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How Home Assistant is being used to protect from missile and drone attacks
- mirekrusin 2y agoWhat a humanity fail that stuff like this is happening.
- mschuster91 2y ago[flagged]
- lionkor 2y ago[flagged]
- juliushuijnk 2y agoThe invading country is as much at fault as the country being invaded? So I guess someone can claim a room in your house, and you should then negotiate.
- lionkor 2y agothe conflict did not start with invasion
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- Luc 2y agoShameful opinion.
- lionkor 2y agoI don't really get that; did you try to understand my current before commenting, like the HN guidelines suggest? You seem to assume the worst and seem to be disregarding my opinion because of that
- V__ 2y ago"The rape victim never accepted a peaceful surrender to the rapist, she is just as much at fault." This is how you sound.
- lionkor 2y agoIt seems disingenuous to compare a complex war with multiple participants and over more than 10 years with something as clearly one sided as rape
- lawn 2y agoWhat a stupid and ignorant take. Russia is invading, murdering, torturing and committing genocide. The only thing a "peaceful resolution" would accomplish is: 1. Show Russia that aggression is profitable. 2. Give Russia time and opportunity to prepare for the next attack. Russia doesn't give a rats ass about any promises they make and they can and will break every single one of them if they can profit from it.
- lionkor 2y agoare you ignoring years of conflict before the invasion on purpose, to help your argument?
- throw38228374 2y agoWe already have dozens of military bases surrounding China. There's not much more to do since China is not currently attacking foreign soil.
- victorbjorklund 2y agoThey are indeed violating other countries waters though.
- dgoldstein0 2y agoAnd how would you propose deterring them from doing this while also avoiding escalation?
- wood_spirit 2y agoIsn’t history showing that letting aggressors nibble away at norms and borders and letting them get away with it ‘to avoid escalation’ is just emboldening the aggressor? Peace in our time.
- waffleiron 2y agoSo countries should have attacked the US when it committed it's illegal wars in the middle east, to stop emboldening the aggressor? I don't think that would have created a better world. It's easy to say things like this about your geopolitical enemies, but allies get away with it all the time.
- ajuc 2y agoSanctioning US back then would be interesting. BTW war in Afghanistan wasn't illegal.
- pydry 2y agoSanctions barely work even if you ARE the world hegemon. In Iraq they just made Saddam's position even more secure while killing a million children. Aginst Russia they backfired spectacularly because Putin had prepared better for the sanctions contingency than Europe did. I'm struggling to think of an example where they actually led to the desired outcome.
- smolder 2y agoWhat would you do? Install a favorable dictator? Thanks to warmongering there isn't much of a diplomatic route to peace where we still need it. Petty ulterior motives held by world 'leaders' have made it hard.
- mciancia 2y agoA ton more sanctions, becoming less dependand on russian oil and gas, killing nordstream. But in 2014, not 2022. Probably would have helped
- jakjak123 2y agoSome form of action should have been taken when they invaded Crimea in 2014 and Georgia 2008. But even in retrospect its hard to say what except shutting down Nordstream and stopping investments. I still find it difficult for Europe to accept going to war with Russia over Crimea, but I guess this timeline is worse. Sanctions has limits, like we see with North Korea and Venezuela. The worst part of this timeline is that we guarantee that the only way a autocrat is safe, is when he has nukes.
- ivan_gammel 2y agoIn 2024 it’s pretty clear that sanctions ag
- 5e92cb50239222b 2y agoWell, the EU could have put a ban on selling riot control gear to Putin's forces back in 2012 when he used it to suppress massive pro-democracy protests in Moscow, not in October of 2022 like they actually did. This set the tone for everything that happened afterwards. I said this already under a (now flagged and dead) comment, but it's worth repeating — "your" (not your personally) one-sided propaganda and continuing support for Putin (if indirect) have made "you" lose whatever anti-war and pro-West opposition there was in Russia. I only wish we'd seen how convenient Putin is for "the West" a decade earlier. This was particularly obvious in June 2023 during the short and failed putsch of Wagner PMC. If you care at all, you can dig into my comment history from the beginning of 2022 and see how my own opinion has changed. It's a pretty typical example, I think. https://russiafossiltracker.com https://russiafossiltracker.com
- yard2010 2y agoSo does hitler. Every century we have that specific shitty decade with these specific evil shitheads
- GordonS 2y ago[flagged]
- mschuster91 2y ago> And please stop spreading anti-Chinese sentiment - it's bordering on racism. When was the last time China invaded another country? What are they actually doing wrong on the world stage, other than being more economically powerful than the US? There's boatloads of evidence of Chinese fishing fleet fishing illegally (and way too much) even as far away as Africa [1]. Then there's the constant saber rattling around Taiwan, going as far as to "punish" Taiwan for having a clean, fair election just recently. And then there's the territorial takeover of Philippine land [2]. [1] https://www.economist.com/middle-east-and-africa/2024/04/11/chinas-fishing-fleet-is-causing-havoc-off-africas-coasts https://www.economist.com/middle-east-and-africa/2024/04/11/... [2] https://fsi.gov.ph/philippines-china-relations-beyond-the-territoral-disputes/ https://fsi.gov.ph/philippines-china-relations-beyond-the-te...
