The only ones worth getting have Lidar. I've had a 'random path' one before and it was like you described. My Lidar one runs every day with only a rare issue when I leave a cord strung across the floor or similar.
That's what I thought and hence I bought the eufy model with a lidar; I also thought maybe the technology in 2025 is more mature but it wasn't the case. It would complain about obstacles even thought there was nothing on the ground. Maybe I was unlucky both the times but I am just way more satisfied when I clean the house with my $100 hand held vaccum haha.
I still think the value prop is dubious for a device like this.
> turn stuff on or off remotely
Why? Nearly all modern humidifiers have a sensor to measure humidity and will cycle on and off based on the setpoint. Getting to the setpoint also takes time so I don't see any reason someone would want to turn it on and off based on presence.
> (turn on/off based on outside sensors or the current electricity price...)
Not sure why the outside sensors would matter, it's concerned with the inside humidity which again it has a sensor to read. The amount of electricity these take to run isn't worth even mentioning.
> get status alerts ("tank empty, refill")
So you can refill it remotely? You have to be present to fill it anyway - just look at the thing and you'll know its water level
I say all this as someone who also run Home Assistant and automates various things.
Hm, I have the opposite setup - I operate a dehumidifier. The building I live in gets humid quickly, and that causes mould quickly. My tank fills. When the tank is full (and, depending on outside conditions and number of humans present, that happens anytime between 16 and 40 hours), the device stops dehumidifying to prevent tank overflow.
Yes, I do still need to be present to empty the tank. But automated warnings when the tank is full (in combination with more intense 'room's LED lightbulb flashing red' when BOTH the tank is full AND humidity rises above 60%) are nice - otherwise, I'd have more mental load to check a little tiny LED on the device itself every two days or so, which, surprise, I would keep forgetting.
Why are outside sensors relevant in my use-case? Because running the dehumidifier is pointless when the window is open AND outside humidity exceeds inside humidity (and electricity is expensive where I live).
Secondary use-case: mould and 'rentee did not air out the humidity correctly' are some of the more common points of conflict between landlords and rentees over here. With my smart dehumidifier (and a few more sensors placed around the apartment and outside), I have a paper trail should this ever come in front of a judge that yes, in fact, I correctly fought humidity.
Is my use-case everyone's use-case? No. Am I probably over-engineering this? Sure, it's possible. Is it nice and kind to make broad paternalistic assumptions and snarky jokes on what and what not "anyone" really needs? Doubtful.
You're arguing from device capability. I’m arguing from human cognitive load and failure modes.
The question isn't "can the (de)humidifier regulate humidity on its own?", but "how many low-level checks and mental reminders does it eliminate over months of use?".
For people who forget, get distracted, or simply want fewer things to keep in mind, that's not dubious value - it's the entire point.
It's a good thing personal choice exists and you don't make the rules for everyone.
> I don't see any reason someone would want to turn it on and off based on presence.
Maybe someone doesn't want the noise when they are present? Some people like white noise, some don't.
> The amount of electricity these take to run isn't worth even mentioning.
Not everyone lives where you do and pays the electricity rates you do. What about people who generate their own electricity, live off a grid, or just plain want to conserve energy for a myriad a reasons? Turning off specific loads based on XYZ is useful.
> So you can refill it remotely? You have to be present to fill it anyway - just look at the thing and you'll know its water level
Maybe the humidifier is in a low visible or less-trafficked area, and getting a reminder to fill it up would be useful.
What a terrible take you have on people's use case not exactly matching yours.
If the blame were solely on the user then we'd see similar rates of deaths from gun violence in the US vs. other countries. But we don't, because users are influenced by the UX
Somehow people don't kill people nearly as easily, or with as high of a frequency or social support, in places that don't have guns that are more accessible than healthcare. So weird.
Real-debrid == imagine a huge cloud storage service. You have 1000 people trying to download Burgonia.4k.mkv. it downloads the torrent once to the shared server, then gives each user their own access to it via a WebDAV mount.
WebDAV == trick you server into thinking a cloud server is a local folder. You use RClone to mount this and it's accessible from your local drive so you can stream all your stuff directly.
What this means: you add a show in Sonarr or a movie in Radarr. Prowlarr searches Torrentio or Zilean for torrents. The best match is chosen. It sends to Decypharr (or black hole) to say "download this torrent to my real debrid box". It finds the cached version of the file, which is instantly available in your drive. It's symlinked so Plex can pick up the file.
