Ring still partners with Axon [1] as part of the Community Requests feature [2]. Since terminating the partnership with Flock is solely a PR play, the answer to your question will likely depend on if consumers en masse use this opportunity to educate themselves on the gravity of the “loss of control (of your data) in exchange for convenience” paradox of cloud services and advocate for additional changes to be made to the Ring platform, or if Amazon’s PR capability will find a way to improve consumer sentiment towards Ring products and services without addressing privacy and surveillance concerns.
Isn’t this position predicated on the assumption that individuals without substantial capital “own” an AI?
When someone uses an AI they do not own, they are (maybe) receiving a benefit in exchange for improving that AI and associated intellectual property / competitive advantage of the person or entity that owns the AI—-and subsequently improving the final position of the AI’s owner.
The better an AI becomes, the more valuable it becomes, and the more likely that the owner of the AI would want to either restrict access to the AI and extract additional value from users (e.g. via paid subscription model) or leverage the AI to develop new or improve existing revenue streams—-even if doing so is to the detriment of AI users. After all… a sufficiently-trained “AGI” AI could (in theory) be capable of outsmarting anyone that uses it, know more about its users than its users consciously know about themselves, and could act faster than any human.
While I share in your hope, I think it is unfortunately far more likely that AIs will widen the gap between the haves and the have-nots and will evolve into some of the most financially and intellectually oppressive technology ever used by humans (willingly or not).
HEOS-capable gear from Marantz and Denon cover a lot of the applications you referenced. I decided I would never buy another Sonos product after the S2 rollout, and I now have a mix of eleven Denon and Marantz receivers driving both built-in, freestanding, and outdoor speakers of my choice all over my house.
eCommerce is inherently cashless by design. Confined / captive environments (e.g. airplane cabins) are cashless. Concessions and merchandise counters at large events (sporting events, concerts, etc.) are cashless. Self-service kiosks for anything (or vending machines) are increasingly cashless. And if memory serves me correctly, I believe that using cash to purchase real estate via arms-length transaction is prohibited in the USA by law, even if the buyer and seller agree on the use of cash (and if it was logistically feasible to do so).
I would argue that cash is not an option in more cases than it is an option.
1) What is the point of posting this website on HN? I love vinyl, and have a collection with plenty of rarities in it (one out of five, one out of ten, test pressings, promo pressings, signed sleeves, etc.), but I am not sure if a discussion on HN about a vinyl marketplace is apropos. I am not trying to be contrarian; I am asking out of curiosity.
2) As a US-based collector, I find prices listed on the posted website of some LPs I would like to have in my collection much more (as in, double) than listings I can find on Discogs… not to mention Discogs’s excellent communication tools and release database. With the exception of one purchase I made where the seller was essentially acting as a drop shipper and had no idea what they were selling, every vinyl I have purchased through Discogs has been exactly what I thought I had purchased (variant, condition, other important characteristics). I typically communicate with sellers to make sure vinyls are packaged a certain way in depending on the purchase to make sure the new addition to my collection arrives in the best condition possible. Discogs community-centric tools make it very easy to determine or infer buyer and seller reputations / trustworthiness. All said: what is the value of this site over a site such as Discogs?
What distinguishes the offerings from Fabric8Labs from the offerings from long-established companies like Desktop Metal[1] that are capable of printing parts using a wide range of materials including carbon steel, stainless steel, titanium, and tungsten?
The tungsten capability really throws me for a loop. As someone who TIG welds in my spare time, I can’t imagine having a machine in my shop that could make electrodes. The amount of energy required must be … a lot.
I paid far less attention to weather forecasts 30 years ago than I do now, but I have numerous anecdotal examples of how weather forecasting models and information provided by publicly available weather services have trended towards uselessness.
There is no publicly accessible weather information service that can accurately forecast weather at my house. One of the first purchases I made when I moved in to the house was an Ambient Weather Station resulting from pure curiosity that has evolved into an interest in keeping a historical record of "actual weather". Daily hi/low temperatures generally have positive correlation with forecasted temperatures, but the spread between forecasted temperatures and actual temperatures is generally ten degrees less than forecasted.
Long term qualitative temperature trends ("above average for the winter" and similar) are positively correlated.
But ...
- Forecasted storm intensities are wildly inaccurate. Forecasted high-intensity rain storms end up being all-day drizzle events or on and off rain showers, and visa versa. A forecast of “a passing afternoon shower” ends up being an all-day wash-out.
- Precipitation forecasts are wildly inaccurate, without correlation. Actual precipitation can be far less than forecasted or far more than forecasted, even when compared to short term forecasts--to include same day and intrahour forecasts. Just this past weekend we had accumulating whiteout snow squalls on an off all day long on Sunday, yet there was never any mention of any possibility of snow by any local meteorologists or by any weather forecasting service I routinely check.
