Fiat and VW have no love for you and your failed ideology.
Buy a plug-in electric car, SUV, or truck (they sell them for $9000 in China today and in First World nations like Canada) and stick it to the man.
You do realize that the US has a huge number more electric vehicles available than Canada right? Most EVs are only available in CARB states, which Canada isn't.
In my experience they were much less likely to damage the mechanism than the tapes themselves that had a tendency to spew long lengths of tape throughout the mechanism at random intervals. as for "working properly", I always managed to hear what I played through them quite clearly, and usually with better sound quality than an actual tape. I never saw any downside.
Canadian brick and mortar stores have a LOT of lobbying clout, and they HATE online merchants. Take a look at the argument over raising the amount you are allowed to import duty free. Lowest value in the developed world, by a HUGE margin, and no change in sight, all thanks to brick and mortar lobbying.
Of course it's a Canadian tradition, why compete when you can lobby? That's why we pay much more for almost everything than most other countries (possible exception being Australia, they seem to get gouged almost as badly as we do)
Amazon.com prices in the USA are the lowest or close to it. Amazon.ca is nowhere close, and are often completely fantastical.
Exactly this. I'm sick of finding items on amazon.ca that are more than double the price of the same item on amazon.com (even after taking in to account the exchange rate), and finding the one on amazon.com won't ship to Canada. It's disgusting. I was just looking at an item online, $840 on Amazon.ca $320 on Amazon.com, identical item, same model number, everything. I found a different company that was willing to sell it to me in Canada for $450, not as good as the.com price, but way better than the.ca price.
The difference is that in Apple's case, there's are many competitors, all of which make a better product, so it's easy. Let the fanbois have their iDevice and let the rest of us have better products for less money from the competition. Tesla is different, nobody is really competing with them yet, so Tesla customers include both the fanbois, and the people who just want a great product. These two groups often clash quite vocally. Once some competition arrives, it will be easier. The people who can't stand the Tesla corporate culture can escape to a company willing to be honest, deliver on promises, and work with their customers instead of against them. I'll be the first out the door once someone comes out with a product that actually competes with the Model S.
As I said, best car, worst company. If someone else develops a car that's almost as good, I'll switch in an instant. It doesn't have to be better, it just has to be close.
Tesla flat out lied to me to make a sale. They promised all sorts of features in AP1 that have not been delivered, and have quietly been removed from their website after they took my money. They have actively removed functionally from my car after I bought it through over the air software updates, without my permission, and refused to do warranty repair work without my agreeing to have functionality removed permanently from my car. They are openly hostile to any third party repair efforts, despite not having the capacity to do timely repairs at their own facilities. It's honestly hard to be much slimier of a company, but they are looking for ways each and every day.
lol, well, it was an honest typo, but if I'm going to be harsh on Faraday Future it won't be for the auto-park fail. A product failing to perform on stage 2 years before the final version is available to the public is embarrassing for the company, but not really a good indicator of how well the final product will work.
If I'm going to criticize FF it will be for their lack of focus, lack of finances, and overly optimistic promises which I suspect will not come to fruition. I might also criticize the overly complex nature of their product.
I honestly hope they succeed, however I'm not overly optimistic, they just aren't giving off any of the right signals.
Sort of, but the truth is that in the EV world, there's no reason to compromise on performance, it's not the same as with traditional vehicles, a large motor adds negligible cost to the vehicle, and it doesn't use much more electricity in normal use than the smaller motor does, so it doesn't compromise range much either. It's not like traditional cars where you have to chose between performance and efficiency, you can have both in an EV. (to certain limits, at the top end you do need to spend more, but not on the motor, on the battery, to get more power out at a time, you also need a bigger battery overall, but that also helps with range and recharge time)
That said, you are also right that we need the companies to eventually diversify more so that they have multiple types of vehicle, but it does need the companies to become established first, a small company trying to produce a full lineup of 7 or 8 different types of vehicle at launch would have no hope of surviving. They also have trouble starting by going for a different niche that high end performance car, because their first vehicles will by necessity be expensive. It's easier to sell a $120,000 premium sports car, than a $100,000 stripped down commuter car. As they become established they can slowly work their way down market, as Tesla is just now starting to do with the Model 3.
They do it because it's easy. What customers really care about is range and recharge time, but those are hard expensive problems to solve. Unlike in traditional vehicles though, more horsepower and more torque are practically free in an EV. A larger electric motor adds negligible more cost to building the vehicle, it adds only a tiny amount more weight, and apart from the tiny amount of weight, has no impact on range unless you floor it all the time, so there's no real downside there either.
