Henrik Carlsson's Blog

All things me.

posted this note on and tagged it with DIY Narrating my work Smart Home

I’ve recently gotten myself a Home Assistant Green. Up until now I haven’t used it for anything in particular. My smart home consists almost exclusively of IKEA stuff at the moment and as long as I keep it that way the Ikea’s own app works fine. I would like to be able to add stuff from other manufacturers though, so that is why I got the Home Assistant and will slowly migrate over to using it instead.

Right now I’m reading up on some ESP32/ESP8266. I would like to make my own simple home automation hardware and this seems like the way to go. I bought a cheap ESP8266 board the other day and I think I’ve managed to install ESPHome on it. It shows up in my network logs so it seems to be connecting to wifi. I’m considering this a successful first test and I’ll keep playing with this more in the future.

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posted this note on and tagged it with AI

I’m skeptical about OpenAI in general, because while I think AI is so powerful that aspects of it will legitimately change the world, I also think it has been overhyped more than just about anything I’ve seen in my three decades of writing about technology. Sam Altman strikes me as being a drinker of his own Kool-Aid, but it’s also his job to make everyone in the world think that AI is inevitable and amazing and that his company is the unassailable leader while it’s bleeding cash.

– Jason Snell: Sam and Jony and skepticism

This paragraph from Jason Snell perfectly encapsulates my feeling about OpenAI, and so many other ”AI Companies”.

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posted this note on and tagged it with AI

It’s getting increasingly hard to use Office365 without being forced to interact with Copilot. If Microsoft love AI, good for them I guess, but I just want to read an e-mail or create a form or something similar. Don’t put your prompt in the way of me getting my job done.

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posted this on and tagged it with Nintendo Switch 2

Regarding the price of the Nintendo Switch 2. The original Switch has been out for over seven years. If 2 has the same lifespan, with a $500 price tag, that’s just shy of $6 per month.

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posted this article on and tagged it with Svensk politik

Jag har ingen stark åsikt kring Liberalernas nya vision än, men som paroll betraktad tycker jag att ”Bilda dig, bete dig, bry dig” låter bra.

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posted this quote on and tagged it with Svensk politik
Quoted Isobel Hadley-Kamptz: It-männen som krossar staten är inte så smarta som de tror by Isobel Hadley-Kamptz (Dagens Nyheter)

Många till höger vill minska statens omfång, men Elon Musks slakt av federala myndigheter handlar inte om besparingar. Han och de andra it-mogulerna vill rasera den stat som berett väg för deras rikedom.

I vissa fall, som när man stänger sjukhus för veteraner eller kapar marknaden för amerikanska bönder, slår det direkt mot republikanska kärnväljare, något som mer erfarna politiska aktörer förmodligen hade velat undvika. Men tillvägagångssättet är inte ett misstag. Det både Musk och andra vill är nämligen ytterst att rasera själva staten.

– Isobel Hadley-Kamptz: It-männen som krossar staten är inte så smarta som de tror

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posted this quote on and tagged it with Svensk politik
Quoted All klimatpolitik är inte bra klimatpolitik (Mattias Svensson) by Mattias Svensson (svd.se)

LEDARE. Northvolt är inte det enda exemplet. De flesta klimatpolitiska åtgärder har ingen märkbar effekt på utsläppen.

Klimatet är, lika lite som andra områden, en tävling där den som föreslår flest och mest omfattande statliga ingrepp har den bästa politiken. Vanligen bara den mest kostsamma.

Detta betyder inte att ingen klimatpolitik vore det bästa. Världens klimatskadliga utsläpp behöver minska, och vi vet att exempelvis pris på utsläpp tar oss i rätt riktning. Men ska vi uthålligt kunna minska utsläppen måste både dyr och dålig politik undvikas. Mer politik är inte nödvändigtvis klok politik.

– Mattias Svensson: All klimatpolitik är inte bra klimatpolitik

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posted this article on and tagged it with Slice of life

Adding Bruce Springsteen’s ”Nebraska to the mix and moving on from reading to doing laundry.

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posted this note on and tagged it with Slice of life

I’m taking it reaaaaaaaally slow this morning. Listening to music by the album, reading up on my local paper and articles and blogposts, drinking coffee. So far I’m managing to keep my calm and just enjoying a day off.

The playlist thus far

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posted this on and tagged it with The open web

There is a lot of love for the CEO of Bluesky, and her claims of it being billionaire-proof, floating by on part of the web at the moment. I’ve not used Bluesky and I haven’t kept up with things on the web properly over the past year or so, but I think Dave Winer makes a good argument that it really isn’t.

But [Mastodon’s] federation ability adds enough complexity that most people prefer Bluesky, which doesn’t have those complications. There are always tradeoffs in technology. You can have flexibility but it comes at a price. Bluesky would have you believe you can have the flexibility of Mastodon without paying the price.

Bluesky is not billionaire-proof

This is, and continues to be, the problem with a federated or decentralized social web. It will be more complex and complicated than a centralized one. We do need to work on making it less so, but more importantly we probably need to convince the ”normies” that a little bit of extra complexity might be worth it.

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Profile Photo © Henrik Carlsson