I don’t mind much paying for streaming (although that’s increasingly more and more annoying and I still tend to just download whatever I actually care about) but until and unless I can pay to “own” a movie and they just provide me with a DRM free video file of some sort, I will never “purchase” digital content like this.

If you tried this kind of bullshit in just about any other context, even normal people would think you’re crazy.

Normal Person: “hi there, one blender please. I’ll take this one for $25.”
Sales person: “Cool here’s your receipt.”
NP:: “It says here at the bottom of the receipt that you can just come in my house and take this blender back whenever you want or maybe never?”
SP: “yep.”
NP:: “And you don’t tell people that ahead of time?”
SP: “no when you buy it you agree to that by opening the box and it is on the receipt you get after you bought it.”
NP: “you fuckin with me rn?”
SP: “afraid not, and would you look at that corp says I need that blender back, thanks.”
SP: “oh, shoot. I see here you also bought a toaster from EvilCorp sold in one of our EvilMart locations a couple years ago, we’ve decided to license that brand instead to our new partners FukUMart, so we’ll be taking that toaster but if you want you can head to your local FukUMart and buy that toaster again for more than you paid the first time.”
NP: spontaneously combusts

Home Assistant allows you to select the source, so I tend towards using that. There are other remote specific apps that allow similar.

I think I found this in the Home Assistant forums, which are generally a great resource. I’d also warn that you might want to be careful going this route. It wasn’t quite as straightforward as just popping the SSD in and installing an OS. IIRC, and I know I don’t recall why, I had to DD a disk image to it. That said, there are lots of these thin clients all over ebay where it is literally that easy.

If you have money, I would recommend AppleTV, especially if you have an iPhone. It’s by far the best platform in terms of not being solely an advertising vessel and sucking up your data, and integration with the iPhone even just out of the box is pretty great. That said, they’re the most expensive by 2-3x.

Runner up is def Roku, which is much worse, but still pretty good.

And then there’s me with a Fire TV, mostly because I buy them when they’re $25 for the max fire stick config, and you can automate through the android debug mode. So when I want to use the device, I rarely use the main interface, which is extremely garbage.

Yeah, I explained this poorly. I do have a led strip on motion sensors that turns on with varying brightness depending on whether it’s dark outside. The dimmer in this case is more for me and my wife to get ready in the morning. She’s got makeup to do, so she needs to the light all the way up, I’m extremely not a morning person so I barely turn on the dimmer.

Indeed. I’ve DIY’d all of that and then some, and especially in the age of YouTube in which you can find a hundred videos from electricians that have been around as long the light bulb, it’s some of the simplest home repair/upgrade you can do. And although you do need to respect the inherent danger of working on currents like this, electrical is actually pretty easy to understand for the types of home upgrade/repair like this you might attempt.

Just be mindful of what you can and cannot do based on local regulations. You definitely don’t want to have your house burn down and your home insurance tell you to kick rocks because there was a code violation somewhere, even if it didn’t cause the fire.

My entire setup is a bit of a Frankenstein as I originally started with more wifi stuff before moving to zigbee. Anyway, what I’m running now:

• Dell Wyze thin client from eBay. Was about $30, and I put a $20 ssd in it.
• Sonoff zigbee controller, think that was $30-35. YMMV, but generally as long as you watch out and buy zigbee stuff, you can avoid buying hubs for all of the different manufacturers.
• Various zigbee stuff. I have a bunch of Ikea remotes, motion sensors, and bulbs. I also have a few Lutron Caseta switches (they were the only reasonable option at the time that didn’t require a neutral wire.) I also found some Lutron Aurora dimmer switches on clearance for like $10 at home depot, so I bought the last 4 they had. Ditto for 3-4 Phillips Hue bulb. There are also a few aqara and sonoff pieces besides (buttons, bulbs, etc.)
• and I still have a handful of wifi only stuff. I couldn’t find a good fan controller for my ceiling fan that was zigbee, but I was already bought into the Tuya system, so I bought a compatible device there. There are also a small number of bulbs that I still have in use (like my porch lights, which are just off at dawn, on at dusk.)

The whole thing runs on Home Assistant, which tbh does take a good amount of time to understand and get setup, but it allows you to do some pretty powerful stuff. For one, I only have this as my hub, and everything works through that. I can also use this to control all of the equipment without a bunch of intermediaries like ifttt and all that. It also allows me to do things like connect my ikea remote (zigbee) to my wifi bedside lamp. All of the major smart home platforms (google, Alexa, HomeKit, aqara, etc) are also massively more limited in what you can automate. Just that simple little entry automation I posted above isn’t really a thing because most of the basic smart home things don’t allow simple stuff like conditionals (turn on only if it’s dark) and certainly not stacked conditionals (turn on only if it’s dark, and I’ve just arrived, and the door actually opened.) You can also hook it up pretty easily to smart tv’s or plex, so you can do things like “if I pause the movie, bring the lights up.” Or I have a dumb automation that I can tap one button for and it plays a random ep of TNG for when I can’t sleep on a Fire TV, which is just not even close to doable on the pleb platforms.

Anyway, hope that helps.

