I have smart stuff too. Even got an oral-b “Io” series of “smart” tooth brush!

I’m actually not enthusiastic about it at all. I got the oral-b because I knew I have a problem that my brushing isn’t preventing cavities, so I did that in an effort to prevent visits to the dentist. It seems to be working. I just need my teeth fixed so I can not have to see a dentist again for a very long while.

Aside from that, most of the “smart” stuff in my house is lights. I intentionally do not have “smart” lights where safety is a factor, mainly kitchen/bathroom/basement/garage. I don’t want something, or someone being able to turn the lights off on me while I’m slippery and wet in the shower, at the highest probability of falling and hurting myself; or when I’m cutting up food in the kitchen and not being able to see where the blade is for even a second could result in serious injury; or when I’m working on something in the garage, with potential hazards all around, like tools, oil, fuel, and other dangerous items and products.

The basement is mostly for when we do any work on the home appliances, wiring or plumbing. Don’t want to be holding a leak with one hand, waving frantically with the other to try to trigger the motion sensor to turn the lights back on…

Living and sleeping areas, hallways, bedrooms, etc, are all smart lights. They’re mostly RGB so we can do “party mode” or something, if we want… Largely they’re just told to turn on or off, but some household members have found that being able to turn the lights on a specific color for a specific time of day is useful, so the RGB stays. I put in some smart light switches too, some for areas that I don’t care to put in “smart” lights, one notable example is the outdoor/porch lights, I have it set up on a timer to turn on/off with the sunset/sunrise, that way I can use cheap, throw away LED lightbulbs around the outside of the house and if they get damaged or destroyed by weather or vandals, I basically don’t care… Not that we’ve had any vandals around here, I’m just prepared in case that were to ever happen.

Most lighting control, even smart light switches too smart lights, is handled through a hub of sorts; I have home assistant, but it’s not necessarily the best for everyone. When a light switch is pressed, no power delivery changes, it just sends a command to HA to command the lights to turn on. The lights are powered 24/7, so we can turn on the lights with our phones. Most of the light switches have little more than basic controls of on/off for the respective group of lightbulbs. Any color control is either programmed or configured from the app.

A small number of bulbs are still in Phillips hue, and when I have the money those will be taken out because Phillips stuff is expensive for what you get. Easy to get into, but extremely limiting and the output sucks compared to alternatives.

My home is mostly zwave for the exact reason you mentioned. I don’t want my wifi to suck because my fridge needs to be online 24/7. Not that I have, or would ever own a “smart” fridge… I just know the technology and putting some 50+ lightbulbs and light switches on wifi would generally make the wifi terrible. I picked zwave because it operates mainly on the 900mhz ISM band, well away from the 2.4/5ghz of wifi.

I get why so many use Wi-Fi, but I hate that. Just make it a module that you can plug in. Then give people a choice of wifi, Ethernet, ZigBee, zwave, matter/thread, or nothing. FFS.

Anyways. Thanks for coming to my Ted talk, I guess?

It depends on how they “won”. If it was a full hearing with a jury and everything, that’s public record. If it’s arbitration, that’s probably not public record.

Bragging about a “win” in arbitration, and making something that’s not a public record, into a public record, is usually a problem.

With the current wording, while you can infer from context, the outcome of the case, it isn’t explicitly stated by the lawyer. The largest disclosure here is from the party that feels they were “wronged”, and the lawyer is simply stating that “this person wasn’t my client” (more or less). You fill in the rest.

The fact that the commenter was not their client is not disclosing any private information, nor any information about the matter that’s being discussed. It’s a simple statement of irrefutable fact. (Or fact that can be proven at least)

If the lawyer crosses a line by discussing case specifics, like what the matter regarded (divorce, custody, property, whatever), or the outcome of that case, when it is not a matter of public record, can land them in serious hot water.

I would assume, again, from context, that the matter is not presently a part of public record.

These are all valid opinions. Certainly 1% of movement is better than no movement. Certainly gets us closer to the goal, but IMO, it will take more movement before publishers will take Linux seriously, especially for more custom applications.

I would argue that capitalist monopolies are the problem.

There are examples where a “monopoly” has 100% of the market and they do a good job, usually in non-profit driven contexts. To provide an example: there’s only one organization in pretty much any given area, that handles extinguishing fires. Usually called the fire department, and it’s run by the local body of government in a monopoly context.

They still do a great job, but there’s no competition in fire fighting.

They’re not inherently profit driven.

Also, hats off to the firefighters out there, you guys are awesome. Anyways, back to my point.

There are good organizations that operate a monopoly in their service segment. They’re just typically owned and operated by a democratically elected government. Of the people, for the people, by the people.

Any monopoly that is profit driven, especially any that are capitalistic, will succumb to enshittification, 100% of the time, it’s just a matter of when it happens. The only time that it is possible to not have that happen, is in privately owned corporations, which are rare… But the leadership believes in improving the product more than profiteering. But on a long enough time line, that will also fail because inevitably someone will buy the company or inherit it, and they will want to maximize their profits over everything.