Basically the lead time from requesting a movie/series to watching it on your tv is about 10 seconds, with no storage overhead required.
Having figured it out myself, I agree. And it's not obvious that you need both a Usenet _indexer_ (who tells you what content is available) and a Usenet provider (who actually serves you the content).
FWIW, and I'm not sure if this is against terms here, but I use newsgeek for the former and giganews for the latter. Both are paid services but reasonably priced imo. When I can find something on Usenet, it typically downloads with speeds > 10MBps vs. torrenting which can exceed that but is usually much slower.
You can use whatever client you want. I have the *arr stack mentioned elsewhere in this thread as well and SABnzbd is the recommended option there.
Between you and your provider the downloads are over HTTP. The distribution of content between the Usenet providers is over the Usenet protocol which predates HTTP and the WWW.
They're not quite available off the shelf. Best Buy and Walmart are marketplace sellers now. Meaning the bar is extremely low to start selling whatever you want on their website. They don't actually have the stock or have any in stores.
It's infuriating to take the time to draft & send a thought out email to my representatives only to receive a canned email 8 months later.
Most of the time the response is even something like "ok cool opinion but I believe the opposite so bummer" (obviously exaggerated but the meaning is identical).
I will try a letter at some point, email feels completely useless.
Time is of the essence, so I might just have a chatbot draft me something quickly and edit it or rewrite it to more what I want to say. Just emphasize the main points that even the linked article mentions - hugely bad for business, loss of taxes, bad for veterans, people will just go back to the black market for their needs, etc. I'm kind of surprised I'm not finding sites like NORML have any of those "take action" forms on their site you just fill in and it sends it out to all your representatives automatically.
Regardless, it doesn't need to be something you spend hours pouring your heart into.
Some representatives respond differently than others. I've gotten boilerplate letters back, and I've even had phone calls back with someone from their office. It really just depends.
EDIT: It's already been signed into law, so now they have 1 year to try and remedy the situation... :(
In the last few months I've seen many advertisements for a device they call the "Super Box" - it's essentially an (Android based?) IPTV device with every channel imaginable. The people I know with them paid around $300 and there isn't a monthly fee.
I have a hunch they're trading free TV for becoming a residential proxy unknowingly. Would love to capture network traffic from one and see what's really going on.
The fact that people are willing to buy these super sketchy devices and plug them into their networks without a second thought is kinda scary.
Well didn't lookup Super Box but I assume it's less sketchy than you image.
It probably just pulls from something like https://github.com/iptv-org/iptv and so the provider of Super Box doesn't have to maintain pretty much anything or use any of their own bandwidth. So the $300 minus the cost of the hardware is the profit and they don't have real reoccurring costs.
I've never seen a $300 one but I've seen $70 ones. I don't think they're nefarious in that sense, but these boxes are usually scams.
They come preloaded with a pirate iptv service that only works for 1-2 months then they ask you to pay something like $70/year to keep watching. There's tons of providers for these IPTV services so bundling them with the boxes is a way to make it easy to access while gaining subscriptions, you can just buy a cheap android TV box yourself, install the apk and get a cheaper IPTV provider.
Most of these boxes/providers don't last more than a couple years as authorities tend to go after them when they get too big. My dad uses them to watch portuguese TV--it would be impossible to watch certain channels outside the country otherwise--and in the past 10 years he changed provider 3-4 times.
Similarly most fire stick pirate streaming and side loading tutorials use an app called “downloader” which includes a URL shortener. Users are given an 8 digit “downloader code” and most blindly download and sideload APKs on their device. Probably a field day for anyone wanting to bundle and distribute malware.
These have been a thing for a while - check your local Craigslist for "fully loaded" Fire sticks or other streaming TV devices. I wouldn't be surprised at all if you're correct - these devices are marketed to technically unsophisticated users, by vendors who have every incentive to maximize profit.
They’re generally not selling a million of these or even tens of thousands of these, so setting up residential proxy software on the boxes would almost certainly not be worth the time spent.
I wouldn't expect the installers to be setting a proxy network themselves, but rather acting as an affiliate for an existing network and collecting commissions from that.
Alternatively, I wouldn't be surprised if some of the apps installed on these devices have their own embedded malware - the operators of the pirate TV networks are looking to get paid, too.
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