One or more human beings are responsible for the code they wrote, and those are the people who should be held accountable. These programs are not acting “on their own”

a livestreamed execution is just a lynching

there's a lot going on right now, but the ability to buy elections in order to stay out of prison is on the ballot whether you realize it or not

reading this, recalling how quickly the killing of Minnesota Rep. Melissa Hortman slipped out of the news

Where I think home energy monitoring will be useful is for load management, especially for people with limited electrical service such as myself (the point of the video I'm working on). But I'd rather that load management be a few simple if/then statements baked into a PLC.

Well and, to be clear, my angst here is that the actual course of action one needs to take to reduce energy costs will always come back to "do less" Even the stuff largely outside your control, like HVAC costs due to the weather, still involve choices which imo should be obvious.

My whole "energy is energy" schtick is because I know people don't realize this. I don't want to poo-poo anyone's curiosity, but information is not a substitute for intuition (and vice versa!).

I have a very specific purpose in mind for such a system, and it has to do with demonstration. Otherwise, the info it provides me will satisfy a few curiosities and then will no longer be relevant to my life at all. Yet, apparently many people install these because they can't keep track of stuff.

We're also at what, to me, is a baffling place where people feel they need hard data to make certain decisions. Like, I'm in the process of installing a home energy monitoring system. It will not help me save energy because somehow the lesson of "turn shit off if you're not using it" stuck with me.

So for the weirdos who find the notion of booping a card or phone up to a payment terminal so incredibly tedious that they're willing to give their payment details to a car company, well they can have their fun. Meanwhile, folks like me who view that as a load of nonsense can be happy, too!

Let's hope so. And I agree there are signs: Ionna's decision to not even bother with an app for their charging network and to just put credit card readers on their charging stations is a great example. It's also a great example of what a false choice is: they still support plug-and-charge!

Both

Every supposed benefit of putting all my ID and payment info into my phone does not register as convenient to me and/or has an alternative available already. So why would I want to get used to a new way of existing? I don't. I wish more people would respect that.

This may be different brain things but that doesn't seem like a lot of energy to me. It's just applying a bit of imagination to puzzle through a future scenario. People will have different priories, of course, but for instance it's this exercise specifically which keeps me carrying a wallet.

It's less about attachment and more about dependency. I'm no longer going to integrate something into my life that I don't have full, permanent, and sole control over Where I know I differ from many folks is that my response is usually to just say "I don't need that" rather than build my own thing

That's really the core of it to me. Not many people are sensitive to or even aware of the vulnerabilities they're introducing to their lives when they accept a system for convenience that can be altered or shut off externally. And "vulnerabilities" includes "forcing user-hostile UI changes"

I think the new thing we're dealing with is that our devices are no longer static. I am still excited about technologies and automation that help people! But we've let ourselves become convinced that it's "better" for those technologies to alter the terms of the deal after it's made.

Way too many people do stuff because of peer pressure. Keeping up with the Joneses, and all that. Too much cynicism is unhealthy, of course, but enough to keep your self-awareness in check is good.