TVA

Realistically, the banks will start offering longer loans, would be my expectation.

If you thought 6 year loans were already too long, wait til you start seeing 8-10 year long ones for new vehicles!

An Amendment takes 2/3 of Congress to approve though, not just a majority.

I can imagine plenty of Dems in Congress would say “fuck it, let’s try Obama again” though and roll the dice on approving it :-/

Especially because Iran HAD a nuclear deal with the US that they were adhering to and Trump broke that deal in his first term!

Why would they ever risk entering an agreement like that with the US ever again‽

In my experience, Zoomers largely lack a lot of computer skills (specifically in troubleshooting), but, for me the huge difference between them and the older folks has been that the older folks will say things like “I’m just not a computer person ::laugh::” and refuse to be shown how to do anything whereas the Zoomer just doesn’t know, yet, but are more than willing to learn.

ETA: NOTE: that’s just the generalized trend … some of the most knowledgeable technical people I’ve met are Boomers and some of the best computer techs I’ve worked with have been Zoomers.

Yeah, my problem with it is that it’s always something. I’ve been giving it a go about once a year since they forked from Emby and everytime something has made me drop it.

If I’m having problems with it the handful of times I go to watch something using it, the people I share with DEFINITELY would and now I have to handle their auth crap myself as well.

I’ll probably prioritize just keeping a server going side by side now for a lot longer than a month or two at a time and try to find solutions to my problems. it’s never really been a priority before since Plex worked, but the writing has been on the wall for a while now that the enshittification is in full swing and now I need to make sure I’m ahead of it.

Blah, this sucks.

It’ll still be the fault of Democrats and the Trans/DEI agenda for burning all the money.

If their supporters were capable of logical thought they wouldn’t be their supporters (not saying they’d be Dems, but they definitely wouldn’t be supporting these fucks).

A child dying is going to make them double down, honestly. At this point they will REALLY refuse to acknowledge that the kids death was 100% their fault since taking accountability is not something these people are willing to do

My AmazFit Bip could do a month when it was new (it’s down to ~10 days now after a few years), so I would think a month from Pebble would be feasible.

I don’t understand using a watch that you can’t use for AT LEAST a weekend without power … as it is, I’m pissed off that I’m down to 10 days (it’s stayed steady here for 6 months or so, so, I’m hoping it won’t degrade too much more before the new Pebble comes out).

@[email protected] already took care of what SMART means and is good for, so, I’ll address what the spirit of your message instead.

For me, _almost _nothing in my house phones back anywhere with telemetry. Sure, anything that uses WiFi needs the network to run, but almost nothing has access to the actual internet because it’s on a VLAN that specifically blocks internet access.

If you plan out the equipment you buy, you can ensure it’s safe (the absolute easiest way to do that would be to only buy z-wave or zigbee equipment since by design that’s a completely offline ecosystem, unless you buy a controller for it that requires the internet). With WiFi, I basically only buy stuff that can be flashed to ESPHOME, which removes its online requirements and puts a completely different firmware on the devices … this is more work than most people would want to do though, but you can always buy devices that were already flashed by someone else. IIRC, there are even some devices that come that way from the factory and use ESPHOME as an option. Or, they’re devices where I bought the sensors and microcontrollers and wired them up myself and put ESPHOME on the microcontroller.

For me, I love walking into a room and the lights turning on. If it’s night, the lights are red to not jolt me awake. Later in the night, they’re dim and a bit more orangey rather than bright white. These are QOL improvements that I would not want to go back to not having.

My garage doesn’t have any of the standard RF “clickers”/4-digit-code-panels connected because they’re garbage, but I have a relay sitting on it that I can remotely trigger and open the garage. I have motion sensors so that if no one has been in the garage for the last 5 minutes and the door is open, it’ll close the garage door (this was because people kept forgetting it was open.) I have sensors to let me know when the windows are open at the same time as the heating/air conditioning to try and prevent burning money. None of this is internet enabled, but it is controllable over my network and my network is accessible over my VPN.

If the humidity is high in the bathrooms, it assumes someone is taking a shower and turns on the exhaust fans if they’re not already on. This can help prevent mold from growing. There are some real benefits to things being smart and I do 100% agree with you that apps that send data to companies on when we’re home/away and all that are BAD, but, if you plan ahead you can have your cake and eat it too, but the number of choices for equipment you’ll have will be lower, but at least your stuff will keep working regardless of internet access and regardless of whether the company that made the equipment is still around or not.

I have my bathroom fan turn on if the lid has been open more than 45 seconds … some things you just don’t (yet) know you need to be smart :-D

For me, all of our lights are smart (some bulbs with smart switches that talk to the smart bulbs and some just smart switches), but, everything needs to be able to function like it’s dumb … nothing needs an app to function. The wall switches will function as expected … home assistant adds additional functionality, voice commands add extra functionality, but, it all works as you’d reasonably expect it to if you just go and hit the wall switch.

What next? A toaster with butter spreader built-in?

I mean, that’s at least a feature that you can look at and say “Huh, I’m not lazy enough to use it myself, but I’m glad it’s there for Granny who has arthritis and can’t hold the knife very well anymore” UNLIKE the AI which is basically just there for Samsung/LG to get money from Microsoft and for Microsoft … ??? … Profit???

One of the mods said (in the article) that to their knowledge it’s mostly the paid admins removing it not the unpaid moderators.

A lot of these folks that rave about “owning their home” and about how “bad the younger generation is with money” have re-mortgaged their home to fund their insane lifestyles and owe enough that it’s just gonna be a headache for whoever “inherits” the poorly maintained asbestos farm.

12ft.io is one I see a lot, but whenever I try to use it, it says I’m a bot.

On FireFox (desktop or mobile [Android for sure, don’t know about iPhone]), you can click the reading mode button in the address bar and it’ll let you read it.

interesting! I’ve never seen one in a mall in my area, just stand alone (same with Chipotle actually)

Nice! I’ll keep an eye out for one!

I quit going after their CFO was bitching about quiet quitting keeping him up at night.

QDoba is better anyways, they’re just not in nearly as many locations (around me anyways).

Not Russian, but go ahead and block me

ETA: Since it needs to be stated apparently, not a fascist either.

Well yeah, now 500M will get allocated to go directly to the business only, but another 400M that previously would have gone to the business now gets to go directly to the shareholders instead since it’s unallocated! WIN-WIN!

Requiring any closer bookkeeping than that is SOCIALISM!

/s – kinda, but, I expect that’s the reality