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dm_me_dogs

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HomeKit-over-Thread and Matter-over-Thread has been pretty okay in my experience, using HomePods and an Apple TV 4K as the border routers. I'm using Home Assistant, and the HomePods control everything nicely. Setup is a little weird (you have to set up your devices in HomeKit first, remove and then add again in Home Assistant without resetting) but they work great. My only complaint is that HomePod Software and tvOS updates tend to bork the devices until I reboot HA, but that takes 10 ish seconds so not a big deal.

Gemini AI 3 years ago

I would love to use Bard, if it were available in Canada. Don't quite understand why it's still not.

I've completely stopped paying for streaming services (apart from Apple Music and TV+, because of Apple One). I pay $5 a month for Mullvad, and "acquire" everything I could ever want and play it using Plex on an old HP Elitedesk with OpenMediaVault installed on it. It's all automatic, so I request what I want using Overseerr, and it does the rest for me.

Do I feel a little bit bad for stealing content? Maybe. But I'm not paying for 4+ streaming services just so I can occasionally watch shows a few times a year.

That doesn't mean that playing on the cloud is good though, does it? It's still a subpar experience in terms of reponsiveness and image quality, even on a 60Hz display.

It's not my internet connection either, as I have my Series X hooked up with an ethernet cable, and my line is a 500/500 fiber line from Bell, with at most 5ms latency. I should be the ideal customer for cloud gaming, and it's still not good.

I have used it on my Series X and it's just not as good as playing it locally. I've got it hooked up to a 4K120Hz TV that supports VRR and ALLM, and the exeprience over the cloud will never be as good. It's very convenient that I don't have to download 50GB to play a game, but if it's a game I want to actually play, the 50GB is worth it.

I also have a PS5 with the PS+ Premium package, and their cloud offering is even worse.

It's pretty strange that the CMA is most concerned with a market that functionally doesn't exist right now, and may not ever be "a thing". Cloud gaming is still fundamentally not a great experience.

Having said that, I don't think the deal should go through anyway. Large companies should not be allowed to purchase other large companies within the same market as them.