antsar

> energy efficient lights seem to have no downsides

Efficiency is good, but this isn't true. Decades into LED-ification we still suffer shit-tier PWM strobing, poor dimming, disruption to wildlife and human life, and streetlights turning purple en masse.

(The last two are installation and quality issues, but when driven by lowest-bidder compliance with simplistic "efficiency" mandates that's what you get).

If you want Ubuntu without the annoying, that's Debian.

Clicked one of the examples...

> I have a 400mm x 500mm x 80mm drawer for screws and bolts.

(thinking for a while)

"Please provide drawer dimensions to continue."

It takes serious hardware investment [0] to pull that off.

[0] https://lenowo.org/viewtopic.php?t=28

A local REST API doesn't require servers.

Yes. This is frustrating. Notable examples:

Updating an ESPHome device config requires network to build/compile the image. [0]

Viewing your Integrations page leaks a list of integrations you are using to "brands.home-assistant.io". [1]

[0] https://community.home-assistant.io/t/esphome-completely-off...

[1] https://community.home-assistant.io/t/wth-why-are-brand-icon...

Color: 6-pack

You won't see another mosquito - guaranteed!

You're not going crazy :)

Hover over the "minutes ago" string on any of those comments & you'll see the original timestamp. I guess this is a repost, comments got merged, and the "minutes ago" strings are cached/pre-generated from the old thread?

> lawyer ads

I take it you haven't had the pleasure of driving thru Philadelphia. Some say you can even see skyscrapers behind the sea of lawyer ads.

Experienced this too. Having SSH access enabled on the Synology saved the day. There's no 2FA prompt on SSH, so you can SSH in and manually fix the time.

Also available from their site with much faster shipping than AliExpress’s Jan 20 (to the US, at least).

https://www.athom.tech/

Happily using this little guy to drive 100 fairy lights (from Adafruit), all from a USB plug.

https://www.athom.tech/blank-1/wled-2812b-led-strip-controll...

Similar: A growing chunk of my support calls have the audio SO LOW that I have to turn on speakerphone and shove the thing halfway down my ear canal to decipher what they're saying. Asking the agent to speak up gets a response like I'm the first person all day to complain about this.

I guess "due to COVID", companies "just can't control" the quality of the microphone their support staff are using. Surely this has nothing to do with the side effects: it's impossible to make a usable recording of the call (to hold them accountable), I'm frustrated with the experience (and less likely to consume their support resources in the future), and maybe I'll even give up now (saving them money on a product exchange, credit, or whatever I'm calling about).

See also: long holds with noisy corpaganda instead of music, keeping you on the phone while we "fill some things in", "oops the system is loading", and so on.

Its not like these are unsolvable problems. But, money. And regulatory capture.

When you get easily hacked by a script kiddie, you can CYA internally about all the “preventative measures” you took by showing off the rubber stamp.

Why not use a VPN to access your home network, rather than directly exposing the NAS? Many routers have an L2TP or similar server built-in.

You really think no money changes hands to power this feature? The last ~decade of tech teaches one to assume otherwise…

Huh, that's a pretty large amount of refunds (granted, still $10B in additional revenue). Interesting data, thank you for sharing.

Sure. But why in the world would they audit you if you overpaid?

One can hope. I await the CVE.

Presumably a hybrid of #1, #2, #3 is most effective - there are audiences that will respond best to each. I assume the targeting data is out there.

Personally, though, I find the handwritten aspect of the letter, and the from a human being part of the text messages, to be the awkward parts. I've never met the folks texting me, yet they know my name and want to convince me of things. Its advertising, it feels pushy. Being channeled through a real human (even if they truly align with the message) doesn't change that. I might agree with the message, but I still don't want it to barge into my day like that.

Honestly, no, I haven't tried "STOP" out of fear that any response will be taken as a confirmation that a human reads the messages, worsening the spam. That's what happens w/ email and phone spam and its impossible to know if this one is different.

I don't think I registered a party affiliation, so it's not exactly like I opted in to this.

I appreciate that this is an effective way to get people to vote, and more voters is a good thing. I vote. Unfortunately it's hard to sympathize with a party when the message is delivered as an unsolicited faux-personalized distraction in a way that I can't easily block.

Surely not until they’ve spoken the contents of their ads first.

My state (NJ) doesn’t seem to collect phone number, and either way does not seem to allow one to update their registration record.

That doesn’t stop political parties from blowing up my SMS inbox with daily garbage during election season.

Even if your state allows this edit, why would anyone believe that these scum would respect your wishes and stop spamming the old number?

> there are competently run companies

You're just gonna leave us hanging like that?

Yes, and that’s more a commentary on GitHub Pages also being a tracking service, not disproving anything about Google Fonts. Surely Microsoft doesn’t let those access logs just sit around collecting dust.

Why waste bandwidth requesting the same file? I guess you could cache it “indefinitely”, but that’s functionally the same as just hosting it..

Logging in with a MS account automatically uploads your documents to their cloud?

Cool…

My current (Yale) keypad is too new to judge, but the digits seem to be printed underneath the plastic rather than on top of it. Should make it difficult to detect any wear.

You can just rotate the code every few months to wear different keys?

That sounds nice, but can't possibly matter. "We're closing your account, for, uhm, no reason." How are you going to argue against that?