themeatbridge

So… we’re doomed?

No shit.

You’re right, but the reason that hasn’t caught on is that talking to your “smart” house is stupid. You can’t possibly program every possible command or situation, and telling Alexa to dim the lights in your kitchen to 40% is slower than using a dimmer switch. Actual smart homes are automated to the point where you don’t need to talk to your room.

Alexa was never supposed to make money by itself. It was supposed to do two things, collect information and lower the barrier to buying things.

They must have either collected enough data to lower the value of collecting any more, or they have realized that people got over the novelty of asking Alexa to order more dog food.

My guess is the latter, because buying anything from Amazon now requires 15 minutes of research to make sure it’s actually what you want and not at some ridiculous marked up price. I wouldn’t trust Alexa to pick the best result on the first try.

Right? I already don’t use youtube as much as possible. Piped helps, but if that stops working, I just won’t watch movies on youtube.

I understand why people are upset anytime a company fucks their customers for money, but the solution is always to walk away.

I used to work for a European home automation company. Thing is, their gear is most cost effective in new construction and was very popular in Germany, Austria, Czechia, and Poland, but convincing anyone to wire for low voltage devices in the UK or US was like asking for ketchup on pancakes. There are a lot of reasons to like their tech, but they don’t really do retrofit, so it hasn’tanaged to make a dent in the market.

Yeah, I definitely get it. It would be illegal to mix low and line voltage in the USA, too.

I ended up running the cabling myself, all class two circuits powering 12 24vdc spots. The nice bit is that they are all addressable RGBW spots, so I can control them all individually or as groups. And it’s all automated. The downside is that I’ll probably have to remove them if we ever sell this house, because nobody but me understands how it works.

True, but more applications are supporting Linux as it becomes more popular. More users means more Linux apps means more users.

Sure, but if you have the option, you shouldn’t choose it. One reason so many businesses use Windows is that everyone knows Windows. If everyone learns Linux, more companies will use Linux.

I have some dc lighting in my basement. It’s great, but there aren’t as many options out there and electricians don’t want to touch it.

Most LEDs run on DC, and the built-in transformer is the most likely component to fail. If the LED is failing and getting dimmer, it’s most likely due to poor heat dissipation.

If we had little 12v adapters and separate LED modules, you could reduce waste by only replacing the part that fails, and manufacturers would have greater incentive to improve build quality. Instead, we get cheaply manufactured bulb-shaped disposable units that need to be thrown away when one part fails.

But that’s the problem. Early adopters are starting to see the performance drops and are just replacing their equipment, and we don’t have a proper reuse pathway for a lot of it. We should prepare a plan for panel (and battery) repurposing to keep plastic and metals out of landfills. Recycling alone isn’t enough.

Again, not a reason not to produce or adopt solar power and electric cars, but it is a legitimate second-level concern.

That’s the tricky part with dismissing these concerns outright. Conservatives are not arguing in good faith, and take a kernel of truth surrounded by a mountain of bullshit. We don’t want to overcorrect and ignore the problems, because that just fuels the bullshit arguments.

Yes, we do have that problem, but it’s not the panels anyone puts on a roof. It’s the cheap plastic shit manufacturers put on disposable consumer devices like pathway lighting or portable chargers.

I wouldn’t put that cheap shit on my roof, but as solar adoption increases, capitalists are gonna capitalize.

It’s a stupid argument against solar power, but it is a legitimate argument against cheap and poorly-constructed solar panels that do not have the same longevity as the ones built in the 90s.

Thanks!

I can actually get one as part of my company healthplan. Which model do you have? I was leaning towards the Venu 3 over the Forerunner.

I’ve been contemplating getting a galaxy watch, but I was waiting for Samsung to get it right.

Are you asking me what I would do given the keys to the nuclear arsenal? Or are you asking me what the current state of geopolitical affairs?

We won’t win an economic trade war with China. China isn’t the Soviet Union. We might win an actual war, but it would be the largest war ever fought on earth. China isn’t Russia.

I don’t want anyone mining lithium unless we can do it without destroying the planet where we live. I’d gladly trade my cell phone for universal human rights and clean water for my grandkids. But that ain’t a button on my console.

Oregon is in the United States, a country where people expect life, liberty, and the pursuit of a jetski. The CCP treats its citizens like wheat for the thresher, and has zero qualms about turning some land into wasteland. Economically, you can’t compete with that. If you want to place tariffs on Chinese lithium, let’s do it. But we need to actually produce it here, and we have to be OK with the full, long-term cost of mining and manufacturing it, safely and cleanly.

Unless we do that, there’s not much sense in acting like we’re better than China. We just have a national NIMBY attitude, happily outsourcing our climate disasters and human rights abuses so we don’t have to see it first hand.

Right, but China has cheaper labor and few environmental regulations. Citizens of Oregon are less likely to send children and political prisoners into mines and factories.

Sure, but AirBnB and Uber didn’t improve the hotel and taxi markets, they just joined them. They each took advantage of a tech debt and then lowered the barriers for entry to the market. In doing so, they made a shit ton of money by carving out market share from the fucked up systems you described.