Justifier

Clearly, some people beyond that

Wcyd ¯\(ツ)/¯

Yeah, except I didn’t use Ai or a prompt as I’ve now said 3 times which you seem to be unable to comprehend

I used a LLM and TTS to verbally type

Did you manage to read all that Buddy? or we going to keep playing merry go round?

Yes.

You and those like you can kindly learn to read, and websearch what acronomys mean before responding condescendingly while being completely incorrect. That would be quite helpful :)

… You think TTS is Ai slop?

Lmfao

It’s talking to your phone and it translates audio to words and words to audio

To be completely honest, I don’t expect many people will.

Increasingly, people are completely incapable of reading on these platforms… you know, these ones designed to communicate via…reading and writing,…But what can you do?

Whoever you are if you made it this far, if your attention span has managed to remain unharmed in today’s world, read or dont. Your choice, and your responsibility to deal with the fallout of either wasted time or losses in personal capability either way not mine

I didnt write it 🙃

VTT with a bit of editing removing punctuation and breaking up blocks of text

LLMs are useful for some things

I’d like to preface all of the following with something: a vehicle should account for no more than 10% of a household user’s budget, some say up to 15% but most of the literature I’ve seen puts it at or under 10% to maintain fiscal responsibility. That’s monthly ofc, and puts the total budget somewhere around $1,200-1,400 on most of these cars

So how many people do you know who make between $120,000-140,000 per driver?

Some of us do, most of us don’t

I know plenty of people who cannot and or will not for various reasons ever make that much in their lifetimes

Let’s say a 19 year old getting their first car without support. You think they can afford a 60k car? Hell even a 40k? At +6% apr? They still need a car and not all of us have or had parents to help us foot that bill

How about even a used one ran into the dirt at 20-25k to “establish credit”? Think that’s a good idea either for someone like that? Its a terrible one

Further, if literally anything goes wrong with the battery before it’s paid off but out of warranty… Then what? File bankruptcy at 20-25? Take the credit hit and be unable to buy another vehicle or, or get student loans, or be able to get a mortgage because your credit is shot?

No matter if the payback even makes sense we have prime examples that the economy is down right hostile to EV owners with the EV tax road hike increases forcing EV users to pay up to 10x road “gas” tax equivalents of what petrol does in the US regardless if they drive 1,000 miles in a year or 40,000

Plain and simple, all commuter/work vehicles are not worth $40,000-60,000. They are grossly overpriced and have been since at least 2020

The $70,000 GMC EV work truck trim with 450 miles of range? That’s worth $45,000 max. The Tesla model 3 dual motor (which I paid $60,000 for new in 2023 btw) are worth $35,000 max brand new top trim model and has never been worth more than that despite the insane market gauntlet we’ve been run through

The person you are responding to is not even slightly wrong

Vehicles are grossly overpriced.

Front loading potential savings is not an acceptable practice in an economy where people do not have the option to go without a vehicle to function. Prices needs to crater. Companies need to be making any profits they do make off the back of quantity sold, and off government subsidies and cutting out middle men not massive margins per lesser quantities of vehicles at our expense, because as things stand they’re making their margins off of government bailouts anyways and consumers are perpetually the ones getting bent since taxes are our money and these incompetents are increasingly demanding more and more of it

I have had a bad experience with HA + reolink

First one, audio stopped after a winter storm, only static playing constantly

You can set them up with 2 way audio with HA, but it’s an endeavor, not a one click it works thing

I highly recommend you look up ubiquity, get a ubiquity protect router and bite the bullet cost wise because they work flawlessly

Or better, just get home cameras and keep a dumb doorbell

Oor… Hear me out… not everything needs to connect to the fucking internet

For example?

My Ecobee thermostat, absolutely wonderful device for just under two years

They change their TOS because they’re starting to push their “security” camera side of the business. I disagree with the TOS and won’t agree to them. It includes grossly invasive private data sharing including data collected from the microphone on the Ecobee

Oh what? You don’t agree? (There’s no disagree button) Guess you can’t log in and use the device any more

No problem right? Just use the homekit stuff from it and boom you can control it locally right?.. Except I have an entry level heatpump… and heatpump have to have a thermometer to tell it when it can’t use the heatpump due to low temps (mine is 40°for) which Ecobee sources local weather to determine that point and if you don’t have it connected, you could damage a +$15,000 piece of equipment… So connect to the internet and agree to the new tos or buggar off

And that’s a +$450 thermostat when all sensors are included

Can follow this line of bullcrap with cars, lawn equipment, farm equipment, you name it

Just full blown middle finger to internet connected tech from me, as well as any software updating tech is my current position. Fully standalone, zero OTA updates, zero wifi, zero bluetooth. These days no bullshit is a premium feature apparently

Perhaps that’s the case for now

I personally save all posts like this though because you never know when it will be needed

Same with TV cracking stuff I’ve seen even when I don’t own a TV, because there’s a high chance the things I hate about TVs will be coming to monitors next and those I do use, so I assume I’ll need as many starting reference points as possible

From some family member or otherwise who is already in the ecosystem, to the potential of GrapheneOS not surviving Google’s hostility and ending up in the same exact shoes as Apple users

In 2-3 years a post like this could be buried in age and forgotten with the people who used to talk about it jaded by indifference or opposition and significantly fewer

Plenty of things I used to be extremely enthusiastic about that I just don’t bother with any more because of those kinds of interactions

I just go full anti tech, which people find ironic since I’m in the tech industry, and they poke fun at that

No matter what you do, no matter what you think or say, people will try their darnedest to poke holes at it

But what you *don’t * do? That’s pretty hard to poke holes at.

