Welcome to this week’s casual kōrero thread!
This post will be pinned in this community so you can always find it, and will stay for about a week until replaced by the next one.
It’s for talking about anything that doesn’t justify a full post. For example:
- Something interesting that happened to you
- Something humourous that happened to you
- Something frustrating that happened to you
- A quick question
- A request for recommendations
- Pictures of your pet
- A picture of a cloud that kind of looks like a hippo
- Anything else, there are no rules (except the rule)
You may have noticed something different about our daily thread!
People haven’t always had things to talk about each day, threads weren’t posted each day so new conversations often started on old threads, and in general having daily threads didn’t seem to be necessary. So the new format will be a weekly thread, this will be pinned in the !newzealand@lemmy.nz community so you can always find it, and we can have conversations there that we were previously having on the daily threads.
Roughly each week (no specific day) I’ll create a new thread, pin it and unpin the old one, and we will start fresh for that week(ish).
Thanks, this makes sense. Would also help keep longer conversations going (one of the issues with the daily threads being that you were less inclined to go back to an older thread to check for new comments).
If you’re on the web UI, you can choose to view comments instead of posts. Order by New under Local and you can see every new comment being made in a local community!
Also works on All but a bit more crazy to follow there 😆
Exciting 😀
Weekly thread suits our pace better I think.
Yay, this will stop me having to click around so much when I miss a few days and am wondering what you’re all up to.
I like it, this solves the problem of nobody making the thread on the weekends, and also less clutter in the instance feed.
Our parents adopted a cat a few years ago now, and they haven’t installed a cat flap yet because he’ll bring home a mouse, and they don’t want him to bring them inside the house. So for now, they’ve been opening and closing the door everytime (they’ve setup a little security cam at the door so they know when he comes back), which unfortunately involves opening the door in the middle of the night.
So I’ve been meaning to try and build a “smart” cat flap that utilizes image recognition to detest if he’s got a mouse in his mouth or not.
I had previously done a bit of research last year and gave up on it for some reason. Here’s to hoping I get a bit further down the road this time, and have some success lol.
An easy “cheat” way to do it would be to use ChatGPT 4, you can submit a picture and ask it a question like “is there a cat in this scene and is it holding a mouse? Respond with either ‘true’ or ‘false’”.
Python examples here: https://platform.openai.com/docs/guides/vision
Nice PoC!
Huh. Super interesting! I should give this an initial go, and maybe when I come up with my “own” solution, benchmark them against each other. Wonder if there’s a trade off (e.g., chatgpt is more accurate but takes longer due to all the back and forth required, whereas the local solution may not be as accurate but is faster)
It’s honestly amazing how quickly all this stuff is evolving and growing. Thank you for that tip 👍😄
This is really interesting - will done (I know, it’s not done yet)
I fear you’ll spend months occasionally retraining it though? (I have no experience in this, I just knows how brittle my code is)
Honestly no idea at the moment! It’s literally my first time trying this. Hopefully not? haha
That sounds amazing! Would that be some sort of frigate setup?
I’ve always wanted to set up something like that, where you get notified that a van is in your driveway or a person is at the door via image recognition from a security camera. But I think the hardware is a bit hard to track down, though I haven’t actually done much research towards this thing that I’ve “always wanted” 😆
There are other options. I use deepstack on my nas for object recognition so that I only get alerted by the camera if it recognises vehicles or people in our driveway
What type of hardware are you running if you don’t mind me asking?
It’s running on a 10 year old xeon. I already had Unraid running as my Nas that has a bunch of docker containers for Plex, Homeassistant, etc. Deepstack is running on there as a docker container.
FWIW, I setup my security camera 1-2 years ago, so there might be better options now. However there was also a big shortage of Coral TPU’s at the time, even though I did consider using Frigate. I ended up settling on BlueIris for recording as I wasn’t happy with what the free options offered back then. Unfortunately BlueIris is Windows only, so I picked up an ex-lease PC which runs headless just for BlueIris and storing the footage.