Dark Sky was the best app I ever used for weather forecasting. Its short and long term forecasts were more than sufficient for planning purposes, but where the app to this day has had no equal was in its intrahour local forecasts and precipitation forecasts. If Dark Sky alerted me that there was going to be tornado in my area within the next 15 minutes, I saw a funnel cloud 15 minutes later. If Dark Sky alerted me that it was going to stop snowing in 15 minutes, the snow stopped 15 minutes later. Sadly, Apple lobotomized the service when they claimed to have integrated Dark Sky functionality in to Apple Weather. Even though I fairly regularly report weather accuracy issues to Apple via the Weather app, the reporting and forecasting provided by Apple Weather has never improved.
- Seasonal precipitation forecasts are wildly inaccurate without correlation. Modeling (from NOAA, local meteorologists, etc.) suggested we were to have "above average snowfall" this winter, with the official average winter snowfall being 48 inches. We have received 20 inches so far this winter. Either winter will go out with a bang in the next few weeks (which would be nice, IMO), or modeling will have predicted more than 140% of the actual snowfall. This is an altogether unfair comparison, but why not: if the executives of a publicly traded company forecasted 140% more revenue to shareholders than the company they preside over realized, they would all be immediately fired, sued, jailed, etc.
If society collectively will not tolerate 140% inaccuracy in financial matters (stock price manipulation, value destruction, and so forth), should we be content with weather forecasting and modeling that is just as inaccurate? After all, weather is treated as (only) a financial matter by insurance companies. On an individual level, viewing weather's impact through financial optics still makes sense--from lost days of work and lost wages, to insurance premiums, to food prices, to transportation costs, to taxes, to paying for the ability to get your money back for a concert ticket you bought months ago if the weather is too bad.
Climate change is certainly wreaking havoc on weather modeling, but it has been doing so for a significant period of time and the models do not appear (to me) to be getting better at adequately accounting for the effects of climate change. If current weather forecasting models cannot be adapted to accurately account for the effects of climate change, it may be time to either fundamentally change the way weather modeling and forecasting is done, or not do it at all. Taking out my broad brush and bucket of paint: are there any companies relying on AI to develop a more accurate weather forecasting service?
And if anyone has a weather service to recommend that will not “Night at the Roxbury” me with ads and that has accurate 3-day-or-less weather forecasts, I am all ears. Please post them here.
All electronics fail, and all systems reliant on electronics fail. Not all worm gears fail.
As someone who has worked in tech my whole life, and who currently runs a technology-centric company, I generally detest the state of technology these days. I have reached a point in my life where I consciously limit my use of technology, and make it a point to steer clear of purchasing and making use of devices and services with "superfluous technology" unless their are no alternatives.
Many (if not most) modern technology systems are far too complex to be properly tested, especially when taking into account integrations (via "standard" interfaces) with third party technology systems. As technology systems have become more complex, their reliability as tools to accomplish an intended goal has drastically decreased while the telemetry capabilities of the systems have been drastically improved (without me knowingly realizing any benefits thereof). As such, I have learned to rely on technology less and less as I have aged.
There are surely many reasons for the inverse relationship between complexity and reliability of technology systems, but a cursory list of suggested root causes that come to mind include:
- use of (necessary, in modern software development) automated test tools;
- use of programming languages too-abstracted from technologies employed within the system;
- a likely growing percentage of developers lacking a working domain knowledge of the systems they are developing;
- the corporate / financial pressure to needlessly upgrade or evolve technology systems--even in the absence of flaws or demand for the upgrade--in the name of maintaining / increasing shareholder value (see also: planned obsolescence, etc.)
Two immediate examples of "too much technology" that come to mind, because I have experienced them within the past few days:
1) Bluetooth is soon to be 26 years old, yet my model year 2022 smartphone cannot reliably communicate with my model year 2022 vehicle's head unit via Bluetooth to play music or relay audio during phone calls. I cannot tell you how many point releases of smartphone software (or vehicle head unit software) have been released since I have owned both the phone and the via Bluetooth, but Bluetooth has never worked correctly on any of them. Why?
2) On some recent releases of macOS Sonoma, the OS can read FAT* formatted USB media without issue, while other releases (to include 14.3.1) cannot read FAT* formatted USB media. Regarding 14.3.1: on 14.3, I could read and write to FAT* USB drives just fine, but I could not type an email longer than a couple of lines without the UI overlaying text on top of other text in the email, making the entire text of the email illegible. When 14.3.1 (with the text overlaying issue fixed) was available, I applied the update right away. Now I can write emails without issue, but I cannot read FAT* formatted USB drives. Why?