“I don’t have a Facebook account” is a brickwall to the conversion. That way in their mind, it’s not that I don’t trust the company, it’s that I don’t even slightly value the product. I have a damn phone, I have to am required to_ pay for the damn phone. It has group chats. What is the value of Facebook again?

Marketplace? I buy everything brand new and keep it until it’s dead

Doomscrolling? Bad habit, not interested

Family connections? I cut most of them off but maybe 4, who know to call/text

Now even thermostats are getting microphones and listening devices, which will absolutely be used to collect data on people from their homes see ecobees new TOS, and the new HoneyWell/ring camera integrations frankly I’m just done with the bullshit. I’m full blown get any phone home technology the fuck out of my house levels of done

But I don’t say that when people ask why I changed my thermostat from the $400 Ecobee, which was a standout feature in my home when they walked in.

No. I say “their servers kept going down and causing issues when I needed it to work”, because people who somehow manage to live without concerning themselves of targeted pricing or snooping practices do care about slight inconveniences, and for whatever reason “they changed their TOS to get people to agree to let them spy on them without legal reprecussions, and if you don’t agree they’ll lock you out of your account barring you from using half the stuff you paid to use” is less logical to their pre-occupied brains than “I got inconvenienced twice a year from down servers”

Uhhh

Wasn’t that…

That was the whole point of US regulations wasn’t it?

To keep Nvidia out of Mainland Hands?

And that’s backfired how? Seems like it’s been a great success from your own description Jenson

Play with military contracts and get export blacklisted by the US Govt exports department bigbrain

That’s called the other side of the coin of the free market economy. Capitalism.

You sell your tool’s battery for $200/ah? Someone makes the same thing without the tag that is compatible with the same ah rating but without your warranty for $50 and I buy it from them, you lower your price or see your sales drop off a cliff

What you think anyone should actually subscribe to the Ethics for thee but not for me model?

BTW I’ll be buying some aftermarket tabless 12ah batteries for my Ego tools when they kick and guess what I won’t be paying for 6 of them… $4,000

Yes, four. thousand. dollars.

I’ll be spending less than $1,000.

HomeAssistant and vlans are kind of the answer to most of the issues/concerns regarding smart devices this post has

I have to say though, I find anyone who leans too far either way to be extremely silly

Well chosen devices from reputable manufacturers can drastically improve quality of life

One big one for me was window blinds on a sun timer. Because after a decade, I was swapping from nights to days permanently having spent that past time swapping from nights to days every Wednesday and had signifcant issues both waking up and staying up on those days, and even now I still do

Having my bedroom windows open in the morning on their own to use natural lighting to wake me up has been extremely helpful for that, and then using HA that could be tied into external camera systems to close the windows automatically if a person or vehicle is detected within specific parameters, or having the ability to open my son’s window if I hear him crying to be picked up from a nap but I can’t immediately respond has been wonderful

Now there’s also your Rings, your creepvacuumbots, any smart TV at all and any other host of problems with iot devices, but there are some gems that make life much better without the dark patterns we increasingly associate with connectes devices these days

Especially true as increasingly fewer of us have homes or even rentals with the space needed to house the types of tools to make things even if they are owned

You know, I had a similar conversation with someone but regarding houses

My big issue with old furniture is the quantities of people I see bring some nice old piece home only to end up with termites or other pests, evrn after they treated the thing, and then they are forced to spend way more than just the cost of the old piece to remove those pests from their home… thats if they catch it in time anyways. If they get to the structure you’re looking at thousands in pest removal and repairs

One of my neighbors who worked in pest control at the time would go on about stuff like that being one of the big factors keeping him in the trade

Everything comes with its own caveat. New stuff isn’t built the same as things used to be, old stuff is very old now, usually hardly servicable without substantial effort and diligence

There’s a good 20 year gap on the market of quality consumer goods and todays types of products so getting quality stuff is also just getting darned hard as they break down and are disposed of. Soon it won’t just be the products. It will be the tools and skills to make them too

Idk when your competition is $2,000 mdf with 10 hinges to fit into a 6"×35" box even your finger painting first try has the potential to be a treasured family piece if it can hold up a turkey and table cloth these days

Last time I diy’d it was triple the cost

I got tools to do other things with after the fact, developed a personal connection with the things I made. The second version didn’t break and was substantially under the original projected costs, but the total was over triple

However, if you want things made to last instead of things to ship these days, the tools and materials of say a decent dining table can easily be under the cost of the product

$500 in lumber, $1,500 for a table saw, $700 for a helical thickness reducer, $700 for a helical planer, $300 for a biscuit joiner, and ~$500 in varius clamps, glues, screws, and materials puts the project at the ~$4,000 mark, which is the starting point for many decent good dining tables (without shipping/delivery)

I can’t really speak for today, because I know things are way different than they were before when I got out of retail

But I can tell you what worked for me and maybe you can apply something from it to your own situation

Save up enough money and buy your own tools, for me that was a $200 in 2013 computer. Sounds cheap today but it was a very tough purchase to make at the time without help and with bills to pay. Learn something that can be applied elsewhere using ‘free’ resources (r/piracy, FMHY, and your local Library would be the equivalent today). For me that was learning to use Linux, CAD and other modeling software in ways traditionally educated people at the time did not leverage them, and that edge got my foot in the door

Oh, and before you get your hopes up on the regular sleep schedule bit, I spent the past +decade swapping between nights and days every single week after getting out of retail. Now there’s also a baby in the picture and we won’t afford child care so sleep is a pipe dream. Maybe 2-4 hours a day if I’m lucky. Been that way for over a year now

Retrospectively my schedule then of 4-10:30 on week days so I could go to school and 5am-2pm weekends to get enough hours to pay the bills was amazing. Pay sucked though. So did them playing with my hours to keep me part time without full time benefits.

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