Can’t both be true? It can be true that Roblox keeps kids hooked through shady practices but if not them, kids would have sought other places. Club Penguin, RuneScape, WOW, Xbox Live, all served similar functions for myself growing up, I don’t find it hard to believe I would have ended up on Roblox
I would agree it's both. Ideally we would make many games restricted access and most games games less addictive. At this stage the only viable plan I can think of is for parents to join a cult or cult like group where the parents are dedicated to restricted screen time and enforcing outdoor play. One parent alone can't make it happen. Maybe the quakers were onto something. :)
Just downvote or flag. It looks like you only have 17 karma so I don't think you can do either (I know you can't downvote, I'm not sure what, if any, threshold there is for flagging), so the best thing to do is to ignore it. Contribute to the site until you get enough karma, and then downvote/flag this kind of nonsense.
I feel exactly the same way. The first night of real rest feels as if my body “caught up” to how sleep deprived I was and I often don’t accomplish much that day.
The wifi APs too. And not "will" stop working but "might, and if so I won't be around to reboot it." Also regularly tests that stuff will return to health after a real power outage, and that nothing is depending on ephemeral state like DHCP leases. Basically, I want to experience the same circumstances during the week I'm visiting that they're going to experience for months after.
Ubiquiti APs failed this test. The moment one started an OTA update, my mom temp unplugged it to make room for a blender. It soft-bricked itself. Parents couldn't figure out how to reconfigure it after a hard reset.
I usually SOIC clip/backup the firmware on Ubiquity and other devices we own, before doing anything like this (more recently). Its usually so much faster and reliable than an RMA in most cases for a simple firmware update fail, especially with the post pandemic supply chain the way its been.
Took awhile to get the approval but when you have a large pile of RMAs sitting for 6mo to a year due to a bad firmware update, for only a standard 1-2 year limited warranty, and they stop responding, and replacements were back-ordered for ages. Well, you do what you have to.
For wifi in the kitchen. The walls have wire mesh that happens to block RF really badly, so wifi will only work in the same room. If internet went down, house was also a cell dead zone so nobody could talk to me while looking at the router or something.
Usually the power brick is poorly isolated and/or you have dirty electricity, it results in errors on an ongoing basis that get logged to the small amount of onboard memory. (not usually a circular buffer.)
When the errors have sufficient volume the memory fills up, and it stops working at resource exhaustion.
In a real pinch, I've resolved this in some of the more milder cases by simply using one of those walmart plug timers that turns off for a few minutes in the morning when everyone is asleep.
Well, at least they were on UPS and got power conditioning that way. But there's also just crappy programming. It's not only ISP-provided stuff, it's cheap home routers in general. I don't trust them.
My family would play a similar game at Easter. We paint hard-boiled eggs a day or two before, then on Easter, we each pick our "fighter" and attempt to break the other person's egg. Point to point is allowed, and you have several attempts with the different sides of the egg before the bout is over.
They sometimes have deals that beat NewEgg and Amazon prices, like CPU motherboard combos, parts on clearance, etc. They also will price match Amazon and NewEgg prices. The staff at my closest Micro Center is knowledgeable, and of course it’s nice going to a physical store. Shopping for monitors was much nicer being able to physically look at it, rather than trying to comb reviews and hope the one you ordered online looks good.
Same-day shopping, returns, being able to look at things, and talk to people count for something too.
I can't count the number of times when I bought a motherboard, and didn't realize my old AT power supply no longer worked with an ATX motherboard, or some other random standard, connector, or form factor changed. You can ask an employee "Will these five parts make a computer?" and get an answer, or even configure one up on their web site.
Plus, sometimes there are defective parts. You buy a part that doesn't work. You plug together motherboard, RAM, CPU, and power supply, hit the power switch, and very little happens, with no real way to debug. I won't say that's easy or seamless with Microcenter, but if you have five parts from Newegg and Amazon, you're basically SOL.
