JustEnoughDucks

Interesting, when I started using FreeCAD I had 0 training, and I have managed to make it work just fine. Was mostly frustrated by the topological naming problem, but that is fixed now.

You can do quite complex things with it.

You just have to put in a bit of effort and think in an additive sketch-extrude workflow. But yeah, not easy to transition from solidworks.

Well the gadgetbridge comment is not really true.

It can’t pull activities from Strava, runkeeper, or similar or push to them. Syncing across services via APIs or Heath Connect stops it from really being a proprietary watch software replacement or a google fit replacement as they all do that and it is a core function because people want to use the apps they want to use. For example, lifting tracking from Progression or similar which other apps like gadgetbridge or strava just aren’t made for. It doesn’t have the functionality built in to cover every activity set.

GPX is extremely limited and is only GPS data, not good for fitness trackers as they track all sorts of activities. TCX or FIT are better, but of course managed by Garmin. There isn’t really an open alternative standard. I guess the closest we come is the Health Connect API which is completely local interoperability.

Just send the energy directly back to the power executives houses with a high power laser. They want the energy for free so badly to pad their profits and buy a 5th yacht, give it to them 😉

Only partially true. The solar panels almost all inject power back into the grid. Power companies started complaining about their profits when they had to actually pay the users for their power that they generated so now home power generating houses get paid pennies on the dollar for delivering power and reducing the power capacity needed by the power companies and of course the power companies didn’t lower prices at all, so they are just sucking up the difference in pure profit.

Actually, the AI assistant fad isn’t all bad.

HomeAssistant has an open souce assistant pipeline that integrates into the most flexible smart home software around. It is completely local and doesn’t rely on the cloud at all. Essentially it could make Alexa’s and google homes (that literally spy on you and send key phrases back to your built data collection profile) obsolete. That is a way not to have to rely on corporate bullshit privacy invasion to have a good smart home.

Indeed transcribing and translating (and preserving dying languages and being able to re-teach them) are 2 of the best consumer uses for AI. Then there is accelerating disease and climate research.

If these were the use cases that were pushed instead of fucking conversational assistants, replacements for customer support that only direct to existing incomplete docs, taking away artists’ jobs, and creating 1984 “you can’t trust your own eyes and ears” in real time, then AI would actually be very worthwhile.

What?

He is saying that AI uses countries worth of energy by itself. Even a normal search query using AI uses orders of magnitude more energy than a traditional search query.

Literally tech companies have been buying or reserving entire power plants exclusively for training AI datasets. At least Microsoft reactivated an old nuclear plant instead of buying out coal plant energy shares.

And 90% of uses for AI are absolute dogshit corporate fluff or a shiny activity for 10 year olds to play with for 30 minutes.

There are legitimate uses like auto note taking, voice assistants, etc… But it is destroying the environment because corporations are shoving it into every possible thing they can, quadrupling the energy growth rate and straining our electrical grids and burning tons and tons more coal to do it.

Here in Belgium there used to be big government subsidies for solar panels 5-10 ago.

Now the same wattage battery + solar setup without any government subsidies is a good chunk cheaper than that time with the large subsidies.

Pretty cool and shows the power of government renewables subsidies. A huge percentage of houses in Belgium have solar panels now.(and electricity still costs 0.30€/kWh average because of fossil fuel energy lobbies)

Now that there is a local industry around it, most renovations and almost all new builds include them.