A standard smart meter can’t exactly. It only measures the energy that is getting consumed into the house or whatever is behind it. But some companies have started to develop energy profiles on appliances though. Say for instance that your washing machine pulls a specific amount of power for 5 minutes, then a different amount for 15 minutes, etc as it runs through the various parts of the cycle. It creates sort of an energy signature that they might be able to tell what it is even if they are only looking at the combined usage of everything in the house. In my experience, this kind if profiling isn’t very accurate, but it might get better over time with AI models.

I wanted to chime in and say I have had no issues with my ZigBee or Z-Wave networks (I run both) not being reliable in my house. I made sure I built out the mesh by installing devices close to my server closet where my ZigBee/Z-Wave receiver is and then out from there starting with powered devices that work as repeaters.

Some smart switches can also be configured to run in Smart Bulb mode, where they can be used to control a smart bulb without actually shutting off the power. You can also set up device groups to be able to control the device directly even if Home Assistant is down. I find that this gives me the best of both worlds, as I can do cool things like changing light color and intensity with automations while still having the ability to turn the light on/off if my server or WiFi network goes down.

If we actually cared about government waste in the US, we would go after the insurance and tax prep companies. Fucking leaches on society. They only exist to siphon money from people.

I’m not here to defend the Chinese government or anything, but there is an argument to be made that the US has an equivalency to each one of these things.

CCP officials at tech companies - NSA backdoors

Uyghur slaves - Prison labor aka war on drugs

Taiwan - Gaza/Literally any “3rd world” nation with oil

Censorship - Right wing media empires/red state bills targeted to downplay US atrocities taught in schools

Retaliation against protestors - Police brutality Social media censorship - Oligarchs owned social media

I think a lot of people are less falling for Chinese propaganda and more overcoming US propaganda.

It’s a rough draft according to her substack.

Its not out of control now, but that doesn’t cancel out previous high inflation rates on things. If people wages haven’t kept up then they may not be able.to still afford the standard of living they had a few years ago.

Like one of the other replies mentioned, when you get closer to retirement, more of the money should get shifted from stocks to more stable but lower return investments like bonds and such that are not affected by a stock market crash. Usually you can set a retirement age in the management portal of your 401k and the management company in charge of your 401k uses it as a guide to move the money into the more stable investments.

Absolutely, but for now the best thing we can do is show up and vote and call out these misleading polls for what they are. The larger the margins are, the harder it gets to try to cheat through the courts. Of course if there is a big blue wave, we’ll hear that it itself is evidence that voter fraud happened, in which they will justify with these slanted polls.

I think the other silver lining is that when it comes down too it, Trump doesn’t have a large enough base that is willing to stick thier own necks out in a misguided attempt to “save” democracy. Trump.didn’t get the numbers he wanted on January 6th and he won’t get them this time either.

You literally just described American healthcare. I don’t know where people get this idea that you don’t have to wait to see a doctor here. I’ve had to book doctors appointments months out. And specialists can be 6+ months of waiting.

I think the Americans that say otherwise actually don’t try to go to the doctor on a regular basis. And if you press them on why, they’ll admit it is a fucking hassle and worried about the bill if they need to actually get something done.

Just because you don’t know the rules doesn’t mean they are unwritten.

https://democrats.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/2024-Delegate-Selection-Rules.pdf

They did hold a primary. You might have not liked how they ran it. I had my own issues with it as well, but they did and once those votes are in the pledged delegates have to honor the winner from it, which Biden was. Tell me how they could have just taken it away from him without him stepping down again?

Do you know how Democrat canidates are picked? Biden already had enough pledged delegates to win the nomination.

Aren’t all of the misogynists already voting for Trump? I think just being a younger woman candidate could energize the younger voting base.

So they say, but they also just said the president had immunity for official acts. If Biden did this while at the same time urging Congress to pass judicial ethics laws, who could stop him? Hell, expand it to the federal court system and tell the committee to move fast and prioritize the most unethical judges in key positions and either the Republicans have to play ball with Democrats on passing judicial reform through law or the remaining sane judges reverse a few key decisions to unfuck our current judicial quandary.

I’m no legal expert, but could he possibly form a judicial ethics committee to investigate supreme court justices. On any evidence of violating ethics, he could sign an arrest warrent to remove them from the court.

The only reason I make the bed every morning is because we have dogs that like to lay on it when we aren’t home and there is nothing worse when you are crawling in bed at night and finding dirt or sand all in it.

I’ve wondered the same thing. Maybe a the Enquirer did a catch and kill payoff to the neighbors when it happened?

I don’t have V-Rising, and I’m sure a lot of this stuff is hardware dependent, but according to a couple of reports on ProtonDB, there might be a kernel bug causing issues with it.

https://www.protondb.com/app/1604030

I just installed bazzite on my LCD Steam Deck this week and it has been pretty solid so far, but obviously the hardware support for it is top notch thanks to Valve. I didn’t have really any issues with regular SteamOS either and just wanted to try something a bit more customizable.

And really Linux gaming on the Steam Deck feels like cheating, especially compared to trying to run games via wine before the proton days.

The claim was that billionaires shouldn’t exist and that to get that amount of money requires exploitation. You are the one taking that to mean that they are automatically morally bankrupt. I have broken down my more nuanced take that you seem to mostly agree on, so I guess I’m not sure why you are continuing to push on this one point. No one has called for actually punishing billionaires for this in this specific comment chain; I know that opinion is all over elsewhere, but that’s not relevant to what we have been discussing.

Personally speaking, I’m doing okay under the current system, I recognize where my labor is and has been exploited and am lucky enough myself to get by with what leverage I have. But I recognize that I’m just one bad accident from losing my livelihood and not being able to provide for me and my family. And if the wealth gap continues growing, then billionaires, or the owning capital class in general, should be worried about violence against them. And if that day comes, I for sure ain’t sticking my neck out for some fucking billionaire.

At the end of the day, we can disagree on messaging, but I’ll leave that to proper organizations to get the message right and try to support them when I see them to hopefully turn things around before it turns to violence. But we’re not going to convince anyone here by just getting the perfect message for the masses.

You are right that we seem to be talking in circles, so I’m done here. Going to GI back to enjoying the rest of my weekend and I hope you have a good one.

I’m not calling to break out the guillotine. Just the acknowledgment that the system is flawed and support initiatives to minimize exploitation and pay their labor fairly where they can. At the very least stop using their capital to support initiatives that only support growing their own capital at the expense of others.