I don’t need physical media, a DRM-free download that I can save on my own will do.

All government agencies get gouged. It’s absurd.

Man, you can’t even teach adults that.

Maybe, but Amazon in particular will also bag/box every solitary thing. Not sure if it balances, but it’s an interesting question when you put it that way.

Still, I expect they prioritize meeting service levels over fuel economy.

The same company that will same day deliver a single tube of toothpaste to my door doesn’t care about carbon emissions? What?

The company benefits by convincing investors that is still growing and innovating. If investors think they are still growing their stock prices go up. If their stock prices go up then they can use their stock as an asset to borrow against or as a form of payment in lieu of cash. Stock is particularly useful to a company as a medium of exchange because they can just make more. But they can only do that without tanking the value if people are buying, and they can only keep people buying if they think the price will go up, and the only thing the price will go up if they think the company is going to become more profitable in the future.

This is basically Cory Doctrow’s argument in his latest book.

Aquara C1. Use Home Assistant and your own Zigbee antenna.

It’s actually pretty handy, and can be useful for portion control too.

There is no reason it should require a cloud connection.

Repeat after me: Local control. Local control. Local control.

“The Cloud” is just other people’s computers.

You had me up until “you can’t really fault anyone involved”, because actually you can.

These systems are designed, marketed, and used irresponsibly. In the case of any given error we will have to decide which party violated our expectations and committed the act most responsible for the crime.