It’s interesting that, with Python, the reference implementation is the implementation — yeah there’s Jython but really, Python means both the language and a particular interpreter.

Many compiled languages aren’t this way at all — C compilers come from Intel, Microsoft, GNU, LLVM, among others. And even some scripting languages have this diversity — there are multiple JavaScript implementations, for example, and JS is…weird, yes, but afaik can be faster than Python in many cases.

I don’t know what my point is exactly, but Python a) is sloooow, and b) doesn’t really have competition of interpreters. Which is interesting, at least, to me.

No doubt related to Johnson noise.

And a big plastics shill, unfortunately.

For back-of-the-envelope or mental calculations, pi is often 3 or 10^(1/2).

The latter is better than 1% accurate, and has nice properties when doing order-of-magnitude/log space calculations in base 10.

ZigBee router thing:

I’ve been happy with the SMLIGHT SLZB-06M. You can easily flash firmware, and it has PoE which was important for me. I believe it also supports Thread, but I haven’t tried this yet (and I’m not sure if it supports it at the same time as Zigbee).

Zigbee smart plugs from Third Reality have been pretty solid in my experience, and they report power usage.

For circuit breaker level monitoring, I have an Emporia Vue2. I have it running esphome, completely local — unfortunately this requires some simple soldering and flashing, so it’s not turnkey. But it’s been rock solid ever since flashing it. (Process is well documented online.)

I’ve had decent luck with cheap wifi Matter bulbs, but provisioning them is finicky, and sometimes they just crap out and need to be power cycled; Zigbee bulbs (e.g., Ikea) have generally been reliable, though sometimes I’ve had difficulty pairing them initially. After power cycling a Matter WiFi bulb, it takes a while for it to respond to Home Assistant; Zigbee bulbs generally respond as soon as you power them on.

I have a wired smart light switch from TP-Link/Kasa (KS205), and it’s been completely hassle free (and totally local — Matter over wifi). The Kasa smart switch dongles I have work flawlessly but need proprietary pairing, and I’m afraid to update firmware in case they lose local support.

Good luck! Fun adventure :)

Physics is like sex: sure, it may give some practical results, but that’s not why we do it.

— Richard P. Feynman

I think the same is true for a lot of folks and self hosting. Sure, having data in our own hands is great, and yes avoiding vendor lock-in is nice. But at the end of the day, it’s nice to have computers seem “fun” again.

At least, that’s my perspective.

You mentioned ham radio — definitely fun! It’s a process to get into it though, as you need to study/pass an exam, and then you need a radio. Radios range from cheap ($25 or so) in the VHF/UHF (“walkie talkie”-style) to more expensive for an HF rig ($1000 range for 100W HF). If you want to get into low power (“QRP”) it can be much cheaper. You also need a fair amount of space for a good antenna setup…

There are tons of different communication modes, some without a computer and, like you mentioned, some that use computers. wsjtx and fldigi are popular programs.

Good luck!

Similar with Y2K — it was only a nothingburger because it was taken seriously, and funded well. But the narrative is sometimes, “yeah lol it was a dud.”