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Comment Just squeezing the last drops from the customers (Score 2) 80

I am a owner of a FutureHome Smarthub 2 (soon to be sold), and my home transitioned to Home Assistant a few days ago. I have been following closely the situation for a few months now, including the reactions of the user community.

What is especially worrying is that the monthly fees are only nominally monthly - they are to be paid in advance for a full year. If they had been truly monthly I might have been tempted to test it for a month or two, but with this much money being asked up front I am not only worried about the actual value of the service (am I going to save that much on electricity?), I am worried that so few people will take up the offer that the company will be instantly wiped out.

Among the further genius decisions of new owners, this transition period was placed in July: the traditional Norwegian summer month, when half the country is in Spain or Greece, especially a lot of people with larger homes, children and available income (the key target customer group). A lot of them probably never noticed the change and will come home next week thinking the hub broke.

Now, while the TFA claims the MSRP of the FH Hub is $275, it is actually far cheaper - it is about $100, which means the annual fee is more expensive than the hub.

You need to understand that electricity in Norway is laughably cheap (no matter what Norwegians tell you). Today's average price I am paying is 7.81 USD per MWh, as an example. Electricity is so cheap that Norwegians use it directly for heating (even heat pumps are a dubious economic case). Some, including the guy who built my house, use direct electric heating to de-ice stairs (so that's what I am stuck with).

This means that the savings you can achieve with FutureHome are very limited. My largest successes in cost reduction were using a more careful planner for the entry stair de-icing resistance, which used to run anytime temperatures were low and now only runs when there are the right conditions of temperature and humidity. Electric cars (very common here) can also be scheduled to charge at nighttime, and the same goes for water boilers, with simple timers that can be bought for $5.

So the question FH users have been asking: what exactly am I getting for well over $100 a year? It is very unlikely that you would save that amount of money with the FH hub in Norway.

Comment Aging occurs in stages (Score 3, Insightful) 57

And yeah, for me, 48 years old was the big downslide. So many small things start going wrong at the same time. And the maddening thing is, you still feel young inside. It's just that you slowly give up on stuff because the body doesn't follow. It's like seeing opportunities disappear and doors closing. Not fun...

Comment The kindest thing that can be said of AI (Score 1) 59

is that at the moment, it has human junior engineer-level skill. This means it's also liable to do stupid mistakes out of inexperience, that turn into giant screw-ups if you put it in charge of critical stuff.

I did my share of root rm -rf's when I was a young programmer but my boss didn't let me do it on the primary database machine. The wost that ever happened was that I deleted my own copy and had to reinstall my machine.

If you're dumb enough to make AI work on important stuff, you're a bad "manager" of your AI junior engineer.

Comment EMP (Score 1) 121

Couldn't they pass all the bikes through a box that delivers a high-energy eletromagnetic pulse, or microwaves for a split second or something to destroy any electronics inside while leaving the mechanical things intact?

Or course stuff like electronic derailleurs or cycle computers would have to be taken off first.

Comment Without sleep? (Score 1) 46

Debiak coded for 10 hours on minimal sleep

Is that guy a cat who needs to nap every 2 hours?

FWIW, I once participated in a coding contest at my university in the early 90's that lasted 72 hours (the first prize was a full scholarship, which I didn't get :)) I ran on coffee and speed for the full 72 hours, then collapsed on a couch and slept until someone woke me up to come get my third prize (a Solaris license).

10 hours non-stop coding sounds like a normal day at the office trying to wrap up a project.

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