Yeah, you can plug it into a few external services like OpenAI or even use a local LLM like LocalAI. Not used either, but I know it’s possible.

That would also explain why Aldi in the UK also has these while other stores don’t.

From the UK. I’ve never seen matte spelled as matt. CA, UK and AU are generally pretty close with spelling, whereas the US is usually off doing its own thing. It’s a similar thing to blonde and blond.

Oh no so am I, but I’ve seen enough of these stories in the past to know it’s a common occurrence ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I don’t think it was intended to be sensationalist, just a pun with the words. It’s one of those non-issue stories that are sort of tongue in cheek so the writer has a bit of fun.

I think most outlets have pretty much given up writing anything serious about Apple based alarm issues as they’ve been a thing for years (whether it’s user error or otherwise), hence why this one in particular is just quoting people on TikTok of all places.

Some, yeah - mostly for laptop chargers on the longer routes. A lot just have usb though.

They did. Cheap and reliable

How do you prepare for an update when Bethesda don’t tell you what is changing? It says in the article they had literally no correspondence from Bethesda until the update dropped, so the only thing they could do was keep developing and hope not too much broke in the process.

That being said, from what I understand is that the script extender broke, so they’re just waiting for an undefined time until that gets fixed for the latest update.

The index is better overall and I love mine, but I can’t help but feel jealous that someone can just grab their quest, put it on and get into VR immediately. I have to cart my PC downstairs, turn the base stations on, find the index and wire it all up, troubleshoot why Windows has decided to mess up the drivers and now nothing works, and maybe half an hour later finally get into a game or completely give up and try again another time.

The quest gains a lot in portability and ease of setup, and that does result in a lot of other features being sacrificed but to most people the downsides don’t matter as much.

You can, but MS disables automatic updates without telling you. I have TPM but my CPU is one generation too old apparently, so they silently disabled updates on my machine and I didn’t realise I was still on 21H2 until a couple of weeks ago and had to manually update it.

The manual update worked and it didn’t warn me about anything or encounter any issues, but that was a massive pain.

Is that Jon from Auto Shenanigans?

I’m not entirely sure how cheques work being that I’ve not used one in about 15 years, but I’d imagine they give a cheque from an account with no money. Because cheques are awful the money will appear in your account for a time period by which you are given the illusion of getting legit money. They ask you to buy something like jewellery or gift cards and ask for it back at the end, maybe letting you keep a bit of it for yourself. A while goes by and the cheque bounces, which means you’re then on the hook for the cost of everything you purchased and the scammer gets a ton of free items that they can then sell on.

Nor-fuck in the UK, so sort of close I guess.

Line must go up

I definitely find it harder to think of words when I’m talking to people and it seems like something that came about after COVID. Also, I have a much shorter fuse now and seem to get annoyed almost randomly.

It’s fine, they’ll just suggest a new generation of baby boomers to get the population back up again.

It’s not hugely complicated but instead of me having to ask an assistant everything, I let HA tell me everything through various speakers based on the state of sensors around the house at appropriate times.

When I wake up in the morning and go downstairs it’ll detect my presence, and if it’s a work day it’ll inform me of weather, traffic (as well as a suggested time to aim to leave by) and a basic schedule of my day, then it’ll stick some music on.

As it gets closer to the time to leave it’ll chime up again telling me I have x minutes left to get ready, but only if it detects me in a room so I definitely hear it.

All that is controlled by HA automatically and isn’t something you’d ever get from any of the big players, because they don’t have the sort of information and stats that HA does.

If I set a timer in Google Home then it’ll become available to HA through it’s integration and I’ll pop up a timer bar on some of the displays I have dotted around so I can track the time left without having to talk to the assistant, and as any timer gets close to expiring then it’ll even show a message on the TV saying which timer is about to activate.

There’s a few smaller things that just make life a bit easier too, like turning speakers off in rooms that aren’t active, or integrating my dumb doorbell into HA using an RF receiver so I can automate doorbell presses.

Home Assistant is currently working hard on assistants. I’ve not used it much yet but their text to speech offers so much more than any of the larger companies in just customisation alone, plus it all runs locally.

I have Google Home devices all over but they currently mostly act as a dumb speaker and I just get HA to do all of the heavy lifting. The most Google does is set timers and even that just goes into HA for most of the processing.

You’re fine unless something happens to PayPal.

Not tried in a while but it used to just be a case of leaving it disconnected from the net during setup.

Failing that you can still sign up with a throwaway account and convert it to local in the options after installation iirc. It’s not ideal but it’s still something at least.