a million Euros a day any company providing services to host its website. Wait until, "in the spirit of reconciliation," the US goes along with it, too.
Wait until unattested desktops aren't allowed on the internet.
I understand that you’re using it as an example, but I still find it very misleading. Estonia is pro-privacy and has consistently voted against Chat Control.
On the other hand, France has been undermining privacy for a few years now. They supported Chat Control, have attacked GrapheneOS, etc.
Many of us would need the unmodified one to have a working SIM because a lot of those providers require SMS in their auth flow. Expensive for many of us. For me it'll mean I have to do these things on a computer. Until they come for that one too of course.
Don't they usually SMS you a TOTP code that you could then just type into the unmodified one? I've seen some apps that snoop on your SMS to automatically grab the TOTP code but I've never come across one that wouldn't let you manually type it in.
Do you mean you have the same esim on both phones but normally activated on the burner phone except when you need it on the unmodified one w/o access to burner phone?
I can have multiple free esims with my operator. Since I have my auth-phone in airplane most of the time, I don't care about two ringing phones (or the small privacy caveat that comes with sharing the same phone number across multiple devices).
If that's the case, then I'd hold this as a different threat model than not being able to turn off WiFi and Cellular.
Very curious if an iPhone or iPad with all accessible settings off, including for NFC turning off Apple Pay, NFC tag reading, etc., leaving only this background NFC on, if there are still persistent identifiers being broadcast.
I could be wrong, but on a lot of mobile SOCs all of the modems are in the same chip as the CPU. I think you would have better luck removing the connection to the antenna
iPhones will transmit bluetooth beacons even if turned off. Fortunately the battery goes completely flat after a couple of weeks or so and then they no longer do. Unfortunately this is not very healthy for the battery.
Need? Unless and/or until the ability to log in and do your banking, healthcare, etc. via desktop/laptop goes away, then you don't need a phone to do any of that. Yes, 2FA may be required but in the tangential experience of myself, my partner and my two closest friends, we have multiple 2FA options available to us for our banking/healthcare apps that don't require a smartphone.
I see this point all the time - "You can't bank or do important life stuff without a phone!!!" and it's just, largely, bullshit. I don't do any "important life stuff" on my phone.
Beyond that, even if you had to have a phone to perform those tasks, I'd strongly argue that if you feel you need a second phone, then, and I know this will come off as reductive and unproductive, I think the idea of spending less time on your phone and on the internet, and more time "touching more grass" and interacting with the community and world immediately around you, might apply.
You don’t do any important stuff on your phone. Others might not have the luxury.
Notably, in Vietnam people use QR payments a lot. If you want to interact with them by, say, paying at a small local restaurant, you’ll need a phone (or a stack of cash, and please do prepare change).
Hmm, yeah, I guess you’re right. There are tradeoffs, but if they’re worth the benefits for you – yes, you can live without a smartphone.
For this to work for me personally, I would need webapps for ride-hailing and preferably food delivery, and to learn how to navigate the city without a map. I think I might be able to pull it off for some of the places I live in.
Just because you don’t need it doesn’t mean other people don’t. Heck, I have no need for a rooted phone so I only use a normal phone, but I respect that others might need a rooted phone.
It depends on location. In my whereabouts banking and e-signing requires one of two 2FA solutions both are mobile-only.
Theoretically there is a third option with USB ID card reader to use certificate stored in ID card. But I never saw one used in practice. It’s a PITA to get those devices to work on anything beyond Windows. And they’re accepted in relatively few places.
It's Pixels only at the moment; the GOS team are apparently working with another hardware vendor to produce a suitable device, but that's still a long way off.
With all due respect - I totally understand you may need a rooted phone, I’m just curious what you use it for? I’ve never had a modified or rooted phone so I don’t know of any of the reasons you might need one.
You start to use it because you care about privacy and your data. But now it's just to avoid all the crap Google and OEMs put into the phone. Same story is with PC and Windows. To quote one smart guy: "I'm not in the mood to be treated as a chimp." And that's it.
System wide adblocking, being able to backup any app are the top two reasons I'd still root my phones if i had any choice. You'd be amazed by the battery life improvement you'd get by just blocking ads..