The long term effect of such legislation, especially if replicated in other jurisdictions, is that OEMs will cease to manufacture LNG/LP appliances because of lack of demand.
If OEMs no longer sell LNG/LP appliances, vendors that make LNG/LP components (burners, orifices, combustion chambers, etc.) stop making them. Over time, appliances become unserviceable.
Then consumers must purchase electric appliances, even if they are not a viable option—because they are the only option.
You are correct; there is no cause for immediate concern for existing appliances and existing residences. But over time, only electric appliances (and parts) will be available for purchase, and that is precisely the intent.
Just as California emissions laws generally set the standard for automobiles that are available for purchase in the US, this legislation will have far reaching affects across the country.
Why not properly educate the population on why electric stoves should be preferred over alternative stoves?
Why not incentivize buyers to buy electric stoves (e.g., tax credits) or incentivize OEMs to lower the cost of electric stoves?
As someone who’s house is intentionally and entirely designed around the premise that we lose mains power on a routine basis due to poor infrastructure and challenging environment (a mountain with dense forest), and wish to have a means for cooking food indoors without electricity, I have a propane stove. It is the only viable option as far as I am concerned, and as such, I am willing to pay a premium for one if I need to replace the unit I have. But if I can’t get a replacement propane stove in the future, what am I supposed to do? Overhaul my house at my own expense? Pay the electric company the multiple millions of dollars it would take to modernize their infrastructure to make an electric stove a viable option?
Shifting that much burden onto someone like me is absurd, as is this ban. There are numerous other ways to address the problem that the ban aims to solve.
Bans are rarely—if ever—good solutions, and should only ever be used as a measure of last resort. The situation at hand is far from one of last resort. But apparently the US is fully mired in the unfortunate “bans are the best way to score political points” phase of its history… one that I think we’d all be best served to put behind us quickly.
The only downside to their site is that it does not render correctly on mobile. But they now have an app (at least on iOS) that provides a UI and workflow akin to their website.
After all of the iterations of iOS, there is still no way to have only the first new/unread message per SMS/iMessage thread generate a notification--particularly the notification sound or tone.
I find the feature would be useful in all situations, but would be especially useful in group threads. I don't need to hear a ding every time someone in a group thread sends a message if I don't have my phone in my hand. One ding generated when the first unread message is received will do just fine.
If the time in which the stereo was "forgotten" was at the time the exclusions were written into the sales contract (or the sales ad), the stereo would be legally conveyed to the purchaser of the car once the buyer and seller complete the sale.
Similarly, once a real estate purchase is completed, all items within the bounds of the property purchased--whether it be roof shingles, trees, or former owner family heirlooms they forgot to take with them--legally become possessions of the new owner unless itemized in a sales contract along with agreed-to stipulations that permit retrieval of the items by the former owner after completion of the sale.
Goodwill (and being a reasonable buyer/seller) goes a long way in situations such as these, and in most situations a buyer and seller will work out property sorting issues amongst themselves. However, there would be nothing legally preventing a buyer that stumbles upon a stash of gold bars left in the basement of their new-to-them house--that they did not know about, and that the previous owner did not disclose--and immediately selling them. [1]
BMW's recent second attempt at "enabling equipment features as a service" is a canary in the coal mine, or trial balloon, so to speak. BMW's argument for heated-seats-as-a-service is, flippantly, "What if the second buyer of the vehicle doesn't want heated seats? They don't have to pay for the service. Problem solved." This distorted-reality C-suite speak so drenched in logic fallacy is worthy of a conversation by itself, but I bring it up to say this: instead of buying a car in the traditional sense, OEMs are attempting to change the model to buying "the physical components comprising a car, and the option to enable features of those physical components".
I want no part of it. I like to use hyperbolic (at least for today) examples adapting commonplace business models for smart home devices, software licenses, hardware compatibility lists, EVs, cloud services, etc. to traditional / legacy / analog items:
- What if you went to use your hammer you've owned for years, only to find out that it can't be used to drive in a nail because the company that made the hammer is no longer in business?
- What if your basement flooded because, while the trench drain around your foundation is physically capable of directing enough water away from your foundation into your sump pump, you didn't opt to pay for the "catastrophic flooding capability" license? Better yet, let's say you paid for the license, but haven't checked your email in a few days (maybe because of the storms, since your power has been out and you don't have ready Internet access) to learn that the credit card the trench-drain-as-a-service company has on file has expired and the license renewal charge was declined, so the license you leased was deactivated via OTA update without notice sent via the post?
