Oh look, yet another reason to use an ad blocker.

An open source smart glasses platform would be a much better direction.

But that only provides security assurances for the wearer of the glasses. Anyone else interacting with them doesn’t know how they are configured, and what is being recorded and/or shared.

The core technology is impressive, and has legitimate use cases.

But that doesn’t outweigh the enormous privacy concerns these devices raise. They aren’t being angled as an accessory for specific activities, but as everyday wearables. If smart glasses like these became common they would be unavoidable, creating leave of intrusion that’s concerning even without Meta being involved.

Yup, the UK once again creating a needlessly convoluted and harmful solution to an already solved problem.

I would laugh if I didn’t live here.

The figures are the averages for the full trial period.

So it’s possible they were making more queries at the start of the trial, but then mostly stopped when if they found using Copilot was more a hindrance than a help.

I think the options either that combination are limited. IKEA Zigbee devices use removable batteries, but they don’t have a temperature sensor. They do have a USB air quality sensor but it’s a bit more complex/expensive.

There are some good WiFi, Bluetooth or RF options with removable batteries but they won’t be Zigbee.

I’ve heard of some people modifying the coin cell devices to used a wired power supply, maybe that would be an option.

It’s not mentioned in the release notes anywhere, but the 2025.8 update has subtly changed the shade of blue used in the UI:

It’s been throwing me off a bit ever since I updated.

We have a cheap and reliable black and white laser printer at home for convenient printing of stuff like return labels.

On the rare occasion colour of photo prints are needed, there’s a great little independent print and photo place in town that does prints for pennies.

Seems to be the best of both worlds.

I would also recommend openSUSE Tumbleweed. I’m usually a Debian/Debian-based person but I’ve been running Tumbleweed on my desktop for a few years now and it’s been great.

It has a few peculiarities like any distro but it’s been very stable, with few issues even with things like Nvidia drivers. Docs and community seem good too.

These Mavicas could become popular again now as retro tech. There’s a lo-fi aesthetic growing in photo and video that’s all about compression artefacts and old image sensors. Physical media and its inconveniences is also having a moment as a novelty and maybe even a broader movement.

In the general population it does. Most people are not using an academic definition of AI, they are using a definition formed from popular science fiction.

The platform owners don’t consider engagement to me be participation in meaningful discourse. Engagement to them just means staying on the platform while seeing ads.

If bots keep people doing that those platforms will keep letting them in.

It’s a feature that’s often been requested, but hasn’t appeared yet. The best option out of the box is creating non-Administrator users and then creating custom dashboards and panes per user with only the controls they need.

But that doesn’t stop a user from poking around still, because they can still access all devices and entities through features like the Logbook - which is always accessible because sidebar items can’t be controller per user.

There are some HACS bits that might be able to lock things down a bit further, like Kiosk and Guest modes.

I’ve heard some people get round this by setting up inebriations with Apple/Google/Amazon ecosystem, only exposing the desired entities/devices, and then giving others access to those and keeping them out of Home Assistant altogether.

It’s a feature set I wish they would add/expand, I’m sure anyone with a home office and mischievous children would agree.

It’s something I often hear complaints about. Several of the Home Assistant users I know love the way it integrates all their smart devices together, but say they find making good dashboards difficult.

Improvements like proper drag and drop and better auto categorisation and population will go a long way to help them. The old default dashboard that just lumped everything in one screen isn’t a great way to get started.

I’ve got parts on order for this very project, should arrive this week.

I previously tried using one of those large pressure mats but it didn’t work under the mattress.

That’s Thread. Matter is an application layer standard, which currently supports running over WiFi, Ethernet or Thread.

Matter could run over new wireless systems in the future.

A few years ago the hose on our washing machine split and we didn’t realise until water started coming out from under the units. Thankfully damage was minimal but it was a big pain to dry out.

I’ve had some of those Aqara leak sensors in place since as a precaution.

Just remember to change the batteries regularly! Easy to forget them when they are out of sight.

They were still making MiniDiscs and MiniDV tapes? That seems more of a surprise than the Blu-ray discontinuation.

The N-Gage had a bunch of bizarre design decisions.

The game cartridge slot was behind the battery - swapping games required disassembling the phone.

The revised QD version fixed a lot of the mistakes but it was too little too late by then.

Throwing money at AI seems a big gamble for productivity.

I’d rather see the UK invest in its human workers instead, with better education and training. IT skills for example as still lacking in the country. PCs have now existed for 30+ years yet so many still struggle with task like making simple spreadsheets.