kileywm

If autonomous vehicles are a success, then there may be surprisingly few totaled cars in the future, compared to what we see today. I'm excited for that and agree with you that some really cool stuff can come out of the salvage of the future.

It's interesting to think about the situations where even the most sophisticated sensors and software may be unable prevent an accident that can total the vehicle. Animal crossings, catastrophic vehicle part failure, surprise road debris, etc...

I agree that Vehicle Miles Traveled will likely increase, but it's important to note just when that increase will occur. I suspect that increases occurring in off-peak hours can be handled by current infrastructure.

I think you're referring to Lyme disease.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lyme_disease

A truck, carrying live Pacific hagfish, spilled the cargo in a 5-car collision. Hagfish produce slime to escape danger, and thus slimed the cars onto which they landed. There was no melting involved.

Extensions/add-ons were the #1 reason I switched from Chrome to Firefox on my mobile device. It supports uBlock Origin & others.

It's worth a try if you haven't done so lately.

That tax could shift to a registration fee. In order for the EV to be licensed for road use, an annual registration fee could be applied, or increased if it already exists. Whether it is a flat fee or some other cost structure, it could be a suitable tax replacement.

Legality aside, which other posters have covered:

I dealt with a local mechanic (small shop) earlier this year who, when it came time to settle the bill, said he will do debit/check for no fee, or a 2% fee for a credit card. In addition, some local gas stations advertise cash rates for fuel, which are slightly discounted vs credit cards.

It's an interesting practice that I don't mind. Ultimately it provides transparency and options to consumers who may be unaware of interchange rates and such that factor into day-to-day transactions.

This is pretty amazing. I've been using a Windows program called Agent Ransack [0] for finding files with regex, but this Everything program is so much faster. Incredibly so. Thanks for the tip!

[0] https://www.mythicsoft.com/agentransack

> "1. It discourages "routine maintenance" -- it's a lot cheaper to go to the dentist annually than to get a root canal every ten, yet there are many who if they only had catastrophic dental insurance would skip the annual."

It's not quite fair to say that it discourages, when really it just doesn't encourage routine maintenance.

To that end, it would be interesting if there was a component that encourages routine maintenance. Every undocumented annual checkup results in <some percentage> of the claim being the claimant's financial responsibility.

Similar, I suppose, to an automobile warranty where a lack of documented regular maintenance can be grounds for voiding some portion or all of the warranty. The healthcare parallel being less extreme.

My suggestion for people who find cruise control makes driving boring, disengaging, and thus more dangerous is to instead focus on other aspects of driving - perhaps unobvious ones. It's surprisingly effective.

Personally, I use cruise control very often, and the attention freed up by it I typically put toward maintaining lane position and checking my mirrors more often. It keeps the trips engaging and makes me a safer, more consistent driver.

I'm also convinced that traffic flow would be much better if people used cruise control more often. Speed variability seems to cause excessive lane changes as a driver inadvertently slows down and the cars following attempt to pass so that they don't have to slow down too.

I agree that separating them would help in this regard. We should; however, consider why it was done this way. I can only speculate on the matter, but tend to think it was bundled with payroll for simpler accounting (assuming tax deductible insurance premiums stay intact).

I've had a smart watch for about 2 months now. I've come to appreciate it the most for one particular reason: notifications.

I silence (no sound or vibrate) my phone and rely on the watch for all notifications. It's really quite peaceful for me and everyone around me.

The article suggests radio buttons instead of most select menus.

I can appreciate the ease with which one can skim radio buttons vs select options; however, once there are more than a few options, the sprawl of radio buttons can be a little ridiculous.

The screen space required to display 50 states via radio buttons vs select menu is tremendous. At that point, I suspect it would be difficult to determine where the list of radio options end and the next form field begins.

Good point, I really didn't complete my thought. Updating my comment to explain.

Burning wood is not carbon zero. It is the reverse of carbon sequestration in the sense that atmospheric CO2 was once converted to wood by the tree, and now the wood is being burned and the captured carbon release back into the atmosphere.

