91–100 of 741 posts
For years I've been asking: Why does my toothbrush have to connect to bluetooth? Why does my refrigerator twitter? These were always useless mis-features and we can hope some of them can get pared down now with the shortage. Bring back old style dumb appliances!
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Well if you want it to be scriptable, you might need to spend three month's rent on a new washing machine. And yeah, uhmm... most washing machines can run drying after washing. You just took your specific model's issue, and decided to generalize it to "must be scriptable". Which is really a giant leap to make. To recap: 1. Your specific model can't dry after washing. 2. Your specific model can't be scripted either. 3…
Why? If it didn't belong to my landlord I could've made it scriptable in a few hours with one of a litany of wifi-enabled chips I have on my desk. I'm a professional programming language implementer why can't I use those skills to do as I please?
Is there any kind of organization where we can donate old and unused cpus? I have at least half a dozen chips in a drawer sitting and collecting dust. Some are even a decade old but I'm sure they're more than OK to run a toaster or a washing machine.
Is there any kind of organization where we can donate old and unused cpus? I have at least half a dozen chips in a drawer sitting and collecting dust. Some are even a decade old but I'm sure they're more than OK to run a toaster or a washing machine.
For years I've been asking: Why does my toothbrush have to connect to bluetooth? Why does my refrigerator twitter? These were always useless mis-features and we can hope some of them can get pared down now with the shortage. Bring back old style dumb appliances!
I think you’d have to go out of the way to buy a toothbrush with Bluetooth, and I see many a non-smart fridge in the best sellers at Home Depot. (https://www.homedepot.com/b/Appliances-Refrigerators-Side-by...)
For all the hooplah about smart homes and Alexa and Thread and Merlin Mann screaming about HomeKit and blah blah blah…most people have dumb lightbulbs, dumb garage doors, and dumb fridges.
The obvious exception is a smart TV, which are effectively mandatory now. And…after years of being a contrarian…guess what? I like my Roku-enabled TV. The apps are nice. I don’t have to have an external box. It’s fine. More than fine, even—I am kinda shocked at how good this Amazon-special TCL TV is.
Ban cryptocurrency exchanges and some of the wafer capacity currently being dedicated to mining will return to regular use (or we can just wait for the ETH2 merge, then ban the purchase of PoW cyrpto). Secondly get workers back to work by ending COVID-era unemployment payments and workplace restrictions.
I hate cryptocurrency, but trying to ban them is just dumb. It's not going to work. Ban where? How? What are the side-effects? What about people's liberty? Cryptocurrency is stupid and depletes natural resources, but trying to use the law to ban it is only going to make it stronger.
edit: to head off the downvote brigade, I'm not advocating for this. Only pointing out that "banning" doesn't necessarily mean outlawing its use, but can also include making it unfavourable to use.
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That was, at one time, true for "smart TVs" as well.
Many people I know are asking for and seeking out smart tvs. It's not being pushed on them. I don't hear those people asking for smart fridges (but occasionally I hear them talk about integrated ice makers).
Why not get a TV with Netflix built in? At this point, it just makes sense to have apps on the TV.
Interestingly, there is an embedded video in that article that explains the issue specific to the automotive shortage - it's because the automotive industry cancelled a lot of chip orders in anticipation of low vehicle demand and that caused chip makers to reduce their production for the kinds of chips that go into cars, and now it takes time to ramp back up: https://www.cnbc.com/video/2021/03/02/how-the-global-compu…
Presumably, due in part to eviction protection, they have been able to divert all or a portion of their rent payments to keeping up with bad car loans for commute vehicles that often will not be needed.
These folks need them for housing unfortunately.
If repossessed cars start showing up that should put downward pressure on people wanting to buy new ones. Most new cars still suck / Do not offer meaningful new features.
And of those who do buy new, that will be another fresh supply of used cars.
How long is this chip shortage due to vehicles going to last given these circumstances?
https://news.berkeley.edu/2021/05/07/are-renters-and-the-u-s...
Why is there a shortage rather than a price hike, similar to what would happen with fuel? Long term contracts?
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Connected devices are a good thing - i.e. I should be able to make the washing machine scriptable from my computer, but I bet these solutions are always crap because they are implemented in a hurry by engineers who don't understand either the hardware or software well enough to make it work, so you end up with quasi-useless boss-pleasers like we have now.
I’d argue that on average the engineers working on these things understand things just barely well enough to implement these things in whatever hardware/software combination is selected. Any more understanding than that would be sub-optimal for shipping consumer products where cost optimisation is a primary concern as the salaries for more competent engineers would cost the company more. You can see this effect in ac…
Great.