I drive a van in the UK (work related). I suspect bringing SUVs into the same rules as vans would be remarkably effective. They are often the same weight already.

Basically, vans have 10mph knocked off national speed limit roads (50 on single, 60 on duel carriageways). Apply the same to SUVs (and enforce it!).

Those who need them can still buy them. They are just required to drive a bit safer and slower. It will put off those who just want a big fast ‘safe’ vehicle.

Oh, and I still remember queuing up to buy one of the first ones for a younger sibling.

I wouldn’t describe them as evil. Evil is far too mild a word. 😅

I explicitly typed furby, apparently the autocorrect decided I was wrong.

Fixed, and thanks!

It’s a biblically accurate angel, I think. Though why it also looks like a furby, I don’t know.

/Edit unautocorrected furry back to furby.

Off the top of my head.

• Adjusting from the sofa, or bed.

• Auto off when you leave the house.

• Auto off when the room is unused for a while (great with kids).

• Colour temperature and brightness adjustment to match sunlight (great for conditioning children to go to bed easily).

• Party Mode

• Auto dim turn on at night(avoids waking you up to much on bathroom runs).

I’ve been trying to find a IoT thermometer that can survive oven temperatures long term (or at least its probe can). No luck so far. I currently don’t really trust its own settings.

A bit of both. It’s a mindset that keeps me from doing anything too stupid, and a good one to pass on to others. I can play around, so long as I don’t make her life harder.

It mostly stops me putting brittle, or janky setups into use. I need to actually streamline and ruggedise them. I benefit from that too, in the long run.

I’ve been playing with my smart home for years now. I’m well past the “oh wow” honeymoon phase and into the “just do your job” phase.

I forgot to mention WAF, Wife Acceptance Factor. Any smart system should fall back to a dumb one, if something goes wrong. E.g. You should never require WiFi to turn your lights on. There should always be a switch that will just work. Central control computer crashes? The wife is annoyed the house is now just dumb, not that the house is now dead.

I’ve considered that, for the same reasons. My machines are obnoxious enough to be heard through half the house on their own however.

The built in smart ones seem to be the worst of all worlds. They farm you for data, while not providing much of use. They try to tie you into ecosystems, that stop you using the data elsewhere.

My solution was going to be to monitor current draw, via a power monitoring plug, running Tasmota. Once it’s below a threshold for long enough, send an alert.

Smart home stuff can be done right.

• You need to focus on the use case. Is what it is doing actually necessary? E.g. smart lights are amazingly useful, smart washing machine? Why?!?

• The S in IoT stands for security. Smart devices need to be treated as security risks. Mine have their own WiFi to play on. They don’t get to play with my important devices. Also, internet access is a privilege, not a right. ZigBee is often superior to WiFi too. Control the bridge and you have absolute control of their internet access.

• Open source for the win. A lot of IoT options can run open source firmware. This helps break open the black boxes and let you see if they are doing bad things. Home assistant, EspHome, and Tasmota are the big 3 to look into.

• If you’re not the customer, you’re the product. Google etc sell smart speakers at a loss. If you must have them, treat them as actively hostile. I’m still trying to find a good alternative to some of their functions, but getting there.

We knew the forebrain and hindbrain were different. This research shows that the difference is OLD, and likely from when the brain was more distributed. They also found that, while they function in almost the same way, they are built from different genetic tool kits.

Basically, we knew there was a difference. This explains what the difference is and how to work around the problems it has created.

It also needs to be somewhere geologically stable. You really don’t want erosion cracking open the storage. That limits the options.

It’s also worth noting that habitability can change remarkably rapidly. E.g. the Sahara went through a green period. It ended about 5000 years ago. The reverse can also happen.

The mindset being used is also layered defense. We need to make it simultaneously understandable, boring and off-putting. Putting it somewhere inaccessible also helps.

Hydrocarbons are one of the best energy stores available. We also have large networks already set up to distribute and use them. Being able to dump large amounts of excess energy into hydrocarbons as energy storage and feedstock would be a big gain for saving the planet.