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.

If there is going be insistence on platforms being open there shouldn’t be these distinctions.

All of these devices are capable of general purpose computing at a hardware level, phones, tablets, PCs, headsets are now very similar and generalised in that regard. I don’t see why a phone platform should be forced to be open while a games console gets to remain closed, when there is now only a hair’s breadth separating an Xbox from a Windows PC.

Considering the latest changes at Meta, it seems their latest innovation is to transform social media into antisocial media.

USB-C has been a blessing and curse. One port that does everything, except when it doesn’t. Even charging is now complicated by the “guess the cable that supports the right PD type” game.

Not that the old days were much better. I don’t miss faffing around with the myriad of serial and parallel port modes and settings.

Take the AI crap out and give it an open display API and it would be a fun desk toy.

A rotating phone screen in a cylinder creating a hologram-like effect to display notifications/metrics/whatever else.

I have the G4 Doorbell, it’s worked well as doorbell and camera in both UniFi and Home Assistant.

I had no luck at all getting it to work with a chime though. I tried several different chimes and transformers and the chime would never work.

I ended up setting up automations to trigger device notifications and a bell sound on smart speakers to act as the chime instead.

I’m surprised they didn’t include an option to disable the backup encryption.

It’s a good feature to have but it’s probably overkill for users who only store backups locally. Encrypting backups increases security but also danger, lose the keys and lose the data. It should be up the user to decide on that tradeoff.

So the plaintiff’s are claiming Siri was recording them without consent, and that Apple were sharing those recordings with third parties including advertisers.

Apple claims they were sometimes wrongly keeping recordings for internal quality control/analytics but hasn’t admitted to sharing them, and have agreed to the $95m settlement.

The sharing with third parties is the most egregious part here, but it doesn’t seem to be addressed any further.

There are some Xiaomi Bluetooth temperature sensors available. I have a few of the LYWSD03MMC models. They are very cheap, have a LCD screen, and can also be flashed with custom firmware.

I have a few flashed with custom firmware and use them as general sensors around the home integrated with Home Assistant via ESPhome proxies.

I’m not sure how you could monitor them from both a phone and a Bluetooth proxy, but as they are so cheap and hackable they might be worth playing with.

For TVs now, by buying used. Help yourself and the environment by buying an unwanted “dumb” TV that’s free of this sort of crap.

Or if budget allows, look at industrial displays.

Supply answers demand, is we stop buying junk smart stuff and take our money elsewhere the market will eventually follow.