MusketeerX

Technology has started to make it easier and easier to be anti consumer. To maximise how much you can extract out of consumers.

It is making it easier to understand and control exactly how they use products and services. This allows you to structure your price and offering to give them the minimum amount they'll accept at the maximum price. Allows you to strip features out and offer them for extra. Allows you to hide things behind ongoing subscriptions. Allows you to better lock people into products and services, making it more difficult to switch/leave.

All of this was possible (and being done) before, but technology makes this so much easier/better.

Technologies often start out by making something easier for the consumer. But beyond the early stages, it's all about making the world better - for the corporations developing and selling products and services.

Exactly!

This pretty much summarises it.

A good alternative. I moved across too.

Youtube is the only thing there isn't a really viable alternative to at this stage.

I'm out of the loop, what happened in January to cause that sudden growth?

I have an account but I'm not active. Just not much of a social media guy in general.

March 2000. Bigpond Cable. Such a step up in speed (although I can't remember what that initial cable speed was) and suddenly we were always connected.

I had a faster connection than anyone I knew at that time :)

Great, so we're living in the modern equivalent of 1938. Hopefully next year doesn't go on to be the equivalent of 1939 😬

Such an underrated show!

I don't disagree.

There is one forum I still participate in:

https://forums.whirlpool.net.au/forum/

It's mostly tech-focussed and Australia-centric, but it does have other topics like sport, TV etc..

I wish there were more like this.

I hate that the bulk of online discussion is now owned/monopolised by a couple of huge corporations.

A decent percentage of Gen X and early millennials grew up familiar with computers. You kind of had to be, to some extent. Stuff didn't always work smoothly or easily, so some tinkering and understanding of how things work beneath the surface was required.

We're moving towards a future where a computer becomes just like an appliance, like a TV. Both the hardware and software will be locked down and set up to work. You just tap and press buttons to get it to do its thing.

Eventually, we may even get to the point where computers are required to be locked down "for our safety".

If we get that far, then I can imagine those who want to build their own and have full freedom to install and customise it any way they want could be considered the very fringe/fanatical elements of society.

"Hey, you want an illegal unauthorised computer, why on earth would you need that, are you a terrorist or criminal or something?"

I hope things don't go quite that far. But I don't think it's out of the question.

Very nice!

Also appreciate the comments on how you edited. Always find that interesting.

Summary:

HACS 2.0: A Major Update to the Home Assistant Community Store

• HACS 2.0, the latest version of the Home Assistant Community Store, brings significant improvements, including an easier installation method, faster updates, a revamped user interface, and improved notifications for Home Assistant updates and repairs.

• HACS serves as a platform for users to discover, install, and update community-created integrations and user interface elements, enhancing the functionality and customization of Home Assistant.

• The new version introduces a user interface that closely resembles the native look and functionality of Home Assistant, providing a consistent and intuitive experience.

• To enhance performance, HACS now utilizes a remote dataset stored in Cloudflare R2 buckets, reducing the number of API calls to GitHub and resulting in significantly faster updates.

• System and add-on updates are now displayed in the same format as native Home Assistant updates, eliminating the need to visit the HACS page for updates.

• HACS 2.0 introduces Template management, leveraging the new template type to improve Jinja templates.

• While HACS offers a wide range of community-made integrations, cards, themes, and more, it is important to note that these are not officially supported by Home Assistant and may affect system stability.

https://www.home-assistant.io/blog/2024/08/21/hacs-the-best-way-to-share-community-made-projects/

No way. Coverage on my carrier is solid everywhere I've been - even in the middle of a national park a couple of hours outside the city recently.

I like to get away, but I'm not the type to want to go to extremely remote places, hours from the nearest town in the middle of the desert or anything like that. So this is useless to me.

I'll accept it if it's free, otherwise you can keep it.