This is the way. Though this isn’t exactly cheap to start, I have a $50 eBay thin client (including the price of throwing an ssd in there), a $30 sonoff zigbee controller, install Home Assistant, and boom you’re off to the races. Ikea’s stuff (as well as Phillips hue, which I was able to snag some deals on clearance for) and Lutron Caseta are all zigbee so I have complete local control over most things in my house, minus a few wifi pieces that I’ve been replacing over time. We do similar with the 5 button remotes, and I also have a few different button controllers from sonoff. Ikea’s motion sensors have also been rock solid for me.

And yeah, heating is currently my white whale. My home has electric radiant heating which leaves my only option for thermostats down to one or two units that are $120 or so, and I have like 7-8 in total in the home so that’s just going to have to stay manual for now. Space heater isn’t a bad idea, though.

This is what I use as well.

So many things in your house that are probably pissing you off:

• it’s very easy to replace an outlet that doesn’t hold a plug or is a little off for whatever reason.
• ditto light switches
• door handles and shit. We hated the jank handle on our patio door that barely worked and required specialized training to get to lock. $12 for a new one, that was much more aesthetically from this decade. (that said, some lock lube, which is a thing, goes a long way)
• ditto for the various shitty faucets in this house (or any slightly older house.) You can get a ton of bathroom fixtures for under $30.
• hinges. Unless you’re trying to re-hang a safe door, you’re going to be under $20.
• faucet diffuser. They just screw on. Have you lived in your place for more than a few years and haven’t replace them? Just do it, it’s like $4 a faucet.
• doorbell. Smart doorbells can easily be had for under $50. A little easier often than replacing the traditional bell because you usually have a plug in chime rather than something wired.
• a can of sprayfoam. Seal that area that is letting in air. Trim it with a box knife, chances are you won’t know the hack exists.

Could even make this a little simpler - if somehow you’re not using an SSD at least as the primary boot, please god change that immediately. $50 can easily get you 512gb, often even a TB.

I wish my particular flavor of annoyance could get past this point because it does seem helpful, but I’m even further and can’t really stand a case unless I’m doing something specifically that warrants it.

a few random things:

• $5.99 magnetic measuring spoons. They stick together and nest.
• $18.99 MagSafe phone car mount. I use iPhone and my car supports Android Auto/Carplay, but there isn’t really a good place to stick your phone. This thing is basically a big magnet, I plug my phone in, throw it on this thing, and we good. Worth noting, even if you have CarPlay (guessing Android Auto as well) even though you don’t need to use your phone, some apps have some functions when you’re using them in this manner. EG: maps displays the next few turn by turn directions on the phone screen, and the overview of the map on the carplay screen.
• decent/good chef’s knife. I think the one I’m using now is about $30, but you can get the ol’ reliable Victorinox for around that price or a little cheaper.
• cabinet lighting pucks. I think Walmart has them for like $12 for two, but they are basically stick somewhere, motion activated lights that are battery powered. Paired with rechargeable batteries, I can now see the food that we push to the back of the cabinet to die.
• new streaming stick thingy. Though I greatly prefer Apple TV, it’s hard to justify the price of those compared to Roku/Fire TV. That said, if you’re hanging on to an older version of the Fire TV/Roku, upgrading helps the annoyance factor because it’s just far less slow. We just added a $24.99 4k Fire TV stick, much nicer.
• Wireless chargers for phones. You can get them for like under $10. Buy 5, put them where you generally set your phone down. Or more simply, right next to the bedside. I generally only charge at night, so much nicer to be able to just drop it on a pad/magnet, etc.
• $9 dimmer switch. Our master bath is weird. The toilet/shower area has a door. The sink area connects directly to the bedroom with no door. The sink area has large mirrors and massive amounts of lighting. Fucking sucks if you’re just getting up to pee and you now have the light of the sun on you and your partner at 3am.

more niche, bunch of smart home shit:

• just think about how $10-$20 and a little bit of thought can improve your life. I have a switch connected to my espresso maker, now I can yell in the shower to turn it on to pre-heat. If I had a regular schedule, I could automate this further just on time. I have it set so that once I tell it to turn on, it turns off after 20 minutes.
• motion sensor lights. though technically you don’t need a smart home for this, there are some lights in my house that I only want to turn on when someone is there. I have a hallway, for example, that is more or less a cave tunnel. Any time I’m in that hallway (or anyone else) I want to have some light. So I have a motion sensor that turns the light on, and based on the status of the sun, it dims accordingly. When I walk into my garage, there are a few lights that turn on in sequence and it feels like you’re walking into the bat cave.
• buttons! You can buy many different remotes for < $20. Pretty much anything you automate via voice you also need a button for. Pro-tip, use in-wall switches where you can, but in my case I didn’t have a neutral wire because it’s an older house, and my options were pretty limited/expensive.
• last example: my entryway lights. I have a door sensor ($10-15) so if I open it I can perform an action. My entry light has a smart bulb ($9.) I also have a floor standing lamp adjacent to this that has a smart bulb. What this allows me to do is check when I’ve recently arrived, and if it’s after sunset and the bigger light isn’t already on, turn on this entry light. If my TV is playing a movie, the light goes on in the dimmest setting so arriving people don’t disturb.

