I’ve ordered various things from AliExpress before, I’ve never had any major issues. One item was DOA, and another never arrived, but In both cases I got refunded quickly and easily.

It seems no worse than any other online marketplace now.

I assume these 3DS units are some sort of refurb. Are they Chinese region units?

Might be worth looking into LoRa for longer range, it’s got quite cheap to play with now.

There are so many weird and wonderful BASIC dialects found on all sorts of platforms.

In Europe the PlayStation 2 shipped with a version of Yabasic on the bundled demo disc. It was an attempt to avoid some of import taxes by claiming the PS2 was a computer instead of a games console.

There is an open source implementation of BBC Basic for modern systems that’s being actively developed - BBC BASIC for SDL 2.0.

Modern websites are so complex and dynamic now it makes saving their state next to impossible.

For a while I’ve been longing for something similar, but for going forwards and backwards in a tab. There’s been too many times when I hit back to look at something I missed, only to find it was some dynamically loaded element that changes when the page is reopened.

It’s a real step up for managing Home Assistant. I was using it earlier to find some devices to reconfigure and it’s a lot faster. The xtra panels in the UI feel a little cramped on smaller screens though.

I wish they would implement a proper permissions system next, the lack of control is the other admin bugbear of mine with Home Assistant.

I always keep Home Assistant as up to date as possible. Home Assistant keeps improving a lot. Month to month each update goes fairly seamlessly if HA is kept up to date, but the further it falls behind the harder it is to catch back up. Recent optimisation improvements have also made the update process faster.

If you can make the time it’s worth the effort. Even if you have to “start over” somewhat there is probably a lot you have learned since that you can use to improve your setup.

One of my favourite games, it was a very impressive title for the Game Boy at the time. It had an interesting development story, it started as a Game Boy port of Link to the Past, developed in off hours as a sort of passion project.

I remember having to download a text file guide, with dungeon layouts drawn in ASCII art, to get through a couple of the tricky bits.

The Switch port is worth checking out too, the graphical style is adorable.

A shame they never continued the remasters to Red Alert 2 and Tiberium Sun.

Would be nice to see the Generals games get some attention too, they weren’t “traditional” C&C titles but were still fun to play.

Is it common for apartments to have shared extractor ducts? I’ve never heard of a setup like this before, and it sounds like both a pain in the arse and a potential safety issue.

Controlling the kitchen fan is probably the easier bit. Depending on the design of the hood, you might be able to control it with a smart outlet or relay. Turn the hood’s switch to always on and control it with the relay. The difficult bit would be sensing when to turn it on.

Cooking will often produce VOCs, and VOC sensors are easy to obtain, but they are also have other sources that are likely in your own apartment. Maybe try using temperature and humidity sensors int the duct to activate the fan when there is elevated temperature and humidity inside the duct?

Frigate seems fairly popular among Home Assistant users for security cameras.

I think ZoneMinder is still going too which used to be the go to Linux option for that.

There are some Zigbee dimming relays/modules which should work with your Zigbee stack of choice. I haven’t used them myself as I use Zigbee dimmer switches instead, but I’ve seen others recommend them. There’s a few different brands depending on your country.

I can also second the recommendation for the Shelly Dimmer 2. Works out of the box with the HA Shelly integration, and can also be flashed with ESPHome or Tasmota if you really want. It can also be used in detached mode to work with smart lights I believe too. My home is mostly Zigbee but I have a few Shelly devices and they have all been solid.

Apple was negotiating to buy Be, but they couldn’t agree on a price. The rumours were that Be was asking too much.

The Apple board also favoured NeXT, and the rest is history.

I also have an oil boiler, and a tank in the garden. The tank was fitting with an Apollo Ultrasonic oil level sensor, which sends a signal to base station with a very basic LCD display in the house via 433Mhz radio.

I use an RTL-SDR USB radio dongle, a cheap 433MHz antenna and the rtl_433 software to monitor the signals from the ultrasonic sensor, which transits roughly once an hour. The level measurement transmitted is a fairly accurate centimetre value (I compared it with manual measurements with a dip stick for a few months).

The base station only showed a vague level indication with 10 bars, but now I have more a more precise smart display of the tank level, without any extra modification to the tank system.

I have a similar setup but with an ultrasonic sensor instead of a float sensor. rtl_433 had support for the sensor, and I could get a good signal reception with an RTL-SDR and cheap 433MHz antenna. I can even pick up signals from a neighbours tank that is some distance away.

Once I had devices that replaced entities with new ones with a different ID after a firmware update. It happened to some ESPHome devices I had after upgrading the firmware. Have you checked the device the entity belongs to?

It might be worth keeping purge_keep_days configured to less than the default 10 days to keep the database size small and speed up backups etc, especially in setups running on low power hosts like a Pi and with large amounts of sensors.

The new climate cards have configurable features. Edit the dashboard and climate card, and buttons similar the old ones can be added back the card. I was confused by this at first when I updated and the on and off buttons for my heating disappeared. It feels like the modes buttons should be added by default.

One model that seemed to work well was the pre-social media internet old people might remember: bulletin boards, forums, blogs.

Ouch.

The video makes an interesting comparison between online and offline communities, but I think it’s missed how common identities that gave offline communities cohesion have also broken down in the modern age. Increasing pressure for jobs and housing, among other things, have forced many societies to become a lot more internally mobile. This has resulted in a much diminished sense of local community because so many people rarely stay in one place long enough to form local bonds.

Supporting the local sports team and attending the local church together once helped us overlook our differences, but those shared experiences are shrinking. That loss of offline cohesion is contributing to the alienation and polarisation alongside the troubles online.

Personally I prefer using smart switches, or smart relay modules in between the switch and bulb. However that’s maybe not best for you if you are already invested in smart bulbs.

The “neatest” options would be to fit a switch cover over the switch, or remove the switch and replace with a blanking plate. A smart button can be fitted onto the cover or plate to provide the functionality of a switch, there are devices with multiple buttons and even rotary knobs.

Depending on the style of light switch used in your country there may be commercially made switch covers available if you can’t 3D print them. There are also several 3D printing services online that can be fairly affordable, I’ve had decent service from Treatstock.