For (very fancy) cloth/paper bills like American ones, some counterfeiters wash the inks out of $1 bills to make $100 ones. Only possible if the $100s are the same or smaller size.
Certainly, the standard smart thermostat set up is that your ecobee is connected to the Internet, but controls the furnace using good old-fashioned signal wires
A standard furnace and thermostat won’t even know if you pull the thermostat off the wall, much less have any way to handle it beyond “full blast heat 24/7”
More challenging: you expected the sprinkler setup to do the opposite. Instead of following its last-known plan (the schedule) it should stop doing anything (possibly killing the plants it’s watering)
Good off-line only mode in a reasonable plan for what to do without the Internet makes a lot of sense, but at some point, there’s a control system and you need to change it (or even just have one in the thermostat example)
> there’s a control system and you need to change it
Why does the control system have to live on someone else's server in "the cloud"?
There's no reason for smart home devices to require an internet connection to the producer's service. Companies could just as easily put compute on device, or sell some sort of "bridge" (aka a home server appliance) that runs the compute and the accessories connect to.
Fully offline, local network only.
Save the online stuff just for analytics or other value-add features, but core functionality shouldn't require a web service.
The only reason it's 100% internet connection required all the time is to sell subscriptions, aka consumer hostile behavior.
In both cases the control system is physically in your house. It sounds like the sprinkler system did work completely offline (though it's not clear if you'd actually be able to change anything without internet - that would be a problem if not), they didn't set up an account so the system was in "offline" mode and dutifully ran the sprinklers on the last known schedule.
For the thermostat the example was physically removing the control system, which is typically not connected to the furnace through any sort of internet connection, and expecting the furnace to know what to do.
The way I see it is... I'd rather my lawn be yellow, plants dead, than a burst pipe underground causing significantly more expensive remediation.
I agree it's not likely (especially if the system is running as-scheduled), but it was a surprise is all. What if I didn't set up the service at all, and it dropped below 0 C? I would be in for a nasty surprise in the spring.
Yeah both my furnace and sprinklers require a local controller to do anything, and that just maintains my settings. Idk what an internet connected version of those things looks like, but would hope it's the same except local settings can be read/written remotely.
It wouldn’t _have_ to, that’s a political decision not a mathematical requirement.
But, even if you did it would still help tremendously and possibly still be sufficient. There’s diminishing returns where lower income people get a higher percentage of their income as a social security benefit. As long as that policy is maintained the ultra high wage earners would be contributing far in excess of the benefit they get paid back out
they're regularly revised up or down because they're (very openly) preliminary numbers released just days after the month ends and before many employers have even answered the survey. When the economy reaches an inflection point they tend to be streaky (multiple revisions down or up in a row) but that's nothing new and mostly just means that the economy has been getting worse over the last year and a half, which... that's one of the big arguments for Trump's victory so I'm not sure why it would be a surprise.
Towing range is an issue with all EVs and the battery on this one isn't that big, but if you're regularly doing long distance towing I'm not sure why you'd start with a city truck
it does depend a lot on what you buy it for, but obviously 8' is a good benchmark.
But honestly... at 8' I'm not sure why you're bothering with anything (unless you're getting a lot of them), i usually just threw 8 footers in my Honda Fit and closed the hatch.
Ironically most pickup truck beds are shorter than 8' and most likely a 8' piece of lumber would have to lay diagonally sticking out over one of the edges.
Still good for occasional piece of furniture, lots of lumber, or plywood.
The shortest bed f150 you can buy is 5.5ft, with a 2ft tailgate, trivially hauling 8ft with just a few inches overhang with the tailgate down, and easily doing 10ft lumber.
Again, I think pickup trucks are idiotically oversized and dangerous to pedestrians, but arguing against them by repeating things that anyone that uses a pickup knows is nonsense is not helping win over any detractors.
To be clear, I am not arguing against pickup trucks. The reason I bring up the bed length is a personal pet peeve thing. I have some amount of OCD going on, and I will be damned if I will ever approve of a truck that can't fit a piece of lumber in its bed without leaving the tailgate open that can fit into a Ford Fiesta with the trunk closed.
I am fully aware of why and how people use pickup trucks and I have no beef with that on cultural grounds. But if I were to get one it would be a long bed truck and I would sacrifice the cab space if needed.
Is any mass produced car made by a quality first org? I'm sure we can dig in and find examples. Someone brought up Toyota and Japanese cars. How about the unintended acceleration issue and the frag airbags?
I don’t know where we’d draw the line for “quality first” but I’d argue Toyota at minimum qualifies
That doesn’t mean they’re perfect: cars are incredibly complex machines and mistakes are inevitable. But the airbag issue was a vendor (used by many companies) and IIRC the acceleration issue wasn’t that much bigger in Toyotas than other makes
True, I was considering the same timeframe as the Toyota issue. However, their reputation would likely be supportive of quality and be another example for my point.
What? Unintended acceleration happens _all the time_. It’s usually driver error or a stuck floor mat. The vast majority are drivers who hit the accelerator thinking it’s the brakes then panic when the car speeds up. Toyota had some design issues that seemed to make it more likely (though the software was found to be fine) and got attention due to a viral 911 call and a poor response.
They were absolutely not the only make with unintentional accretion reports/issues at that time; nor presumably today, but I haven’t seen recent numbers
Fine, let me be more specific - unintended acceleration due to mechanical design issues (sticking pedal, even without floor mats). The point is, Toyota was raised as an example of quality, yet here we have a design issue. This also shouldn't be a surprise since the floor mat issue can be solved by design changes sound on other vehicles. So yes, manufacturers can make good and bad products. There are no manufactures who make only perfect products - it's not a surprise the P320 could have issues when the poster holds the P365 in such high esteem. The only thing that statement really displays is the suppression of cognitive dissonance being suddenly unachievable.
Ford, GM, and Tesla are all bottom barrel automakers. All three of them relying on the government to prop them up, too. Otherwise, the Japanese market would have obliterated the American automotive industry ages ago.
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