It's become just another form of wealth transfer from the poor to the upper classes in the economy. Perks and incentives to earn "points" and cash-back by spending on credit cards are financed by those merchant fees, so the entire country is subsidizing them by paying hidden fees in the form of higher prices of goods and services. People who buy a lot with credit and can easily pay off their credit card bill every month come out ahead. People who can't or don't purchase much or who cannot always pay their bill in full get screwed. And card networks (Visa, Mastercard, etc) are leeches in the middle sucking blood from everyone.

Once you understand how the system is rigged, it's actually pretty disgusting.

Which is an argument for e-mails, really. It's sitting there waiting for them to need the information, and they can just refer to it at that point if they need to. I have little sympathy for the position of "But I don't want to do my job...".

And their inability or unwillingness to do their job is my problem... how again?

I found it saves a lot of time for everyone if I refuse to indulge the person who didn't read the e-mail and proceed with everyone else's questions, or if it's wide-spread enough just reschedule the meeting to give everyone more time and call it there.

I've been meaning to move to Home Assistant for years, but most examples are like yours and I'm not sure if my seemingly simple use case is covered. Would you mind providing some additional insight?

My use case is to get off of my Alexa devices. The main feature I want is voice control of the lights. As far as which smart bulbs are supported, I'm comfortable dealing with that (I know half of mine are unsupported by Home Assistant and will need replaced). So my biggest question is, what's the easiest way to add voice support for basic control of lighting groups (ex. "Turn off the living room lights", "Turn on the bedroom", "Set the kitchen lights to 50%", etc..)? Might be nice if I could convert my existing Alexa devices into remote speaker+mics for Home Assistant, but I'm hoping there are better solutions (and hope they're affordable).

Most of the features I use are very basic Alexa features, but my normal use of them is via voice, so that has to be integrated:
* Time (What time is it? What is the today's date?)
* Timers (Set a timer for 3 minutes. Remind me in 40 minutes to get the laundry.)
* Weather (What's the weather? What's the weather tomorrow? What's the (current) temperature?)
* Music (Play White Stripes on Pandora. Pause. Resume. Set volume to 5. Raise volume. Lower volume.)

All the cool home automation features you listed are things I don't own yet. I could see adding some of those and growing my system once it's going, but I don't have any immediate need for them (apartment life plays a part there). I can't foresee myself building this out just for those sort of automations (ex. I can hear my smoke detectors from anywhere in the apartment, just look at my thermometers, have no thermostat (steam heat), etc..). But I also loathe these Alexa devices cause I can't get them to just do their job without butting in and suggesting bullshit in follow ups and ads, and I don't need all my dumb timer requests sent to the cloud just for speech-to-text.

You needed a handbook for that?

Anyone who ever went to a business meeting could've told you that.

By my experience, it takes only 4 things to make a meeting productive: a) someone is in charge of the meeting and moderation, b) that someone had time to prepare, c) everyone in the meeting has received an agenda with enough lead time to have read it and (if necessary) prepare their part, at least a bit and finally d) there is at least a simple protocol of the meeting for those who couldn't attend, those who dozed off in the middle, and those who claim next week that something else was agreed on.

Exactly this, I met a girlfriend after she studied in IT and I hate to speak against her but she wasn't that good although I tried to upgrade her knowledge back then. She never found a job in IT ever as far as I know. Sure she got jobs where her IT formation helped her get the job but those weren't real IT jobs like the programming jobs she was looking for initially.

The first thing to do is ask "Does this need to be a meeting?". If all you're doing is disseminating information, it doesn't. Send the information in an email instead. If you expect questions, send it in an email and have people ask their questions via an email thread. If you start getting debate on a question, then you need to schedule a meeting or take it to real-time chat. If you want feedback and expect debate on changes, send it in an email and schedule a meeting later to give people enough time to understand the information and get their feedback ready.

TBH I think any meeting that has a detailed agenda doesn't need to start as a meeting. My experience is that the productive meetings always involve a starting point so nebulous that the whole point will be to throw ideas at each other and work out what we're actually doing.

They're still making DVD drives. They're just mostly USB now. Ripping is pushbutton easy these days. No messing around with getting a copy of DeCSS and such.

seriously, slashdot? It's 2025 and you still can't do the Euro sign?

Even so the prices are excessive. If I want to upgrade the SSD in the current MBP from 512 GB to 2 TB that's +750 â

Meanwhile, a Western Digital Red SN700 with 2 TB I can get for a bit over 200 â.
A Samsung 990 PRO 2 - 245 â (was just rated the best M.2 SSD on the market by Tom's Hardware).

Whatever exact chips Apple is using, they're not 3x as expensive as other high-quality SSDs.

Even if "locked in place" is your underlying assumption, anyone who's even heard of the real world from their mom who has a friend whose father once visited it should know that there is no rule without exceptions and even if that is perfectly true, a small number of those particles will not be locked in perfectly.

I've read MRI scans require helium, and there is currently a shortage. It's not practically renewable or recyclable so far. If everyone gets an MRI it could cause a severe shortage.

I wonder if the tech can be reworked to not require helium or any other hard-to-find resource.

First,mandatory screen time needs to be limited. If they want text books in ebook form, great, but they'll need a way to restrict school issued pads to school work during the school day.

On the flip side, I have more than once heard a parent complaining that homework is being given that requires a computer to complete where a school doesn't allow chromebooks to be taken home. That's equally absurd. Not every family can afford to give each kid a computer, and sometimes computers break. It's not like parents can just grab an extra one at the corner store like they would a pack of pencils or paper. If school work requires a computer and/or internet connection, the school should provide it. If that includes homework, the students must be allowed to take it home.

If the schools don't like that or can't afford it, they can issue text books and homework that can be completed with pencil and paper (yes, that includes accepting hand written essays).

And as for not letting parents view the assignments, that's ridiculous. Of course the parents have a right to see it. If some company wants to claim that to be proprietary information, I guess the school can't use it at all.

It's crazy to complain about students on their screens too much and then have mandatory screen time. It's equally ridiculous to complain that parents need to be more involved and then shut parents out.

/rant

I'm thinking very very stupid. No sprues for casting.

Agreed. This is all stuff that at MOST should be accessible over the LAN. The ESP32 is cheap and provides the WiFi and enough power to run a simple RESTful web app. If I actually need/want to access it remotely, it'll be through a well protected integrated web servie on a jump box.

A cheaper manufacturer could probably make the ESP32 do double duty as the primary micro-controller with a suitable interrupt routine.