To state the obvious, a compressor is a type of pump. They both forcefully move a substance from a low pressure side to a high pressure side.

A typical A/C / heat pump has three electric motors that operate: the compressor that circulates the refrigerant between the condenser and evaporator, a fan on the outside unit (condenser), and a blower on the inside unit (evaporator), plus various reversing and expansion vales. I don't see how this device reduces the number of motors, as I don't expect it's feasible to size the electrocaloric material so it interfaces directly with blown air. Pumps moving fluid through of the electrocaloric material won't have as much pressure differential as a typical refrigerant compressor so would draw less current, but any savings there would need to be measured against the added draw needed to form the electric field.

You could say it's solid state, but no more so than the coils of the condenser and evaporator of a conventional unit are. The moving parts are the pieces that circulate refrigerant or air and the valves that control those flows. Those might change, but wouldn't go away with this system.

This will trend to the top of several sites, generate a slew of bad PR for Microsoft, and they will backtrack and defer it to some undetermined later date that will never come around. They will recover from the bad PR with a small uptick in official accessories from those that are afraid that error will come around again. Their next console will only allow official accessories from the start.

You heard it here first.

When Johnny's mom caught him chasing Sally with a hammer, Johnny sheepishly said, "But, Mom, I was just kidding. I wasn't going to really hit her."

Something along the lines of "I wasn't really going to do it" is what ALL the bad actors say when they are caught red-handed.

"I don't intend to get rid of a single US Postal carrier. I intend to hire more as new cities are built and need postal services. What I do intend on eliminating is the Pony Express and all its horses, stables, and stable hands, now that we have procured this new fleet of horseless carriages to deliver mail."
-- US Postmaster General, circa 1860

(BTW, that's a fictitious quote, made to point out that each new disruptive technology that improves all of our lives comes at the expense of disrupting some careers. The Pony Express was never actually part of the USPS. In the end, all those excess stablemen were no longer adding value, but there were new jobs opening as auto mechanics and gas station attendants.)

This theme repeats many times throughout history with inventions and technologies that we now consider essential but were first viewed with fear as entire industries were thrown into upheaval. The best way to prevent AI from replacing your job is to learn how to control the AI doing your job.

I would love to have more control of my lights, but the first thing I look for is local control WITHOUT the need for a hub or WiFi/Zigbee/Zwave/etc. Insteon mostly fits this bill, but is expensive and proprietary and its future is cloudy.

Here's what I would love to see:

Switches control the lights directly over Romex wiring. Even if there has to be some signaling over the line for dimming and color selection, it has to work without RF. This allows easy retrofitting of existing homes and won't confuse electricians who are accustomed to their way of wiring a house. It also allows an easy fall-back to conventional switches and bulbs.

Switches can update or be updated via RF by each other and/or a hub, but do not require it. The technology for that can be local or RF, or both as Insteon does. However, if the hub is down or inaccessible, local control via the switch MUST still be possible.

The hub must also be locally controlled; no cloud-based crap for me. HomeAssistant, OpenHAB, or something similar are the likely candidates at this level, but there is room for commercial providers or even cloud-based services for those that are ok with that.

I go to sell my house, and the elderly couple willing to pay cash look in the server closet, realize it's a necessity for controlling the lights, rip up their earnest money check and leave.

I go to sell my house and realize the extra $50k I spent on commercial-grade wiring, DMX controllers, and lights is all sunk cost that I'll never recover.

People expect residential goods in their residences. The likelyhood that you'll find a buyer that is as excited as you were to rewire your entire house for DMX lighting is next to nil.

Local control and the "Luddite father-in-law test" are key criteria for me when evaluating a potential HA product. In the USA, UL-certification and fire insurance clarity are a close second.

Keep it up, shitheads. People will eventually come around to the idea of self-hosting again.

When Jeff coined the "disagree and commit" phrase, what is he asking for in a commitment? If I disagree, should I commit to a belief that my stance is the correct one, or commit going with the flow even though my stance is being overridden?

I can see the value in saying if you're going to disagree with what's happening, be vocal and committed to your stance. That's how you ensure you're not surrounded by sycophants. However, once your disagreement has been aired and discussed, it sounds like he's asking everyone to commit to the RTO even though it seems it's driven entirely from the top.

Have you tried Zig? It claims to solve the most common memory-safety issues but without many of the blockers you seem to associate with Rust. Coming from a C background, I personally find it closer to my ideal, but my ideal isn't the same as most rustaceans...

Nope. You got it right. United States ISPs (and cable/telephone/electric utilities) are free to add unadvertised fees to recoup costs that should be considered part of their core business costs and that many believe should be paid out of the basic cost of service.

Imagine sending them a check for their monthly bill, but deducting the cost of the check and stamp, plus the cost of the food consumed to give you the energy to walk to the mailbox, plus the cost of the water used to flush the byproducts of digesting said food...

I should start a business that supplies services they need just so I can get on their supplier list and add a bunch of BS fees to my invoices. "What? You do it, why can't I?"

This begs the question, do EVs violate FCC interference guidelines? Not while they're sitting idle, I expect, and a mobile interference lab would be difficult, so maybe a dyno within an RF chamber should be a required part of certification.

If I'm sitting at home listening to my AM radio, and an EV drives by, I can no longer listen to Rush reruns, all because that tree-huggin' EV driver is tramlin' on my freedoms. That's something even deplorables should be able to get behind.

Roaches avoid sunlight...

If you go to Launchpad, Canonical's bug tracker, and search for snapd bugs, you're likely to find that most of them are reports of issues encountered while uninstalling it. Admittedly, one of them I opened, as that's the first thing I do on a fresh install of Ubuntu.

On the plus side, while installed by default, it is not a necessary part of the server OS and is easily removed.

The big difference this time is that AI is coming after white-collar jobs.

The industrial revolution automated many menial jobs, eg. textile weaving leading to the rise of the Luddites. I suspect we'll see a great shift to trade skills as the value of many of the jobs requiring a college education are replaced or diminished by the use of AI.

I cannot imagine an AI or robot installing a new HVAC system...

Or if you prefer, Google Earth...