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  • MyQ blocks third-party support, Matic is a new style of vacuum, & more on HomeKit Insider

    Another fairly easy option to deal with the garage door opener issue is Bond Bridge. (I skipped the MyQ thing altogether because it was expensive and seemed to require a subscription and works through the cloud, which is entirely unnecessary). Bond Bridge is a WiFi device that sends out RF signals to ensmarten dumb ceiling fans. Turns out it can also read and copy your garage door opener signal. Bond Bridge doesn't directly integrate with HomeKit because it's dealing with one-way communications, which is a no-no in HomeKit. Your garage door opener uses a single radio signal to toggle the opener, opens if it's closed and closes if it's open, and it doesn't send any signal back to let you know if it worked or not.

    The other two things you need besides a Bond Bridge device, then, are a contact sensor and to write a shortcut that allows you to verbally command the Bond app to run the garage door toggle command. (The Bond app does integrate with Shortcuts.) In my case, I found a good spot in the garage door mechanism to place an eve contact sensor (which does communicate with HomeKit) that will let me know if the garage door is open or closed. If you have more patience than me, you can write two separate "close door" and "open door" shortcuts that will read the contact sensor to determine if the garage door is open or closed, and then decide whether or not to actually issue the toggle command (so it doesn't open an already closed door when you tell it to close the garage door) and then wait an appropriate amount of time to confirm that the door has indeed opened or closed. In my case, I just wrote a simple shortcut that issues the toggle and then if I can't visually confirm the garage door is closed or opened, I can ask Siri, which will tell me via the contact sensor what the deal is.

    There is an unintentional but useful security benefit to this setup. Shortcuts live on your iPhone. As such, a verbal command to your HomePod won't run the shortcut if your iPhone isn't connected to the WiFi network because you're not home. As such, nobody can stand outside your window and yell at your HomePod to open the garage door when you aren't there. HomePods are also supposed to be keyed to your voice, which adds an additional layer of security, so it all makes it very improbable that someone can surreptitiously open your garage door without you knowing about it. 
    beowulfschmidt
  • No Apple Tax for environmental efforts applied to users, says Lisa Jackson

    kellie said:
    First you have to assume CO2 is a pollutant.  In which case you should stop breathing because you’re externalizing the costs of your existence upon me.  There is still much debate over the impact of CO2 on climate change.  I know the plant world is very happy to see more CO2 in the atmosphere.  

    Second, China CO2 output is skyrocketing.  Any CO2 reductions Apple implements in China are meaningless and have virtually no impact on global CO2 levels.  

    The costs to reduce CO2 are added to the cost of goods sold.  Apple wants to maintain or increase profitability so these new costs are passed along to the consumer.  Pollution control either increases costs or reduces profits.  Of course governments love the idea of a carbon tax to supposedly address the costs to society of CO2 emissions but it’s just a money grab. 

    Overall it’s politically correct virtue signaling.  If Apple really wanted to address environmental impacts of their products they would make Macs that had user upgradeable SSD’s or RAM.  Their current designs decrease the useful life of their products and create massive profit opportunities.  iPhones should have upgradeable storage as well.  

    Excessive carbon-dioxide pumped into the atmosphere is a pollutant. No, there is not "much debate" over the impact of CO2 on climate change.

    Water in the creek behind your house is not a problem. Excessive water in the creek behind your house can become a serious problem. Water brings life. Fill your living room and your lungs with it, and it could take life away. See how that works? 

    CO2 in the air acts like a blanket, letting heat from the sun in, and then reflects it back down when it radiates back from below, holding it in. A certain amount of that is a good thing. It's why we don't have daily temperature swings like on the surface of Mars. Carbon cycles through the air, flora and fauna every moment of every day. Some of that carbon is more permanently captured in flora and fauna and stays there when those things die, and then gets buried under silt as rivers wash out into the sea. Over millions of years, those things are buried deeper, compressed, and turned into crude oil, coal and natural gas. In the last 150 yeas, humans have dug and drilled vast quantities of those things that had been slowly pulled out of the system for hundreds of millions of years, lit them on fire and pumped the resulting CO2 back up into the air. The excess carbon dioxide makes the CO2 blanket denser, causing it to retain more heat energy in the atmosphere. That extra heat energy drives climate change. It strengthens weather systems making them more violent in some cases, producing more precipitation in some cases, and shifts normal weather and climactic patterns out of place. There is no remaining debate, outside of disinformation campaigns driven by fossil fuel interests, that human use of fossil fuels is driving climate change. There just isn't.


    williamlondondarkvaderchasmFileMakerFellerminicoffeejony0
  • No Apple Tax for environmental efforts applied to users, says Lisa Jackson

    In economic terms, pollution generated during production of a thing is an externalized cost. That is, it’s a cost of production that is shifted to everyone else, and away from the manufacturer. That savings can either be used to reduce the price tag for consumers and/or simply added to the company’s profit line. 

    Everyone else who experiences the negative effects of that pollution or pays to clean up that pollution is paying for the items produced while generating that pollution- whether or not they buy or use the item produced. 

    If the pig farm nearby dumps concentrated pig sh*t on the ground and into the creek that runs behind your house, they’re externalizing their costs to you, whether or not you buy their bacon. 

    If the pig farm changes their farming practices to appropriately handle, dispose of or recycle their pigsh*t, leaving the creek unmolested, they’re simply taking responsibility and internalizing their own costs. If that increases their price of bacon, that should be entirely appropriate. Letting their customers know that their bacon is a little more expensive (or their shareholders that the profit margin is a little less) because they don’t spew pigshi*t on their neighbors isn’t “virtue signaling,” nor is it making us “live in the stone ages.” 
    GabyauxiowilliamlondonAlex_VkiltedgreenOferdewmexyzzy01stompychasm
  • New Apple Silicon has arrived with M3, M3 Pro, and M3 Max chips

    designr said:
    Interesting that they kept comparing performance to the M1—as if the M2 didn't exist.

    I mean I get it. Just funny. You gotta pat close attention to what (and how) Apple presents. They are very clever.
    Apple doesn’t market current year devices as replacements of prior year devices. They really don’t even market them as replacements for two-year old devices, but the M1 is the first in the series, so it offers a good benchmark. Besides, they also repeated comparisons to Intel Macs as well. 
    Alex1Nronnwatto_cobratmaykillroywilliamlondon
  • Apple's intricate Thunderbolt 4 Pro cable design revealed under CT scan

    Apple is now also selling a 1 meter version for $69.
    williamlondondewmewatto_cobra