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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: July 14th, 2023

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  • You’re right in that running HA just for a WoL timer would be silly, but (presumably) it’s already running for other, less silly purposes.

    I’d say the main benefit is when the machine requires regular (as in daily) reboots, or if it’s something you don’t trust is fully private and want to be powered off outside work hours. Not useful for me, but I can see why it would be handy.




  • Node Red by far gave me the best automation for numerous lights. X minutes after sunrise, it iterates every light that is on and calls turn off with a fairly long (2 min?) transition time, so the lights all gradually fade off.

    It’s been running for years without me needing to touch anything, it doesn’t care if you replace/rename any lights, and the slow fade when it’s still getting brighter outside makes the change invisible.

    I’ll bet you could do the same thing without Node Red, but nowhere near as easily.




  • It depends on what you’re building. If you want a normal rectangular house, 3D printing will be incredibly inefficient and pointless compared to traditional framing techniques.

    On the other hand, if you want curved walls, traditional framing becomes incredibly complex and expensive, whereas 3D printing takes exactly the same materials and labour regardless.

    I think 3D printing an entire house is just a gimmick, but it will still be an incredibly useful tool, even if only used for simple things like making rounded foundation pads or retaining walls that follow the landscape or curved hallways connecting modular buildings.


  • Having some word or phrase marking the end of a request makes the voice recognition a little more reliable. It doesn’t have to be polite, but being polite when it’s totally unnecessary is a good habit to build.

    “Do X please” makes it unambiguously clear (to a machine) where the end of the request is, whereas “Please do X” is mostly pointless.





  • It’s not quite that bad (yet…) - it has reasonably clearly labelled subscription and non-subscription cartridges. So when you cancel the subscription, you just throw the non-subscription cartridge back in.

    If you’re printing quite a lot, but not enough to justify a laser printer, then they can work out okay. The vast majority of people would indeed be wasting money though.