Have you looked up what “planned obsolescence” is?

It makes a lot of difference. For me shipping times for both would be similar, but I’d have to pay for shipping from the US&A, and possibly some duties/taxes. With AE all of this is already included in the price of what I’m buying (except for some products that aren’t offered with free shipping, which is always clearly stated).

I’m using a WH2650A weather station, and I believe it does not need an internet connection to work at all, and I have been able to connect it to HA locally.

That’s not something I’d assume. Aliexpress sometimes delivers packages within one week for me (I live in Poland).

Sure, that’s definitively safer. With AliExpress even when I had issues they were dealt with properly, but it’s probably better with ifixit

It was a few years ago and even if the seller still exists on the platform (which is not given), I couldn’t find it.

Not risky at all. I’ve bought a replacement on AliExpress a few years ago and it’s fine

Can you say the same about their voters?

I hope they won’t increase the price everywhere to “eat the cost” of Trumpistan tariffs. They chose the orange man, they get to have the consequences.

Canadians, stop being nice - grab your pitchforks and dethrone the orange man!

I can’t really disagree with any point you’ve made here.

And game prices haven’t been going up for a long time. Not that I want them to, but the fact of life is that the production cost for games are way higher now, while their prices are not. Everything else is getting more expensive. I’m not saying it’s not sustainable, but I understand that these companies want to make money, not just keep themselves afloat.

Because they don’t go on the public roads, or don’t consider lives of ordinary Russians to be important enough?

With production costs that can not be decreasing

Sure. By the way, about the stuff you’ve referenced before - while the AMD’s crap seems to be referencing October Revolution/Red October (I can’t really understand why would it resonate well with western cultures, but oh well), the Apple ad seems to be referencing Orwell, not Russia. Big Brother does not have to be communist, and it may happen in any totalitarian country - even in the US eventually if stuff continues to go downhill. The best remedy is to have people know history and understand it - something we can’t really count on anywhere, not just in the US.

In believe I do understand the shallow way you (as a nation - no offence here) see other cultures. That’s why I’m saying all that. Because most of the western cultures don’t remember the attrocities they’ve been commiting during WW2, just because they switched sides. They were literally allied with Nazis until they’ve attacked them;) Since then they were re-writing history (trying to erase evidence of atrocities that were even worse than what Nazis we’re doing) just because they’ve ended up on the side that was victorious. I was under the impression that while during Cold War they were the villains to you (and the best you’d be able to say about them would be “commies”, worst would be “Evil Empire”) when it fell down most of the world somehow thought they can be treated as partners and talked to. But their mentality never changed, and now after they went to be full Soviet Union mode all we (people from the countries formerly behind iron curtain) can tell is “we told you so”. They should never be glorified - even for “liberation from Nazis” (they were worse), negotiated with (anything they get will encourage them to run their schemes again). They should be isolated (in all possible ways) and cut off from any external income.

I’m not going on a manhunt after you. All I’m saying is that Russian/Soviet symbols should be shunned (or at least not be glorified in any way) just like the Nazi ones because it’s pretty much the same. If I have a choice I will not support anything made by Russians, because there’s a chance it will support their homeland.

You could set up Tailscale on any device in your network and access it through that. That’s probably the easiest way to do it.

I’ve asked about the consoles for a reason. PC market has usually have been more open, and if you’re praising Steam, check out gog.com

No, I live in a country where Russia has done a lot of harm throughout the history, and you live in a country where people think it doesn’t affect them and isolationism works (hint: it didn’t 80 years ago, it won’t now).