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.

Maybe if you'd read the replies to your question you wouldn't be creeped out. There are a lot of good use cases and I haven't even though how it could be misused before you brought it up.

Turn on the lights in the bedroom based on presence sensor, but only if the bed occupancy sensor detects no one is in bed.

Some actual gun control laws would be better, not to mention universal health care. What’s next on the list? Kitchen knives? Pans, pots? ;)

How much harder would it be than getting an actual gun?

I am using a few of self-built assistants using https://github.com/formatBCE/Koala-Satellite/tree/main - which was heavily inspired and uses a lot of very similar hardware to HA Voice. I have to say my speakers turned out pretty great.

From Zigbee devices I’d highly recommend the ones from Ikea (Somrig, Styrbar, Symfonisk - depending on what you’re going to use it for), and there are a lot more on AliExpress.

Another route might be using ESPHome and program something like Cheap Yellow Display (5-10$ on AliExpress) with LVGL.

Not sure how much this stopped, but it was definitely not nothing

Have you tried drying it (even if it’s straight from the factory)?

Less overhangs?

How is Gentoo doing these days?