This is a great idea but there are areas like where I am in southern California that electricity is simply too expensive to make this viable. In the summer when it's extremely hot our combined utility bill runs over $800, and this is for a small house with pretty decent insulation. We get a break in winter when we can heat with gas which is cheap here. If heat pumps are mandated, then there needs to be massive amounts of work done to make electricity cheaper at the same time. Otherwise it's simply not economically viable in some areas.

Let's see how this incarnation of a "god app" goes for them \_()_/

So if you ask it to turn off the lights in another room, or adjust the thermostat that you're not directly looking at, or lock the front door when you're in bed, you can see that it did what you asked?

Also I realize your comment about not being disabled is a dig about being lazy, but it also comes off as extremely ableist. I have several friends with different degrees of physical disability who use IoT lights and such in their house and for them it's an absolute godsend.

...where every computer understands your voice command perfectly every time, there are never network problems, and nothing ever requires confirmation.

Sorry but the rest of us don't live in that universe. There are very good reasons computers give confirmations when we ask them to do something, and even more so when it's not in the same room as us. If their Google speaker is yelling at them at night, maybe they should just learn to turn it the fuck down? Or make the volume setting part of the night routine? ðY

For me it just kept getting buggier and buggier, and the word suggestions and private dictionary would keep being reset every time I changed phones. I got tired of it sucking and moved. And bonus that GBoard actually has most medical and technical words in it, though some of those may not show up in swipe typing by default until you use them once.

I tried going back to the Samsung keyboard after Swiftkey became hot garbage but it was awful, which makes sense as it's literally just a clone of Google's default keyboard. I ended up switching to the actual GBoard keyboard and have been extremely happy with it ever since.

I remember when they bought SwiftKey, but shortly after that it just languished and seemed to be abandoned. It became more and more buggy and felt like abandonware that MS had acquired just to occupy the market space and then left to die. I ended up switching to GBoard and have had a MUCH better experience since then, and it's frequently updated as well. But of course now that there's an opportunity to occupy a market segment again with *New Shiny* (tm) they can dust it off and tack on some glorified autocomplete garbage so they can ride the publicity wave. :rolleyes:

As much as I want to shill for my home city of Madison (which is legit an awesome and super cool place to live), from a local perspective what's going on here becomes instantly obvious: Epic Systems. They're the 800lb gorilla of modern electronic medical records vendors, and they're located just outside of Madison in Verona. Epic is well known for hiring *TONS* of people from overseas on H1B visas. Now that visas have been extremely restricted and immigration is essentially a no-go, they've been looking to hire and move native US talent instead. And Epic is also known to have a *HUGE* amount of worker churn due to the extreme pace they push people to. Between that and the fact that they're large enough that by themselves they can make a significant impact on the city's tech worker numbers all on their own.

Nope, stuck for work and don't want to have 2 cell phones.

"Sprint is a bad company with a crap network run by dummies"

As someone who's been on Sprint since around 2002, I can attest that they're not wrong in the least. Worst coverage, weakest signal, tech run by idiots, crap customer service...I hate to say it but it can only improve with the merger.

Same. I had a degenerative cornea disorder and had to have cornea transplants in both eyes. As a result of that, I don't have functional depth perception, or at least not the kind that will work for 3D movies. I'm fine with the 2D ones until they come out with those 3D holograms you were talking about.

Should I win the lottery . . . how much does a team of, umm, educators cost? Say, ex-special forces, perhaps. To find these folks, and "discuss" why they should consider a better, less dangerous career. Yeah, discuss, that's the ticket!

Anyone know what the PowerBall and MegaMillions are up to now? One ticket counts as "entertainment."

WTB Cap'n Crunch whistle PST

I like the creamy center.

Here's how the rest of that conversation goes in my house:

"I know how you can save 100% off."

"I know, I know, don't buy it, God!"

"You do? Because it seems like you DON'T know."