Tech notes on IT, AI, privacy & digital sovereignty

notDIRK — personal notes and analysis at the intersection of human and machine.


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EN

Luxtronik 2.0 – bringing an older heat pump into the Home Assistant era

Heat pumps with a Luxtronik 2.0 controller run reliably for 15+ years, but getting them into a smart home used to be fiddly. luxtronik2-hass brings them straight into Home Assistant – enter the IP, done. It began as a Modbus proxy; the native integration is now the core. Beyond read-out it adds real heat-pump smarts – solar boost, bath boost, night pause. In the HACS store since 2 July 2026.

  • #Home Assistant
  • #Heat Pump
  • #Luxtronik
  • #HACS
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EN

Shelly Cloud DIY – the devices your local integration can't see

The official Shelly integration stays the first choice for local devices, but structurally can't see everything: shared, cloud-only and Bluetooth devices stay invisible. Shelly Cloud DIY closes that gap – via a cloud key you generate yourself, no application needed. Local-first: the native integration keeps control, the cloud is only a visibility overlay. In the HACS store since June 2026.

  • #Home Assistant
  • #Shelly
  • #Smart Home
  • #HACS
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EN

Confidential Computing – A Way Out of Europe's AI Dilemma?

Confidential Computing protects data not only at rest and in transit, but also while it is being processed – inside a hardware-encrypted enclave that even the cloud provider cannot look into. That genuinely solves the confidentiality problem, but it does not automatically solve digital sovereignty, because the roots of trust (the chips, the attestation technology) are themselves under US control.

  • #Confidential Computing
  • #AI
  • #Privacy
  • #Digital Sovereignty
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