I’ve been thinking lately of updating the hardware in the Nas, as there is a huge performance jump if I move to one of the new Raptor/Alder lake Intel chips with quick sync, particularly for transcoding for Plex. But it’s going to be at least a couple of grand to update everything properly, which I don’t have to spend right now :(
During my research, I’ve been seeing a lot of talk around Docker. Is that sort of like in between a Venv & VM?
My understanding is that is you use a Coral TPU, it basically allows you to run things such as Image recognition on much lesser hardware than would otherwise be possible? In theory, does that mean you don’t need the top of the line everything else if you’re trying to run something like that?
I’m not going to pretend like I’m an expert at either of these. Unraid has come a long way now that installing app containers is pretty trivial. I am going to link this reddit comment that does a pretty good ELI5: Here
With the Coral, I think it’s literally the tensor processing unit (hence TPU) or coprocessor that is found usually on GPU’s for AI and machine learning. So you can use it with lower powered devices that can’t fit a discrete GPU or offload the processing to the TPU instead of using CPU/GPU. I think. Don’t quote me on that 😆
Looking at what others have done online, it seems the corals can really benefit inference speeds for image recognition. Hopefully I’ll be putting my order in to test it out :)
Would that be some sort of frigate setup?
Honestly I just started thinking about this again yesterday so I basically know nothing lol. Though i did come across frigate, and it did make me want to try and setup a local home security system (as I’ve been meaning to get away from using a wireless one from one of the big manufacturers of such things).
I’ve been doing a bit of a dive into something called YOLOv8, which seems to be an object detection model, where you can use existing models, or train your own. Utilizing that on maybe a RPi 5 with a camera and a Google Coral (which from my understanding, supercharges your hardware’s ability to process such things), and then using the output from the model somehow to control some type of actuation (electromagnet maybe?) to lock or unlock a catflap.
But I think the hardware is a bit hard to track down
Yeah I think from memory, one of the main reasons I had abandoned it last time I looked was that it was so hard to get the relevant hardware. Having a look again, it seems that most things are quite readily available now :)
I’ve been doing a bit of a dive into something called YOLOv8
Not knowing what it is, I’m not sure if using software called YOLO is advisable 😆
it seems that most things are quite readily available now :)
Oh man, don’t tell me that, now I’ll have to do it!
Haha. Though seeing as their on their 8th YOLO adventure (different versions are actually built by different people it seems), maybe they have a method to their YOLOing madness😆
Oh man, don’t tell me that, now I’ll have to do it!
You definitely shouldn’t visit mouser.com then hahaha 😆
Oh man, there seems to be ample stock!
Any suggestions for a camera? I don’t have any at the moment. One that doesn’t expose itself to the internet would be nice 😆
I’ve only been looking at the Raspberry Cams for the moment, as my thinking was that I wanted to keep all the components as compatible as possible to make my life easier.
Though for security cameras, maybe @eagleeyedtiger@lemmy.nz would have better knowledge around what is good out there?
I don’t know much about rPi specific models. For outdoor security cams I always go wired with PoE IP cams that at least have an RTSP stream, that way most standalone NVR software can work with them.
Not a fan of wireless/battery security cameras. I do have one wireless indoor cam, but it’s only to check on the toddler when she’s sleeping, it doesn’t record so no constant stream of data. I think I’m using a cheapie Amcrest out front, I haven’t really looked at cameras in awhile. Dahua’s are often recommended on places like ipcamtalk.com, but you need to look at specific models as there are a lot of them.
Cat flaps are psychologically bad for cats.
Also keeping them in overnight means way less catfights/vet bills.
That said I love those image recognition catflaps they yield some hilarious picturs, especially the lightbox/silhouette method.
What was the problem with cats and cat flaps?
Doesn’t seem to be an issue for this guy. They installed a cat door on the little pool storage house thingy they have in the yard, so that he can get in and out of that as he pleases (it’s sort of like his own little house 😄), and he doesn’t seem to have a problem with it.
Also keeping them in overnight means way less catfights/vet bills.
Definitely agree with this one, though unfortunately this fella really does needs to take his (what we assume is his toilet break) little wander at 4am. The whole thing with him not wanting to use a toilet indoors is another thing all together… Maybe it has something to do with the fact he was basically a street cat for a bit.