It makes easy headline numbers they can use to say they're better, even if nobody cares. It's not exactly like they're the only industry to do this either. Many industries focus on delivering lots of useless, but cheap and easy, features so they can claim to be the best while completely ignoring any of the stuff the customers actually care about.
The PC industry was among the worst for years focusing exclusively on clock rates while ignoring all other metrics.
Electric cars are serious sports cars, and they don't care about airflow over the batteries because it's too inefficient. They use liquid cooling just like you do for anything you're serious about cooling properly. Tesla took a shortcut in their motor cooling and then took a software shortcut to cut power based on time at high power rather than temperature, combined it makes the Tesla inappropriate for prolonged usage on a race track. That doesn't mean all electric cars are that way. Take a look at Formula-E racing for example.
And that is Rei's mistake. He is extrapolating that because people are currently buying Teslas, that they wouldn't rather buy from someone else. The fact is that there is a very large (and growing) portion of the Tesla customer base that is fed up with Tesla, and would gladly buy from anyone else if there was only a viable competitor. Unfortunately at this time, no suck competitor exists. To be successful in the market, a competitor to Tesla doesn't even have to produce a better vehicle, they just need to produce a vehicle that's almost as good, at a price that's about the same, but with a good service network, and not promise people things (and take money for those things) that they will never deliver.
I have a Tesla, it's the best car currently on the market, from one of the worst companies in business today. I would gladly buy a slightly inferior product from another company if it meant avoiding dealing with Tesla. The problem is that there is no "slightly" inferior product on the market, there are simply vehicles that do not even begin to compare.
Unfortunately, I personally do not believe that Faraday Future will be the company to change that. Everything I see indicates a lack of focus and drive that makes it unlikely they'll even make it to market, combined with the same attitude that Tesla has indicating a likelihood to also over-promise and under-deliver.
I find more promise in Lucid Motors, though I am the first to admit that they still have a long way to go, and no guarantee of success.
cooked the sales figures. Most of the big sales were people buying a marked down TV never intending to use the 3D capability.
And they continue to cook the books to prove that it's a success. You almost can't buy a TV without 3D, so any time someone gets a TV with that feature (even though they will never use it) it's used as proof that people want 3D. I'm sure my purchase was used as proof even though it didn't even come with the glasses, and I have never bought any. It's the same in theatres, most movies are in 3D, with very few 2D showings, and only at inconvenient times. But if I give up and go to the 3D showing I'm used as proof that people want 3D, when in fact I would have paid extra to avoid it if that were only an option.
Around here the 2D showing is once per day at 2pm on a weekday, the 3D showing is at 6:00, 6:15, 6:30, 6:45, 7:30, 8:00, 8:45 and 9:00. But people choose to watch in 3D instead of 2D so people are demanding 3D! (No, people just want to watch the movie and don't really have a choice!) I will ALWAYS choose 2D where I can. I have been known to drive across town instead of choosing a closer theatre just to avoid 3D, but because the theatres get a couple extra bucks per ticket out of you for the 3D showing they do their best not to offer any alternative.
Maybe I'm missing something, but this doesn't seem like how I'd design or build this thing.
First of all, there's no reason to store, even for a few seconds, anything before you detect the hotword to wake up. Next, the device does need to record the next bunch of time and forward it to Amazon for processing. But once the audio is processed, and the command detected, what can be gained from storing the raw audio? it would take a fair amount of storage space to keep the audio from every device for long periods, and you've already done whatever it was you needed to do with it anyway.
I can't come up with any reason why the raw audio would even exist more than a few seconds after the original use, let alone be available days, weeks, or months later to obtain by law enforcement.
Now if what you're looking for is evidence that someone activated the device, or issued a command (or even what the command was), then sure, I can see that existing in log files for troubleshooting, use analysis, marketing data, etc. But background audio? I just don't see why that would even exist.
Canada Post is the worst of the bunch. They absolutely REFUSE to knock or ring a doorbell, instead leaving boxes in plain sight on my front porch next to a busy road for anyone to see. Additionally, despite having a post office 2 blocks away, they refuse to send any packages there instead preferring to send them to a much further one. Not to mention that packages can sit for multiple weeks sometimes with no accountability (I had one sitting at the sorting centre a few blocks from my house for 2 weeks at one point, nothing I could do but wait)
FedEx, UPS, and even Purolator (despite their Canada Post association) have all been willing to ring doorbells and/or hide packages from view, and their pick up points, while further than my closest post office, are all much closer than the post office Canada post decides to actually use.
