Also Ctrl-MouseWheel works a treat.

Don't use xrandr directly. Use arandr which gives you a nice GUI to configure the monitors. Once you're happy with the layout, you can save it as a shell script (that under the hood does invoke xrandr) so you can replicate the setup each time you log in or each time the system boots.

Our society has become progressively more and more materialistic to the point where "Standard of Living" has come to mean how much stuff you can own rather than how happy and healthy you are.

Honestly, once you have enough stuff for your basic needs, and then a bit more just for fun, I find any additional item is a net negative for my happiness. I also get extremely irritated by built-in obsolescence and I try to make my stuff last as long as possible.

Society teaches us to consume rather than think.

As of 2025-12-09 at 00:40 UTC, it seems to have been released.

I have four monitors hooked up to my graphics card. From left to right, an Acer 1920x1080 display, an LG 1920x1080 display, a Samsung 1920x1200 display, and a Dasung PaperLike e-ink display whose native resolution is 3200x1800 but which I'm software-scaling to 1600x900.

No issues whatsoever with this setup and X11.

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.

I have always through three years was too short for servers and network equipment. Especially nowadays that Moore's Law is slowing down, I think a 5-year depreciation period for servers makes sense.

For AI processors, though, I think three years might be too long given how much change is going on in that space.

Imagine the hilarity when tow trucks incorporate similar anti-theft systems...

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.

I still like going out to a movie. It seems like more of an occasion. Moviegoers here tend to be respectful and quiet, and they will get kicked out if they use their phones during the movie.

As for snacks, any serious moviegoer will smuggle in their own snacks. Or *GASP* last for 150 minutes without eating something.

OK, I live in Canada, so maybe our systems are more sane than yours.

The amount of time I would have had to spend doing payroll would have cost me far more than $45 in time.

And I would never use ADP; ADP totally sucks (I know this having worked at a company that used ADP.) Ceridian was far better.

If you pay online, the confirmation page has a transaction number you can write down if you're worried about needing to prove that you have paid. And if you pay with a credit card, that's recorded on your credit card statement. I don't think I've paid with a cheque in years and there has never been an issue. And (at least in Canada) banks don't send back cancelled personal cheques anyway. All they do is provide an image and give you 90 days to download it. If you actually want the cancelled cheque back, that costs money.

Why wouldn't they just outsource payroll to someone who can do direct deposits? I ran a small business in Canada for about 19 years and I used a company called Ceridian to handle payroll. It handled tax calculations, government remittances, etc. and it only cost me around $45 per pay for 12 employees... a real bargain.

Now, if only we could train the oligarchs to confess to bad behavior, then we'd be getting somewhere...