The animal psychologist that convinced me put it like this: how would you like it if there was a door into your house you couldn’t lock and violent people could randomly come in, day or night.
Even the ones that are chip controlled, cats themselves don’t know and will engage in catdoor guarding behaviour.
If your cat is young and likes the odd fight it’s probably okay though.
How is that different than nature? Noon domesticated cats didn’t have a door at all, much less a door that a servant opens and closes on demand.
It’s not different from nature. Neither are predation, parasites and diseases.
Stationary single point food sources would be rare but if there was one, resource guarding and physical competition would be normal as well, as would behaviours such as marking territory with urine.
Data from the US (where they have predators like coyotes) always give cats in the wild a 2-5 year lifespan.
I think the figures are better here, but cats in their natural state still have much harder lives than most pet cats.
Personally, if I have a pet my aim is to give it a long happy life, but I know mileage varies and everyone draws the line wherever they feel comfortable. I’ve mostly been lucky enough to have windows I can leave open for cats during the day.
What’s your thoughts on catios? At first glance they seem like a good compromise, but reckon they’d be worse because the cat would never be able to catch that bird/mouse (kinda like how laser pointers are bad)?
I don’t know much about them. I get the impression they’re big in Australia, probably because of snakes etc.
To be honest even though it’s better for bird life, I’ve never kept a cat inside all day. My last cat was super old for a really long time though, and didn’t get up to anything much on her own except dozing in the sun or peeing under a particular tree.
Hmm… Interesting thought from the psychologist. Can’t say I necessarily agree or disagree with them as I’m not a cat! 😆
Yes our preference would be to have indoor cats (due to their safety and wildlife safety), and we adopted a senior cat that stays indoors (other than supervised walks outdoors on a leash). Though in the case of our parents cat, we think it’s mainly due to him being a stray for the first ~1.5 years of his life, he HAS to go out. Won’t go to the bathroom indoors whatever we do for him, and continuously begs to be let outside etc.
Not all cats have a problem with flaps.
I have two cats they have zero problems with the flaps. They sometimes use the flap as a short cut to sneak up on the other one when playing.
I have those electronic ones you register with their microchip so only they can use the flaps.
But, I still get gifts like mice, skinks, praying mantis, cicadas, leaves, etc. The flaps don’t stop gifts.
Haha, yeah the microchip thing is something I’d like to have built in as well.
I just want to say that windows troubleshooting is unbelievably frustrating and needlessly complicated.
They constantly point you to tools that run but don’t fix the issue then redirect you to forums that tell you to run the tool.
Then you search the problem and find posts telling you to install a random 3rd party tool to fix the problem. No I’m not installing a random non open source tool to run with admin privileges that would be unbelievably stupid.
Also I’m bombarded with system tray notifications because programs on windows think its ok to serve the user an ad via system tray. I expected better from malware bytes but I expected exactly this from Adobe and one drive.
Another thing is that the windows forum advice is really bad like really bad. It doesn’t teach the user anything about problem and instead gives them a solution that will work but might break other things.
I’m not a noob to windows either I’ve used it for 20 years at least. I think after moving to Linux I’ve realized how simple things can be.
I reckon with Windows it’s just easier to nuke the whole thing and reinstall. Especially with most stuff syncing / backing up to the cloud (and drivers pulled down via Windows update) plus with SSDs, it’s much more faster to just do a clean install.
And the settings ever since windows 10, like the main interface is the slick new style but it doesn’t provide all settings info, so it ends up back into the old layout/control panel that traces back to windows 95 (but is still better). It’s all just a mess as far as ui goes.
I switched to Linux again for my home laptop last year and pretty much use it full time. The only major sticking point for me is ms office - libreoffice feels like office 2003 and you can never be confident a libreoffice docx is going to look the same when someone opens what you’ve sent them in ms office.
Plus when I troubleshoot in Linux I can use the terminal and feel like a real hackerman™ (even if I am mostly just copying stuff off Google).