- What if you find out while driving that your car brakes won't work because a repair shop you've gone to for years installed a set of third-party brake pads that used to be but are no longer compatible with your car (or part of an OEM-certified or OEM-supported configuration) as the result of a recent firmware update to your car's PCM/ECU?
All of those sound terrifying to me.
[1] Source: myself, but not about gold bars, unfortunately. More than one year post-purchase of a house I purchased, the seller decided they wanted a lamp back that they thought they left at the house prior to its sale. I did not remember if they left it or not, but they did leave several items behind. I sent items to their forwarding address that I deemed to be personal items (e.g. monogrammed clothes), but assumed that all other items were left because they didn't want to take them. I donated all of the items I didn't want, possibly including the lamp they desperately wanted returned, to charities. After spending a good bit of energy harassing me over the lamp, the seller consulted with counsel and learned that they had no options for recourse. The harassment stopped, and I have not heard from them since.
This is not always true. I live in a Resource Conservation zoning area that was established to protect wildlife and vegetation in our region and preserve a large watershed area that is one of the primary sources of potable drinking water for folks that live down in the valley in the suburban and metropolitan areas. I consider my family and I extremely lucky to live in the area that we do, but we are a far cry from NIMBYs.
Not in all cases. I live in a Resource Conservation area where no lot less than 10 acres in size can be subdivided per zoning laws. The zoning is set as it is to preserve watersheds, wildlife, etc. There are limits (by ratio to land area) that dictate structure density, amount of impervious substrate that can exist within the perimeter of my property, etc. Just because I own over 10 acres doesn't mean I can sell my property to a developer so that they can build four high rise apartment buildings and turn a rural area into a burgeoning metropolitan hub (while destroying a large swath of forest in the process).
We pay high property taxes (which are split value taxes, by the way) relative to other rural areas in the region. That is, we are taxed for the virtue of owning relatively large plots of land (for our area) that come with the protections afforded by the zoning laws--even though our sparsely-developed properties and the characteristics thereof provide benefit to all in our area, including city dwellers (e.g. readily available and clean drinking water, maintaining a healthy ecosystem), for which a value could be assessed that would result in lowering our taxes.
That said, I purchased the property specifically for the Resource Conservation zoning protections, as did my neighbors--and we'd have the zoning laws set no other way regardless of the cost of doing so.
Trying to jam more people into the same finite amount of space is not a sustainable solution (here's looking at you, Bay Area). A byproduct of the recent pandemic was that a significant number of people beta tested relying on technology to get their job done independent of where they were physically located. I would argue it generally worked quite well (though not in all cases).
Though a more ambitious plan than merely increasing taxes and hoping that more housing is developed, why not incentivize people to move to less populated area with the intent of promoting a more-even distribution of population density over time; incentivize medium and large businesses to either permit remote work or establish and maintain local/regional offices if remote work is not conducive to their lines of business or their corporate culture; and fund timely development of new and improvement of existing infrastructure that would make previous two goals achievable?
The primary use case is addressing situations where wet ink signatures are required by a party to a transaction without having to print, sign, and scan a document.
Yes, it is an odd combination of legacy (sometimes regulatory) requirements and modern technology, but there are numerous situations where only wet ink signatures are accepted, and “digital signatures” are not accepted—even though the document is stored in a digital format.
Wet ink signatures are most commonly required in finance / investment / banking transactions. They are sometimes required for B2B transactions. While not as common in the US as in other countries, you can also run into requirements where documents must be signed via wet ink signature under seal (or stamp). Scanning a document with a signature line that has been embossed with a company seal looks somewhat comical and arguably legible (especially if the scan is done with a feed-through scanner) but is required to get business done sometimes.
When I moved, I used the home sale as an excuse to leave Sonos behind due to their drive to increase revenue at the expense of their current customer base. I purchased a couple of Denon receivers, use them for both AV and whole-home audio use, and have never-once regretted conveying my somewhat-sizable Sonos system along with the home sale.
Russound has a more traditional whole-home audio product line (with some--but not all--of their products only available for purchase/install via certified installers), but I have them on my radar if I look to expand my home audio system in the future.
Along the same lines, Favorit makes a press (along with tools / dies and rivets) that takes a lot of the guesswork out of through hole plating. I’ve been a long-time user of the press after getting frustrated with the “solder a paper clip” method of through hole plating, and its greatly increased the yield of my CNC PCB projects.
IIRC, even some DRM-free digital content (e.g. iTunes downloads) are rented per the EULA. But yes... I agree that anything that is rented is more appropriately be defined as a service rather than a product.
[1]:https://www.axon.com
[2]:https://ring.com/support/articles/uds27/Community-request