I agree. If only it hadn't been made with AI, I would have loved it.

Ah, good that the Trump regime is concentrating on the important things. But anyway, they secretly want us all using Antiqua anyway.

And if you're wondering, "December kan wel een beetje McDonald's gebruiken" means "December could use a little McDonald's".

Well, OK, apart from the gratuitous use of AI to make it, I think the commercial is quite subversive and funny. Also, it's clearly intended for the Dutch market, and quite a bit of Dutch humour is subversive and a bit rude.

If they'd have made it without AI, I'd give it a 10/10 for creativity.

To watch your dogs a wifi device is OK but if real security is a concern understand that home invasion gangs use ~10W wifi jammers as standard practice now.

Amcrest supports RTSP pull and SFTP push which is handy.

I use a Raspberry Pi 4 running motion and this USB camera. The camera uses visible light when there's enough light and switches to IR automatically when there isn't.

This setup also lets me use wired Ethernet (though you could still use WiFi if you prefer that route.) I have a post-motion-detection script that automatically copies the footage to an off-site server so even if a burglar destroys my pi4, the pictures are safely preserved.

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.