11–20 of 108 posts
Or: don't take your rental car that relies on cell service out of cell range. Was anyone else expecting a story about actually going off the grid, you know, permanently?
Or: don't take your rental car that relies on cell service out of cell range. Was anyone else expecting a story about actually going off the grid, you know, permanently?
Sure enough, we couldn't watch them. The netflix app needed to phone home before it would allow us to see them.
While I'm not off-grid, building my new home I try to reach a certain level of "local backups" to be "off-grid for some time", the real result is that so far all tech is designed to keep a door open to the vendor as much as possible, typically AGAINST formal owner/buyer interests.
There is no "really off-grid" solution so far. There is really no protections so far because most of people DO NOT CARE being connected not together, a natural thing being social animals, but to few giants who master all "connections" like shepherds who manage their flocks.
Cars? Oh, that's a nice part of the hall of shame: formally BEVs can be really off-grid since POTENTIALLY you can recharge them from local p.v. so virtually having years of limited autonomy. Well... ALL BEVs (and all new cars, in general) I know off are so stuffed of crapware and connected crap including ways to push the user connecting the car to craphones that being off grid for sure means being able to switch planet or perhaps try some far lands in Central Asia, South America or Antarctic...
I do not know how much ability to survive in nature we lost while evolving vs how much actual earth is less fertile than the past, but well... I feel that the war to be off-grid in the sense of being a bit autonomous is simply an already lost war like privacy, for mere lack of fighters for the defending front. We can just spend money in expensive potential backups of various kind hoping those who have designed them will not use the big pile of backdoors a day.
That "lodge" the 3 girls had to stay in was the Salish Lodge & Spa [0], which is pretty damn expensive. I recognized it from a stay there once, it's a beautiful area, I think it was $300-$400 for the cheap rooms. Hopefully, these companies can figure out a way to prevent this, or to warn the users when they might lose access to the car, or else someday this will be a national news article when a whole family dies in…
Or: don't take your rental car that relies on cell service out of cell range. Was anyone else expecting a story about actually going off the grid, you know, permanently?
It's unreasonable to expect everyone to critique the engineering of their rental car before renting it. It's the engineers job to make sure the product is capable of being fit for the task it's intended for.
But really I'm just irritated by the bait and switch title, that to me promised a much more interesting topic than "here's a thing that can go wrong with one car rental company in situations it clearly wasn't designed for".
I laugh, but then again I recently lost my job a few weeks ago. Thought I would fly home to check-in with my mother and take a sabbatical holiday from the 15 years. I got out of the taxi, hadn't realised that my phone had fallen out of my pocket; ran for the taxi but was too late. The first feeling was anxiety. After accepting that, it was jealously. Walking past all the strangers in the airport on their phone while…
That "lodge" the 3 girls had to stay in was the Salish Lodge & Spa [0], which is pretty damn expensive. I recognized it from a stay there once, it's a beautiful area, I think it was $300-$400 for the cheap rooms. Hopefully, these companies can figure out a way to prevent this, or to warn the users when they might lose access to the car, or else someday this will be a national news article when a whole family dies in…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's unreasonable to expect everyone to critique the engineering of their rental car before renting it. It's the engineers job to make sure the product is capable of being fit for the task it's intended for.
Fair, sort of. I shouldn't blame the victim too much. That said, engineers have to make assumptions somewhere. I suspect remote camping trips are just too far out of the envelope that ZipCar was designing for, that envelope being cities. But really I'm just irritated by the bait and switch title, that to me promised a much more interesting topic than "here's a thing that can go wrong with one car rental company in si…
Not to mention, there are plenty of places in cities without cell service, like parking garages.
So at least in unusual situations like this no-cell-service one, spending a cold night in the woods is hopefully less of a risk.