Never going to happen. The junk mail lobby has too much influence in Congress, and Congress gets free use of the postal service for "constituent communications" (aka electioneering).

Feels like a simple thing to audit: snap inspection and see the average ages of currently in use equipment.
If it's what they're claiming, give them a refund.

So the various state attorneys general got huge settlement for these.

As long as we are bitching about harming the poor... Shall we ask what % of those settlement ended up in, say, the actual hands of poor customers?

Just wondering.

Lately, HA has focused on voice control, and there seem to be a strong push that yielded some tangible results.

I don't use it myself, so I don't have first hand experience.

But the web site now has a section on voice control.

And there was blog post on it too.

If you search Youtube, you will find people implementing the above too.

Ironically the only streaming service I know of that doesn't interrupt with ads is.... Netflix.

Yes, I believe there are several others that if you pay enough (generally a LOT more) you can avoid them.

I'm not defending the system, because I too think it's broken... But please let me know a society where the rich don't get more of what they want?

And before you reply with something like "but in my country they can't buy their way out of a parking ticket" note that I'm not defining "rich" either. Generally assertions of virtue in this context merely means the price is higher and/or indirect, ie hiring better lawyers, funding the right politician in the next election, or donating to the right thing.

I am a Home Assistant user for at least 8 years.

Initially, it was for automating a few things, including existing door/window sensors from a legacy alarm manufacturer. Using RTL-SDR and rtl_433 I was able to intercept the messages, have them decoded, and into Home Assistant over MQTT.

Then it started to be essential for things like: if you leave a door or window open for more than x minutes, it will complain, unless you turn off that automation temporarily.

Now it does many things: Outdoor temperature, humidity, wind speed, wind direction, and rainfall. Indoor temperature, humidity, Volatile Organic Compounds, CO2, Radon.

It also emails me a weather forecast in the morning and evening. The contents are aggregated from the weather station, and two different sources for the forecasts (Environment Canada, and Met.no [Norway's weather service which covers the globe]).

It also runs my humidifier in winter, factoring in the values for indoor humidity as well as outdoor temperature (to reduce condensation on the windows).

And it interfaces to my Ecobee thermostat, via HomeKit, so it is cloud-free (not depending on an internet connection at all).

Overall, it is a nifty project. Very useful, very customizable.
My only gripe is that they discontinued support for running from a Python venv. I had to move to a Docker container instead. That made certain things that I have been using for years not work anymore (e.g. voice alerts, sending emails from shell scripts). I created workarounds for those, and they work well.

Jesus Christ man, does anything in your day not somehow involve thinking about Trump?

Checks are a last vestige of a higher trust society.

I work for a European firm and they (their auditors) despise checks and can't comprehend how America can be so backward as to still use them.

Ironically we just had a customer involved in seven-digit fraud payments ...which couldn't have happened without electronic payments. Had they been "allowed" to pay us in checks like they used to, it simply couldn't have happened.

I'm not sure listing another random rule that allows the German state to arrest people is a "win".

In a way this is good news.
Seriously.

If Russia expected to win this conflict, it's unlikely even they are dumb enough to cause major nuclear leaks in territory they expect to hold.

It's possible this is a clue that they DON'T expect to do so, and we've advanced to the "well if I can't have it nobody can" scorched earth stage, which is very Russian.

Trump says thanks for letting him live free in there.