HiTekRedNek

No. There were design similarities, but it was basically a Mazda MX-6. Which I also owned later. That one tried to kill me with fire.

The car I had in high school is absurdly rare these days.

I had a 1989 Ford Probe.

Oh no. They'll have to use Linux! A few billion new people using it would certainly bump it up a notch or 4.

Set or change alarms, add reminders to your calendar, ask about those things, send text messages, start phone calls, have it read out last text messages received.

When I was a truck driver, my wife could test me, and I could just listen to a transcript of what she sent instead of calling her and asking what she typed.

"Hey Google, read my last text"

"Hey Google, send a text to , 'Quit texting me while I'm driving, woman!" Stuff like that. 🤣

I read this in an orange accent.

How dare they make a profit!? It's only the whole reason they're in business after all..

Ever notice that it's the governments that shoot people for not buying what they sell?

You can see the US federal government imploding at this very moment, all because one side or the other takes power, and your first thought is to give them power of control over your Internet services??

Just...wow.

Guess it's ok when governments leave debris by shooting at satellites, but not when businesses do?

Weird.

So? The ISS is due to be decommissioned soon and the HST has been failing from orbit for a while now.

Telescopes on the far side of the moon would see far far more than any telescope in earth orbit and especially any on the ground.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lunar_Crater_Radio_Telescope

Things in space don't veer wildly out of control when they fail. They stay pretty much in their existing orbit.

It's not like these satellites have big thrusters or engines just propelling them constantly around the planet. They're in a state of free fall. They're just also moving sideways fast enough that the earth also falls away from them at around the same speed that they are falling towards it.

Lower orbits have far more atmospheric drag, and any debris in those orbits will simply slow down enough to stop missing the planet.

There's so much more room out there than there is here on this finite planet.

Correct. Unlike zigbee and zwave Matter does not define a single communication technique.

It can be used with thread, or over a standard ~~tco~~ TCP IP network.

Typically, Matter devices will support either thread or WiFi, but there's no definite distinction to Matter itself.

If you also want to use Matter over Thread devices, you will need a thread dongle. The ZBT-1 can do either thread OR zigbee but not both at once.

In fact, the biggest issue I see with Matter is that there's no real easy way to tell if the device uses WiFi or thread.

There are a lot of Matter devices out there now, but only a few use the Thread protocol.

My Matter (and Zigbee, and Z-Wave) hub is a laptop I paid 300.00 for almost 10 years ago, when I wanted something cheap for the semi truck.

I run Home Assistant on it now. I have both a $40 zwave USB stick, and a similarly priced Zigbee stick.

The software for the hub comes with HA. Just install the matter server

Their zbt-1 dongle can do either zigbee or thread, but matter does not technically need anything else. Thread does, but not Matter. Install Matter Server addon and you can use any matter WiFi device.

Weird. My Google Pixel 9 Pro XL has 3 navigation buttons.

That's something that's customizable using the stock firmware.

Settings -> Display & touch -> Navigation mode.

My Google Assistant still responds to "Hey Google" or "ok Google" just fine as well on my Google phone.