I once owned a bunch of WiFi connected devices. One day I inspected my router logs and found out that they were all making calls to a bunch of services that weren’t the vendor - things like Google, and Facebook.

WiFi connected devices require connecting to a router; in most homes, this is going to be one that’s also connected to the internet - most people aren’t going to buy a second router just for their smart home, or set up a disconnected second LAN on their one router. And nearly all of these devices come with an app, which talks to the device through an external service (I’m looking at you, Honeywell, and you, Rainbird). This is a privacy shit-show. WiFi is a terrible option for smart home devices.

ZigBee, well, I haven’t had any luck with it - pairing problems which are certainly just a learning curve in my part and not an issue with the protocol. I chose ZWave myself because I read about the size and range limitations of ZigBee technology, versus ZWave, but honestly I could have gone either way. Back then, there was no appreciable price difference in devices. Most hubs support both, though, and I can’t see why I wouldn’t mix them (other than I need to figure out how to get ZigBee to work).

In any case, low-power BT, ZigBee, or Zwave are all options, whereas I will not allow more WiFi smart devices in my house. I’m stuck with Honeywell and Rainbird, for… reasons… but that’s it. I don’t need to be poking more holes in my LAN security.

If Smell-o-Vision was a thing, everyone would think Trump smelled like pine trees and ocean spray, because that’s what he’d pay them to broadcast, or else refuse to allow himself to be broadcast on their networks.

The guy slathers on so much fake tan, he looks like he’s wearing black-face. His only genuine characteristic is his inability to stop the senility from coming out of his mouth.

Good thing Joe isn’t running, huh?

That’s composing quite an edifice of unprovable postulation to reverse engineer faith. “A” for effort!

Yup. The requirement of “faith” is a sure sign of charlatanism.

It’s a funny thing, when you think about it. If you were truly God, you wouldn’t need to prove it; you could just make it so everyone believes you.

Nicely put!

Reddit at least allowed blocking of trolls, whereas if we want that here, we will need to expend the effort to make that happen.

I don’t so much mind this, at least. It’s just curation, and I’d far rather have it in our hands than the hands of moderators or platform owners. Not that moderation isn’t useful, and hosting admins can still defederate - but giving users the ability to manage their own block lists, at the user, group, and instance levels, makes it less critical to have moderation, and makes moderation a little less prone to abuse.

Completely agree, except that I’d amend that no real conservative politicians exist. I think there are a lot of real conservatives - you named several - but that simply can’t get elected with our current election mechanisms. Primaries need to be eliminated. Progress like adoption of RCV needs to expand. The electoral college needs to be eliminated. If we can make progress in these areas, it’ll let moderate conservatives to regain control of their party. And it’d let people stop arguing and being frustrated with having to vote for the lesser of two evils.

Like most things, there’s a sliding scale. I block two instances (in my client) because of the high noise-to-signal ratio, and a few individuals who I find particularly obnoxious. I’ve never blocked anyone who I thought was trying to have a good-faith argument with me, regardless of their position. But I also don’t feel obligated to stand and listen to the MAGA dipshit shouting obscenities at minorities, either. Is it an echo chamber? No more than me not watching Fox “News”.

Although, Lemmy leans strongly left, and the instances are tankie ones; there isn’t a lot of right-leaning posting IME. I think this is a particularly difficult time for reasonable conservatives because of how their party has been co-opted by fascists. The instances I’m on doesn’t do a lot of defederating, but I know just by virtue of being on Lemmy, I’m getting a left bias.

Seconded. OP, if you can write Markdown, Hugo will turn it into a website.

There are grammar Nazis, and fashion Nazis; PC Nazis, and good ol’ fashioned fascist Nazis; but my favorite Nazis are logic Nazis!

Go ahead… you can whisper it to me

Opening an office is a completely different thing; there is an enormous difference between offshore contractors and offshore employees. That much, I’ll agree with.

In the US, though, it’s usually cost-driven. When offshore mandates come down, it’s always in terms of getting more people for less cost. However, in most cases, you don’t get more quality code faster by throwing more people at it. It’s very much a case of “9 women making a baby in one month.” Rarely are software problems solved with larger teams; usually, a single, highly skilled programmer will do more for a software project than 5 junior developers.

Not an projects are the same. Sometimes what you do need is a bunch of people. But it’s by far more the exception than the rule, and yet Management (especially in companies where software isn’t the core competency) almost always assumes the opposite.

If you performed a survey in the US, I would bet good money that in the majority of cases the decision to offshore was not made by line managers, but by someone higher in the chain who did not have a software engineering degree.

Thing is, outsourcing never stopped. It’s still going strong, sending jobs to whichever country is cheapest.

India is losing out to Indonesia, to Mexico, and to S American countries.

It’s a really stupid drive to the bottom, and you always get what you pay for. Want a good development team in Bengaluru? It might be cheaper than in the US, but not that much cheaper. Want good developers in Mexico? You can get them, but they’re not the cheapest. And when a company outsources like this, they’ve already admitted they’re willing to sacrifice quality for cost savings, and you - as a manager - won’t be getting those good, more expensive developers. You’ll be getting whoever is cheapest.

It is among the most stupid business practices I’ve had to fight with in my long career, and one of the things I hate the most.

Developers are not cogs. You can’t swap them out like such, and any executive who thinks you can is a fool and an incompetent idiot.

Johnny Appleseed was a real guy, but he was doing his thing in the late 1700’s. Apples from grafting were pretty good eating, by then; trees grown from seed were mostly only good for making cider.

I think Android updates intentionally made the Pixel C slower. It was a noticeable process, up to the point they stopped supporting it. I’d downgrade to an earlier version, but there’s such poor support in Lineage, I’m barely able to run the version that’s on there now.

Such a shame, because it’s still an amazingly beautiful device.

I’m 100% with you. I want a Light Phone with a changeable battery and the ability to run 4 non-standard phone apps that I need to have mobile: OSMAnd, Home Assistant, Gadget Bridge, and Jami. Assuming it has a phone, calculator, calendar, notes, and address book - the bare-bones phone functions - everything else I use on my phone is literally something I can do probably more easily on my laptop, and is nothing I need to be able to do while out and about. If it did that, I would probably never upgrade; my upgrade cycle is on the order of every 4 years or so as is, but if you took off all of the other crap, I’d use my phone less and upgrade less often.

The main issue with phones like the Light Phone is that there are those apps that need to be mobile, and they often aren’t available there.

Sounds delicious

I pronounce is Pin-eap-ples, just to avoid this very thing.

But, at least they’re fruit.

The James Nicoll quote is better - use that instead.

Whew. Thanks for the /s. That was a comprehensive list of French stereotypes, though. Bravo.