Rehwyn

It's good to be cautious about nonprofit organizations, but in the case of DSI, they've been around a while, have a good reputation, and score well on third-party sites like Charity Navigator.

I'd also like to make clear that their Dark Sky Sanctuary certification isn't a scientific one based solely on light pollution, but also that the local/state/etc governments have implemented certain policies to help ensure the area remains a dark sky area. It's best to think of it akin to something like a designated "wilderness" or "wildlife sanctuary" area, but for starry skies. Because DSI works with governments to certify these areas, you're right that certain regions are likely to be more represented, and some not represented at all due to geographic and political barriers.

P.S. I'm not affiliated with DSI, but have used their accreditations in the past to pick wilderness areas to visit for hiking/camping/photography.

They do accreditations internationally too, though you're almost certainly right that some locations aren't as represented, especially since it requires communication and cooperation with the governments for these areas.

To be fair, the add-ons are just containers installed and managed by HA. In most cases, you can install all of them as separate containers via something like Docker, but configuration takes more steps (though you also get more control).

Example: I have HA, Eclipse mosquitto, zigbee2mqtt, zwave-js-ui, node-red, Grafana, and influxdb all running as docker containers on two different devices (my main HA host wasn't ideal for Zigbee and zwave USB dongles, so those are on a Pi 4). The other containers are accessible separately or from within HA as iFrame panels.

Technically 3.5" SSDs are still out there, but they're massive (16-64 TB) and target enterprise use (with a price to match).

And 3.5" is still the standard for platter HDDs, which are still the more economical option if you need large amounts of storage.

Now if you meant no more 3.5" floppy disk drives, then yes, those are definitely gone. ;)

I think you may have misread OPs post. They haven't built a PC since shirtly after they were 10-11, which was almost 30 years ago. So developments since the turn of the century are in fact relevant here, heh.

This is the way. I've had absolutely zero issues with my Hue bulbs directly connected to a USB Zigbee controller and running zigbee2mqtt. With Zigbee bindings to smart switches, they respond practically instantly as well whenever we decide to control them that way.

Traditionally in systems like D&D and Pathfinder, Wisdom is more representative of inherent common sense, awareness, and intuition and Intelligence representative of the ability to reason and learn. What actually represents accumulated knowledge is your bonus in the related skill, which is a combination of ranks (representative of time spent training/studying that skill) plus inherent bonus (in the case of knowledge, usually Intelligence since Int is representative of your ability to learn).

Some skills end up seeming like they should be a bit of both though. For example, Healing/Medicine requires knowledge of anatomy, ailments, treatments, etc (which would be Int aligned) but actually diagnosing and using it requires perception to recognize symptoms and often some intuitive choices about how best to treat ailments (which is more Wisdom aligned). It's simpler to just pick one, and often Wisdom is chosen to avoid too many things being Int.

The only way I see a company like this having "significant economic harm" from you not using their free app is if 1) they eventually plan to charge a fee to use the app or 2) they profit from data their app collects about you (third party data sales, for example).

Not something I'm interested in either way, so they've lost a potential customer.

That's a good point I hadn't considered from a legal standpoint before. I believe there's also some network media players out there that can load up iso files, so in theory you could have a library of iso files that you load up as if you were playing the disc, complete with menus and all.

I have no idea if this is any better from a legal standpoint though, since you'd still be using what I assume is unauthorized software to bypass the DVD and Blu-ray encryption whenever you play the iso.

Long story short, they really need to carve out a DMCA exception for this specific conflicting case (which they've done for other conflicting situations), but I suspect there's some strong lobbying against it by interested parties...

That one certainly came to mind. ;)

Yup. "Buying" a movie online is a grift, since all you're actually doing is buying a license to stream as long as they decide they want to host it. Companies can, and have, removed movies people have bought because of things like studio distribution agreements expiring.

My dream would be for UHD Blu-ray quality (or better) DRM-free digital movie purchases, much like you already can with high res music. But until that becomes a thing, I'll be buying a physical copy of any movies or shows that I want to own (rather than rent).

Nah. I'm sure there are multiple factors, as mentioned in the article, but another big thing preserving physical media is home theater enthusiasts. With a good system, the higher bitrate video and lossless audio on a UHD Blu-ray is noticable compared to most streamed content.