- GordonS 2y agoChina is hardly unique in fishing waters they aren't meant to. Plenty European countries, including France and Spain, have been doing that kind of thing for decades. But the west isn't (literally!) up in arms over that; all the anti-Chinese rhetoric spewed forth by the five eyes is transparent BS, likely designed to manufacture domestic support for when the US decides China needs some "good ole US democracy". China building small bases in disputed territory is slightly concerning, but given how the US builds bases all over the world, it feels deeply hypocritical for the US to complain about China enhancing it's defencive posture - especially with all the anti-Chinese sentiment coming from US Congress. BTW, I liked your "boatloads" pun :)
- IsTom 2y agoThere was a peace deal before (Minsk agreement). Agreements with Russia are not worth the paper they're signed on. Any peace deal Putin is willing to sign is just to consolidate his gains and get more time to prepare for another attack.
- onethought 2y agoOr “we should have stopped the US”?
- snird 2y ago[flagged]
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- elric 2y ago> Home Assistant has a built-in Ukraine Alarm integration. It monitors the nation-wide system of air alarms and toggles safety sensors in HA. I don't know anything about the HA community, but I would be very wary of any new commits impacting this plugin...
- oaiey 2y agoConsidering they are running in thousands if not millions of homes, I hope they are anyway checking everything
- alias_neo 2y agoI'm not sure what your implication is exactly regarding the HA community, but that aside; I work in an industry that puts huge emphasis on the risks of software supply chain attacks; regardless of the community, in an ideal world, and in this situation, I too would be making sure any such code was very carefully reviewed by a trusted group of peers (including myself) and using signatures et al to ensure everyone is "getting what they paid for", so to speak. This might not be relied on to the extent people's lives depend on it, but if it's important enough to use, it's important enough to be sure. All of that said, it's easy enough for me to say when there isn't such a terrifying list of munitions raining down on my home when I'm trying to get some rest, so a simple step such as "not updating from a known-good configuration" might be enough.
- thefz 2y agoThe fact that this exists is at he same time chilling and inspiring.
- moffkalast 2y agoI didn't think I'd ever read a programming tutorial on string matching Tu-95 take-offs and Kalibr launches in anything but a fictional setting, holy shit it feels so surreal. Like a modding guide for Cold Waters or something.
- 5e92cb50239222b 2y ago[flagged]
- pjc50 2y ago> Western media tend to portrait Israel in a negative light Western media bend over backwards to report the official Israeli spin on events as often as possible and they still end up looking bad, mostly because people can get information from non-MSM sources as well. The problem with the Palestine conflict is that there are way more than just two sides involved. People keep overlooking Iran. And the Syria disaster.
- moffkalast 2y agoThe counterintuitive bit is that a lot of western support for Israel also comes from neo-nazis who see Zionism as a perfect way to effortlessly remove the Jewish population from their home country and move it to Israel, like it's some sort of faraway colonial gulag.
- tomNth 2y agoneo-nazis like old-nazis were always anti-Zionism.
- TiredOfLife 2y ago
- transformi 2y ago[dead]
- supriyo-biswas 2y agoThe existence of this is fascinating and horrifying at the same time. I wonder how he tests it though; when writing tons of YAML for K8s or Ansible, you usually test it in a test environment before putting it in production. Unlike the other cases though, a bug in your YAML here can literally lead people to lose their lives.
