231–240 of 267 posts
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Not everyone has a set schedule like that, though.
Yeah, but I assume it would be even worse at learning those. To handle non-set schedules it would really need to be more reactive, with more sensor data that I believe it actually has.
I missed the edit window: I meant "with more sensor data than I believe it actually has."
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The apartment we are renting has a Nest. And it just reeks of solution looking for a problem to me. I've never felt like the Nest is an improvement over what it's replacing. It hit me when I was in bed and wanted to turn the heat up, so I grabbed my phone and launched the Nest app. Not sure what segment of the network was having issues, but it wouldn't connect to the thermostat. After about 3 minutes of fiddling, I g…
Yeah, I really don't get value of the Nest either. I'd rather just program my schedule myself and have some certainty about it, rather than let some algorithm try to guess. The only smart thermostat feature that's at all tempting to me is the Ecobee's remote sensors (which the Nest doesn't have). I've lived in places where uneven heating is a legitimate problem.
Maybe each Nest is a remote sensor, and everyone who has one has their house temperature set to the same temp, the result of some super-duper averaging algorithm running on Nest's cloud.
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This is why I like the FirstAlert wireless detectors: mesh network so they all go off, but you program each one to announce with a voice which room the trouble is in. They even announce which one has the low battery instead of chirping in the middle of the night.
Well much of that was the "dream" of the nest protects... It announces where the "alert" is, you can wave to dismiss it, it has the app for your phone to alert you if you are away from home, and they all link together (without needing any wiring in the house, making it easy to retrofit). Sadly in practice it's a mess, nothing works, so much so that I've lost all confidence in the product to do it's minimal function,…
Literally all that was needed to get 100% of the reliability of the billions of detectors out on the market, while working out all the kinks on the "cloudy" sort of stuff.
I have to admit I re-invent the wheel more than I should, but man. This one seems simple :)
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Yet industrial/commercial grade hard wired smoke detectors work just fine. I've worked in industrial facilities where there were thousands of smoke and fire detectors, and a zero false alarm rate. Yet, one day, when a HVAC unit overheated and smoked, all the right stuff happened. The local alarms went off, and the duct dampers slammed shut to contain the smoke. But because there wasn't confirmation from a second dete…
Because they're disrupting thermostats.
The problem with "smart" anything is that the more features you add the more places there is to break. The coffee maker in my office has a color touch screen. What advantage is a color touch screen over a "dumb" mechanical switch? None, but I am sure its more likely to break and much more expensive to fix/replace. Yes, the touch screen has one button - make coffee. Then it plays animations while your coffee is brewin…
They did a similar thing with our office elevators. They replaced the physical call buttons with a touchscreen. It doesn't do anything other than call the elevator. It's far less usable because someone who's blind can't use it.
I would have thought an elevator not usable by blind people would be illegal.
I worked there. It was literally the worst experience of my career - and I have worked at all of the hardest charging blue chips and two successful startups - so it is not about high expectations - but abuse. I still wake up with something like PTSD occasionally from getting yelled at and bullied by Tony Fadell almost literally every day while I was there. I have a distance from it now -- and a way better job. It mad…
Maybe you just needed to leave the Nest?
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Not usually. People who do that think they're saying something that someone needs to hear, but they're usually either wrong, or saying it in a manner that does make them an asshole.
I disagree. Most people don’t want to hear the truth and will take anything they don’t want to hear as a personal attack against them. I’ve seen it time and time again.. and then pushed out on social media to make the person that said it look like the bad guy...and since it’s usually one person against another, it’s impossible to defend. This is why when the technology gets cheap enough, I will have a secret body cam…
"...you are now known as an asshole."
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Terminated for insubordination is actually what I meant. I seem to recall that that was one of the "for cause" criterion, but not absolutely sure. Regardless, at the companies where I worked it meant involuntary termination without eligibility for rehire, no severance, and no unemployment benefits.
UI eligibility varies state by state. Here in MA, the FAQ says: "if your employer is able to show that you were fired for deliberate misconduct or violation of a company rule, you may be disqualified." My strong wager is that standing up for abusive management practice would not trigger the "violation of company rule" clause and an employer with a penchant for acting like a jerk is unlikely to fight such a UI claim.…
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that seems an egregious misreading of the parable: At the Egyptian city of Naucratis, there was a famous old god, whose name was Theuth; the bird which is called the Ibis is sacred to him, and he was the inventor of many arts, such as arithmetic and calculation and geometry and astronomy and draughts and dice, but his great discovery was the use of letters. Now in those days the god Thamus was the king of the whole c…
timely.. "On this day (February 15) 2415 years ago, Socrates was sentenced to death by people of Athens. " https://www.reddit.com/r/philosophy/comments/45wefo/on_this_...
You may want to google "thirty tyrants" and read a bit and you'll quickly see there's more to the story. The claim is that Socrates was executed for constantly criticizing the state, for putting science and philosophy/ethics ahead of the interests of the state, and thereby corrupting youth and his students. That, taken in 20th century context sounds bad, really, really bad. However, here's what they meant by that statement : not once but twice the people he taught tried to overthrow the state. You see, Socrates hated democracy with a passion, to the point that he advocated using mass violence and killing to end it.
One of these coup attempts by his students succeeded and proceeded to execute >5% of the total population of Athens in a little over a year for various imagined offences. One of the tyrants, their leader if they had any, a relative and pupil of Socrates is described as "determined to remake the city and kill democracy whatever the cost in lives". While Socrates distanced himself from their actions, and even managed to make enemies of some of them, there's good reason to believe he was involved.
When the tyrants were overthrown, democracy was reinstated, and Socrates was left unpunished on condition of not teaching anymore. It didn't take him a week to violate this condition, and once again he raged against the state and it didn't take long for his students to attempt yet another coup. Shortly after that coup attempt was thwarted, again with loss of life, he was executed, right after his students who attempted the coup and survived were.
Socrates was a man who believed, taught and fought for the idea that "those in the moral right" (and he meant him and his students) should control all of society, and he kept fighting for it after having demonstrated what happened (ie. the killing of >5% of Athens).
Was this guy executed "for his defense of science" ? No. He was a dangerous lunatic that actually managed to organize an armed force that successfully (for a time) tried to implement his view of a "morally correct" society by mass murder.