The only major sticking point for me is ms office - libreoffice feels like office 2003 and you can never be confident a libreoffice docx is going to look the same when someone opens what you’ve sent them in ms office.
If you haven’t tried it already, check out OnlyOffice - looks very similar to MS Office and has great compatibility with it too. I once did a side-by-side comparison with the same .docx running in Word (M365) and OO, and they looked virtually identical (I posted the screenshots sometime ago on Lemmy, if I can dig up the post I’ll link it here).
Ah yes I have heard of onlyoffice, it looks great. I had assumed you need a backend given how much it pitches it as an online collaboration tool thing so hadn’t gotten around to it. If you can run it locally like a ms office type thing I might check it out soon.
Yep you can indeed run it locally, easiest way to get it is to just install it via Flatpak. If you use Gnome you can use the Software Center, and If you use KDE you can get it via Discover.
So what is everyone else doing with the glut of feijoas? Getting a little tired of eating them everyday
There are 4 heavy eaters in my house (everyone except me), so our problem is they aren’t ripening fast enough 😆
We’ve been getting about 8 to 10 dropping everyday, plus some that people have been giving away. Three of us are eating them every night, but we still have two big bowls full!
If you’re tired of feijoas you’re tired of life.
In muffins
Stewed with icecream
Smoothies
I might be a little tired of life… smoothies sounds like the least effort, so just have to think what other ingredients will go well with it now
Pear and banana. There’s something about brown skinned pears with feijoa that just works.
My wife does the stewing thing. The trick is that you stew so many you haven’t eaten them by the time the next fejoa season comes around, then you stew some more. Repeat each year.
Feijoa jam time.
I’ll take some!
I haven’t checked my tree for a while actually.
Uh oh, you better watch out for those feijoa-stealing whores!
We’ve got lots as well. Looking at how to use them in other dishes, I found a Herald article - “24 Feijoa Recipes”.
It’s an archive link to skip the “pay-for” - https://archive.ph/TzMXj
Your comment didn’t show up until now, I’m guessing due to the federation delays with lemmy.world. In any case is the link still working for you? Doesn’t seem to load for me
It works for me, BUT I need a VPN enabled to read it. The Herald link is a “pay to view” article which the Archive link bypasses. If you don’t have a VPN, take a Google for “Feijoa cake recipes”, there’s lots of links to different sites.
Baked some Feijoa cup-cakes today, came out great. Not overly sweet but really yummy.
For the record, the link works for me without a VPN.
The Archive system changes often. Until a few weeks ago, I too could open them without a VPN, but now I need it enabled to do so. 🤷
Strange! Is archive.ph related to archive.org?
Yes, the Archives are all part of the Wayback machine. I don’t fully understand how it’s all linked and why they have a number of different name extensions.
I moved to Australia years ago and I still feel the pain of missing feijoas. They exist here but not in a huge quantity like in NZ. Enjoy your harvest! 🤤
I didn’t even realize it was feijoa season until I went into the office earlier this week, and it seemed every other person had a bag full of em on their desk lol.
Went over to mum’s earlier today, and she gave us some as well 😆
Fuck my mate who went out for a fish with us whilst sick.
If you’re sick just stay home. I’m tired of this convoluted game of germ tag we keep playing.
The weather has been terrible today, so we all stayed inside. I started playing PGA Tour on game pass on a whim and hoo boy am I bad. I don’t remember the last time I played a golf game, but man it feels difficult. My character, John Golf, can’t even qualify to get past the first stages of the career mode, he’s ended up placing in the 140’s after my first few goes 😂
My day was similar except I played Stardew Valley with the kids. Luckily it’s hard to lose at that. Though I did forget to update the game before we played so we missed out on the recently released new content, but there were no tears so all in all a good session.
I haven’t played Stardew for so long, there must be a lot of content I haven’t seen. I don’t know if I can bring myself to start it again though. I thought the creator was working on a new game, did that ever come out?
Nah, they are still working on it. Took a break to release a Stardew Valley update.
