A relative was caught out recently. They pretended to be the bank. I missed the beginning, but what I heard sounded extremely professional, and exactly like a bank employee. It was only when they seemed confused I paid more attention. I jumped in rapidly when they gave them a code they got via text. By that point they had practically forgotten that the scammer called them, not them calling the bank.

I immediately put a stop to it. Even when ending the call, they were calm and professional. I told them that we needed to call them back on a confirmed number. And got a bunch of details in case it was real. I still wasn’t sure at that point if it was actually a scam or just our bank having a REALLY bad procedure.

Long story short, it was a scam, and the bank confirmed it. I don’t know if they managed to cancel the gift cards in time. However it was a credit card, so that was between the bank and the supermarket who sold them.

I personally wouldn’t have fallen for that one. I’ve got a bunch of mental “hell no” filters. Outside of those however, it was more professional than the conversation with the bank’s actual fraud department.

Unfortunately pessimistic can still be right. At least it’s on its way.

I got the shipping notification (tracking code generated). 2nd day afterwards, I got an update, out for delivery. The 6-10 days seems to be a pessimistic estimate.

Not really. The biggest issue is motion sickness. A lot of games have you teleport around for that reason. I can personally handle it quite well, but some games still mess me up e.g. subnortica.

That said, some people do have eyes that are slightly off level with each other. That can cause interesting problems for them. It’s not hugely common however.

They seem to be going out in batches. I was lucky enough to get an early one in the UK.

It runs perfectly, best I can tell. I did have some setup issues streaming it from my computer. I wanted a repeat view for others to watch.

It runs fine on a power bank. It’s happy charging and playing simultaneously. I clocked about 15W when it was on but idling, with 50% battery.

I drive a van in the UK (work related). I suspect bringing SUVs into the same rules as vans would be remarkably effective. They are often the same weight already.

Basically, vans have 10mph knocked off national speed limit roads (50 on single, 60 on duel carriageways). Apply the same to SUVs (and enforce it!).

Those who need them can still buy them. They are just required to drive a bit safer and slower. It will put off those who just want a big fast ‘safe’ vehicle.

It is a lot. The key problem is heat. A properly designed battery can handle those short of values, for a short time. It needs an active cooling system, however. Even then, you wouldn’t want to do it regularly. It will significantly lower the battery lifespan, on EV car batteries.

FYI, it’s the equivalent of 15L of petrol. A lot of energy, but not absurd levels.

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.