If current “personalized ” advertising is any indication, the new ai ads will push

• whatever you most recently bought
• gambling
• something relevant to whatever demographic it’s hallucinating

But it will never do something useful like advertise things you’re searching for

Not so bad when you think about it …… Ring’s subscription isn’t too expensive and it gives you cloud storage and remote access. Bring on the hatred but I’ve found it one of the few worthwhile subscriptions

Yeah, I also tried searching and rash came up as at least the same possibility

It’s not just automatics anymore, but also

• CVTs, especially forneconoboxes that used to be manual
• electronic shifters, sort of automatic
• automatic, with more and more gears
• EVs don’t need a transmission

The thing is there’s no longer much of a price difference and manual is no longer the efficient choice

Yeah I finally went over to the dark side because of bostons horrendous stop and go traffic

Of course I’d use transit whenever I could. However I lived to the east and had to drive through Boston to get home from anywhere else. There were times when it took hours to drive just a couple miles: I couldn’t deal with manual transmission for that

Chevy Chevette. This may have been one of the worst cars built, take minutes to get up to speed and over-rev cruising in the highway, but it was also a tank that lived through 6 people learning to drive a stick and probably close to two decades.

It was also really easy to work on, but

• when I replaced the springs I found them light enough to compress by hand
• when my brother replaced the clutch he said it’s the only car he saw where the transmission was light enough to hold one handed while replacing

It’s always money.

When I first moved to the town I live in now, I was impressed by the all new schools. However I eventually realized they replaced a bunch of older neighborhood schools with a smaller number of bigger schools. They saved money by providing a worse educational experience and making walking less likely.

We walked to my kids elementary school but the town saved money by not plowing the sidewalks in winter, nor forcing residents to. Our walk would require walking on a major street - until my ex went full Karen and made them plow

When my kids got to middle school, we were in “walking” distance so there was no bus. However that was a full mile including crossing a six lane road whose light was always broken, and they didn’t spring for a crossing guard . We ended up choosing a private school in a different town, so there were no buses nor walkability

Regional school districts are now common. More kids goto schools that are not even in their towns

I’ve always wanted one of these but really only to remind me of my grandparents house from when I was a kid

As a parent, we made sure to have an analog clock in every room while my kids were growing up, and we made them prove they could read it. Still don’t work. Digital clocks are everywhere else and in many ways more convenient.

Analog clocks are an obsolete decice whose time has passed. I also tried to keep it alive into the next generation but it’s not happening. It’s time to give it up.

Let that be one of our hallmarks as we age: the last generation with analog clocks. I use an analog face on my digital watch, have analog decorative clocks and I’ll accept that my kids believe that old fashioned (they do accept the analog clock face on my old car I gave them though, or maybe don’t know how to change it)

User replaceable batteries would be actual cheap, would be nice. But iPhone 15 pro battery replacement at Apple is $100, and I’d expect that to be one of the more expensive battery replacements. Many phones will be cheaper, third parties will be cheaper. While I’d rather do it myself, it’s really not that much for once every three years to keep it above 80% health, and 9% of phone replacement cost.

the argument of “why would you try to save your battery by not using it when it has the same net effect of less battery?” is pretty short-sighted.

The argument is

• why try to save your phone battery when it’s critical to last the day and eventual replacement is cheap?
• it’s much more important to save your car battery because you won’t miss reduced range on normal days, you want max range available for road trips, and replacing the battery is very expensive

Definitely incredible but I still feel like people’s excitement is misdirected.

• they’re less energy dense so not likely to be on phones or many cars
• for cars the extra life is marginal when existing batteries already last more than the life of a typical vehicle
• much cheaper will make a huge difference in low end cars.
• but storage is the killer app! I don’t care about energy density but they’re much cheaper and will last much longer. Huge win!

Imagine if home battery systems cost half as much but last four times as long! Or grid storage! This is huge!

I don’t see this as a valid comparison.

• replacement phone batteries are really not that expensive. Don’t overthink it. Is it really a problem you might spend $50-$100 in three years to replace the battery?
• car batteries are not just much more expensive but they’re also overkill. Charging to 80% is more than enough for almost everyone’s daily driving on most vehicles, so why charge more?

Most of these infamous early failure modes that people are afraid of are entirely possible to repair at home for a DIY guy. On a BEV I’m shit out of luck

In a BEV many of those failure modes don’t exist. It’s quite possible we’ll see them last much longer with essentially no issues

BEVs use conventional suspensions and brake systems, so failure there are likely just as repairable DIY

The batteries have gotten better over time, but they can still fail fairly early

Aside from the OG Nissan Leaf with passive cooling, this really seems like more of a scare tactic than an actual issue.

I don’t know about all EVs, but assuming they’re similar to mine:

• battery warranteed for 8 years, 120,000 miles
• solid history of batteries lasting 250,000 miles or more
• aside from accident or manufacturing defect, batteries rarely actually fail. The above are defined for battery health being above 80%

I’m sure it happens that a few people need to replace the battery but they tend to last beyond the full expected lifetime of most cars and the usual failure mode is to continue working with less range

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Let me play devils advocate……

One of my cars has the hvac controls on the screen and it’s usually fine, because it is actually smart. I only need to set the temperature and it remembers that.

For example now that it’s getting cold, I almost never need to touch those controls

• I can preheat through an app (no subscription needed)
• when I start my car, the thermostat is set to 69 (heh heh) where I last left it
• the car goes through a progression: heating steering wheel and seat first, then automatically off when the cabin temperature comes up
• the glaring problem is defroster. Aside from initial heat up I don’t know a good way to switch to that while driving. I don’t know if it’s supposed to be automatic and fails or if there is a shortcut somewhere

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I didn’t know that. I guess my “English privilege” is showing