Read the FAQ and you’ll get the details.

Its not just musk they are poking fun at, but also the PAC system.

Yep.

I’d happily crap on them for being an e-waste factory, for making it insanely hard to install anything outside of their app store, etc.

This ain’t it. This is nothing.

Everyone absolutely can decide that for themselves.

For me, I’ve decided not to bother with the demo version and be kind of done there.

Good luck with the product

1. Because I don’t trust companies to hold onto passwords.
2. It syncs. I don’t need live access to my home.

They seem pretty cool!

Unfortunately I can’t eat them, since the one thing they can’t seem to certify on is gluten… May be pretty good gifts though.

Oh they can do as they please of course, its just… a free demo as is. And a tiny/mini/micro can be had for about $150, so not exactly a ton to run two machines you’ll have for years.

Again, no issue with commercial software, or even levels. The couple I recommend often are for audio and video editing, reaper and resolve respectively. Reaper for reference has no limits, just a nag after 60 days. Resolve the main difference is UHD as the limit, 60fps, and Studio adds in support for DCI 4k (up to 32k really) and 120fps.

The lifetime on this is twice what Reaper costs, and the Pro level is comparable to Studio.

I live in terminal, and I would have personally considered this, but at those limits I’m just not even interested in testing it out. Just my opinion, of course, and why I say I get where they are coming from. A different structure that I’d consider more reasonable at the free end would have had me try it out (I went to the page for that reason, to see the pricing and what the tiers were), but now I’ve lost interest. If I tried it and liked it, I may have recommended it to others, like other software I’ve personally bought or bought through work, which they may do the same. With the limits though, its not like I can see how fully useful it would be for me.

Which is why I think its more like a lifetime limited demo than a free community edition.

I’m not against commercial software personally, I’ve even recommended some options I consider the best in the past that are a huge improvement over open source options. I’ve also had my employer purchase support licenses for open source projects that don’t require it to do what we’re doing. I like people getting supported for their efforts.

The pricing model here does jump into having to pay very quickly though. For example, the community edition is a single proxmox node - not Enterprise, thats a separate category. Its practically a free demo with the limits there. Just my opinion, but thats far too strict and drives straight into being just pure commercial at that point.

So I get their perspective on this.

Next stage - “What else can the same ESP32 do?”

Soooo much nicer.

Working on tweaking a new launcher for my “Kids Version” htpc, with gcompris, a few shortcuts to some really great non-profits with education games, and of course JF. 4th gen Intel dell micro, runs like a dream…

Dozens!

(They also last longer than the premade stuff, including the fairly dumb zigbee devices. Though just grabbing some ZigBee sensors is soooo much easier than cleaning up and painting small 3d printed housings…)

Its not correct actually, there will never be a difference in audio signal in any of those cables you’re talking about, that’s marketing nonsense. The biggest risk to audio signals is induction caused by nearby power, run parallel for more than 3’ within inches of each other. Regardless.

And yes, you’ve had surges. You won’t notice them in general, but your line is not going to be a perfect 120V at each outlet at all times. If you have a cheap surge protector and open them up, the MOVs in there have degraded, and I bet a few of them have popped if you have used them long enough. Everything looks fine when the lights come back on, the blinky lights on your hardware start blinking, but you just had a surge.

Your power supplies in those electronics will.

They will degrade faster when those minor surges and drops happen. When you have a brownout or a blackout, when the power comes back there is an in rush of current.

You can choose to let your hardware die faster because you don’t want to take basic precautions, I don’t care. But as someone who knows better, I won’t. You say you’ve never had any surge? You probably think that a surge is just a lightning strike or something, which it isn’t. That, like the gold plated cables nonsense, is also marketing junk. In part because those crappy MOVs in cheap surge strips can’t handle an actually large surge

I’ll also take the extra step of making sure my devices shut down cleanly, avoiding data loss, because that’s an unnecessary problem to have.

You can think whatever you want, but I’m not going to waste my money replacing hardware or my time fixing an installation, especially for something that’s a tiny fraction of the cost of the devices its connected to, regardless of what magical electrical service you claim to have that’s always a perfect 120v delivered to every outlet.

No, hard disagree.

I have many thousands of dollars worth of hardware. I have seen the results of a surge. I have seen a NAS reduced to a paper weight. You’re making incredibly silly assumptions here - this has nothing to do with uptime, and everything to do with protecting your equipment.

You will not ever convince me otherwise, because I’m not willing to dump thousands of dollars on replacements because someone on the internet thinks it has anything to do with uptime.

You are wrong.

Edit: anywhere that weather exists is an area with “unreliable electricity”. Full stop.

The nice thing about some battery backup is not keeping it running during an outage, but safely shutting it all down.

I agree on the laptop battery, I’m just disagreeing on battery backup. It serves a purpose, as does decent surge elimination.

Well yeah, that’s half the fun

Or a fully themed, punctuation inspire flick. Named “character” to let you fill in the blanks.

Char 1: Well what do you think Mark?

Char 2: Are you sure she can handle it, Point?

Char 1: Its time we’ve shown

Char 2: our true power…

Together: As Interrobang!

Char 3: No wait, I’ve got my per…

… OK it needs to be reworked, but you get the idea.

Oh that’s unfortunate, thats not how they run things here. I haven’t been in a while, but its more like a bunch of DMs and everyone gets randomly assigned to a table. Games are 30 minutes, and then rotating tables. Its more about trying out some different games than anything else.

They did have a separate night they’d host, but those were reserved rooms (like a conference room setup, TV available for map display). More like a night for regular players to have a regular space to play, but its kind of obvious (with the reserved signs on the rooms and all).

There’s a hobby/ttrpg store nearby that hosted game nights every week. They’d try out a new game.

There wasn’t a big crowd, but went out wife my wife to dinner and there were definitely people chatting from different groups at the bar. Dont know if they knew each other though, its not that big of a city.

I think there are still places to go, its just harder for a lot of people to go out. Even my wife and I, we haven’t had a dinner just us in a few years (kids).

I’m not sure you should have a Lowe’s Associate as a legal advisor.

Here’s Home Depot covering it

The relevant text:

Corded blinds are dangerous to children and pets. Roughly one child per month dies from blind cord strangulation, and more than 600 children per year are injured. That’s nearly an average of 2 preventable injuries to a child per day. Between 1990 and 2015, more than 16,000 children were injured.

New Voluntary Standards

• The Window Covering Manufacturers Association decided safer standards in January 2018.
• Manufacturers adopted the new standard on cordless blinds in December 2018.
• In 2019, all standard model window blinds were expected to be cordless.

Cordless Blinds & Law

• Corded blinds are not regulated under state or federal legislation.
• New, safer guidelines allow for cords on custom-made coverings.
• Per WCMA standards, custom cords should not be longer than 40% of the window height.

Considering our use is not to the general public, we’d be better off with an entirely different strategy.

This is one where there is a significant economic cause and effect.

People not having free time, money for activities, hobbies, etc - this impacts our ability to be social.