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.

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.

Happy with our Nvidia Shield TV Pro on the main TV and Onn 4K Pro on the secondary TVs.

In both cases with the superb Projectivity Launcher, so we don’t need to see the default Google front end and any promoted content.

It’s perfect.

You receive a penalty notice in the mail and have to pay a fine. Similar to a traffic infringement or parking fine.

All elections are held on a weekend and voting booths are everywhere, to make it a little easier for everyone to vote.

You can choose to not mark the ballot, no one would know. As long as you turn up to a booth and get your name marked off, then you are considered to have voted.

As a result, voter turnout is generally over 90%.

It’s a good point/observation.

Makes me wonder how different things might be if the mainstream media were more neutral and less prone to sensationalising everything and stirring outrage.

Social media just adds another layer on top of this.

Thanks for sharing.

All too often the free and open alternatives (or these days even just the non-subscription alternatives!) involve compromising some features or convenience.

But not always.