• 5 Posts
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Joined 3 years ago
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Cake day: July 9th, 2023

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  • This is not as big a deal as the headline shows. No one would pay that much.

    The unfortunate reality is American healthcare is geared to generate humongous bills but that’s just the starting point. Normally your insurance company will then negotiate it down. If you don’t have insurance, you can usually get them to write off huge amounts.

    One of the underlying problems is not everyone has insurance but everyone will get at least emergency care. Hospitals know there will be a lot of bills that can never be paid, so their initial bill to everyone needs yo account for that loss.

    That and the general extractive nature of the us health care system, the massive number of layers and middlemen that all need to show a profit

    But clearly the problem here is the non-us insurance company not dealing with it until forced to nine months later

    Worst case scenario- go home and never come bs k. That bill is not following you to another country




  • It can, unfortunately.

    We might celebrate Steve Jobs as an entrepreneur who started building computers in a garage and grew it into one of the world’s largest companies but that’s not common.

    For me the scamminess is pure internet “entrepreneurs”. We’ve all seen those who have no real product or service except self-promotion, and it seems sketchy that part of that is calling themselves an entrepreneur. We’ve all seen mlm’s where victims are sold on being “entrepreneurs”. Basically word inflation: using a more important sounding word to seem more on the level








  • Tesla always had “light show” as a fun gimmick. It’s one of the first things you show friends and family.

    There’s a few canned versions but apparently you can create your own on usb stick. Supposedly it was an outgrowth of qa, so it includes things like windows and trunk opening and closing, side mirrors folding and unfolding, all timed to music, etc. Even before the active matrix headlights were approved for regular use, one of the canned light shows used them to spell out “Tesla” on whatever is in front of you.

    A recent update mentioned new light shows and a way to synchronize. I can certainly imagine a Tesla club having great fun with this






  • I got into each mesh technology for specific devices. Home Assistant supports them all and they seem to coexist just fine in my use case.

    I have a small to medium setup with only a few simple automations and a focus on voice control and scheduling

    Preference

    • Thread - given Apple, Amazon, and Google support and the standardization work, I expect this to be the future. Eventually. But I’m getting impatient. If I’m buying a device, I prefer Thread but usually it’s not yet
    • z-Wave - my first, and most devices. Basically this was what was most available at local stores when I started. No complaints
    • Zigbee - by far the biggest selection of simple, cheap sensors. I need to more of those
    • all too much is WiFi but I try to avoid

    But it also helps that my approach is generally switches and outlets. Hard-wired, predictable network, tend to be repeaters. I have comparatively fewer leaf nodes.

    This approach also fits in with my biggest challenge. While my house is small, it’s an older one with dense materials that blocks a lot of radio signals. For example I have no cell phone reception inside yet strong signal just out any door. My focus on switches and outlets overcome this with a repeater in every room

    So for example a few years back I got a z-wave IR blaster to control a mini-split AC because at the time I mostly used z-wave. I already had a z-wave light switch in the same room, acting as a repeater, so no worries about connectivity. Now I have both z-wave and Zigbee light switches in that room so expect both meshes to be strong for any future devices in that room