51–60 of 108 posts
We downloaded some shows from netflix before we went off grid so we would have something to watch in case there was some down time. Sure enough, we couldn't watch them. The netflix app needed to phone home before it would allow us to see them.
This reads like a hit-piece against ZipCar. The author doesn't give any advice, and merely retells a few anecdotes about people being stranded by parking a ZipCar in a place with poor cell service. This isn't a problem I'd thought of before, but with the title "How Not to Go Off the Grid", I some advice. (The author doesn't even seem to offer the somewhat-obvious conclusion of "don't park a ZipCar somewhere without a…
It doesn't read like a hit piece to me. I doubt most people would think to check their cell phone signal before parking a car.
Reachnow (BMW based) when it was around solved the issue by having a pin code you enter, Car2Go (Mercedes based) probably also did I think.
Here's the other hn post from 3 years ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20873234 , and my more detailed comment from then: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20884046
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…
Snoqualmie is 4 hours away from Forks by car, but the article says that it took them 45 minutes to drive back to the trailhead next day, so it must've been some other place. The photo in the article is probably from earlier in their roadtrip - if you're driving to the Olympic peninsula from the east, stopping somewhere in the I-90 corridor is natural.
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…
"Select your Zipcar, pack your tent and pick your spot, from national parks with campsites to choice spots listed on USACampgrounds.info." [1]
Besides, even driving on the freeway between two cities, you can often find dead spots. Imagine pulling into a rest area in the middle of nowhere for a bio-break, only to find yourself stranded.
[1] https://www.zipcar.com/ziptopia/best-vacations-for-solo-trav...
Going off grid and all the related complexities is quite an interesting thing. Unlike this article.
I've changed the title to something more specific now.
We downloaded some shows from netflix before we went off grid so we would have something to watch in case there was some down time. Sure enough, we couldn't watch them. The netflix app needed to phone home before it would allow us to see them.
That's DRM for you. Never trust it. Get a phone with expandable storage and fill your SD card(s) with GBs of non-DRM encumbered media and you can enjoy having it all instantly accessible to you whenever/wherever you want it for as long as you like. Control is what DRM takes from you, but we have the technology to take it back for ourselves.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
Isn’t the stereotypical use case for zip car to take it on a weekend trip out of town where public transit doesn’t go? National parks are very popular recreational attractions. Not to mention, there are plenty of places in cities without cell service, like parking garages.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Snoqualmie is 4 hours away from Forks by car, but the article says that it took them 45 minutes to drive back to the trailhead next day, so it must've been some other place. The photo in the article is probably from earlier in their roadtrip - if you're driving to the Olympic peninsula from the east, stopping somewhere in the I-90 corridor is natural.
The natural area around there had very bad cell service, plus I recognize the little store they made a call from in the article as the little store inside Salish lodge. Plus, it was 45 minutes from the trail where they got picked up by the couple, not 45 minutes from Seattle that they mentioned in the article?
But the article specifically talks of the Olympic National Park, which is also mostly uncovered. And even if they were hiking somewhere in the eastern parts of it, there's no trailhead anywhere on the Olympic peninsula that's 45 minutes away from the Salish Lodge. OTOH 45 minutes is exactly how long it takes to get from the Lodge to Seattle in normal traffic, so it would make sense if the car was already towed there by then. But then the article specifically talks about "45-minute drive back to the trailhead".
I suspect it's just a case of a non-local journalist misunderstanding some of the pieces from the interviews and cobbling the story together the best they could.
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?