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Joined 3 years ago
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Cake day: July 9th, 2023

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  • I recently ordered a Trmnl, because it looks like they do what I want, and I keep not doing it as a project. I haven’t gotten it yet but ….

    My impression is it’s more of a finished product, not a project. If there is a plugin doing what you want, then it’s a simple configuration. However if you want to customize, you may need to pay for a developer account










  • I still don’t see how that makes sense

    • you’re covered again as soon as you get your next job, and prior conditions are covered
    • most employees are not actively receiving healthcare at any given time
    • COBRA exists for those desperate enough, and is retroactive for the rest of us.

    When I’m between jobs, I can usually choose not to have healthcare. If something happens I can choose to retroactively be covered by cobra. The day I get another job I’m covered again, even for pre-existing conditions. Sure there are some exceptions that don’t meet these, but I find it hard to believe it happens enough to justify as a way to trap employees.

    Over the economy as a whole that would be such a tiny percentage compared the the savings these companies would get from not needing to pay healthcare at all, especially for hourly employees

    As counter-examples, I’ve known several people who prefer to work on contract, but have gotten salary jobs temporarily for the sole purpose of health insurance. I’m positive these companies do not like the idea of going through the expense to hire a software engineer, pay software engineer salary, have them immediately maximize their benefits, then leave in 6-12 months when the health emergency is over







  • My experience with a Pi4B has been rock solid and plenty fast for what I’ve tried so far, at low power consumption.

    While I had problems in the beginning, it was all from the micro-SD card. People here will recommend staying away but I’ve had no problems since buying an “extreme” card. Well, starting to hit the size limit now - I can no longer kick off multiple concurrent updates because limited free space available on, I think, 16G card. Get bigger


  • If you’re starting with ha, don’t feel confined to only one.

    IMPORTANT: a local area mesh is not just a low powered way of connecting devices but is inherently local-only. Highly recommended

    The more common local area meshes include

    • Zigbee - open standard, lots of inexpensive sensors
    • Z-Wave - devices need to pay for certification but are more standard. I found more smart switches using this in my area
    • Thread - the new standard. Same frequency as Zigbee but IPv6 based. Slowly rolling out.

    The new Matter/Thread standard has support of the major players (Apple, Google, Amazon) so seems like the way to go for the future, but products are slow to roll out so you can’t count on it yet

    Personally I found the strengths of each compelling so quickly added all three of the above to my ha setup. Ha is fine with it so why limit yourself

    I follow the principle that devices must work “as expected” for my users, automation adds capabilities but does not replace them. This comes together with a focus on smart switches

    • can be used interactively just like any switch
    • continue to work as expected even if ha is down
    • typically act as routers to strengthen your local area mesh. I have switches acting as routers for Zigbee, zwave, and Thread, so all my local area meshes are solid everywhere
    • then I can automate