The door monitor mostly helps when a kid walks off leaving it open thinking they closed it.
The freezer temperature monitoring has saved the contents several times. A breaker had tripped once and I didn’t notice, it let me know that I needed a generator during a power outage, and one of the kids snuck an ice cream and left the lid wide open.
So yeah, it’s been useful. It’s not needed 99% of the time.
Nothing needs to be, but I do like to monitor door status and temperature for my fridge and deep freezers with home assistant.
It’s not the actual tech, generally speaking, that people are upset about. Although your Luddite reference is probably more accurate than you intended.
The Luddites weren’t anti-tech, they were anti- the damage it was doing to the people who did the work.
Most people who hate these new technologies aren’t mad at the tech itself, they’re mad at the quality that’s produced when the only concern is lowering costs and the extractive infrastructure built around it. A monthly fucking subscription for heated seats. This exists now.
The alternative to this is the galaxy brained take: “THESE PEOPLE HATE HAVING A COMFORTABLE ASS WHILE DRIVING”
That’s the most hilarious thing about being good at being an engineer it seems. I’m more than 10 years into my career at this point and I spend more time correcting other people’s work and outlining the technical work that needs to be done than writing things myself these days.
So, do what you need to do for your family. But I’ll say this. I spent time looking into this last go round because I knew Biden was a temporary reprieve. I’m the parent of a trans kid, we did not leave the country for several reasons.
The entire western world is experiencing this dramatic rise in fascism. There’s no guarantee that you will actually avoid this long term.
Many countries (especially the UK) have draconian immigration rules, see above note about fascism.
We ultimately decided to move to a blue state, from a red one, primarily for safety reasons, and made it happen over a couple years. We are far happier in this situation and are now able to help extract other loved ones from similar situations.
Again, do what you need to do for yours and your family’s safety, but you’re in for a tough go of it regardless of what you choose.
ETA: I went as far as interviewing for some jobs in Canada after building my immigration profile and starting the job search in NZ.
The problem with windows 8 is that with the initial release they wanted everything to be a mobile OS, even your desktop.
“Metro Design” lol
But it seemed decent for tablets and phones.