That’s fine, I’m over here eating popcorn, watching all the drama……

Luckily I’m not likely to need any laptop, phone, tablet. game console, car, tv, etc any time soon. All my higher end devices are good for a few years until the bubble bursts.

That being said, my hobbies tend to be in low end devices. We know raspberry pi’s are now expensive and likely to get worse, but I wonder how it will effect the tiny bit of old technology memory in things like “smart switches” and sensors

To take myself as an example ….

• all smart home stuff is arguably a gimmick. None of it is necessary, but for some of us it can add value or interest.
• the resolution is plenty for many applications
• I always liked the idea of a moving ticker for status or info, like the stock ticker. I assume this could
• I always wanted a clock large enough to read without my glasses, without all the crap on the cheap ones, or maybe configurable to my choice of crap
• I’m gradually putting together a house status alert system, and this is so much more expressive than the colored LEDs I’m looking at so far
• this is so much more interesting, more of a statement than a simple screen
• it’s local. We’re not locked into some god awful vendor portal
• someone was creative, had an idea, packaged it nicely, and offered it to the world. I want to support that, encourage more of it

I’m not sure if I’ll get one but it’s definitely tempting

Dammit, I fell for rings assurances of “only in response to a warrant”. Mostly out of laziness, but still …… I really am going to have to figure out self hosting a video doorbell, aren’t i

This is one of the concerns I have watched with interest ……

• with the first mass market push to wind “grid won’t be stable with any significant amount”
• as wind and solar became more popular “renewables can only be 30% without destabilizing the grid
• this past summer “with today’s renewables and storage technology, the cheapest most stable option is 95% of the grid”

Your concern may be technically and historically valid but is rapidly disappearing

I really hate how so many of these articles feel like they need to dumb it down with this “artificial sun” imagery. It feels so condescending. I’d rather learn more about the latest progress with nuclear fusion

People have accepted heat pumps as 400% efficient. This is the same.

And realistically, how do you describe in an approachable way “you experience what would look like an impossible number if we had continued as before”, where the “if” is key, as is “you experience”

I don’t blame the technology here but the implementation or the scenario

• the article makes it clear they understand it’s an uncommon scenario to have to switch number so many times
• wtf is the carrier doing requiring text 2fa to get a new eSIM? Thats just dumb
• Apparently android needs some work?

I have the opposite anecdote: eSIM has been more reliable than physical SIM. It just works on my iPhone. I like never having to goto a physical store. When i got my new phone this fall it transferred the eSIM so smoothly I barely noticed. It just worked.

Meanwhile from previous phones it always seemed about half the time I got a bad SIM and had to goto my providers physical store to get a new one. What a pain!

Yeah I’ve noticed people take a bit to figure it out even after I explain it. But as an owner it quickly becomes natural. It’s not all that different to use that a standard handle - the older style that used to have a button on the handle. As long as you use the correct hand, your thumb is ready to press exactly as if there were a button, then the jangle pops out and your hand is there to grab it exactly as the old style to pull after pressing the button

But I guess my main issue here is not all teslas are the same, so it’s important to be specific and precise.

Given that the underlying cause is trying to make a “Software Defined Vehicle” (SDV) I have to imagine most of the Chinese EVs have similar implementation. There’s also a fairness concern: are they specifically targeting Tesla or are they actually concerned about safety across all similar implementations?

It all depends on the details, I kid the article is blatantly wrong

All Tesla models use flush, electronically actuated handles that blend into the bodywork

I believe this is only the model s and x, a small minority of their vehicles.

My model y has a physically presented handle - you press on one side to pop out the other - NOT electronic self-presenting. I believe that’s true of model 3 and y, the vast majority of teslas.

That being said, there’s several things this may mean. Is it just the self-presenting they don’t like? What about buttons like on the cybertruck? What about the manual operated handle like on the model 3 and y? Or is the important part the electronic latch mechanism internally? I have no idea what safety features that has.

If it’s literally just the self-presenting handles on the high end models like the article mentions, that’s probably no big deal. They don’t sell many of those and the model x especially is way overdue for redesign or to be ended. Hopefully it’s more than that though

Tesla, believe it or not, is doing the ai thing right.

1. There’s always a control: you may not like touch screen in your car but it’s always there so you’re not forced to use voice assistant.
2. The standard voice assistant still works the same as it ever did
3. AI voice assistant is separate that you can choose to use or not. When it was new, it was not allowed to control anything but that is gradually being phased in as it works.

When the ai first came out all it could do is hold a conversation, and was amusingly snarky. Now it can set a destination, but is still limited compared to standard voice assistant

At least in Manhattan, traffic is usually slow enough that pedestrians are at least as fast. Also they tend to go as a crowd. I’ll usually wait for the light but when hundreds of other pedestrians swarm into the street I figure we’re fairly visible and safe.

I would never drive in Manhattan simply because it’s the slowest and most frustrating way to get around. I used to drive around queens when I had a girlfriend there but we’d always take a train around the city, and I’m sure traffic has only gotten worse. It’s just not worth it

My similar anecdote is people taking a right on red without stopping (or apparently looking), and would probably be included in those statistics. Since there may be a pedestrian or cyclist just around the corner you can’t see until you’re at the intersection, stopping and looking is critical for safety

I used to be a proponent of right on red, because who wants to be stuck at a dead intersection? If you only consider cars, it’s a nice efficiency gain. But now non-car users like pedestrians and cyclists don’t have a safe time to cross the intersection. And it’s so much worse now that people turning right on red seem to have forgotten the parts about “after coming to a complete stop” and “yielding to other traffic”

I knew someone who did that because the sidewalks were too uneven. She had bad ankles and kept rolling them trying to walk in the sidewalk

Since pandemic I’ve fallen twice because of bad sidewalks. It’s embarrassing as shit

My stock Subaru can handle more off-roading than most trucks ever do