<p>As the <span class="h-card"><a href="https://bsd.network/@bsdcan" class="u-url mention" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">@<span>bsdcan</span></a></span> lists of talks and tutorials have been posted, I can officially announce my presentation:</p><p>Don't Freeze in the Cloud: Reclaiming Home Control with NetBSD</p><p>In 2010, I was taking more flights than cups of coffee. After a two-week trip, I returned home to a nasty, albeit expected, surprise: an indoor temperature of 7.8°C (46 F). Possessing more time than money, I decided to solve the problem my own way. I built a custom Python-based control system, accessible only via VPN, to manage my heating.</p><p>In 2015, after moving houses, this system was demoted to a secondary role, replaced by a shiny, commercial "smart" thermostat. However, I continued to maintain and update my custom solution for fun.</p><p>Fast forward to October 2025: major cloud providers faced significant outages. My commercial thermostat became dumber than a mechanical switch. I was reduced to manual two-hour overrides, with no visibility into settings or usage. It was a wake-up call: keeping my home warm should not depend on someone else's server.</p><p>I dusted off my solution and adapted it to modern needs - powered, of course, by NetBSD, running on the very same hardware that served my previous home for years.</p><p>In this talk, I will share the journey, the technical challenges, and the architectural decisions behind the project. I will demonstrate how NetBSD’s stability and low footprint make it the ideal operating system for long-term, "set-and-forget" home automation, allowing us to reclaim control from the cloud.</p><p><a href="/tags/netbsd/" rel="tag">#NetBSD</a> <a href="/tags/bsdcan/" rel="tag">#BSDCan</a> <a href="/tags/bsdcan2026/" rel="tag">#BSDCan2026</a> <a href="/tags/runbsd/" rel="tag">#RunBSD</a> <a href="/tags/ownyourdata/" rel="tag">#OwnYourData</a> <a href="/tags/presentation/" rel="tag">#Presentation</a> <a href="/tags/talk/" rel="tag">#Talk</a></p>
Edited 53d ago
Hello from an old year 1997 Machine!<br>This snac server is now running on a Micronics Spitfire with 2x Pentium II @ 233MHz and 512MB SD-RAM. Operating System is NetBSD 10.1, installed on a 120GB SSD (SATA->IDE converter)<br><br>OpenBSD wasn't able to run snac stable on this machine, it crashed after a few requests with "illegal instruction".<br><br><a href="/tags/snac/" rel="tag">#snac</a> <a href="/tags/snac2/" rel="tag">#snac2</a> <a href="/tags/fediverse/" rel="tag">#fediverse</a> <a href="/tags/activitypub/" rel="tag">#activitypub</a> <a href="/tags/netbsd/" rel="tag">#NetBSD</a> <a href="/tags/openbsd/" rel="tag">#OpenBSD</a> <a href="/tags/retrocomputing/" rel="tag">#retrocomputing</a> <a href="/tags/retroserver/" rel="tag">#retroserver</a> <a href="/tags/retrohardware/" rel="tag">#retrohardware</a> <a href="/tags/pentiumii/" rel="tag">#pentiumii</a> <a href="/tags/pentium2/" rel="tag">#pentium2</a> <a href="/tags/oldhardware/" rel="tag">#oldhardware</a><br>
Edited 45d ago
<p><a href="/tags/californialaw/" rel="tag">#CaliforniaLaw</a> is written by people who are either very ignorant or very incompetent.</p><p><a href="https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billStatusClient.xhtml?bill_id=202520260AB1043" rel="nofollow" class="ellipsis" title="leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billStatusClient.xhtml?bill_id=202520260AB1043"><span class="invisible">https://</span><span class="ellipsis">leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/fac</span><span class="invisible">es/billStatusClient.xhtml?bill_id=202520260AB1043</span></a></p><p>They have assumed that all operating systems are like Microsoft Windows 11, Android, or iOS; and have written legislation for operating systems where people download glorified WWW client 'apps', from 'stores', which use 'accounts' that they have with vendors or Microsoft/Google/Apple.</p><p>But the legislation *as worded* *also* covers everything from <a href="/tags/debian/" rel="tag">#Debian</a> and <a href="/tags/ubuntu/" rel="tag">#Ubuntu</a> through <a href="/tags/arch/" rel="tag">#Arch</a> Linux and <a href="/tags/mobaxterm/" rel="tag">#MobaXTerm</a> to <a href="/tags/freebsd/" rel="tag">#FreeBSD</a> and <a href="/tags/netbsd/" rel="tag">#NetBSD</a> and <a href="/tags/openbsd/" rel="tag">#OpenBSD</a>; where users anonymously use package managers or ports systems to install applications, written by developers, on operating systems, from 'publicly available internet website' repositories.</p><p>There is no age field in the GECOS data in master.passwd(5) of course, and the reality is that no BSD or Linux-based operating system has this concept of apps/stores/accounts.</p><p><a href="/tags/midnightbsd/" rel="tag">#MidnightBSD</a> <a href="/tags/freesoftware/" rel="tag">#FreeSoftware</a> <a href="/tags/unix/" rel="tag">#Unix</a> <a href="/tags/california/" rel="tag">#California</a> <a href="/tags/uslaw/" rel="tag">#USLaw</a> <a href="/tags/ageverification/" rel="tag">#AgeVerification</a> <a href="/tags/gdpr/" rel="tag">#GDPR</a></p>