- xyst 2y agoThe term “battle tested” is used literally here
- yard2010 2y agoMade by the people from the trenches
- yard2010 2y agoWelcome to the dystopian future timeline! It gets worse
- import 2y agoMost of the stuff moved to UI already in home assistant and less than error prone compared the last
- somethingreen 2y agoThe actual horrifying part is that this is more of a coping tool than a warning system, as its utility as the latter is limited even in Kyiv. If you are not at the point of accepting your fate, but have already given up on attempting to get to actual shelter, you can set this up and only hide from glass shrapnel for an hour when the cruise missiles and killer drones arrive instead of hiding for hours while they fly all over the country through the gaps of air defense. For anywhere closer to the frontline than Kyiv this is almost completely useless. Travel time of even non-hypersonic ballistics, hell, even of glide bombs is so short you'd be listening to your alarm and the sound of explosions almost simultaneously.
- snird 2y ago[flagged]
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- af78 2y ago[flagged]
- jedimind 2y agoHistory did not start on Oct 7, that's deceptive framing. Before Oct 7, Israel was already murdering more Palestinian children. That's the main difference. 5 Feb 2024 — At least 507 Palestinians were killed in the West Bank in 2023, including at least 81 children, making it the deadliest year for Palestinians since the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) began recording casualties in 2005. [https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2024/02/shocking-spike-in-use-of-unlawful-lethal-force-by-israeli-forces-against-palestinians-in-the-occupied-west-bank/ https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2024/02/shocking-spik...]
- snird 2y ago[flagged]
- victorbjorklund 2y agoRussia are the ones bombing both Syria and Ukraine. And no I dont feel sorry for Iran who are the ones helping Russia bomb Ukraine. Both Iran and Russia have blood on their hands.
- dueyfinster 2y agoFascinating use of HomeAssistant. He mentioned uptime monitor in the next section - I wonder what he uses to ensure it stays online? I would guess some sort of UPS or battery backup.
- Hamuko 2y agoI imagine UPS are necessary anyways in Ukraine since the power grid is getting constantly attacked.
- excieve 2y agoMost of us have something in place since the winter of 2022 when the power outages were systematic due to russian strikes on civilians and infrastructure, amplified by lack of air defence. Most of us needed to work though so some got UPS, EcoFlows, generators, solar systems, even DIY batteries if the budget is low. This year it's more of the same.
- beacon294 2y agoWhat DIY batteries? Have you considered the new sodium/aluminum battery type? I am wondering if that battery could be easy to DIY because sodium and aluminum are cheap and available.
- thesmok 2y agoDIY batteries here are usually battery banks assembled from Chinese LiFePo4 cells, plus a Chinese BMS.
- nirui 2y agoIt's 2024, instead of riding our personal spaceships to habitat on Mars, we use Home Assistant software to alert us about incoming missile attacks. War is the single most unproductive activity humans can do. Sure, maybe Putin has his rationale, but spiting on a cake is never how one can secure the cake for themself, because guess what, others can also spit on it and then the cake is ruined. A greater leader knows that the only way to really solve a problem is to do something that adds (instead of removes) value, sadly some leaders never care to learn it. Rant aside, I want to ask a question: based on the article, it seemed that the system requires Telegram (thus Internet) and open source intel to work. Is it possible to make the system self-sustained? Is it physically possible to detect imminent attack based on soundwave/light signals? Because after the war started, Internet access maybe a difficult privilege.
- exe34 2y ago> War is the single most unproductive activity humans can do https://science.howstuffworks.com/war-drive-technological-advancement.htm https://science.howstuffworks.com/war-drive-technological-ad... war leads to technological progress. peace leads to kerfuffles over pronouns.
- multjoy 2y agoDirected with unerring accuracy by Moscow specifically to seed discord and division. The idea that this the inevitable direction of peace ignores the fact that the rise of the so-called culture war is part of an asymmetric conflict.
- exe34 2y ago[flagged]
- onethought 2y agoMoscow would freely admit they are driving the culture war? Can you cite that? Either way, aren’t you disagreeing with your own statement. What you’re really saying is Russian disinformation is effective.
- mfiro 2y agoUsing technology to improve lives is one thing, but using technology to survive missile attacks is just another level. Sometime I ask myself, will humans ever stop wars once and forever.
- xyst 2y agoHumans are naturally inclined towards war or conflict. It’s our fatal flaw.
- Ylpertnodi 2y ago>fatal flaw Enjoy your freedoms: paid for in blood.
- Ylpertnodi 2y ago>fatal flaw Enjoy your freedoms: paid for in blood.
- JKCalhoun 2y agoSeems to be just a few bad eggs that fuck it up for the rest of us. Everyone I know just wants to get along with their lives, deal with their own problems.