I deliberately avoid all banking apps even though i didn't root my phone, but i have to use Google Pay a lot. So... That's the only reason this phone I'm typing on isn't rooted.
The most prominent case for such a future would be china moving against Taiwan, which now got easier with two of the 3 big world powers making their move.
Taiwan is a different story. There are quite detailed war simulations built for defending the country. I guess you might mean that russia is one of the “3 big world” powers and their move is the special operations to capture kiev. I stop here
Yes, I meant China, Russia and the US with the "3 big world" powers and yes, I was referring to the war in Ukraine. I am aware that the situation in Taiwan, Ukraine and Venezuela cannot be compared one-to-one. My categorization was not intended to suggest that these 'moves' are the same, nor to make any evaluation regarding good or bad. From the respective perspectives of the 3 world powers, they have been motivated by different interests. The important point is that each of the three will use the moves of the others to justify their own, whether this is correct or not.
What frustrates me is the justification I hear for this from those opposed to the kidnapping of Maduro, an illegitimate president.
Somehow it's not ok for the USA to violently meddle in the internal affairs of another country, but it is for the PRC because... Taiwan is nearby? Because the people speak the same language? Because the ghosts of the CPC's past are here on the island? It's frustrating.
1) An iPhone Se 2022 that I use for TOTP, banking and auth. It is always in airplane mode, unless I need to login to banks (etc). The OS will receive security updates till 2032.
2) A Pixel phone with GrapheneOS for daily use: Internet browsing, routing, phone, message etc.
I set up automatic backups of WhatsApp to my self-hosted Nextcloud once. Since you need 'tested backups', I tried to decrypt these WhatsApp backups independent of my phone, but this was not possible. You need the original device. There are some hacks online, but they are always out of date.
I am tending now to running Mautrix Whatsapp bridge and backing up my data through this.
Great visualization! It would have been nice to zoom out to a view of the world from space at the end, since this is really the max size of life as we know it (n=1 so far).
I think he is still correct in saying that the gear OP bought is worth much less now and further deteriorating fast. See my comment above here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46227813.
GPUs have such a short liefspan these days that it is really important to compare new vs. used.
Is it? The used data center P40s I bought for $150 2 years ago went back up to $450 a few months ago, I sold one for $400. I just checked and price is down to $200, so I'm still profitable. I bought MI50s for $90 less than a year ago, they are now going for $200. What deterioration? OPs gear was far less and is no longer deprecating. It will probably hold this value for the next 4 years.
I recently had a similar experience, although not this size.
Pre-story:
For 3 years I wanted to build a rack-gaming-server, so I can play with my son in our small apartment where we don't have enough space for a gaming computer (wife also doesn't allow it). I have a stable IPsec connection to my parents house, where I have a powerfull PV plant (90kWp) and a rack server, for my freelance job.
Fast forward to 2 months ago, I see a Supermicro SYS-7049GP-TRT for 1400€ on Ebay. It looks clean, sold by some IT reuse-warehouse. No desription, just 3 photos and the case label. I ask the seller whether he knows whats in it and he says he didn't check. The case alone comes new at 3k here in Germany. I buy it.
It arrives. 64GB ECC memory, 2x Xeon silver, 1x 500GB SSD, 5x GBit LAN Cards. Dual 2200 Watt PowerSupply. I remove the airshroud, and: A Nvidia V100S 32GB emerges. I sell the card on ebay for 1600€ and buy 2x Xeon 6254 CPUs (100€ each) to replace the 2x Silver ones that are in it. Last week, I bought two Blackwell RTX 4000 Pro for 1100€ each. Enough for gaming with my son! (and I can do some fun with LLMs and home assistant/smart home..)
The case fits 4x dual-size GPUs, so I could fit 4x RTX 6000 in it (384GB VRAM). At a price of 3k, this would come at 12k (still too much for me.. but let's check back in a couple of years..).
Buying used enterprise gear is fun. I had so many good experiences and this stuff is just rock solid.
It is obvious that everything that has been dreamed up relates to what exists now. There are no examples of real creativity or anything new or unexpected. This is my worst fear for the future: that novel ideas will become less commonplace and texts will become more average.
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