That could be nearly carbon zero (I don't know the contributions from soil and what mass remains as ashes, etc..), except when you consider the opportunity cost.

That burned tree, presumably healthy just prior, loses the ability to sequester any more carbon. A burned tree puts carbon in the atmosphere AND removes a carbon sequesterer simultaneously. That act is removing X amount of future sequestration until the tree would have naturally died and turned to soil. At that point most of that carbon would still be in solid form and not in the atmosphere.

I'm nitpicking at this point, but I lean toward burning wood as not carbon zero for the sake of opportunity cost.

Ah for Nginx, specifically, I meant to refer to location blocks. Granted, regex should be used very carefully for performance reasons, but when appropriate you can do some really cool pattern matching.

As someone who has crafted thousands of complex regular expression rules for data capture, here is my take:

1. This is a fine idea to aid regex newbies in crafting their expressions. I see this as a gateway instead of a longterm tool. The expressions won't be optimal (by no fault of the tool), nor will they likely be complete, but that's not the point. If it helps reduce the barrier(s) to adoption of regular expressions, then I can heartily support it.

2. To the people who say they use regular expressions only a handful of times a year, thus it's not worthwhile to invest time in learning the syntax, I offer this: once you know it, you will use it far more often than you ever expected. Find & replace text, piping output, Nginx.conf editing, or even the REGEXP() function in MySQL. It's a valuable skillset in so many environments that I expect you will use weekly, if not daily.

3. Ultimately regular expressions, like everything, are extra difficult until you know all of the available tools in the toolbox. At that point, you may realize you wrote an unnecessarily complex expression simply because you didn't know better.

The car could log the signal strength of all successful auth attempts from the key fob and determine an acceptable range. Anything outside of the acceptable range could then require use of the mechanical key (for those fobs where the mechanical key is built in) as a precaution.

Fobs could require a 'wake up' key press after a certain duration of inactivity.

Fobs could have a physical switch on them, enabling an airplane mode.

These ideas all give up some manner of ease-of-use.

You're probably thinking of Premium-rate telephone numbers.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Premium-rate_telephone_number

If you're looking for a new audio player on Windows, you may want to try out foobar2000. I've been using it for several years and have really enjoyed it.

https://www.foobar2000.org/

The Credit CARD Act of 2009 [1] made it considerably more difficult for an 18 year old to get a credit card, but I should add that circumstances change when an 18 year old has a co-signer. At any rate, pop-up stands and such have been curtailed by this provision:

"(5) Eliminates excessive marketing to young people. Consumers under the age of 21 must prove that they have an independent income or get a co-signer before applying for a credit card. The Act also prevents credit card companies from mailing offers to consumers under 21 unless they "opt in," and prohibits companies from wooing students with T-shirts, free pizza and other free gifts at university-sponsored events."

As an anecdote, my experience (within the past decade) reflects the parent post's perception. My first credit card had a very low limit of < $1000, and was surely because I was then young, a student with no stable income, and had a lack of credit history.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Credit_CARD_Act_of_2009

I've used some of the products containing microbeads and was flabbergasted when I learned that they were plastic. It was my dentist who asked a pointed question during a routine cleaning:

"Do you use Crest toothpaste?"

I answered yes and was informed that some of the plastic beads from the tooth paste had gotten stuck in my gums. The dentist went on to explain that she'd sent in many complaints to the company but they still didn't drop that ingredient.

What weighs on my mind now is why a toothpaste company continued to use microbeads after learning of the externality. Did they have too much inventory to sell. Were they afraid that discontinuing that exact product would upset customers? Did they think that owning up to the mistake and correcting it would draw too much attention to the mistake?

Personally, my respect lies with any entity that can own up to and correct its mistakes before it is forced to do so.