Of course I've also had issues with many other couriers. UPS, don't bother with their next day guaranteed service, the guarantee is worthless, they won't even reimburse the shipping cost on a package that's delivered over a week after the "guaranteed" time. I also had DHL "accidentally" ship a next day overnight air package by ground adding a 4 day delay, (they were also unwilling to reimburse anything, even the premium paid for the next-day service). I recently had a FedEx package do an extra lap of the country (tracking info showed it arrive in my city the day before delivery was scheduled, over the next 2 days the tracking info showed it go back out and visit 3 other cities, some over 1000km away, before returning to my city for a late delivery)
Honestly, the only shipper I have never had issues with is Greyhound, but they don't do express overnight, so their use is limited, I also don't know any online retailers who use them.
There is a difference. One has the authority to throw me in jail, or worse take me somewhere offshore and torture me. The other might show me more ads.
I don't want either one spying on me, but there's certainly an order of preference here!
Because you believe Apple doesn't ever look at all the data they collect about you? That they would never share it with anyone?
At least with Android it's your choice. You can root the phone and decide exactly how much you want going where. Now if you want to actually use any services you'll have to share something, but it's up to you what the trade-off is. On iPhone you have no choice, Apple gets all of it no matter what you do.
People don't put landline phones in their pockets. Having to take your phone out of your pocket to charge every day would be an immense hassle. And yet, people have figured that it's worth the hassle.
I've already admitted that these smart watches don't make a great sleep tracker because of the charging, but they do so many other things well that I wouldn't give up on the whole genre because it doesn't do something that you couldn't do before anyway.
Your landline phone doesn't require charging at all, yet people still bought cell phones. The increased convenience outweighed the inconvenience of recharging. A good smart watch is the same idea. It may need charging almost every night, but the convenience of having it outweighs the inconvenience of charging it. I have to plug in my phone every night anyway, no problem putting my watch beside it. I never liked wearing a watch to bed anyway.
Slashdot Mirror
Fiat and VW have no love for you and your failed ideology.
Buy a plug-in electric car, SUV, or truck (they sell them for $9000 in China today and in First World nations like Canada) and stick it to the man.
You do realize that the US has a huge number more electric vehicles available than Canada right? Most EVs are only available in CARB states, which Canada isn't.
In my experience they were much less likely to damage the mechanism than the tapes themselves that had a tendency to spew long lengths of tape throughout the mechanism at random intervals.
as for "working properly", I always managed to hear what I played through them quite clearly, and usually with better sound quality than an actual tape. I never saw any downside.
If you have a new iPhone, then you're probably in that same hipster category in the first place.
That's why you keep a cassette adapter around, not an actual cassette.
You do realize most phones these days use TOUCH screens right?
Canadian brick and mortar stores have a LOT of lobbying clout, and they HATE online merchants. Take a look at the argument over raising the amount you are allowed to import duty free. Lowest value in the developed world, by a HUGE margin, and no change in sight, all thanks to brick and mortar lobbying.
Of course it's a Canadian tradition, why compete when you can lobby? That's why we pay much more for almost everything than most other countries (possible exception being Australia, they seem to get gouged almost as badly as we do)
"other people are breaking the law too" has never been a valid defence in any courtroom in the world.
Amazon.com prices in the USA are the lowest or close to it. Amazon.ca is nowhere close, and are often completely fantastical.
Exactly this. I'm sick of finding items on amazon.ca that are more than double the price of the same item on amazon.com (even after taking in to account the exchange rate), and finding the one on amazon.com won't ship to Canada. It's disgusting. .com price, but way better than the .ca price.
I was just looking at an item online, $840 on Amazon.ca $320 on Amazon.com, identical item, same model number, everything. I found a different company that was willing to sell it to me in Canada for $450, not as good as the
So why then is simulated child porn also illegal? (Eg animations, paintings, barely legal people pretending to be children)
The difference is that in Apple's case, there's are many competitors, all of which make a better product, so it's easy. Let the fanbois have their iDevice and let the rest of us have better products for less money from the competition.
Tesla is different, nobody is really competing with them yet, so Tesla customers include both the fanbois, and the people who just want a great product. These two groups often clash quite vocally.
Once some competition arrives, it will be easier. The people who can't stand the Tesla corporate culture can escape to a company willing to be honest, deliver on promises, and work with their customers instead of against them. I'll be the first out the door once someone comes out with a product that actually competes with the Model S.
As I said, best car, worst company. If someone else develops a car that's almost as good, I'll switch in an instant. It doesn't have to be better, it just has to be close.
Tesla flat out lied to me to make a sale. They promised all sorts of features in AP1 that have not been delivered, and have quietly been removed from their website after they took my money.
They have actively removed functionally from my car after I bought it through over the air software updates, without my permission, and refused to do warranty repair work without my agreeing to have functionality removed permanently from my car.
