The democrats should not have dressed so provocatively!

Agreed. Changes this large for society will always take time. That’s why it’s important to not burn yourself out on one issue, or one fight. You gotta buckle in the for the long run. But keep fighting for change in a way that allows you to keep fighting. I feel guilty sometimes for not getting more involved in issues or causes that I think need support, but I have to remind myself that no one person can fight every battle. Forgive yourself from time to time for “not doing enough”. So long as you keep coming back to the table when your pace allows it.

This is an instance where I think the folks at nobu casa (paid branch of home assistant development) could dedicate some resources to hardware. Instead of the prebuilt SBC stuff like HA-blue, or yellow or whatever. Create an esp device that just has a reliable microphone, and crank them out. I’d buy one for every room in my house!

I’ve got an esp army in my greenhouse that runs wLED, and one of them has a mic for doing the sound reactive display stuff, but it’s running wLED, not ESPHome… I wonder how easy it would be to just slap a digital mic on some of the other esp things I’ve got floating around?

Nice, I like that Time article better. It reinforces the GINI articles analysis: middle class folks wages didn’t go up with lower class wages. I think that’s sorta a good thing? Ideally the top 10% would not grow, but the bottom 90% would. But help getting to the bottom 50% is definitely not a bad thing.

Also, I never said the income inequality growth is Biden’s fault. But more that it’s the reason all these articles about how good the “economy” is doing might not be seen in the same light by people who are still struggling.

We can do better, and I think closing that gap is everyone’s goal, but the methods to achieve it can vary wildly.

Thank you for the sources. Some comments:

1. I don’t think a narrowing of the income inequality between races is the same as a generalized reduction in income inequality across a whole nation. Yes it probably contributes, but it doesn’t tell the story.
2. your article on GINI tells the exact opposite story that you’re saying here. The headline says it all: pre-tax income inequality has fallen slightly (1.2% or so) but after people pay taxes, the income inequality actually ROSE!! Easily demonstrating the regressive nature of the tax structure. The article mentions some expiring tax breaks for low income households.

Literally until the moment I read your comment, I thought that community was “microbiology memes”

Not on topic, but wow.

Good deal. Seems like you’ve got a pretty good grasp of it.

When I got the sales pitch I just leaned into it, and went out and got quotes from 3 others. Compare and contrast!

That makes sense. Can’t you give PSE a call and see what the schedule is?

Otherwise you could check what the cash price is anyway, and use a HELOC or personal loan to get a fixed interest rate (this really only makes sense if you’re serious about paying it off quickly)

But seriously ask about the “cash price”. Because I was shocked at how much more the principle is on the financing offered through the Solar company. It seems solar companies are partnered with financing companies to make the monthly price palatable for larger groups of customers.

What’s with the financing? 0%-11%

Is the rate adjustable?

Ask for the cash price and see what the actual interest rate is. Generally the financed price is higher, and the interest rate is low. But if you’re planning to pay it off in 2 years, you might be better off saving up and buying in cash.

That’s just been my experience (oregon, not Washington)

I’ll just add that I’m a fan of valetudo, but it can be a bit more involved than your standard firmware swap. I had to build a pin breakout board, and race against time to root my vacuum because there is an auto-reset programmed into some robots that can brick your vacuum if the jailbreak isn’t finished when the reboot is triggered.

Just read the process through all the way before you decide on device.

I was sweating like I was in the hurt locker when I did mine, because my partner would have NEVER let me forget the time I bought a $900 robot vacuum and broke it before it even cleaned the floor once!

Hahah! This answer works for me, because I was unsure what db0 was. Now I hopefully learn two new acronyms

Yeah… I’m not sure there’s anything more I can do. I’ve added the port forwarding rule to my router. As far as I know, there’s not much else to do.

Oh wow. That is a good tip. Because that could drive someone like me insane. (Un)fortunately— I know there’s an issue. Any traffic I pass through my wg vpn ends up nowhere. So I know the tragic is being redirected, but I can’t tell where or why it doesn’t make it inside my home network.

Either way, I got Tailscale to work right out the rip, so I’m just rocking that until I have more time to tinker with WG.

This is the first time I have attempted to port forward. So there is only one rule: this one. Port 5xxxx:5xxxx to the internal IP with the wg-easy docker container.

Thanks for the reply, but I’ve bailed on this project for now. I fly to Europe tomorrow, so I don’t have any extra time to tinker. I gave Tailscale a try, and it works flawlessly, so I’m not likely to try WireGuard any time soon. I’ll wait for them to try an monetize their “free plan” users.

This comment has been haunting me a bit. I have been struggling with my port forwarding in the rest of this thread, so I decided I need to investigate alternatives. I’ve heard good things about Tailscale, so I started googling. The following quote is directly from the Tailscale web-page: (emphasis mine):

“WireGuard is typically configured using the wg-quick tool. To connect two devices, you install WireGuard on each device, generate keys for each device, and then write a text configuration for each device. The configuration includes information about the device (port to listen on, private IP address, private key) and information about the peer device (public key, endpoint where the peer device can be reached, private IPs associated with the peer device). It’s straightforward, particularly for a VPN. Every pair of devices requires a configuration entry, so the total number of configuration entries grows quadratically in the number of devices if they are fully connected to each other.”

I find it odd that they would say this, if the Wireguard VPN works as you stated. Any tutorial or article regarding wireguard fails to make this discussion obvious, so I am now even a bit more confused. (still won’t solve my port forwarding issue. So I guess I’m stuck with Tailscale anyway…

EDIT: Tried from an external wifi network, same issue. I think it’s my port forwarding is broken/wrong. I can’t see the port being open from outside. Need to do some troubleshooting on that end. Any advice would be welcome.

I will try that today.

For your first question: I went to https://www.portchecktool.com/ and found that the connection is being refused. So I think this is the issue. I will have to dig in a bit more, but I do believe the answer to your 2nd and 3rd question are - yes.

Damn. That sounds perfect. That’s exactly how I was hoping it would work. But for some reason my phone won’t connect… I wonder how to troubleshoot it.

Thanks for the reply. As I said below: when I flip on the wireguard toggle in my phone’s app, it appears as if I am connected, but it seems something is off. I am not seeing the “last handshake on” line, and when I try to navigate to the internet (for example ‘whatismyip’, my browser app times out. So it seems my requests are trying to go through the VPN, but they are getting stuck.

Okay, I thought something seemed a bit odd about what I was doing. So for my use case, I only need to access my home network with my phone, or my laptop. So all I need is a wireguard server on my home network (currently the case, running wg-easy), and the wireguard client on my phone and laptop.

I have that happening right now. And strangely when I am connected to my home wifi I am seeing the “last handshake” information in the wireguard app. But as soon as I turn off wifi and attempt to use my cell network, that line disappears from the app.

Although the frontend webpage for wg-easy still shows my phone connected.

Lets pretend it is connected. You’re saying I could simply type “192.168.3.69/login” into my phone’s browser, and I would see the mineos login page as if I was on my home’s wifi?? Because that would literally be perfect.