The trend when doing web-development since at least 2014 or so is mobile-first responsive design, which is basically as you describe, and it is really not that hard.

You’re right - the only reason that any regular website isn’t performant is usually because it’s chock full of bullshit. Most of the web is unfortunately riddled with a few problems:

• library bloat. The vast majority of developers (even outside of just web) will include a giant library for 1-2 functions instead of just writing it themselves. I don’t really blame them, most of the incentive for development these days has little to do with building things well, but instead focuses on building them quickly. With web dev in particular, it’s extremely common to import a few thousand npm packages from dubious sources.
• on the web especially, everything seems to be running 3-4 different tracker networks, ad tech bullshit, anti-adblock stuff, click/scroll/jackers, etc. I’d hazard a guess that the vast majority of the regular web, the content is less than half of the actual function of the site.
• It’s also extremely common in web dev to use some cool kid toolset designed to recreate photoshop on the web to build a blog or whatever.

I don’t know who is responsible for horizontal scrolling UIs to begin with, but I hate them. Carousels work on mobile where there is touch, and absolutely gargle balls on desktop.

Hamburger menus are basically just junk drawers. Which isn’t to say that you don’t need that stuff, but it’s the lazy out for “eh, I don’t know a good way to incorporate this into the UI, so let’s throw it in this stupid drawer.”

Maybe if the Linux community decided on one default there would be more progress on inroads with desktop Linux.

Well, Linus at least agrees with you. I just watch a talk he gave the other day in which he described one of the biggest problems with Linux desktop being that the distros can’t even decide on a default package manager/way to package applications and all of the difficulties that creates.

It’s funny because even for simple stuff like when I used to update my Plex install manually I’d go to the Plex website, and the list is:

Windows
Mac

Linux: Debian x 32 Bit Debian x.1 32 Bit
Debian x 64 bit
Debian x.1 64 Bit
Fedora …
Ubuntu …
Cent …

and god help you if you’re not on one of those versions or you don’t use one of those distros.

I’m going to have to interject on even on the first point. FWIW, I’m a person who vastly prefers to use a keyboard when possible, can totally live on a CLI only system, etc. Anyway:

It’s faster and easier than using a GUI. This is because you can type a lot faster than you can click-click-drag with a mouse.

This is just not true for the vast majority of people. Have you ever watched normies type?

The other thing is that even with simple stuff like file operations normal users get lost with a GUI where it’s far easier to visualize what is actually happening. If they get a few basic mechanics (click+drag, right click, double click) that’s about all they have to remember to move files around. Compared to learning ls, cd, mv, cp, the directory tree, symbols like . and .. and so forth. Or perhaps my favorite example, quick name a valid tar command. On a GUI system like windows/Mac, they just need to remember they can do things to files by selecting them and right-clicking them. On a CLI only system, how the fuck are you supposed to get a regular user to remember that to compress a file, you type in tar to start with, much less remembering flags (my flavor of choice is usually -xvf.) How many people who regularly use linux even know wtf it’s called tar?

And that’s even forgetting the things like the defaults often being much harder to recover from. In Mac/Windows (and I think even most distros, though I haven’t daily driven a gui linux in a while) deleting a file the default way is a safe operation and easily recoverable because by default the gui is designed to be more user-safe.

Though I don’t think anyone will disagree with the fact that the CLI is an immensely powerful tool that a lot of us can’t do without, it has never been really designed in a way to be accessible to normal users, and I’d be willing to bet that if you were designing a CLI today in a vacuum, it wouldn’t look anything like the one we’re familiar with. It’s why I’d also guess that very few of us that use the command line all of the time don’t have a mile long list of aliases, scripts, switching to shells like zsh and things like zsh-autosuggestions or zsh-syntax-highlighting, colorls, a specific terminal emulator they use, and so on and so forth.

This, and the general business ecosystem. Few companies even ship hardware with Linux support, especially at big business scale. I didn’t even see an option from Dell any longer, Lenovo has one machine it looks like, so you’d be going for something like System76 which operates no where close to the same scale.

I also think that it’s not a great take that the OS vendor shouldn’t include decent default apps for most people. I mean, I know we’re in c/linux, but the vast majority of people don’t want to start with a terminal and build their system out from there. Hell, even the vast majority of linux users don’t, so then it’s just nitpicking where the line of which defaults should be included is.

I have to believe the person who uses Apple Notes, Reminders, Safari, Calendar, etc

I am that person now. Your example about Reminders is basically exactly why. I used to try and then pay for a ton of services to cover reminders/todos because I too was looking for that perfect app that worked just the way I wanted, and really the only thing I got out of it was making a slightly different trade off that I was then paying for in quite a lot of cases. it also happens that nearly all of those apps were closing gaps with the reasons I moved away from them to begin with. For the average user, they likely won’t even look much past the defaults because the defaults are actually pretty good, and so if you don’t have an advanced use case, your needs are covered. Like, I used Trello and Todoist for kanban for larger projects and it’s now native in Reminders.