If it’s been a long while (many years) since you’ve played, there’s probably a lot of extra content. If you have old saves you can probably continue them, most of the content seems to be more end game stuff and extra areas rather than stuff you need to start again for.
Did you guys hear about the stabbings in Aus over the weekend? Its insane
Yeah, seems like incel stuff again? I feel like in the future this period of time will be studied in detail by historians due to being very influential for many reasons, this being one of them.
Yea he was like 40 year old Virgin or something. Crazy stuff I hope this doesn’t spark any copycats.
At this point surely all the incel murders are copycats of their early/OG homocidal incels like Eliot Rodger.
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I’ve been looking online but couldn’t find a definitive answer.
It seems that if I purchase something overseas and have it shipped here, if its total value (incl. shipping) is under $1000 NZD, that Customs won’t collect GST at the border, and rather, this is supposed to be collected by the Vendor.
But what happens if your vendor doesn’t collect GST at the time of sale, and your goods are under $1000? Will it then be collected at the border by Customs?, or by your shipper (e.g., DHL)?
So you’re not using YouShop or similar, the place you’re buying from is not registered for GST in NZ and the value including shipping is under $NZ1000?
This CAB page says:
If the overseas seller is not registered for GST, they do not have to add GST to the cost of the goods
If the overseas seller is not registered for GST (because they do less than $NZ60,000 of sales to New Zealand customers), they will not collect GST on the goods you buy from them.
If the total value of the goods is no more than $1000, you will not be liable for GST.
So it seems you wouldn’t pay GST.
Yeah just shipping via DHL or UPS.
Interesting, I wonder if there’s a way to know whether a seller does under that per year, or maybe if customs flags that they are doing over the limit, they send a request to the vendor, hence if they don’t seem to be collecting gst as time of sale, one could assume they are under?
My assumption is that the govt makes sure big tech are all registered then that gets them 90% of the GST they want.
It’s probably difficult to enforce for small vendors even if they clear $60k, but it probably doesn’t make too much difference. I’m pretty sure one if the main targets was subscriptions (I seem to recall it being called the Netflix tax).
That makes sense. Maybe I’ll give it a go and order it lol. It’s somthing that isnt sold here, and even if they do end up putting on GST somewhere along the line, it’s not a deal breaker.
For future reference - in case you want to order something over $1000: I recently bought a PC directly from a small manufacturer’s website (not your usual Amazon etc) which was over $1000 NZD, and I didn’t get charged any duties for it. I’m not a 100% sure why, but it could be that didn’t declare the full value on the waybill. And it also got shipped by DHL, who’d normally take care of clearing the customs duties etc and would contact you if you had to pay anything.
But on the other hand, if I’d ordered it via Amazon or eBay, I would’ve definitely had to pay duties. For instance, a couple of years ago, I had ordered another PC - this was from eBay - and they shipped it via DHL. Normally if the seller used the eBay Global Shipping option, eBay would’ve calculated and charged me the duties during checkout itself. In this case however, DHL handled it. I also had to apply for a client number with customs beforehand, since I was importing something over $1000 (this was basically just filing out a form and providing identification). But this can take a couple of weeks, so best to get registered well in advance, so as to not hold up the delivery.
So maybe what Dave implied was true (as in they keep any eye out only for the big name exporters).
Interesting. Good to get some real life examples of that theory in action :)
I finally watched Dune 2 and it was better than expected. I found the first one forgettable for some reason but I’ll have to watch it again now.
Also watched a few episodes of the 3 Body Problem. I read the books and this series does them justice.
Oh 3 Body Problem is out? It’s been a while since I read the book but have been looking forward to seeing the series. Good to know it’s good!
It’s excellent. I’ve spotted 3 Games of Thrones actors so far too. It’s made by the same showrunners.
Well that comment was a rollercoaster. I was excited by “it’s excellent” and then deflated by “the same showrunners” because of what happened to GOT.
I recently rewatched GoT for the first time. It’s taken me this long to make peace with the final few seasons. I enjoyed it more than I expected though. And don’t let it put you off the 3 Body Problem.
I won’t, but I’ll be half expecting them to betray me.
Tempted to wait until they have made the whole thing!
