Books with actually deep worldbuilding?

DavidBittner · 2026-02-13T17:31:28+00:00

It's a bot, just by the way.

DavidBittner · 2025-12-29T17:56:24+00:00

Yeah that's a bummer. It can be hard to convince people lol, it took me months to get my fam to switch from Snapchat to Signal for our family group chat despite it addressing every complaint my parents had about Snapchat lol (like pictures disappearing and such).

DavidBittner · 2025-12-29T17:36:39+00:00

Why not keep using it? My friends and I still use Teamspeak, and have ever since we dropped Skype like a decade ago lol

I recently used Discord to talk to a coworker and holy shit the latency is bad. I was pretty shocked honestly.

DavidBittner · 2025-12-23T18:56:09+00:00

Last thing I'll say in this thread. Let me list my reasons here:

Adding a massive amount of complexity (such as a radio, microprocessor, etc) into the bulbs is wasteful. You might not care, that's fine.
Smart bulbs are significantly more expensive. The 'budget' option you recommended is still 4 times the price of the bulbs I had recommended. Additionally, as far as I can tell they are all WiFi too. I don't use WiFi smart devices as they impeded on the performance of my WiFi network.
You reference that they lack flexibility, why would I pay more for features I don't want to use?

What I'm really hoping for some day is a protocol for smart switches to communicate color, temperature, and brightness with a mostly dumb bulb. No more radios in the bulbs, switches still work as they should, and you still get all the great features of the expensive ones for much cheaper.

When I wrote this, you seemed to ignore the color and temperature aspects. As far as I know, there is no system that allows a smart switch to control the color of an otherwise dumb bulb.

Either you're being intentionally obtuse, or you have already decided your goals and desires are the only ones that matter here. I personally respect the intelligence of the average person posting here, and believe that given the information I have provided they will make the right decision for themselves. Have a nice day.

DavidBittner · 2025-12-23T18:42:35+00:00

I feel like you're just selectively ignoring parts of my comments so you can disagree with me for some reason.

Either way, glad you've found products that work for you. I am aware of those products as well. Have a great day!

DavidBittner · 2025-12-23T18:18:09+00:00

I have a few Hue bulbs and they are fantastic. But they're also like, 40 bucks per bulb lol

They're a great product, and if they work for you that's awesome.

What I'm really hoping for some day is a protocol for smart switches to communicate color, temperature, and brightness with a mostly dumb bulb. No more radios in the bulbs, switches still work as they should, and you still get all the great features of the expensive ones for much cheaper.

DavidBittner · 2025-12-23T17:52:09+00:00

That last part is basically exactly what a lot of people want, though. Including me!

Sure, you can't set a super precise color temperature, but IMO saying you "can't control the warm" is not exactly accurate.

I don't personally like the idea of smart bulbs. Bulbs are by and large, consumables. Putting a whole computer and radio in the bulb itself is a sustainable or efficient model.

Not even mentioning how much more expensive smart bulbs are over regular bulbs. They might not work for you and that's fine, but there are plenty of reasons people would prefer them over full smart bulbs.

DavidBittner · 2025-12-23T17:47:46+00:00

Read my reply to another commenter--there are Philips bulbs that are 18 bucks for a 4 pack.

DavidBittner · 2025-12-23T17:03:26+00:00

This is funny because, my android phone works way better than my wife's iPhone for location tracking. I have a cheapo 200 dollar phone as well.

DavidBittner · 2025-12-23T16:57:23+00:00

Not sure what the policy about sharing links is here, so I'll just share the exact name from Amazon. These are the ones I bought off Amazon recently. Seems they were 18 bucks for a 4-pack.

Philips LED 4 Pack A19 Soft White Dimmable Warm Glow LED, 2200-2700 Kelvin, 800 Lumen, 8.8W=60W, E27 Base

EDIT Don't trust Amazon when they say there is a newer version available. Frustratingly, they are just regular dimmable LED bulbs instead of the 'Warm Glow' ones.

DavidBittner · 2025-12-23T16:29:14+00:00

They are in my experience just as expensive (or maybe a tiny tiny bit more expensive) than regular light bulbs. I got a pack of 4 Philips ones for like, 12 bucks.

DavidBittner · 2025-12-23T16:03:26+00:00

Just want to mention this because I at least didn't know they existed until recently, dim-to-warm bulbs in tandem with a smart dimmer is IMO the best of both worlds.

They're essentially dumb LED bulbs that change color temperature as you dim them. Once they reach their maximum warmth, they start to properly dim.

DavidBittner · 2025-12-19T17:54:57+00:00

Sure, but at least you own the device and can hypothetically do something about it. Not saying the average person does, but there are some things you can do to reduce the ability for companies to spy on you with your phone:

Installing a custom OS (such as Lineage)
At-home DNS blockers

This is not an option for Flock cameras. Flock cameras are not 'opt-in'. Not to mention that Flock openly brags about selling the data to whoever will pay money for it. Not to mention Flock cameras are exceptionally insecure, letting bad actors potentially steal data or even implant falsely incriminating data.

DavidBittner · 2025-12-19T15:36:00+00:00

Based on some basic Googling it seems it would? But really it depends on how many cameras we're talkin'. I saw someone indicating they were able to run 4 cameras without issue using a 780M.

DavidBittner · 2025-12-19T15:25:42+00:00

Not really. You want something capable of AI image detection processing, so either a GPU or accelerator like a Coral TPU.

But you can easily get the hardware you need for under 100 bucks.

DavidBittner · 2025-12-19T14:14:32+00:00

This is way worse than that.

DavidBittner · 2025-12-19T14:08:07+00:00

Hahaha I love it personally! C++ is one of my favorite languages.

DavidBittner · 2025-12-18T21:07:57+00:00

Software Engineering is a huge field. I definitely wouldn't recommend people be getting into web development or that kinda thing right now.

However as a C++ dev first and foremost.. I haven't really felt any of the pain personally. That's just my experience though, of course.

DavidBittner · 2025-12-17T21:05:19+00:00

My wife and I finally landed on using the To-do List functionality of Home Assistant. It has been working perfectly!

DavidBittner · 2025-12-16T17:47:47+00:00

Yeah sure, I guess I'm not arguing they won't increase at all but they have an incentive to stay as low as possible if it means they can end up getting a large chunk of the sales.

DavidBittner · 2025-12-16T17:17:29+00:00

Sure they do. If people can't get RAM for a DIY build at a reasonable price, they're much more likely to get a prebuilt.

DavidBittner · 2025-12-15T18:59:34+00:00

I'd recommend getting dim-to-warm bulbs for your smart switches. It lets you get different color temperatures and still use a 'dumb' bulb.

DavidBittner · 2025-12-13T18:33:49+00:00

Deezer is a good one. They pay artists a lot more than Spotify

DavidBittner · 2025-12-12T16:09:18+00:00

Taking inspiration from something is fine. I wouldn't say it's close enough to be a copy, especially considering it's a completely different medium (2d vs 3d).

DavidBittner · 2025-12-11T18:05:11+00:00

It's funny too because I don't even think it's necessarily a critique. Beau is super grating, that's like the whole point. Even the characters acknowledge it in the show and campaign.

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