And it’s not just insurance companies that need to be disrupted. There’s that whole convoluted ecosystem of profit-takers that should not even exist

I do know plenty of people who think this way, and I find the post quite plausible. There’s been so much disinformation about unions in the US, for the last couple generations, that people don’t know any better.

However as an edge case, I do believe it was true for my brother working part time minimum wage. As far as we could tell there were no benefits for the part timers, no extra pay, no protections, no perks, just extra dues to pay. It’s too bad too, this could have been the unions chance to re-educate, show them benefits when someone is starting out so they support unions the rest of their lives. Instead it reinforced his prior attitude and he remains anti-union to this day

The problem is everything with buildings is slow. Who can afford to replace functional buildings, and buildings remain useful for decades or more? There’s only so much you can do with infill. The only other option I can think of is to change zoning radically enough that it becomes profitable to bulldoze functional buildings. Of course that has additional environmental costs but over time should be fine

I’m personally not a fan of higher density buildings by themselves. That’s just a recipe for annoying people enough that you hope they demand better before they give up and move away. Higher density buildings needs to have some thought put into walkability, personal mobility, and transit

Massachusetts has a regional transit system, and just used that to mandate transit oriented development for all towns and cities served. It requires they zone higher density housing “as of right” within half a mile of transit. I have high hopes for that, but it will take decades and we’re starting at such a high cost of living.

However we also have the problem of a stagnant population and very little room for new development. It’s infill and replacement housing so will be even slower

While I love data and crave the dashboards, for everyone else:

• things work normally, and the “smart” functionality is added
• my automation is timers
• everything is voice control

I’ve given up persuading anyone to use any of the smart functionality, although I’m likely to get the Apple home hub when it comes out.

I’ve looked into various e-ink projects for dashboards but never had the time to follow through

Cooking in the oven is a more natural shape and a better crust, but it’s all about the convenience. The reason for getting a bread machine is that you literally pour in the ingredients and press buttons, then come back a few hours later for pretty good bread. I definitely put it well above store bought, although I never had any that were good at sandwiches.

Making your own bread may not be difficult but without the machine it’s very time consuming. It is so worth it to save all that time but still get to enjoy fresh warm bread right out of the machine!

I’ve read articles with such claims, but not really reputable sources.

However I like the idea of the timer ones where in theory you could have the bed preheated for you, but never be in it when it’s on.

Because of those articles, I just got rid of my black plastic utensils, but I’ve been using them over a decade so if they were contaminated, it’s probably too late

UV is good at breaking down plastics ….

Mine is one of my most non-stick surfaces and usually wipes clean with a paper towel

…. Now that I’ve been trying to move away from teflon

Hey, anecdotal, but you might not have to … the one time I succeeded in losing wait, they encouraged me to eat breakfast and it did seem to help. Without breakfast, my metabolism was slower - mornings were miserable. With breakfast, I became much more of a morning person, plus better at moderating lunch or snacks. While it’s easier to limit calories by reducing the number of meals, some of us are more successful sticking with regular meals and trying to reduce them… Of course I eat breakfast now also, when I’m no longer fit

I don’t have any dtata, but my manager is from China, and that’s what she always claimed. It’s not easy to emigrate from China, it’s not easy to pursue US immigration and naturalization, so there is a strong selection bias. Not necessarily smartest, but definitely the most driven people

It is a law. Trump signed it in his first term.

Penalties include

• no transition funding
• no early read-ins to get up to speed

Apparently they don’t care. Congress could probably do something but Senator Warren is shouting into a void

Edit: if you don’t sign an ethics statement promising not to accept bribes donations from unethical sources presenting a strong appearance of conflict of interest, your penalty is you get to accept bribes them

Ideally, yes, Matter/Thread has a lot of potential to be that common framework that makes everything work together. I want to recommend it for everything new …… but products have been really really slow to come out, so your choices may be limited.

My understanding of Philips Hue is limited but I believe they do use Zigbee as a standard network, but functionality is extremely limited unless you use their hub. That’s been more than enough for me to stay away

Clarifying the terminology for the new standard:

• Matter is Ethernet/WiFi, based on IPv6. Great for powered devices, especially those that do need to connect to the internet. Many powered Matter devices will route Thread traffic
• Thread is a local wireless mesh network, similar to Zigbee or z-wave. The range should cover a home, but it is low power, low latency, suitable for all sorts of devices that do not need internet access, or where low power is important
• Device Profiles are a feature that the standards committee has spent huge amounts of time on as a way to make everything’s work together. These define what a device can do, so all such devices work the same way. For example, it defines a light that has statuses and operations for on-off, brightness, color, and maybe more. Instead of a company like Philips having proprietary definitions, now all lightbulbs can be controlled the same way

There’s an important consideration to use local mesh radio networks or not - for responsiveness, privacy, not being dependent on a vendor to continue supplying cloud services. I always prefer one of these, but as I continue to grow, there’s always a reasons to support more networks, and HA excels at that. HA also excels at the number of devices it supports: I suppose it’s a good idea to check compatibility but the only ones that won’t work are devices too tied to a specific vendor, and you should probably avoid those anyway

In theory I prioritize z-wave devices, but I also have Zigbee, WiFi, Ethernet, and Matter devices working together flawlessly. I have a z-wave IR blaster to integrate an air conditioner by acting as its remote control. I’ve considered Bluetooth and Thread devices, which I expect to be just as convenient

While it’s prudent to check compatibility, I guess I’m recommending to not over-think it. Concerns like vendor lock-in, responsiveness, reliability, no ads, are more important to think about

I used to do that too, until mobile devices and the Raspberry Pi and similar started maturing. While I now have many more devices, they use a lot less material and a lot less energy, while also being much more capable than my tables full of museum pieces

There’s probably an element of “read the room”. I’m open to trying something new or different to me, have enjoyed many meals that happen to not include animal products, and will be offended if you let me be a bad host by lack of communication. But I certainly know all too many fellow carnivores who will be offended at the mere mention

Could even be as simple as a savings account. We’re all used to those paying a negligible amount of interest but there are a few high yield ones that may be worth it.

I started keeping more of my emergency fund in savings once I found a high yield choice, although it just dropped to 4.1% so I don’t know. These may have more constraints when you’re just starting though ……

But I really wanted to stress the above point of automatic savings. It’s really helped me to not spend, when I automatically put a little aside so it’s not even in my checking account to spend. Forced savings.

Just like all checks and balances in government, it assumes the branches are somewhat independent and ethical, at least claim to serve their constituents, and protect their own power. It’s up to the legislative branch or the judicial branch

I’m one of those who “do nothing”, if you’re measuring by commits and lines of code.

• as an architect, I spend way too much time doing diagrams and presentation
• as a point of engineering escalation, I spend a lot of time researching things no one can figure out
• as a stickler for code quality, I like nothing more than those days where my lines of code are negative

On the other hand, if you go by the amount of code I indirectly effect with best practices, code quality, appsec, and assisting developers, I affect all of engineering (hundreds)