Off the top of my head.

• Adjusting from the sofa, or bed.

• Auto off when you leave the house.

• Auto off when the room is unused for a while (great with kids).

• Colour temperature and brightness adjustment to match sunlight (great for conditioning children to go to bed easily).

• Party Mode

• Auto dim turn on at night(avoids waking you up to much on bathroom runs).

Can confirm, once the email has been sent, you can order from the steam app too.

I’ve been trying to find a IoT thermometer that can survive oven temperatures long term (or at least its probe can). No luck so far. I currently don’t really trust its own settings.

A bit of both. It’s a mindset that keeps me from doing anything too stupid, and a good one to pass on to others. I can play around, so long as I don’t make her life harder.

It mostly stops me putting brittle, or janky setups into use. I need to actually streamline and ruggedise them. I benefit from that too, in the long run.

I’ve been playing with my smart home for years now. I’m well past the “oh wow” honeymoon phase and into the “just do your job” phase.

I forgot to mention WAF, Wife Acceptance Factor. Any smart system should fall back to a dumb one, if something goes wrong. E.g. You should never require WiFi to turn your lights on. There should always be a switch that will just work. Central control computer crashes? The wife is annoyed the house is now just dumb, not that the house is now dead.

I’ve considered that, for the same reasons. My machines are obnoxious enough to be heard through half the house on their own however.

The built in smart ones seem to be the worst of all worlds. They farm you for data, while not providing much of use. They try to tie you into ecosystems, that stop you using the data elsewhere.

My solution was going to be to monitor current draw, via a power monitoring plug, running Tasmota. Once it’s below a threshold for long enough, send an alert.

Smart home stuff can be done right.

• You need to focus on the use case. Is what it is doing actually necessary? E.g. smart lights are amazingly useful, smart washing machine? Why?!?

• The S in IoT stands for security. Smart devices need to be treated as security risks. Mine have their own WiFi to play on. They don’t get to play with my important devices. Also, internet access is a privilege, not a right. ZigBee is often superior to WiFi too. Control the bridge and you have absolute control of their internet access.

• Open source for the win. A lot of IoT options can run open source firmware. This helps break open the black boxes and let you see if they are doing bad things. Home assistant, EspHome, and Tasmota are the big 3 to look into.

• If you’re not the customer, you’re the product. Google etc sell smart speakers at a loss. If you must have them, treat them as actively hostile. I’m still trying to find a good alternative to some of their functions, but getting there.

We knew the forebrain and hindbrain were different. This research shows that the difference is OLD, and likely from when the brain was more distributed. They also found that, while they function in almost the same way, they are built from different genetic tool kits.

Basically, we knew there was a difference. This explains what the difference is and how to work around the problems it has created.

It also needs to be somewhere geologically stable. You really don’t want erosion cracking open the storage. That limits the options.

It’s also worth noting that habitability can change remarkably rapidly. E.g. the Sahara went through a green period. It ended about 5000 years ago. The reverse can also happen.

The mindset being used is also layered defense. We need to make it simultaneously understandable, boring and off-putting. Putting it somewhere inaccessible also helps.

NFTs were (is?) to copyright what Cryptocurrency is to money. A decentralised system, without requiring a central organiser.

With cryptocurrency, the token was the money, and inseparable from the Blockchain. With NFTs it was the equivalent of a recept, not the item.

Basically, NFTs tried to replace copyright etc. However, they have no enforcement ability beyond that of local copyright enforcement. At that point, you might as well just use local copyright directly. No need for a middle man.

Hydrocarbons are one of the best energy stores available. We also have large networks already set up to distribute and use them. Being able to dump large amounts of excess energy into hydrocarbons as energy storage and feedstock would be a big gain for saving the planet.

Children are often a mirror to our true selves, not the delusions we want to be true.

Plus side, you see everything that makes the people around you love you.

Downside, you get to experience all the “cute annoying” habits you (and your partner) have, aimed back at you.

Email systems have a tendency to flag mass mails as spam. By sending them in batches, it stops other email systems panicking as much.

It also lets a human check over things, and limit the effects of a screwup.

Fully agreed on that. There is also a balance of allowing them to explore an idea space, while keeping them clear of risks and negative problems.

E.g. my minion is currently obsessed with Minecraft. They are actually getting quite good at the design part too. They want to play online though. I’m not happy with that, so I am setting up a private server. It will be whitelist access only. They will be able to play online and talk with their friends through Minecraft, but not random players online. When they are older, I’ll allow it, but only when I am in the (physical) room, keeping an eye on things.

If you try and shoehorn your kids into only what you think is acceptable, then you will have problems. If you have shown you will help them explore their own interests, they will come to you with them. If you regularly shut them down, they will go behind your back, where you have no control.

Most modern desalination plants use a “reverse osmosis” method.

You have a barrier that water can pass through, but salt can’t. Normally, water would be drawn across this barrier, till the salinity is the same on both sides. This is osmosis, and how things like plants draw in water.

Reverse osmosis works by using a high pressure on the salty side. This effectively forces water against the osmotic gradient. This is generally done with relatively small amounts of salt water at a time. The end result is fresh water on one side, and extremely salty water on the other. If the salty “brine” is discharged too fast, it can mess up the local salinity levels in the sea around the vent. The process is also very energy intensive (though a LOT less than boiling the water off).

You also have the problem of the membrane being very sensitive to getting damaged or blocked up. You need to clean the sea water up a lot before you can desalinate it.

This new process would help avoid the brine issue, as well as likely being less sensitive to contaminants.

I read it more as, if your kid is intent on something, rather than slap them down, try and work with them to turn it into a positive experience.

Most kids adore doing stuff with their parents. It lets them practice adult skills, with the safety net of a trusted adult behind them.

With something like streaming, it would be down to the parent to keep them safe and let them explore their creativity. It sounds like this dad screwed that up, but is trying to at least own his part of that.

There are nuances between feral parenting and helicopter parenting.

It’s definitely in the “lies to tell children to help them learn” category. The concept of length Vs counting is only just being taught here. The difference between dimensional cubes is a bit beyond most of them.

It lets them use a consistent reference for counting, as well as 1D, 2D, and 3D measurements. They also give something to learn with tactilely, rather than just an abstract set of ideas.

Basically lock the idea of measurements in with the cubes. Then, only when they are confident, split them off into counting and the dimensional concepts.

It works very well for a lot of children.

I have issues with face recognition. While I’m not face blind, I have issues with remembering faces. This also cascades into remembering information about people.

A local face matching system, that can flag pertinent facts to me would be life-changing.

I refuse to let the likes of meta data mine me however. I also don’t want to be in the same boat as the people currently abusing the glasses already.

A lot of it is a storm in a bottle. There are periodic discussions about it. It tends to be when the central government (based in London) gets to South East England centric.

Right now the numbers wanting independence are higher than usual, but not into the realms of breaking away imminently. However, it’s also worth noting that a lot of England is also pissed off with parliament for various reasons. We seem to have a similar capture issue to America (excessive willingness to please big business/money over the people from both sides).

Basically it’s a shot across the bows to the UK parliament to do their fucking jobs, not just line their own pockets.