Absolutely - me,too.

But, to play the optimist for once - Canva could bring some good to Affinity/Serif. Canva is available as a native linux app and Serif in the past has stated multiple times it’s mainly the lack of Linux resources and experience that stops them from providing Linux support. So maybe that could be a good influence.

Canva also has a workflow that is based on a webapp that is more “beginner friendly” than Affinity and a good integration between these services could be a good thing as it may remove barriers.

And Canva for a long time had a desire to provide a full production workflow, so maybe affinity gets the long missing library features.

BUT: Now enough with that optimism, sadly I am rather sure enshitification is around the corner. Which will be a sad day for me.

Had a lengthy mail exchange on that topix with them - before them being bought, though.

While they don’t plan a native Linux version they absolutely were open to optimise towards better Wine usability - which I totally could live with for now.

But I have no idea how the buying by Canva influenced things - Canva does have a linux app so maybe there are more resources and a different focus now.

Blue-Ray Discs are basically the only viable WORM (Write-Once-Read-Many) that is available to normal and small scale professional users. The cheapest alternative, Tandberg RDX is a few hundred bucks per TB. And these are far inferior in terms of protection against outside influences compared to BD media.

And considering that a lot of professional data (e.g. tax reports) are legally required to be saved on WORM in a lot of countries it is indeed an issue, even more so in times of crypto/ransomviruses. None wants to loose their precious baby or wedding photos to a untimely virus. And no, normal Dropbox/OneDrive is no proper backup. And USB drives/external harddrives degrade over time, especially if not used.

No. TP-Link Omada is usually better and cheaper these days and offers nearly identical features.

And TP Link can be used standalone,the controller is just a gimmick.

For pure networking (not WiFi) Mikrotik is also a reasonable alternative,but requires more knowledge.

Also big in healthcare/medical products,btw.

damn, sorry to hear that. Most of our clients are pretty happy with them,but they usually are somewhat VIP so mileage may vary.

At least Mayo has decent healthcare most of the time, that’s at least what I hear from my colleagues. The elephant in the room in the US is not only the affordability and access, sadly it’s also very often the quality.

As someone who has changed roles from an actual healthcare provider to a healthcare economist/manager in international health(amongst others)I am often appalled by the qualify some US facilities provide - while others offer astonishing levels of care. And often the former are the more expensive ones.

Of course it’s possible to be a part time CEO and there are more and more leadership positions that are job shared, etc.

Everything else is sexist and ableist bullshit, because it usually disadvantages women and disabled disproportionately.

Actually Swiss disability provisions are worse than US provisions (worse than most industrial nations, btw)

Sorry,but have you at least read the wikipedia article before writing this post?

Matrix is a standard. Not an App. Just like Lemmy is.

There are dozens of clients (Element, Schildichat, Fuzzychat, Beeper) available to download for basically every system imaginable and in all major Appstores.

You can easily join an existing instance - and with beeper there is even one existing that handles all the bridges for you.

Only when you self-host it gets more tricky-just like it does with Lemmy(as a matter of fact Matrix is far easier to selfhost than Lemmy). And again there are various distributions available. They aren’t as easy as the clients and not as easy as flatpacks, but someone who has done their due diligence can absolutely handle them easily. (And self-hosting should absolutely not be “as easy as flatpacks/snaps” - the risk for both the admin and the net itself is too high). But again: The average user has little incentive to selfhost. Just like you don’t selfhost your Lemmy instance.

The Matrix environment is as easy to use as Signal, Threema, WhatsApp for ages now. In some points I would even argue that it’s more user friendly than Signal,btw.

I don’t have the time nor the crayons to explain that to you.

Yeah, 115 Million users atm. And as I said - you can easily bridge it to other services so you only use Matrix but communicate with others.

Thanks,welcome to the club! It can be a bit “tricky” at times (and I use a container manager,cloudron, meanwhile as I got too deep into the rabbit hole and now host too many things to maintain them myself) but once you get it set up it’s rock solid.

And I am really optimistic for Element X/Matrix 2.0.

It’s a great standard.

That’s why I am so happy that I switched to Matrix - selfhosted with Signal and WhatsApp Bridges(amongst others) and now I only need to keep one App on our mobiles, Notebooks,desktop,etc. but I can still communicate with everyone. (we have have a few mixed groups now)

The system does exactly that - But that is done automatically without intervention.

The system recognises by checking on our devices and the presence detectors if we are at home. If we aren’t it reduces the temperature.* Then it looks into our calendars when we can be expected to be back and increases the temperature accordingly (additionally once we enter a certain Geofence).

*:The overall heating effort is also based on the current and expected weather and sun-influx,as I have some rooms that basically heat themselves when the sun is out. The system is using that effort to adjust shades (e.g. it would allow a lower living room temperature in the morning after we left when it knows that there will likely be a sunny afternoon heating the room without the need to add external heat)

This is what I mean with smart: A smart system is only smart if the user doesn’t have to fiddle around with it. Everything else is a remote.

(My next goal is to add personalised heating. I want the system to recognise who is/comes home and adjust the temperature accordingly as my wife wants other temperatures as I do. O can do it room based, e.g. the kid’s room is adjusted according to the kid being there, but overall I am not quite there yet)

The good thing is: You can easily replace OpenTherm with KNX. Afaik there are Gateways that mimic Opentherm towards the heater so you can use KNC for the actual control.

No,it isn’t. But no open and local solution will be - but you pay for that in terms of long term usability, resilience and data. It’s a choice a mature customer needs to make. Be cloud and manufacturer reliant,invest the time to do it properly or pay someone to do it.

And KNX.org works for me(even tried it with a VPN to be sure) - and do you really think that a standard that is supported by the largest companies in the field(Siemens, ABB, Bosch, Schneider, etc.) and has multi-billion of installations in professional buildings alone per year is not for the long term?

The thing is: The standard itself is rather well designed and didn’t need too much updates (they just extended the possible packet contents in terms of possible parameters - which technically isn’t that necessary as you can fall back to ASCI).

The last major updates were more towards extending functions (KNX over RF), connecting locations via IP tunnel, and securing the packets themselves (which is not really necessary for single household installations but VERY much for multi tennant installations).

The major strength of KNX is the bus packet system itself - as the packets are standardized there are only a few attack avenues. An attacker could flood the bus with packets, try to update with fraudulent code (if none did put a password on it) or try to put fraudulent content in a module that accepts ASCI packets. The problem is the access - the attacker would need physical access or the IP gateway (if existing)would need to be unsecured towards the internet… In the end it is a fairly resilient piece of software.

And to add another unpopular opinion:

A smart temperature control is the one I never ever need to use. Because then the room always has the temperature I want.

Neff has a (magnetic/removable*) knob as well. (* Which is a great idea in theory. Unless you have kids. First it’s great because they can’t start the cooktop on their own. But then you are constantly looking for the knob. A friend nearly got insane…His daughter “accidentally” took the whole fucking thing on a schooltrip to France…HOW? That’s why I have the Siemens one with touch… It’s okayish touchwise and it works…)