Home Assistant

Maine Governor Janet Mills is calling on Congress to approve additional funding for home heating assistance programs. The appeal comes as households face high heating costs, and Mills is pressing federal lawmakers to provide more support for residents struggling to keep warm during the cold season.

Meta's Muse Gadgets initiative is extending its AI agent to do-it-yourself hardware, letting users connect the assistant to third-party devices they build or modify themselves. The company is also offering a free Home Link to subscribers in the United States, lowering the entry barrier for smart home setups. Coverage so far focuses on the openness angle and what it means for DIY gadget makers and the smart home market.

Maine Governor Janet Mills is calling on Congress to increase funding for the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program (LIHEAP), the federal program that helps low-income households pay heating bills. With Maine's cold winters making heating costs a persistent burden, the governor is pressing federal lawmakers to expand support for residents struggling with energy expenses.

A personal finance column reports that most Americans want to remain in their own homes as they age, rather than move to assisted living or nursing facilities. The piece highlights the financial planning involved in aging in place, including home modifications, in-home care costs and long-term savings, an issue of growing relevance as the US population ages.

Meta has opened its Muse AI agent to do-it-yourself hardware makers, reportedly offering free smart home devices as part of the program. The move would let independent developers build Meta's AI assistant into their own gadgets, expanding the agent beyond Meta's first-party devices. Details on eligibility and rollout remain limited, but the announcement is drawing attention in the smart home and AI developer communities.

A blog post titled 'Nobody Is Listening on Port 8125' is drawing attention among developers. Port 8125 is best known as the default web interface port for Home Assistant, the popular open-source smart home platform, and is also used by some telemetry services like StatsD. The piece appears to explore what happens when a network service is unreachable, a frustration familiar to anyone who has self-hosted software and found nothing answering on the expected port.

Home Assistant, the open-source smart home project, has published a blog post arguing that Big Tech companies have degraded the concept of the cloud and announcing that it is renaming its own cloud offering. The post is drawing discussion on developer forums, where readers are weighing the criticism of large cloud providers and what the rebrand means for the project's local-first philosophy.

Maine Governor Janet Mills is calling on Congress to increase funding for the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program, saying the program must 'ensure the safety and comfort of Maine people.' LIHEAP helps low-income households pay heating bills, a critical concern in cold-weather states like Maine where energy costs strain family budgets each winter.

Maine Governor Janet Mills is calling on Congress to increase funding for heating assistance programs as oil prices reach record highs. With heating oil a lifeline for many Maine households, the governor is pressing federal lawmakers to deliver more support for residents struggling to afford winter fuel costs.