I have an 8bitdo Pro2 that charges over USB-C and when the battery pack died of heavy use, you could just swap it out with rechargeable AAs and keep going. I’ve gotten over a year of additional use out of that controller now thanks to the support for AA’s.

I’m specifically not buying the Pro 3 because the battery isn’t replaceable.

Valve did such a good job learning from the original Steam boxes too. The controller was weird, but the best parts lived in in the Steam Deck and the new controller. The incompatibility issues with the original Steam OS showed how critical getting Proton right would be to the Steam ecosystem. Multiple hardware configurations for each SKU made it harder to verify compatibility, so now they have just 1 for each hardware type. A dedicated Steam Link box was kind of a waste, but now Steam Link works great on Android TV, Android phones, and on Steam itself. And then they built Remote Play Together on top of Steam Link, which is amazing.

Many other companies just abandoned their failures, but Valve took the time to analyze the “why” and salvage the good parts to them. No company is perfect, but kudos to them.

The smart thermostat that came with my house has that “feature” and I hate it. If I don’t walk past the thermostat for a few hours, it assumes I’m not home and then lets the house turn into an icebox.

That’s the main use case I’ve heard as well. But, If I have to scan each item as I put it into the fridge, why not just scan it with my phone and keep a less expensive dumb fridge?

Alternatively, just grab a free toothpick from a restaurant and use that to clean the port.