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Comment Re:It's DeFi! (Score 1) 75

Sorry I guess I'm going to have to ask a more specific question. Do you have an example of anybody owning a few million $ in bitcoin *exchanging ALL of it* for something that is not Bitcoin or another cryptocurrency or crypto asset. The fact that you can exchange a small amount of bitcoin for the equivalent amount of dollars does not prove anything.

There are examples of people exchanging their entire hold of hundreds of millions in gold or stocks, without the value of those commodities crashing. Would like proof this is the same for bitcoin.

Comment They replay the manufacturing emissions in months (Score 1) 112

With a wild twisting of words this author added "meaning the emissions were dumped up-front in China's coal plants" to try to make this sound bad.

ALL "manufacturing emissions" are "dumped up-front". There is not something special about China or using coal. And even with the 2x or more CO2 emissions of coal, a solar power panel replaces all that CO2 emission in just a few months, which is an awful lot better than a lot of other things that people claim are green.

Comment Re:Not even three years (Score 1) 60

Not sure about these particular devices, but in general devices will still be fine. You add via a QR code, HomeKit stuff is local only. But even with this - it's Matter/Thread that's the current hotness, not HomeKit/Google/Alexa-specific. If a thing supports Matter and Thread, *properly* (i.e. hubless), then you're fine. If it doesn't, or it does but needs a hub in the middle before it spits out Matter out of the other side...be wary.

Comment Re:Not even three years (Score 1) 60

This is a good example of why you pick things that work natively with what you want. In this case, if you've connected them via HomeKit then they'll carry on working without issue. In future cases - buy the standards, look for Matter (and preferably Threads) integration to make sure you don't need this kind of reaching out to servers.

Comment Re:Do not do it (Score 1) 44

Although the literal answer to that is "yes" since people have definitely rewired houses before, the more relevant one is - this isn't a completely different system. Your light bulb remains a light bulb. It screws into the same sockets as the last ones did, and is operated by the same switches.

In terms of protocols, I've already got several protocols running in my house and they mix and match without issue. Gradually switching over to emphasises one of them (Matter/Thread) more than the others won't affect the overall setup at all.

Comment Re:"Interestingly" (Score 1) 44

Many aren't doing Matter properly unfortunately. Take Switchbot for instance - it uses a hub to expose its devices over Matter. Aqara did too, though not sure if their latest stuff needs it.

Many people did Matter as "take our Zigbee kit, run it through yet another hub, and we'll push it out the other side as Matter". Not ideal.

Comment Re:Prime isn't what it used to be... (Score 2) 236

Interestingly I've found that there are good deals...just not at Amazon. It's from stores making sure they can compete/are still relevant during Prime day. For example I'm a musician who's into synths: this is a good deal on a well-regarded (if a bit controversial) synth. There are other examples for other niches - I get emails from smart home tech manufacturers for instance and they seem to do ok.

Comment Re:Memo to classical economists (Score 1) 77

"Rational actor" has been disproven for a very long time.

My favorite easy experiment (you can run it with a grade school class) is this one:

Two participants. One participant is given one dollar. The other participant is given nothing.

Now, the participant with one dollar must offer some amount of that dollar to the other participant. The other participant can say 'yes,' take that amount, and they both walk away, or 'no,' and both participants get nothing.

The 'rational actor' would accept an offer of 'I'll give you a penny.' After all, walking away with one penny leaves you materially better than walking away with zero pennies.

The average participant, however, will only accept, at minimum, something like 37 cents. Anything less than that is seen as 'insulting' or 'greedy' and worthy of punishment.

Comment Re:Looking more and more like (Score 1) 43

Was torn between moderating and replying - am replying. Yes, it is and by 'backwards' I'm guessing you mean that as a good thing. Ives did fine with most hardware, but when he got his hands on software and produces macOS Funereal Edition (aka 10.0 Lion) stripping all colour and joy from the interface...yuck.

Bring it back, that's what I say. People still talk about BlingOS, Snow Leopard, as their favourite incarnation. There's a lot of functionality added since that I'd miss and I'm not totally sure on the 3D dock base, but I certainly get where they're coming from.

Comment Re:But China is the world leader here (Score 1) 16

There's still some good news on the UK, although it's less visible. There is a change to building regulations this year requiring new builds to have solar panels. It's long overdue.

There are pushes on heat pumps as well. In fact I had a worry with the original Green New Deal that it had basically been hijacked by lobbyists to concentrate too much on carbon capture, allowing them to carry on burning stuff but still claim the money from the deal. The EV mandate is on track regardless of the lobbying to soften it, which is a good thing, and also lower cost attractive EVs are starting to arrive. Our energy mix is improving too, with a smidge over half being generated by renewal last year.

There's the standard tabloid backlash rubbish, but in general green ideas are popular in the UK so they're likely to continue. Is it as big as the push from China? It is not and the deadcat bounce of loud and boorish objectors is annoying. It's still a pretty good picture though.

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