It will always happen when things are privately held, and especially if they’re publicly traded.

There’s a paradox I heard of that’s pretty relevant in this line of thought that is pretty transportable to most things. I heard it in the context of IT security.

It goes something like this: you buy security and after 2 or 3 years when you need to renew, nothing bad has happened, so it seems like you don’t need security. When in actual fact the extra security has been the reason there haven’t been any incidents.

So it’s almost impossible to prove that buying the security is helping without extensive analytics.

In many cases those analytics are either very difficult or impossible to get.

To demonstrate the transportable nature of this concept, let’s transpose it to vaccines.

If everyone is vaccinated, then nobody gets sick from those diseases, making it seem like the diseases are not a threat anymore, which means that vaccines are no longer useful.

Meanwhile, in all actual fact, the only reason why polio is so rare is because there is a safe and effective vaccine for it that everyone has taken (replace polio with whatever disease you want that has an effective vaccine).

It’s a paradox of: how do we prove this is working, without discontinuing it and possibly being eaten by rats/leopards/whatever.

If there’s only monopolies in the market then is their product the best on the market, or is everyone using it because there’s no alternatives?

Leaning that monopoly argument against capitalism, it’s almost certainly not the best product. When you have a captive audience, those that need your service and don’t have an alternative, there’s no incentive to innovate, or invest in improving the product at all. Do innovation stagnates so that corporations can maximize shareholder value; because the focus of a corporation isn’t to innovate, or improve what they do, their focus is always on extracting the most value for the least cost.

Therefore, monopolies will almost certainly lead to a sub-optimal product. The people that suffer for this are the users of that product. In the case of something like Google search, that’s basically everyone.

There’s a more modern term for this phenomenon: enshittification. Actively making a product worse specifically for the purposes of creating profits for shareholders.

Late stage capitalism is fun, isn’t it?

This. Entirely this.

The frustrating part is when there are laws in place for something, and they’re not being enforced and law makers think that making more laws about something will somehow fix the enforcement issues…

Making it more illegal only harms law abiding people, enforcement actually harms the law breakers.

It’s not rocket surgery.

I haven’t either.

Speaking of things I haven’t done… I’ve have, not once, turned the wrong way down a one way street.

… It was twice.

Self improvement is a good thing. Good luck.

I’m rooting for you.

I’m guessing very closeted gay.

Legally, I don’t think the lawyer can brag about such a win on a public forum.

It’s very very likely she can’t say more than that the comment is from the ‘ex-spouse of a client’ without risking libel or something.

It’s up to the reader to infer the context.

The same way as: “there are only two types of people in the world, those that can extrapolate from incomplete data.”

That’s an important step, for sure, but that’s not going to push the majority.

I’m that guy for plenty of people and the number of times a conversation starts with “so I bought…” is crazy. It’s basically the first thing anyone says to me when they need help.

This probably won’t be showing up on shelves at best buy along side computers from the likes of Dell, HP, and Lenovo. I kind of expect it to show up next to the Xbox, PlayStation, and switch, if it shows up at all.

Also, steamOS is not exactly a desktop operating system right out of the gate, is entirely gaming focused. Yeah, you can use it for those things, but that’s not the focus of the device/OS.

I’m not sure Grandma and Grandpa would want a steam machine as a replacement for their aging Windows 7 home computer.

Standardization is a requirement. Whether that still gives the user the ability to color outside of the lines on what’s considered “standard” will be the key factor.

I’m sure oral-b isn’t far behind on that one. They’ve been making smart electric toothbrushes for a while.

The AI push is definitely worse, but the second place, in my mind is the whole “smart” (insert mundane home gadget here).

I’m surprised I didn’t see smart toothpaste or anything.

I’m as happy about this news as the next tech enthusiast, but bluntly, it’s not a big shift. Going from … What? 5% to 6%? That’s great and all but it’s hardly moving the needle.

If we want a significant shift we need OEMs selling prebuilt PCs with some flavor of Linux pre-installed, that’s as easy to use as the competition (Windows/mac) with compatibility that’s both good enough and transparent enough that people don’t need to think about it much.

Before we get Linux OEM PCs on store shelves, we need to figure out that last bit first.

That still hasn’t happened yet. We can’t even agree what window manager should be used, nevermind any of the dozen or so other critical services on the system…

The thing that makes Linux great is that anyone and everyone can, and does, make stuff for it. That’s also the thing that’s going to hold it back from being put on store shelves pre installed on prebuilt PCs.

You wouldn’t be the first.

Completely off topic, but I like your icon.

Uh oh!

I don’t see why.

It’s not exactly a controversial question. It’s possible they’ve never seen the term used before.

So yeah. Pile on with the downvotes because someone is new! Fuck 'em! /s

Thanks. I’ve never owned, fired, or even held a gun.

I have no intention to. I knew most of these, but I’m glad to see it officially written out like this.

If I’m ever in the position where I need to handle a gun, I can do so more safely then I would have before.

Good work. Keep that shit up.