I'm writing as a hobby. Nothing big yet, but 2 published books to my name. I'm writing one right now that I publish chapter-by-chapter on my Patreon. I also make computer games as a second hobby and tried AI voice acting for the dialogs on the one I have on Steam currently.

I wish there were any reasonable AI voice stuff. I'd love to make it an audio book, but my voice acting talents are minimal and of course I'd want different voices for different characters. But all the AI voices I've tried so far are very much lacking. Most of the interfaces don't even give you an option to set markings, you know "a bit louder here", "sound angry", "stress this word". That kind of stuff.

I can't imagine how low-quality all those audiobooks must be.

We're not yet at the point where AI can replace voice acting.

I don't trust the manufacturer, either. That's what the UL listing and certification is for. UL I trust as much as possible. And installing anything like that will require it to be to State electrical code, which is fairly picky on battery storage.

I'm biased. The house I currently live in had the oil burning furnace explode in 2011. It was located in the basement and the fire gutted the kitchen above it. I'm surprised the whole house didn't burn, but there was significant damage.

Where I live it is common for 120 gallon propane tanks to be strapped to the outside wall of the house. Granted, I'm in West Virginia and this place isn't know for intelligence. Safety regulations are for them liberal hippie communist types.

Sigh...no. From the website:

People have heating oil, propane, and kerosene tanks next to their houses all the time and rely solely on the fire-rated tanks. Batteries aren't special in this regard, unless you consider they aren't a liquid that can spread or a gas that can expand so they're safer.

That really isn't their concern, because they're not marketing to the automotive sector, where weight is an issue. Their focus is for stationary storage like data center, grid scale, etc. Weight is no longer a major concern when you aren't hauling it around.

According to this page, energy density in Wh/l is 1/2 to 1/6 that of Lithium. On the other hand, significantly better maximum sustained power and recharge times.

They do mention EV fast charging, but they aren't talking about the car batteries but rather battery storage at the charger so charging stations can level out their power draws and reduce their utility bills.

If you need trained technical support to troubleshoot an issue with a switch you aren't much of an IT Professional, IMHO.

In 20+ years in this profession I've never needed technical support on a switch for anything other than a hardware failure requiring RMA/warranty service. Cisco would certainly be less frustrating in this regard, because I wouldn't have to jump through the Tier 1 nonsense to convince them it actually is a hardware failure, as opposed to an ID10T error, but I haven't dealt with enough switch failures to justify the Cisco Premium for this scenario.

I could be a real snob and make the same statement about routers and firewalls. Admittedly a higher bar there, more that can go wrong configuration wise, still, unless we're talking super small business here, you should have enough in-house expertise to manage them with whatever configuration you need.

Motional worked with Hyundai to create fully autonomous (SAE Level 4) Ioniq 5 robotaxis that are currently operating in Las Vegas.

Fixed that for you. ;)

Also, on a more serious note, I know it runs counter to modern day TV, but I would argue the very last thing Trek needs to be is a franchise. TNG was novel because it was all that was on the air at the time. By the time they got to ENT the franchise was burned out and ratings reflected it. I have a lot of issues with NuTrek, but I do really enjoy SNW, can find redeeming things about DSC, but if they try to make it into the Trek version of the Marvel Universe or copy what Disney has done with Star Wars they're going to burn it the fuck out.

Greenshot can be launched via PrtScn too....

Well, one of them broadcasts his crimes pretty publicly, via social media, and the other wrote a book about it....

It would if they had money. See: Simpson, Orenthal James and Trump, Donald John.

Disagree. My iPad fills two niches: I read on it, a lot, both eBooks and general web browsing. I could do these things on my significantly smaller iPhone but that hurts both my eyes and wrists after a while. The other niche, streaming video, on the road and at home when away from the TV (e.g., in bed, out on the porch, etc.) Streaming video isn't as fun on an iPad as it is on a large 4K television but I can't take the 4K TV with me on a flight or intercity rail ride, and while the iPhone could do this, the iPad is the perfect balance between screen size and portability.

Another minor niche, video calls with friends. I tend to prefer an actual laptop for this use case but if it's unavailable or I'm too lazy to go get it, the iPad is better than the phone.

I'll confess I don't understand the folks using iPads as a laptop replacement. I get illustrators who use them, I have a contingent of those at work I support, but the road warriors I see in airports using iPad Pros as a laptop replacement, uhh, why?! It's just as large as a real laptop -- hell, some of the extreme iPads are LARGER -- and a lot less flexible.

Are you really using the program you can launch with a single keypress (PrtScn) as an example of why the UI is terrible?

They can try but I can tell you as a consumer the deletion of CarPlay/Android Auto would be a deal breaker for me. I suspect many people feel the same way. Very few people are interested in Yet Another Subscription that duplicates functionality they already have.

Pretty difficult to find a worse choice, I'd say.

Zynga. A name that makes everyone who knows what it means turn around and run the other way. An exploitative evil empire.

If after Unity got extensive flak for trying to push through a hostile pricing model someone asked what kind of person to choose as the next CEO to remove that stain from your reputation - I think "CEO of Zynga" came dead last by a wide margin and then some intern sorted the list the wrong way around.

My confidence that Unity is going to do the right thing just dropped from zero to absolute zero.