- EnigmaFlare 2y agoI don't think that would be stable. No war means losing the ability to fight which means eventually it'll be easy enough for just one small group to attack somebody much bigger but weaker. If war is solved by all attacked countries surrendering immediately so one aggressor rules the world, I'm sure factions would emerge within it who are competing for power again. Maybe a solution could come from some defensive technology permanently outperforming offensive technology? I think people would still find a way and the wars might be or begin by psychologically changing people's allegiances.
- kjkjadksj 2y agoThe risk of war between sacramento and san fransisco is zero. I don’t see why we can’t make that true for the world over one day.
- xyst 2y agoThat’s wild. The amount of stress dealing with these attacks at any time of the day/night would likely age me by a decade. Then still expect to grind at work in a few hours or the following day.
- walterlw 2y agoIt is wild, has been since Feb 2022, it's also "the new normal" we really want to get out of. (Not desperately enough to give in tho). Also keep in mind that this is only one of the stressors associated with war. Others include hearing about civilian casualties every week, reading and hearing horror stories from people who escaped occupation or were liberated (e.g. Bucha, Kherson...), learning about friends and acquaintances falling in battle, military draft, uncertain, but likely dire future prospects and the list goes on. So yeah, days go like years. Don't repeat our mistakes and write to your representatives.
- _xnmw 2y agoTo see some statistics about the number and duration of air alerts in all regions of Ukraine, including number of media-reported explosions by region and time period, check out https://alerts.in.ua/en https://alerts.in.ua/en, they have a statistical summary section there. Click the hourglass button on bottom of the screen, then filter by time period.
- brnt 2y agoI work in statistics, and rarely do I wish for fewer data points...
- hulitu 2y ago[flagged]
- H8crilA 2y agoThe real question is why there isn't any official API that details the nature of the danger. You shouldn't have to scrape Telegram to figure out the type/speed of the air assault weapon, and the likely time on target. BTW, also check out Kropyva, it's like Uber for artillery strikes. Very helpful with deleting Russians.
- skjoldr 2y agoThe chief reason is decentralization. Journalists who are updating these channels have their own sources in the Ukrainian air defense network as well as OSINTers who, for example, monitor Russian radio traffic using SDR, or even sometimes have people on the ground observing the take-off of planes in Russia and Belarus (horrifically dangerous, but there are ways to send this information somewhat safely; planes tend to be loud). If one of the journalists goes down for any reason, there will be other people writing updates. Each oblast also has their own channels where they announce attacks, some of them owned by the local administration, some by the emergency services. The air defenders themselves are a bit too busy to monitor and write this stuff; often, the best they can do is to write some short messages into a group chat or a Telegram bot before things go down, and even then, all parties involved have to balance providing an appropriate warning window with not letting the timing of this information to reveal the capabilities and locations of different kinds of Ukrainian observation stations. And this whole system has to be simple, since not every trained air defender is tech-savvy in general. Many don't know what an API even is. Many Ukrainians, too, wouldn't understand how to work with an API, but they can read the warnings in Telegram. Also don't forget that the journalists who curate monitoring channels often also accept reports about the flight paths of missiles and drones from the general public, and while there are a couple of apps for that as well that send data from the phone's GPS and compass while the user is pointing the phone at the object, again, it's a matter of having several information channels that non-technical people can easily use. Even just writing to one of them that you just heard a cruise missile fly by, specifying your rough location, can be helpful, since radar coverage is not 100%. These messages then get relayed back to the people in the Ukrainian AA who are trying to intercept these things in real time. Then there are the obvious security concerns, personal communications and group chat access can be vetted and it's hard to break the anonymity of Telegram channels from the outside to even be able to target the authors' devices with cyberattacks. While an API must be open to the world, and thus it immediately becomes a target. It's a messy system but it works. Kropyva is not available to the general public and it's very far from the capabilities of similar NATO systems, its strength lies in the fact that it's an Android app that can be used on cheap tablets, so it doesn't rely on the military-industrial complex provided hardware, which is safer and more robust, but far more expensive.
- kome 2y agoTelegram and its channels has been such a life saver for many, and a huge resource for the press as well. It is interesting how it is used here. I bet Russia state actors would pay a lot to controls or infiltrate those channels.
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- hermitcrab 2y agoInspiring and horrifying, in equal measure. When is the west going to understand that Putin respects only strength and grow a pair? We should be giving the Ukrainians everything they need. It is the right thing to do. But it is also the military bargain of the century - the Ukranians can continue to decimate the Russian Army and NATO doesn't have to lose a single soldier. Or we can let the Russians win and have to deal with millions of Ukranian refugees. Probably followed by Russia attacking another country.