I just grabbed a pair of 18TB Seagate Exos SATA drives - surprisingly quiet for what they are.

This is exactly how my local municipal fiber network works. The the county owns, and builds put, the fiber network and maintains it, selling network access to local ISPs who sell to customers.

Only shitty part is that if you want to have a connection built out that isn’t on their plan, you have to fund the fiber run to you from wherever the nearest spot is, and that can be many thousands of dollars.

I imagine if we expanded the program like you’re talking about in the rest of the world, we could actually run it fine, like, we have the ability to… It’s just that the people in power are fucking awful.

Not sure if you’re still researching, but I really like the Bluetooth ones.

For the Pi4, I use a little USB Bluetooth adapter from pluggable ($13-ish) on a 10-ft USB extension cable to get the module away from other things. I think the pi has Bluetooth built in? But I never got it working. But generic little Bluetooth USB things are perfect. With the USB extension cable I have great whole-house coverage (small house though)

Then for the sensors, I get a 3pk SwitchBot IP65 indoor/outdoor hygrometer.

They’re on sale on Amazon right now for $25-ish for 3, so it’s a pretty good deal.

As far as placement, I have some outside - they’re fine. I try to place them where they’re not getting totally hosed by rain or snow - under a tree or in the greenhouse or under my garage eaves sheltered from direct sunlight and rain.

They are very low power consumption (2x AAA batteries included) and I’ve had some running over a year and they still have more than 50% battery. (The battery level does report to home assistant)

They show up on home assistant immediately after powering up - no apps or anything needed. Just adopt them and set their location in the home assistant settings.

Hell yeah. Also, support your local library! I know your local library doesn’t have a free for all streaming service, but they lend books and all kinds of media… Just imagine if we could push it to where your local library DID have a Plex/Jellyfin/Netflix-esque service? Just log in with your library card! That’s the dream…

They did, and we’re really up front about it being an opt-in thing, if I remember correctly. Might have started that easy with Microsoft, too. But they can’t resist enshitifying.

Well, shit.

Health!

We lived in a house with a bunch of roommates when we got our dog, and at some point “fuck off” became “go lie down on your bed and get outta my space”… So now if “go lie down” isn’t taking, then “fuck off” works…

From everything I’ve heard about running a reliable and trustworthy email service, it sounds like a fucking nightmare. I’m glad to pay something like proton to handle it for me.

Libraries are fuckin rad. Everyone should go to their local library if they exist locally. Just going in and out the door helps their counts.

I, too, love my old Brother laser printer. Their website is absolute garbage though. I don’t know what they did to it, but it is just slow as hell.

Definitely spend the extra $10 for duplex printing or regret it for the rest of your life.

(Seriously, why even make non-diplex printers?)

If you uninstall is there any guarantee that the kernel level anticheat gets removed, too, or are they in there forever?

Yeah, 4. Bought when we bought the house. Kitchen, bedroom, garage, and living roon where the wood stove is. Little one-time use ones in basement and kitchen again.

And sometimes they don’t. You gotta check ahead, unless you’re going there anyway

I have a single spreadsheet with fairly simple formulas for calculating monthly expenses based on average recurring bills vs. (after tax) salary income.

I can see generally what my “discretionary” balance should be and that gets spent on food, stuff, etc.

Things that are recurring: Mortgage, Utilities (take annual average if you can), services, savings, etc.

Use savings like any other bill - a certain amount must be paid/deposited every month. Use automatic balance transfers from checking->savings on payday to facilitate.

I don’t try to get too fancy with it and heavily leverage automatic bill pay for making sure I can’t forget anything.

Check all your accounts regularly. For me that’s a weekend task to do with my morning coffee. Check account balances, make sure credit accounts are addressed as needed, review investments if applicable, but don’t freak out about them.

I’m partial to treating investments as long term gambles that are NOT something I’m relying on for retirement. It’s just something else to slowly build up over the long run that might be something that can help later or pass on.

I also endorse and recommend proton for de-googling.

If you’re able, try and trust a VPN provider, and route all your networking traffic through them. At least that’ll cut out your ISP from being able to harvest as much.

I basically stopped using wired headphones when Work From Home became a thing. I kept getting up from my desk and wanting to keep my audio going while wandering around and having wireless is perfect for my small house. I would definitely want to go back to wired if I was commuting or out in public daily though.

IT professional here, can confirm, Linux is superior and my choice of os.

… despite my work being mostly Windows Server.

Also: IT professionals usually have some experience and/or start out with Help Desk (hell), where you quickly learn what is and is not a good issue report.

Sorry, what’s a “PE”?