You’ve never requested your data from google. I did a while ago and found a dozen recordings of my voice from my pocket despite having the voice assistant turned off.

No, because I run GrapheneOS.

TF is still using Windows for main? If you care about privacy you only use it as a host for the applications that can’t be ported away.

Then start migrating. You could set yourself on fire, as protest, in front of the Microsoft head office and they would just count it as ‘engagement.’

You know which OS wont flip a switch to enable AI slop features? EVERY OTHER OS

Install Linux or BSD, if you are rich buy a Mac that needs replacing in 3 years.

This feature is completely optional and is never turned on by default.

AI desktops sound like a privacy nightmare but right in the article they say, it’s not the default. Every time MS adds another shitware feature there is lots of warning, like this, and there is time for concerned users to find work arounds or jump ship to a more sane OS. We need less clickbait titles and more “how do we work around it” because MS doens’t care about users needs or concerns only increasing revenue.

TIL SearXNG, I will be testing that out this weekend.

That is pretty much why. I took one programming class in high school (2004) and since then alway enjoyed solving software puzzles.

I ran my first “smart” phone for more than 5 years before needing an upgrade. My latest Pixel 8 is less than a year old and now has a row of pink pixels. Never been dropped, never been wet, never fast charged.

This is a 10 year old house and was supposed to be built with all the latest energy saving tech, except it’s Canada and I doubt it would have passed inspection even on the day it was sold.

Nope, home made sensors and python scripts.

Previous to this the basement was always 5 degrees warmer than the rest of the house because the ductwork was so terribly installed. I spent a week sealing them all up only to find that what feels comfortable has as much to do with the humidity as the temperature so just balancing flow between floors couldn’t fix everything.

The weather outside changes things indoors way more than I expected. By looking at the graphs I can tell if it was a windy day, if it rained at all, if it was sunny and which blinds were open that day.

I noticed pretty quick how much the weather outside affects the inside of the house. When it’s windy the bedroom temperature drops fast. If it was sunny in the day there will be a peak temperature several hours after sunset as the heat soaks through the west facing brick wall. When the outside humidity jumps the inside follows fast but if the humidity drops outside it takes days for the house to catch up.

If I was clever I could probably set up a predictive thermostat that takes into account the next 6 hrs of weather when choosing to run the heat or air.

I just infer from the temp/humi sensors. When either one runs there is a very clear pulse in both readings. The UPS is an APC1400XL, it tells me it was manufactured in 2003, I cleaned out the exploded batteries and put new ones in this year and it worked fine. I think it was only ever used once (until the original batteries burst). I have the UPS supplying my server, NAS and the POE switch that powers a couple of cameras outside.

The shower, we went to bed late. There was also a rainstorm that night which skews things, but it’s curious that the shower will actually raise the humidity of the whole house for hours after it’s been used.

I used AHT21 I2C modules from Aliexpress https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005002613543870.html . I think the one that failed last fall was a bad solder joint but I had a spare AHT21 board and ESP8266 so I just replace the whole unit.

It’s not.

No they wont.

There is no demand for dumb-TVs. People are stupid, people don’t know what they want, people don’t know that their TV is broken because the manufacture made it broken. People will buy what they are told to buy.

At best you can buy a smart TV, hobble it, and use your own video sources.

I took this approach as well but I let Grub add Windows as a boot option. No mashing keys at post and Windows doesn’t get to touch Grub or Debian.