What do you use for furnace/AC monitoring? Do you get data directly from the equipment, or just infer it from environmental trends? I assume the power data comes from embedded monitoring facilities in your UPS? What make/model do you have? I have a similar setup in my house, but it’s lacking a few metrics. Monitoring air quality (CO2, particulates, etc) would be nice, and my local electric provider sounds a lot like yours, so voltage monitoring would be great.

As noted elsewhere in the thread, they do support MTP transport, so it’s definitely not as user-hostile as it first sounded. Things like Calibre will still work. However, the fact that Amazon also removed the ability to download ebooks in the browser for offline transfer suggests where things are heading. IIRC kobos have some anti features of their own, but I don’t recall the details. I wonder if something like the Daylight DC-1 could be even better. It’s not just a nice reader, but a proper computer. At least, if it actually exists.

EVs are older, sure, but they were in suspended animation for a long time.

As to the question of how mature is mature enough, that depends. In my case, as an EV owner, I think they are mature enough now. However, the fact that major developments in range, efficiency, charging speed, etc are happening regularly in the EV space reflects a certain immaturity. The technology clearly has not yet stabilized, and that may be concerning for people coming from an ICE background.

Sometimes you need to check your tire pressure, too.

The general reduction in scheduled maintenance requirements is really wonderful.

That’s not limited to EVs, though. Most modern cars have the same antifeatures.

Sadly, that can happen with a modern ICE car, too.

Sort of. ICE engines are much more mature, and the improvements happen in much smaller increments. There were plenty of ICE cars 30 years that could get 30 mpg, just like there are today. Whereas with EVs, we’re talking about potentially extending range and charging speeds by 50% or more.

Look for a used one now. The prices are low enough that you’ll be able to get a good one for a low enough price that you may not feel bad if you decide to upgrade in 2 or 3 years.

I consider electric only to be a commuter car at best. It’s not going to be able to do a road trip. And depending on the car and the commute may even not be able to do a grocery run after work some days.

I really wonder what kind of car you drive. Sounds like a Nissan Leaf or something.

I’ll share a couple of anecdotes regarding my experience with EVs:

My parents live on a farm in rural Maine. They are on their second Chevy Bolt (first was a lease, and they liked it so much that they upgraded to a later generation when the lease expired). It’s an inexpensive, no-frills EV that is their primary means of transportation. Living in the country, the shortest trip they take is likely to be at least 20 miles round-trip. In the past, I’ve borrowed that car for an overnight trip to Vermont. We made sure to charge it at home before the leaving, and drove to Vermont without needing to stop. I don’t recall the exact distance, but it was about 4 hours of driving through rolling hills. We charged it again in Vermont, and drove home the next day.

My partner and I have a 2023 Hyundai Ioniq 5 that we bought used for $28k. It’s all-wheel drive and has a battery warmer, both of which are helpful in cold climates. We do not have a charger at home. My wife’s commute is 20 miles round trip, and we are able to charge the car where she works, which we do roughly once a week. Although the car itself is capable of charging very quickly, the charger available to us is a low-power home charger, so it’s nice to be able to leave it plugged in during the full work day. We don’t hesitate to take this car on longer trips, especially if they take the interstate highway system or pass through major cities, where faster charging is always available.

When I bought the car, it was 150 miles away from my house. It was charged to 100% when I picked it up, and the car estimated 300 miles of range. We arrived at home with 50% charge remaining, so I’d say the 300 mile range was pretty accurate.

With this car and our charging habits, daily driving doesn’t really require any special thought or planning at all. For longer trips, anything less than a 150 mile round trip requires no more planning than “I should make sure to charge it within a day or so of the trip, if possible.” For a trip in the 250 mile range, I would definitely prefer to start fully charged, if possible, otherwise I’d want to explore charging options along the way. Only if going over that would I definitely feel the need to investigate charging options at my destination or along the route. A home charger would make things even simpler, but as it is it’s so low-stress that we don’t feel a lot of urgency to get one installed.

I recommend reading Tim Bray’s experiences with several years of EV-only ownership, including some long (1000+ mile) road trips in Canada. Here are a couple:

• 5 year retrospective
• An in-depth report of a 1000 mile trip from Vancouver, BC to Regina, Saskatchewan

I’ve owned two Kindle devices over the years, and the ability to directly load content, without involving a third-party service, was a big part of what made them usable for me. If that feature is gone, these devices will no longer be viable for my needs.

And the enshittification continues…

at least three congressional Republicans

How does that compare with the number of congressional Republicans actively spreading this disinformation?

I attended a Ralph Nader rally in Boston ahead of the 2000 US presidential election. It was a high energy event, with an atmosphere almost like a pop music show. Nader and his VP candidate both spoke about their campaign positions, with frequent pauses for enthusiastic applause from the crowd. Nader was a third-party candidate, which meant that he was an outsider to the regular election process, and in particular was not invited to the nationally televised debates. There were frequent chants of “Let Ralph Debate”, and we were certain that the establishment was uncomfortable with that idea because they knew his policies would be very popular. Cash donations were collected, and many people wrote pro-Nader messages on the bills they gave.

I suspect your rally will be similar, really. Not quite as much of an outsider vibe, but maybe it’ll be replaced with an underdog vibe. Expect an optimistic event that tries to inspire enthusiasm. It’s not just about encouraging your direct support, but also about inspiring you encourage others to support the campaign.

Big +1 for K-9. I considered switching to an iPhone after breaking my previous Android phone, but two apps, K-9 and an actual real Firefox, kept me on Android. It’s a great mail reader, and I struggle to imagine having to use something else.

Just ask ChatGPT; it’s better than humans at proving its humanity with these stupid things.

VMs provide a meaningful security boundary between applications. Containers (docker, etc) do not.

I’ve known two respiratory therapists. They spend their days working with people suffering from emphysema and other smoking related ailments. Both of them smoked.

People are weird.

Those aren’t tubes, they’re whole tubular tires, essentially an integrated tube and tire in one unit that is glued to the rim. Changing a flat first required peeling the old one off before the new tire could be stretched (they fit tight!) onto the rim.

Tubulars are still used regularly by at least one world tour team (French, naturally), but these days a flat is fixed by swapping the wheel or even the whole bike for a spare carried by the team car. That wasn’t allowed in the early days.

Interesting! From his post,

Mikhail advised me to use balanced trees instead of extensible hashing

And

I never told Mikhail that Oracle had tried implementing a filesystem using balanced trees, and its performance was terrible leading to most insiders in the industry concluding that balanced trees performed poorly for filesystem File size patterns.

Of course, that filesystem exists today as btrfs.

I’m 100% trying this on my 9-year-old next time he tells me he’s bored. It’ll be a gentle smack, of course…

It’s not discontinued. They backed away from that plan in favor of a battery tech refresh. https://arstechnica.com/cars/2023/07/gm-announces-a-new-ultium-based-chevrolet-bolt-during-q2-report/