Seems like you're aware of the relationship between gluclose and fiber, since you built up to glycemic index as your final question, but for those that don't know:

Fiber content in foods affect how the human body absorbs glucose. High-sugar fruits generally have decent quantities of fiber which mitigates the rate at which ingested glucose enters the bloodstream. At least this is my understanding of it from my nutritional scientist, sister, but I'm no medical professional. For more details, fiber:

"Attracts water and forms a viscous gel during digestion, slowing the emptying of the stomach and intestinal transit, shielding carbohydrates from enzymes, and delaying absorption of glucose,[62] which lowers variance in blood sugar levels"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dietary_fiber#Effects_of_fiber...

Also, compare an orange vs orange juice:

Orange Glycemic Index = 40

Orange Juice Glycemic Index = 50

http://www.health.harvard.edu/healthy-eating/glycemic_index_...

That information is internally available within Verizon, to its employees, to (presumably) verify ownership of an account when speaking to a customer. None of that is surprising - that information is commonly used as security challenge questions in phone support situations.

Whether it should be, well that is another matter.

There may be a terms of use clause forbidding splitting like this but it almost certainly isn't a demarcation issue, so there is no real 'bypass' that I am aware of.

The demarcation is generally clearly marked (plastic box often called a 'network interface device') and is almost never located at the modem itself.

Typically, the legal demarcation is on the exterior of houses. For a multiple dwelling unit (apartment complex) or commercial building, the demarcation is usually inside. ISPs try to choose a demarcation that is accessible from the outside, so as to not require being allowed into the building to test signal leading to the premise. This cuts down on cancelled repairs due to 'no access'. My point in all this is that for most coax and twisted pair services, the indoor wiring is usually the property owners and not the ISP's, especially at the point where it connects to the modem. For someone to add a splitter to wire that is their responsibility and property is almost certainly legal.

I worked for one of the bigger ISPs up until last year, so I speak only from my personal experience. For more details:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demarcation_point

After 30 days of a failed payment [1] or 30 days without contacting JetBrains servers [2] it will only allow you to open their software briefly before "the product will gently notify the user and will allow some time to connect to the Internet before asking to close the application".

[1] https://sales.jetbrains.com/hc/en-gb/articles/204344871-Does...

[2] https://sales.jetbrains.com/hc/en-gb/articles/204348441-What...

To demand a raise of that size from your current employer would likely sour your work environment there. Put yourself in the current employer's shoes: it is either an admission from the company that you're severely underpaid or carries the expectation that you'll be more productive to earn that raise. Yes they didn't have to try to recruit and train to replace you, but a raise of that size quickly overcomes the cost of a new hire (if they're brought on at 1x or less of your current salary).

If the money is important enough to you that you want it, then I think you'd be best off getting it from the poaching company. They'll be glad to have you - it's why they made the offer - and they are bidding for your current/potential productivity level.

> To be fair, this is also incredibly exhausting. Empathy is a skill and, like any other, it gets easier with practice. Eventually the mental overhead is minimal.

The core automaker message I got out of this is:

Automakers want to lock out consumers and unapproved mechanics from tinkering with vehicle software on the grounds that (1) they could purposefully or accidentally make the vehicle non-compliant with safety/emission standards, and (2) they could use the vehicle's computers to infringe copyright (presumably ripping streaming audio?), and (3) closed source = more difficult for malicious hacking of vehicles.

There are already laws in place to deter all of the outcomes of these actions. To deter the action that might lead to unlawful action... sigh.

I agree, that's some high idle power consumption. If I had to hazard a guess, it's the controller aggressively maintaining the charge of the flash cells [1]. Samsung released a fix, not too long ago, for a bug with flash cells losing charge for their 840 and 840 Evo SSD line [2], so I imagine it's a delicate process to get right. Are the other NAND controllers less aggressive and/or more efficient with this process? I don't know. I assume it's the same flash cells as the SATA drives but with a PCIe-oriented controller, so I hardly expect them to lose charge any faster than the SATA counterparts.

[1] http://www.purestorage.com/resources/introduction-to-flash-m...

[2] http://www.anandtech.com/show/8617/samsung-releases-firmware...