Our house has a commercial style HVAC system. The controllers for everything (relays) are very simple. The run on a protocol called BACNet that is unauthenticated and pretty straightforward.

I was able to read in all the data points and then use the weather forecast and a few other data points to make changes to my HVAC system. The comfort different has been very drastic. Our house doesn't overheat on hot days and doesn't get cold fast when the temperature drops. (I am in the Northeast where there are big swings).

Hey, I apologize You were exposed to BACNet. Seriously. That was one the worst HVAC protocols I've dealt with. It seemed (1990's) to do most stuff in obtuse ways compared to other HVAC comms.

At least The standards were supported (eg. 4-20mA).

Again, sorry. And glad You toppled it.

I rolled my eyes when I saw your comment, then I watched the video. The lips and cheeks are distinctly botox'd.

It is worth noting that it is trivial to buy fake stars for a project you are not affiliated with. The reason someone might do this would be to "test" the purchasing of fake stars without risking contaminating their own project.

I once bought a friend of mine a thousand Twitter followers as a prank. He wasn't happy.

As he should be, that wasn’t a well thought through prank.

Am I missing something, that seems like a decent prank. It’s harmless.

No, his friends account is flagged as a spammer now and gets less visibility.

Where did you purchase that?

I wanna say I got it through Fiverr? This was like 8-10 years ago. I don't remember exactly.

I think the most interesting thing would be to run this test against the list of Launch HNs, sorted by votes, grouped by class.

FWIW a smug doctor usually corrects people that they are a Physician.

Maybe in English, but in my native tongue there’s no word for physician.

Also, I meant in the sense that you call someone “mister McSmug” and they reply almost angrily with “doctor McSmug”.

David Sacks wants to run for President. He watched Trump's election closely. He wants to be the smart guy that uses the idiot's playbook. He is working hard to get placed on as much media as possible as a commentator. He is connected to many of the richest and most powerful people in the country.

He is, at the end of the day, a bored billionaire with some very pedestrian ideas. He does go to great effort to shout them louder. He does seem to have some serious ego issues, but I guess what politician doesn't?

I think the hilarity of Calacanis literally tweeting his own similar ideas is that it was a transparent attempt to be louder. ie: he just didn't feel heard about his ideas, so they needed amplification.

David Sacks was born in South Africa. I don't think he can run for president.

Depends on if his parents were US citizens when he was born.

One I saw recently was "With developer signups from the world’s leading brands" and then a wall of logos under it. Felt like a stretch to use a company's logo when all that happened was someone downloaded your open source code.

I have a friend who is going through something eerily similar. To be honest I had to do a double take because a fossil fixation was a part of their breakdown too.

It sounds like you are aware of the impact it had on your family, I would just encourage you to very actively try to demonstrate to them that you understand it and want to make sure their life improves as yours does.

In my friend's case, I think pride has kept them from fully acknowledging just how shitty they made the lives of those around them. Everyone stuck by them because we love them. Their spouse in particular feels like they put up with hell and now that the person is healthy again they don't want to spend time making up for "the past".

It's not easy, but if you have the capacity for it, I encourage it.

Other than that, congratulations on getting through and getting back. A lot of folks come out of a break like that and do not reenter work or past hobbies in any meaningful way.

I do this so often now it's embarrassing. I have always had a problem with tone. Even on email where people don't expect much tone, I manage to come off as an asshole. Now I just write out my points and ask Chat GPT to rewrite it based on whatever criteria I think the receiver would prefer. I get responses in a fraction of the time I used to get them in.

I would love to hear the inside story about why the old one was discontinued and it took so long for the v2.

The HomePod mini is the "first device" we have given to our children. No screen, I am comfortable with apple privacy, access to music and podcasts, etc.

The mini has shockingly good sound for $100 and what it is.

"The mini has shockingly good sound for $100 and what it is. "

It's really something, isn't it? I mean, I'm an audio nut with genuine crazy-person speakers in my living room, but goddamn if that single mini Homepod in our bedroom isn't stupid good.

I was going to get one for my kid but don't want her to be able to ask arbitrary questions and basically access web search just yet. When I looked into it, the only way to accomplish this was to turn off Siri entirely, and just make it into a speaker for source iOS devices. Any chance they have more fine-grained controls for this yet?

Just a guess, but matter compatibility probably caused some slow down. That spec was still in a minor flux until last year.

But wasn't that flux 100% in high-level software?

kudos to you! I know they will cherish a device like that. Growing up I had a similar tech item that was my "thing", it was a tiny MP3 player that I used for years. Having a HomePod Mini is a great way to get them access to super helpful tech without the drawbacks (ads, social media, privacy) of screen-based devices.