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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: June 10th, 2023

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  • When Gord Downie the lead singer of the Tragically Hip got terminal cancer, he went on tour. His final stop was Ontario, and they streamed it live on CBC (our national news network) to approximately 12 million viewers (Canada had a population of about 38 million)

    He died less than a month later. Our prime minister released a tribute statement, and held a press conference over it. Our House of Commons observed a moment of silence. The Toronto Maple Leafs (NHL Hockey Team) brought down one of the retired numbers from the rafters during their next game, because Gord had mentioned him in 50-mission cap. Almost every radio station that plays music switched to Hip songs for the day. The Canadian press gave him newsmaker of the year for 2016, then again for 2017 because of how significant the reaction to his death was.

    Dude was a legend both musically, and also in terms of the causes he championed. Especially the Indigenous reconciliation stuff.






  • So there’s an answer, and then there’s a problem.

    The easy answer is that Home Assistant has Voice Assistants now, and you can use Ollama, Whisper, and Piper to do that all locally.

    The problem is that it really only talks to Home Assistant, there’s no ability to have it search the web, or make a phone call, or really anything else outside of Home Assistant without significant addon stuffs.

    It also requires a reasonably significant amount of RAM on your computer to run the VM for Home Assistant while supporting Whisper and Piper and Ollama.











  • Important

    On your phone (iPhone and Android) there are options to set an Emergency contact. This contact shows up on the lock screen of the phone including their phone numbers, and at least on my android device those number(s) can even be called without unlocking the device. I have my wife and father.

    This can be really helpful for first responders if you’re involved in an accident or have a medical episode that leaves you unconscious, or even if you’re just seriously hurt and you can’t call someone yourself easily.



  • The simple answer is most desktop PCs will not come even close to that at idle. Even just having a few case fans may draw more than that, without involving the CPU at all.

    Laptop devices can do that in some cases with their extra power management features.

    That being said, do the math to see if it matters. The difference between 10w and 40w is 0.7kwh per day, at least where I live that’s about 7 cents or about $25 per year.

    In my case it would be more expensive to purchase a dedicated low power device than it will save me in 4-5 years compared to just using something I already have laying around.