And that 'counterpoint' is hot garbage.

We are not capable of building anything that can withstand the surface pressures and temperatures for very long. The rock of Venus is dry-baked to incredible strength, you're not mining anything even if you could build equipment that could survive there.

I pretty much stopped building my sf&f collection in the 1990s. The writers moved on and I don't like where most of them moved to.

In fact, I put off updates as long as possible. A lot of things can't be backed out of they go wrong, and the devs do this on purpose to avoid having infinite version compatibility issues. It really sucks to update something like that and find people who held back a version are OK... And you just have to deal with having something broken until a dev feels like it should be a priority.

They're pretty good about that, but I just want my system to work.

Typically I back up my entire VM and then spend a day or so trying to update all the configurations they've moved or changed the formatting on. If it's too annoying, I revert the whole thing and try again at a later date.

Only tinkerers should have auto-updates enabled.

The reason people look to Mars is that it is more hospitable than the Moon and has greater potential to be made self-sufficient.

We really ought to be putting small mammals in centrifuges in orbit though, to get some data on whether or not our biology will function normally in .38g. It might be no better for our health than freefall.

I honestly don't know what to say to that. I run my HA in a VM on a grossly over-powered server now, but I started on a PI and never noticed an issue beyond it being difficult to install and configure the RTL_433 addon back in the day.

Venus is not a valid colonisation target with current or foreseeable future technology.

Floating around in a bubble in an acidic atmosphere above a surface you will never reach for resource extraction limits you to an Earth-based supply chain. At least on Mars you can walk around and dig stuff up. On Venus you are crushed and melted.

Not sexism, statistical accuracy.

35 is also young enough you could be creating a horde of desperate, violent men.

I purchased a Chinese generic of the Leadingstar USB dongle. It should cost around $20 through Walmart.

No power consumption data for you, but... I just installed the RTL_433 addon with the config wide open and I pull in everything.

It all shows in the MQTT console with the mosquito_sub command. The challenge can be picking out your own stuff if there are a lot of devices in your vicinity.

Zigbee does mesh net, so you can plan your device placements to help with range. Though that only applies to line powered devices, so trying to chain the power-miser battery sensors won't work. I have a smart outlet I use to help some sensors that are at the edge of useful range from the hub.

I do kind of wish I'd initially chosen Z-Wave for my low-power encrypted wireless for the extra range, but Zigbee has been adequate for my uses so far and I like to keep things as homogeneous as possible, so I'm not switching any time soon.

No, they're morons.

I am overwhelmed by them, but not because I lack the ability to understand them. There are simply so many of them and they are dedicated not only to not adapting, but to holding everyone else back with them.

Morons. Maybe not by medical definition, but close enough that it is a descriptively useful term.

Globe is another brand you'll find on the discount shelves. Total garbage.

My general rule is to start with Zigbee devices for anything I want secured because they cannot route to the Internet. 433MHz devices for anything I'm OK sending data in the clear (like my weather station).

I fall back to WiFi if I must, a lot of that stuff you can get to work by configuring it with the manufacturer's app, THEN blocking it from further communications with the Internet. I don't like it, and I'm definitely boned if I have to reconfigure something and the manufacturer no longer supports it, but some devices are just only available with WiFi communications, or sometimes you need more range than you're going to get with Zigbee.

Look at how many people on Slashdot jump on these articles to post about how it's all a hoax or whatever. It's not just the wealthy, and I doubt they're all part of a paid social manipulation campaign. It's morons. We have hordes of useful idiots holding us back in addition to the much smaller number of elites with entrenched interests in the current state of affairs.

So many 'smart home' items are nice toys that only work if they can connect to the manufacturer's servers. With Home Assistant, you can build a home automation and security system that is entirely local if you like. It still takes a bit of work because you have to do your research when choosing new devices to add, but it works.

The voice assistant is adequate and rapidly improving, though the recommended hardware is listen-only - voice response is currently mainly available via a phone app.

Anyway, even if you have nothing to plug into it but have an old computer somewhere, it's worth downloading and playing with. Link it to the phone app and suddenly you have family tracking, common calendars, and a weather app. When my kids were in school, I added an RSS feed parser and had it telling me if buses were cancelled or not before we'd even had breakfast. Now I use it wake me up with a weather report and tell me if it's time to put out the garbage and recycling.

Add in a $20 SDR module and it can check your tire pressure for you, maybe pick up signals from a neighbour's weather station. Then you can start extending it with really inexpensive door sensors. This summer I'm adding a floating sensor to my pool to track the water chemistry and temperature and expecting to save a ton of money scheduling the filter pump (with a $20 smart light switch) to run just long enough during non-peak hours to cycle the water and keep it healthy.

I also route inexpensive cameras through it so I can check them from anywhere I want without having them connect to a server in China or wherever.