Here in NL they have a decent system if you ask me. Infrastructure for power is owned by TenneT, a semi-government organisation. Then power is supplied by private companies, from whom you can choose any one you want (aka the cheapest/greenest one, depending on your wishes). They then supply power to the national grid, so you’re technically using power from all companies, but paying your share to the one you have a contract with.
Do it in enough places and every won’t.
You can always wire up an ESP32 with an optical sensor that tracks the blinking of the LED. The meter should state how much energy is represented by a blink.
Example project
Lol @ all the downvotes raining in this thread. If it weren’t normalised the way it is right now, and some wacko would introduce it today, people would be disgusted and outraged. Just like with dog meat in China and South Korea, that one dish with a grown chicken embryo called (from the top of my head) Balut, and fermented herring as they eat in the nordics.
People just don’t like to have facts shoved in their faces that make them think. Think about how something they’ve grown up to see as normal, might not be normal after all. The logical emotion from that is outrage, dragging your heels, etc.
My old ISP-supplied cable box/DVR would be pretty toasty when it was on standby. That thing was vampire for sure.
Now, my phone charger, not so much.
One doesn’t have to exclude the other. I sense the irony in saying this, being Dutch (whose country is considered a tax haven for the rich and corporations unfortunately), but we don’t have to pay for tax software at least. Worst case, you’ll pay for a tax advisor/accounted if you have a really complicated situation with shit like alimony and wish to squeeze every last cent from it.
So your government could do what the commenter above suggested for 99% of the population. Got it.
Because that’s what they do in my country. Your income is pre-filled, and most people don’t need to do anything other than double check it and click submit. If you want to get tax breaks for edge cases like uncovered medical care, extra schooling, travel costs as a freelancer, etc., you just follow the mostly easy steps and fill that in.
Doesn’t valve provide login-free setup and use of SteamVR for the index and the like? Granted, you’ll need a beefy PC for it, and probably some kind of storefront for most games. But at least no Facebook login strapped to your head.
Camera systems that read signage are nice, but not reliable enough. From my experience, it reads the signs on the side roads as well. And I don’t want my car slowing down to 50 km/h on the motorway because of a petrol station.
And hamsters into guinea pigs.
I’ve heard the opposite. Apparently most uniforms have to be bought by the parents, and you can see a difference in whose household is wealthy and whose isn’t by how worn down or well-fitting the uniform is. Kids can be so mean…
Somewhat similar: k8s
That meat, dairy, and eggs are essential for a healthy diet.
A purely fossil fuelled electric car (as in, fossil grid) is already more efficient than an ICE.
As others have said, home assistant and the like can achieve this. However, if you prefer not to use any other hardware than what you already have, the Hue app has the “Hue Labs” thingy, where they have sunrise and sunset automations that have the lights do what you describe. Might be worth looking at.
Well, there was the DIN standard for radios back in the day….
On windows you can use “windows + .” to get an emoji/symbol picker. “Command + control + space” on MacOS. Probably exists on most Linux distros as well.
Yeah, over there you had some terminally online folks calling themselves the “emoji police” who would berate you in the comments if you used an emoji. They even had a role-play subreddit where they would get reports and collaborate.
Last time I hit that wall on Firefox, changing my user agent worked wonders. Don’t tell anyone I told you this. ;)
2024 is the year of the Linux desktop
/s