And the great thing is Bialetti sells these parts for pretty cheap: https://www.bialetti.com/us_en/accessories/spare-parts.html

I love that products and companies like these still exist, sad indeed that they have such a hard time to survive.

I got in the habit of setting an alarm on my phone for 5 minutes after I put the pot on. Even if I think I'm going to stay in the kitchen and watch it, I set the alarm. It's amazing how I get distracted, forget that I put the damn thing on as if it never existed, then the alarm goes off and I think "oh yeah!! the coffee!".

The electric moka shuts itself off with the same system as a rice cooker and is extremely durable as long as it is an all metal exterior. I don't know why they are so hard to find.

To accompany the simple moka pot, buy a simple mechanical bell timer.

Brew time is pretty much precisely 6 minutes.

Set pot on stove, set timer. When bell rings, coffee is ready.

(A timer built into your cooker / microwave can also work, I find their alarms are not loud enough.)

It really depends on high you turn on gas/electric

In my experience it had more to do with how high the person making the coffee was.

Good point.

Presuming high heat, it's pretty consistent. I've noted this across a dozen or more cooktops.

The surface area of the pot bottom is the limiting factor more than anything else.

Sure, low heat and widely-divergent hobs exist. Standards and conventions help ensure reasonable convergence.

Check my comment above about Silicone-made seals