It doesn’t matter. I’m not the one whose arguments depend on Apple making money from Spotify.
> The device owner paid for their device and the OS.
I have to assume people writing on Hacker News are not so naive about software business models. The vast majority of software is not sold with a free license to developers to build anything they want packaged with the hardware sale.
The problem of reliability isn't really with Home Assistant. It comes from the pain of integrating the almost-but-not-quite compatible cheap Chinese devices that claim to work with a standard, but don't.
The ecosystem is so fragmented between cheap race-to-the-bottom gadgets and the more expensive "works only with OUR app" that integrating anything more than just a few bulbs is a pain.
And that's not even considering the amount of customer support that someone doing this professionally would have to provide.
Why would installers deal with cheap Chinese devices? Every installer I’ve dealt with has a relatively small selection of vendors and devices that they know and trust. They aren’t reselling random crap from Amazon.
No, they're each having a relatively small selection of vendors re-selling white-label Chinese crap.
In my case: local A/C installers are reselling Haier aircons. Good hardware. Shit software (see "tale of the two apps" elsewhere in this thread). Or, a nice local company selling floor heating solutions. Got electric floor heating from them. Control panels have "smart home integration". Guess who made that? Tuya. The world's finest seller of white-label "smart" devices. Complete with a shit app.
Home Assistant is the only thing that makes the two device classes more convenient remotely than through an IR remote or using the wired-in control panels.
Right there with you that the amount of customer support needed for such a service kills the incentive. I already hate having to fix my house when something breaks or a battery dies. The last thing I want is Joe Schmoe calling me up at 2am because his power went out and shorted the home server, and he has no backups because he disabled the ones I set them up with while "tinkering"
I've had plenty of trouble with Home Assistant upgrades randomly breaking smart devices from well known vendors, e.g. whenever I update I dread to find out whether my Neato vacuum robot is still supported or whether that integration has crapped out again. Same for my LG smart tv and several other devices. I love Home Assistant but it's not exactly rock solid...
> Russia and Ukraine generate a quarter of the world's grain, and nearly as much so of corn.
They generate a quarter of the grain export. That's a very important difference.
Russia stopping wheat exports would be a very bad thing, but it's not nearly as catastrophic as some present it to be.
How's that going to backfire?
What you've presented as the "bad option" is the current status quo. Putin had sky high approval for decades and the Russian population has supported him while he strengthened his grip on power.
Yeah, ban on running a business abroad is definitely going to hit the public supporting Putin, right.
Also, he doesn't have sky high approval any longer. At the last elections, he could muster his percentage in the first tour with huge falsifications and disallowing any other credible candidate.
Hear me out. Russia is corrupt to the core with leadership that's only focused on enriching themselves.
It wouldn't surprise me if their conventional military proved to be way less capable then they're presenting it to be.
Sure, they have enough smart people that are able to design advanced weaponry, but do they have the industrial capacity to actually build? And do they have the capability to maintain it? How about troop training?
They probably don’t. As with almost all modern dictatorships, the military is there to protect the elites from the general populace, and is not fit for much more purpose. Besides Russia doesn’t have to worry about external invaders, because they have their nuclear deterrent. So the state of their military makes perfect sense.
They did have those secure means for communications up until now. Nothing changed. Or, dare I say, it changed for the worse. The regime in Russia got worse by the day and the people of Russia, at best did nothing, at worst cheered Putin on.
And what do you think the reason for that is?
> while providing all the R&D they use to play audio on the device for free
Simply absurd logic. The device owner paid for their device and the OS. Apple already got their cash bag for it.