That may be fair. In my case I accepted the shittiness of x10 and actually had a working system, I just hit the "ok, now what" point. Of course I don't really fall into a lot of the use cases where automation would be useful, it was just a fun toy to play with.

I can accept that products will get "smarter" over time, and centrally controlled lighting/temperature with some smart elements will just become the norm. I can also accept that more and more devices will become internet connected and have gimmicky phone apps, some of which may actually be useful, but most I think won't be.

I just don't think that the current set of things we have in our houses benefit much from automation or remote access. Most appliances you kinda have to be there to use anyway. Being able to access my oven or washing machine from around the world doesn't do much much good if I have to physically be there to make use of it, and receiving a text message from the oven to let me know my food is done sounds nifty, but being far enough away from the oven that you can't hear the buzzer/beeper/whatever we currently have is probably not a great idea.

When we have robots that buzz around our homes, maybe this stuff will be worth it. Right now, it just doesn't seem to really solve a problem.

Largely my reaction.

This terrible style is kinda popular right, where all the "pages" are on one page, separated by big half page images, with links just jumping to different sections and very low information density.

I'll admit this sounds like a plot out of Jerry Springer.

And if she was cheating, letting him go through the second operation was cold as fuck.

Anything where the accepted standard is to send a command 3 times to increase (not even guarantee but just increase) the probability of it getting there is a bad sign.

Not to mention just about anything that produces electrical noise can interfere with the damn things. About a year ago that fan I mentioned in my bedroom would randomly turn off and on. It wasn't really all that annoying (not nearly as annoying had it been the light), but none the less it bugged me and I couldn't figure out what the hell was going on. About a month later, the UPS I had connected to my network gear died, and the problem went away.

I know people who spent a great deal of money buying filters and bridges and amplifiers and all kinds of things to try and make the damn system work. I have to assume that just like the Nigerian 419 scams, after you've bought so much into it, you can't help spend "just a little more" to see the promised light at the end of the tunnel. Luckily I didn't have too many of those kind of problems, but the system even when working was still slow and unreliable.

Ah, the old "smart fridge" fad.

For my use case, this would be impractical, as I tend not to have many "staple" foodstuffs and tend to shop for the meal(s) I intend to make in the near future, and I've usually got a good idea of what's in the fridge.

Back when "fridges with screens that will manage your grocery list for you" was being talked about a lot, some people described situations where it could be helpful, but they all seemed to involve adopting a very rigid protocol around fridge use ("remember to punch in the percentage of ketchup remaining when you are done with it Billy!", to which my response was "screw that shit".

Yup.

Personally I'd be way more open to this stuff if it didn't want an internet connection.

Ultimately I see very little practical application for any of this anyway. As I said in a previous comment, I played around with home automation "back in the day" and while it's nifty, it doesn't really add a whole lot of value outside of some very specialized use cases.

Isn't this what we all figured out back in the x10/smarthome days. After you get over the gee-wiz star trek appeal, there's very little that we actually want to automate, and most of those things are already well handled by stand alone devices which benifit very little from integration. My automatic coffee maker and thermostat don't need an internet connection, and having lights come on automatically when you walk in the room is cool and nifty, for about 20 minutes, then it is overcome by the annoyance of the lights turning off all the time because occupancy sensors suck. Sure we can try to make up justifications, and there may be some people who legitimately have a valid use case, but I think this is gonna be home automation fad part 2.

My old x10 gear still makes an appearance around Christmas, and I still use some of it in my bedroom to control the lights and ceiling fan from my bed, but my (at one time) expensive ocelot controller and like a few dozen various bits sit in a box collecting dust.

(Also usual warning that x10 is a terrible system that I wouldn't recommend to an enemy).

It was an episode of the simpsons because it's actually a thing. School systems are broke, and throwing a couple of shoe ads on the wall or selling extremely valuable classroom eyeballs seems to be what it's coming down to.

To me, the fact that it was being taken down for maintenance doesn't make it ineligible to be "ordered taken down" after the fact. The fact that it was being taken down to be fixed might have put the idea in someones head, but the fact is if it was originally planned to be put back up and is no longer, then that is mostly the same as if there had been no maintenance plans.

Very least it seems like all parties have come out with the line, and don't intend to put the thing back up for the cited reasoning.

Opportunistic maybe, but doesn't scream hoax to me.

Indeed.

Smaller local stuff is the way to go. The big cons are ridiculously overcrowded. I guess some people are into that and you do get to meet some of the bigger names, but not worth it in my opinion.

Shipping used to be a ridiculously dangerous thing. The navigator on a ship was probably one of the most skilled crew members, and if he fucked up, you were done.

I honestly believe even if we did still have that skill set, if you applied old techniques to the scale of modern shipping, it would indeed be catastrophic, and not just for those at sea.

The world now depends on international shipping. Sure, things could be re-juggled (our food didn't always spend half it's time floating across the sea from cheaper production facilities), but in the interim there would be mass problems as supply chains fell apart and things like oil, food, and materials suddenly became scarce.

And planes would be even worse off!

That's because we never really "standardized" on it. Sure a distro can pick their preferred init system, but there was nothing stopping you from using another, because they were _just_ init systems and not the whole system platform clusterfuck that systemd is aiming to be.

Case and point, I use gentoo, and like most gentoo user, open-rc. Up until now this hasn't been a problem. Then systemd came along and started fucking everything up.

This is the thorn in everyone's side. Standardizing on anything is kinda anti-linux. We accept it as a reality for some things, but it's not something we should specifically aim for.

Indeed, or even if the article was about or related to either. I know it's an old tune, but slashdot is just going down hill...

I've been going through much the same.

For physical stuff, have made multiple trips to the local eco recycling place with loads of old computers and peripherals. I'm still keeping some stuff (like my trusty Dragon32 and it's associated junk) do to sentimental value, but I'm less attached to the pile of CD-ROM drives, box of IDE cables, and stack of old machines. If I haven't turned it on in a year, it's gone!

For digital stuff, I keep most of it for the reason you pointed out. The sum total of 1996 to like early 2000 can probably fit in a few TB, and I've got a 20TB file server (which isn't really that uncommon any more). I've considered dumping it to an external (no need for it to be spinning all the time), but just can't be bothered.