I have a kid. She turns 18 in September. I thought it was funny.

I also still make jokes about my mom, and she is now sitting on top of a shelf at Dad's house as of a few months ago.

Equality does not truly exist until everyone is equally armed. Money can only be synonymous with power, as long as the people allow it to be.

When two groups of people are more or less equally armed, neither has the advantage over the other.

What many people fail to realize is that while armaments have changed over thousands of years, as long as there appears to be a balance of power, peace happens.

But once one group or another no longer perceives "the other" as being equal in power to them war is inevitable.

That, in a nutshell, is what is happening today in the USA.

When one group of people has weapons, and the other doesn't, it won't be long before the first group decides the 2nd group looks like easy pickings.

Difference is the school isn't going to confiscate my kid's watch (yet)

This existed briefly, but was quickly removed because big box retailers complained that people were looking at the real stats instead of big numbers in their ads.

Yes please. Can't be much worse than what we have now.

I'm predicting they build it in just 2 or 3 cities, then quit.

Again.

Pontiac was a part of GM, who standardized most parts across all their brands decades ago.

There's no parent company for Tesla.

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.

Weebles wobble, but they don't fall down!