And if you forgot something -- and I've never built a computer where I didn't forget something -- you can pick it up. All the little things are just easier. Building a PC requires a ton of screws, cables, and adapters. I've never had the right set come with parts. Sometimes, the motherboard, case, and peripheral will all come with the same $0.50 part (Yay! I have two extra I don't need), or none will.
With COVID19, I've missed Microcenter; they don't do curbside pickup, and generally have avoided taking any sorts of basic safety measures. It's odd.
I haven't been to that location since the coof hit hard last year. At that time, they were open but locked the fuck DOWN. Only 10 people allowed in the store at a time, and they checked your temperature and made you sanitize before shopping. I guess they got a pass to operate as a seller of "essential goods" (Chromebooks for school kids?) but they were NOT messing around with the pandemic.
I think computer and office supplies are just as essential as home repair goods, auto parts, or household goods in the economy. They're not as essential as food or running water, but they're in that very next tier I think.
The last time I went to the Cambridge Microcenter (~1 month ago) they were spraying your hands with sanitizer the moment you walked in. I haven't seen any local grocery store do that.
It's a fantastic store, but it very clearly hasn't had a remodel since it opened.
As someone who has frequently toyed with getting more serious about electronics over the years, I find the ability to browse components in person invaluable.
Unfortunately my Frys has been crumbling for years (nothing says “commitment to excellence” like dozens of buckets around the store capturing rain water), and I finally gave up going.
It appears humidity doesn't really impact an already burning wildfire, but lower humidity means drier fuel which makes the fire more likely to spread. Conversely, higher humidity can make a fire less likely to spread to moister fuel[1]
I previously put together something like this, but my only gripe was having the usb cable hanging down to an outlet to power the whole thing. I tried a solution by scrapping the Pi, using a nodemcu with a portable power bank and putting the node in low power mode and only regularly coming on to check for updates and to update the thermostat state, but then it became just another thing to charge, so I scrapped that too, maybe a revisit is in store.
The following is relevant to your comment, since you I think are talking about a standard, conventional setup. In contrast, the article has a weird setup for an apartment.
There are adapters you can use to work around the lack of wires. The existing wires already include power, it's the ground that's missing.
The existing 4 wires to a standard dumb thermostat are:
Power
heat
A/C
fan
The functions are enabled by connecting power to whichever is required. But there is a missing "C" (common) wire. So, as you discovered, smart thermostats have no easy way to also power themselves.
I was lucky when I added my smart thermostat. It turned out that my 20 y/o house already had an 8 wire cable preinstalled.
For people stuck with 4 wires, there are adapters available that will multiplex two control signals onto one existing wire. This lets you free up another of the existing wires to become the needed fifth C wire.
Here's one setup I found with a quick search. There's even a video. This adapter requires access to both ends, viz. the thermostat and the furnace.
Trouble with it is that they often times don’t include a ground wire. All the thermostat does is connect the power wire to the given function wire (like “fan on” or “heat pump 1 on”. I am not an expert but having installed a number of thermostats in a number of homes, all the manuals talk about the ground wire being rare and I have never seen one. If you are lucky you might have an unused wire that you can find a ground for, but I have only seen that once. Somehow when houses are wired it seems the HVAC people are very efficient with using the exact right number of wires in a single cable.
I wasn't a fan of messing with the thermostat housing but just now after pulling it off, I think my thermostat isn't anything fancy like that, just two black load and two red line wires. It's also important to note that my thermostat connects to baseboard heaters, not an HVAC system.
Even ones connected to fancy heating and cooling systems aren’t that complex and instructions are usually spot on. A simple heating system like you describe is, well, simple. Connect wires, get heat. I’m sure you can figure it out.
That only works if they didn't staple it to the wall or bury it in spray-foam insulation. I ended up having to run a new one but was lucky that the floor-board was under the garage. I ran a piece of cat5e as well in case there is ever an option to get a thermostat that can use it.
