And it’s not a dementia thing, it’s an adhd+generalized anxiety thing. Piece of mind is pretty valuable to me and mine.

That’s a fair take. I dunno, the potential security vulnerabilities outweigh any possible gains for me with most IOT devices, and I feel smart appliances are just more complicated to fix and more easily break down. Plus, the last thing I need is my washer to brick or my fridge to stop working from a botched firmware update.

With a wifi fridge for example I can know if it stops working and the temp starts rising before I have a fridge full of spoiled food.

You don’t need a wifi fridge for this. My wife and I manage this via Home Assistant and cheap Switchbot sensors. Fully self contained on my network, nothing to phone home anywhere.

The rest of the things you listed are kind of silly. If you left the oven on, that sucks, but you’re already gone. Also, who sets the oven on before leaving the house? That’s just an odd… like, really odd thing to do. Like, senility/dementia level odd, at which point what difference is a notification? And the dryer thing… well, that’s nothing a 15 minute wrinkle cycle doesn’t already solve on a dumb dryer.

It depends. I’m not saying I never pirate books. I’m not going to just support a publisher milking a book that should belong to the commons.

Also, some publishers have taken to raising ebook prices to as high or higher than hardback costs. For those I might buy one book by an author and pirate another. I won’t justify it other than to say I only ever bought paperbacks anyway and still remember those being like $3.99 to $6.99, so I’m not paying $18+ for an ebook novel because of publisher greed.

But if it’s an author I like, I buy their books, and support them in other ways (like with Sanderson’s Kickstarter for example).

Nah, no need to be a shitheel. I’m cool with paying for books, authors gotta eat. I wouldn’t refund a book I’ve read.

MOBI has been deprecated for a long time. Standard formats now are AZW3 (KF8) and KFX. They’re a bit more advanced than MOBI, and thank goodness, since it was a terrible format. AZW3 is essentially a MOBI/EPUB container, and I believe KFX is equivalent to EPUB2, possibly with some EPUB3 features.

Takes a small effort to set up (install Calibre, install NoDRM plugin, apply Kindle serial to plugin), but once it’s done, the rest is literally drag and drop, it removes DRM from your books automagically.

Like hell I don’t. Calibre plus NoDRM says otherwise.

My senior class in high school, the French and History teachers got together to plan a senior trip to Canada post-graduation, with stops in Montreal and Quebec. They let us have beers (on our own dime) if we wanted since the drinking age up there was 18, and one of my history teachers even offered a few of us Cuban cigars the last night of the trip since there was no embargo in Canada but we couldn’t cross back into the US with them. Was a pretty good time.

We were warned the Quebecois could be kinda douchey to non-native speakers, but I found the whole trip was pretty chill, and as long as you were at least trying to speak French to them, they were more than accommodating for directions and help. Was a really memorable trip, 20+ years later still a very fond memory. Good teachers are great.

Okay. I live in a town with a population barely over 2000 people, the paved road ends at my house and continues on as dirt roads, I’m surrounded by miles of empty lots of wild growth with a few houses interspersed here and there, and I have one direct neighbor across the street with the next two closest neighbors being a quarter mile up the road.

I guess I don’t understand your definition of rural then. Or you don’t understand just how far wifi signals can travel when there are no obstructions, or that people can have multiple network SSIDs in their home (hell, I have three, one for 2.4 GHz, one for 5 GHz, and then a separate 5 GHz for a work network). Rural doesn’t mean tech illiterate.

Edit - and to be clear, most of the signals I see are probably too weak to be usable due to attenuation, but I can pick them up all the same via Wifi Analyzer. How many networks I see is dependent on the device used. Currently my mini-PC only sees my networks, then a Roku somewhere (probably neighbors across the street) and another single network at low strength, but it varies.

I used to easily see dozens or more networks in the city if sniffing for them. Your PC’s wifi won’t list all of them, just the strongest signals and there will still be many because city life is saturated that way.

It’s a monument to human achievement that they work as well as they do at all.

FTFY.

Yeah. I’m in the rurals and at any given time can see between 5 and a dozen networks. Years back when I was apartment living, there was a ridiculous number of networks in range, couldn’t even give you a count.

If you’re curious and have an android phone or tablet, check out WifiAnalyzer. It gives a graphical view of nearby Wi-Fi networks, channels they’re on, signal strength, and so on.

You’d be surprised. I have one neighbor across the street and my next closest is a quarter mile up the road. I still see multiple Wi-Fi signals to connect to, 2.4GHz wifi can travel way farther than you might think.

Best to let it have an IP but block WAN access so it can’t leave the home network. This also keeps the TV from complaining about not being connected.

Guess what’s in many of the disposable bottles…

I don’t use pi-hole currently, but have managed access via my router. My LG C1 has been locked down to LAN access only for a long time.

It’s kinds great this way. Since it has an IP it doesn’t give me any bullshit about network, but no traffic escapes the home network.

I’m in my forties and what you’re describing doesn’t sound normal at all. I beat myself up good in my younger years with sports and still do somewhat regular cardio and weightlifting. I have a bum knee and hip problem, shoulder issues from weightlifting injuries, and my back gets stiff and sore on a good day.

None of that stops me from functionally living, and none of its anything the occasional ibuprofen or toke won’t fix in the short term. I can still exercise, do physical labor, open all the jars, and be generally active, and without pain the majority of the time.

What you’re describing sounds more like an inflammatory disease or auto-immune disorder. 110% get a second opinion from a different doc, or a third if needed.

Ah thanks. I didn’t follow to the release page and just skimmed the article, should have read closer.

I could easily see a family that shoots together gifting their child an AR pattern rifle after they got used to shooting mom’s or dad’s firearm. It gives them their own platform to customize and practice on, akin to a musical instrument.

It’s literally your comment.

Maybe a stupid question but… what exactly was illegal about this? I’m sure there were ToS or EULAs violated, but what law is he being charged on?

I spend a bunch of time in log reviews in my current role. “Googling the error message” image is literally hanging on my office wall.

No, that can only be attributed to the great Omnissiah.