This is my experience. I had them on my desk in a test bay to make sure they were all good to go and the only time I notice them is when they’re doing a lot of read/write movements. While they idle they’re quiet. So it depends on your use case, where the drive physically is, and what the drive is attached to. If it’s mounted with nice rubber dampers or something you might never hear them. If they’re mounted up to a loose chunk of metal they might rattle and drive you nuts.

I just grabbed a pair of 18TB Seagate Exos SATA drives - surprisingly quiet for what they are.

This is exactly how my local municipal fiber network works. The the county owns, and builds put, the fiber network and maintains it, selling network access to local ISPs who sell to customers.

Only shitty part is that if you want to have a connection built out that isn’t on their plan, you have to fund the fiber run to you from wherever the nearest spot is, and that can be many thousands of dollars.

I imagine if we expanded the program like you’re talking about in the rest of the world, we could actually run it fine, like, we have the ability to… It’s just that the people in power are fucking awful.

I’m desperately hoping that conversations or conversion kits become more of a thing so I can keep my dumb car, but electrify it.

Cuz it’s either that or maybe wait till cars start getting jailbroken and open source operating systems (ugh) like phones and computers… Which absolutely shouldn’t have to be a thing. But here we are.

Not sure if you’re still researching, but I really like the Bluetooth ones.

For the Pi4, I use a little USB Bluetooth adapter from pluggable ($13-ish) on a 10-ft USB extension cable to get the module away from other things. I think the pi has Bluetooth built in? But I never got it working. But generic little Bluetooth USB things are perfect. With the USB extension cable I have great whole-house coverage (small house though)

Then for the sensors, I get a 3pk SwitchBot IP65 indoor/outdoor hygrometer.

They’re on sale on Amazon right now for $25-ish for 3, so it’s a pretty good deal.

As far as placement, I have some outside - they’re fine. I try to place them where they’re not getting totally hosed by rain or snow - under a tree or in the greenhouse or under my garage eaves sheltered from direct sunlight and rain.

They are very low power consumption (2x AAA batteries included) and I’ve had some running over a year and they still have more than 50% battery. (The battery level does report to home assistant)

They show up on home assistant immediately after powering up - no apps or anything needed. Just adopt them and set their location in the home assistant settings.

Hell yeah. Also, support your local library! I know your local library doesn’t have a free for all streaming service, but they lend books and all kinds of media… Just imagine if we could push it to where your local library DID have a Plex/Jellyfin/Netflix-esque service? Just log in with your library card! That’s the dream…

Well, shit.

Health!

Forgot to mention: controls that don’t suck

You might also ask nicely for folks to send you theirs. Especially since Nintendo is going after Yuzu, I’m sure there’s plenty of folks that would volunteer keys via DM just to stick it to Nintendo…

I’m also in the “my USB Xbox 360 controller is great” camp and wish that they still made them

Just try not to get fakes that are just the normal garbage with drift

From everything I’ve heard about running a reliable and trustworthy email service, it sounds like a fucking nightmare. I’m glad to pay something like proton to handle it for me.

Libraries are fuckin rad. Everyone should go to their local library if they exist locally. Just going in and out the door helps their counts.

I, too, love my old Brother laser printer. Their website is absolute garbage though. I don’t know what they did to it, but it is just slow as hell.

Definitely spend the extra $10 for duplex printing or regret it for the rest of your life.

(Seriously, why even make non-diplex printers?)

If you uninstall is there any guarantee that the kernel level anticheat gets removed, too, or are they in there forever?

Sony is a Japanese corporation

If you’re able, try and trust a VPN provider, and route all your networking traffic through them. At least that’ll cut out your ISP from being able to harvest as much.

I basically stopped using wired headphones when Work From Home became a thing. I kept getting up from my desk and wanting to keep my audio going while wandering around and having wireless is perfect for my small house. I would definitely want to go back to wired if I was commuting or out in public daily though.

I, too, have done blender and CAD. Did solidworks in school and then used Fusion. Both have same parametric modeling principles that make modeling work well. I’ve also used blender, and it’s… Definitely not a parametric modeling solution. It could be. Maybe. And if that was an option, that would be amazing.