They are openly hostile to any third party repair efforts, despite not having the capacity to do timely repairs at their own facilities.
It's honestly hard to be much slimier of a company, but they are looking for ways each and every day.
lol, well, it was an honest typo, but if I'm going to be harsh on Faraday Future it won't be for the auto-park fail. A product failing to perform on stage 2 years before the final version is available to the public is embarrassing for the company, but not really a good indicator of how well the final product will work.
If I'm going to criticize FF it will be for their lack of focus, lack of finances, and overly optimistic promises which I suspect will not come to fruition. I might also criticize the overly complex nature of their product.
I honestly hope they succeed, however I'm not overly optimistic, they just aren't giving off any of the right signals.
Sort of, but the truth is that in the EV world, there's no reason to compromise on performance, it's not the same as with traditional vehicles, a large motor adds negligible cost to the vehicle, and it doesn't use much more electricity in normal use than the smaller motor does, so it doesn't compromise range much either. It's not like traditional cars where you have to chose between performance and efficiency, you can have both in an EV. (to certain limits, at the top end you do need to spend more, but not on the motor, on the battery, to get more power out at a time, you also need a bigger battery overall, but that also helps with range and recharge time)
That said, you are also right that we need the companies to eventually diversify more so that they have multiple types of vehicle, but it does need the companies to become established first, a small company trying to produce a full lineup of 7 or 8 different types of vehicle at launch would have no hope of surviving. They also have trouble starting by going for a different niche that high end performance car, because their first vehicles will by necessity be expensive. It's easier to sell a $120,000 premium sports car, than a $100,000 stripped down commuter car. As they become established they can slowly work their way down market, as Tesla is just now starting to do with the Model 3.
They do it because it's easy. What customers really care about is range and recharge time, but those are hard expensive problems to solve. Unlike in traditional vehicles though, more horsepower and more torque are practically free in an EV. A larger electric motor adds negligible more cost to building the vehicle, it adds only a tiny amount more weight, and apart from the tiny amount of weight, has no impact on range unless you floor it all the time, so there's no real downside there either.
It makes easy headline numbers they can use to say they're better, even if nobody cares. It's not exactly like they're the only industry to do this either. Many industries focus on delivering lots of useless, but cheap and easy, features so they can claim to be the best while completely ignoring any of the stuff the customers actually care about.
The PC industry was among the worst for years focusing exclusively on clock rates while ignoring all other metrics.
Electric cars are serious sports cars, and they don't care about airflow over the batteries because it's too inefficient. They use liquid cooling just like you do for anything you're serious about cooling properly.
Tesla took a shortcut in their motor cooling and then took a software shortcut to cut power based on time at high power rather than temperature, combined it makes the Tesla inappropriate for prolonged usage on a race track. That doesn't mean all electric cars are that way.
Take a look at Formula-E racing for example.
And that is Rei's mistake.
He is extrapolating that because people are currently buying Teslas, that they wouldn't rather buy from someone else. The fact is that there is a very large (and growing) portion of the Tesla customer base that is fed up with Tesla, and would gladly buy from anyone else if there was only a viable competitor. Unfortunately at this time, no suck competitor exists.
To be successful in the market, a competitor to Tesla doesn't even have to produce a better vehicle, they just need to produce a vehicle that's almost as good, at a price that's about the same, but with a good service network, and not promise people things (and take money for those things) that they will never deliver.
I have a Tesla, it's the best car currently on the market, from one of the worst companies in business today. I would gladly buy a slightly inferior product from another company if it meant avoiding dealing with Tesla. The problem is that there is no "slightly" inferior product on the market, there are simply vehicles that do not even begin to compare.
Unfortunately, I personally do not believe that Faraday Future will be the company to change that. Everything I see indicates a lack of focus and drive that makes it unlikely they'll even make it to market, combined with the same attitude that Tesla has indicating a likelihood to also over-promise and under-deliver.
I find more promise in Lucid Motors, though I am the first to admit that they still have a long way to go, and no guarantee of success.
cooked the sales figures. Most of the big sales were people buying a marked down TV never intending to use the 3D capability.
And they continue to cook the books to prove that it's a success. You almost can't buy a TV without 3D, so any time someone gets a TV with that feature (even though they will never use it) it's used as proof that people want 3D. I'm sure my purchase was used as proof even though it didn't even come with the glasses, and I have never bought any.
It's the same in theatres, most movies are in 3D, with very few 2D showings, and only at inconvenient times. But if I give up and go to the 3D showing I'm used as proof that people want 3D, when in fact I would have paid extra to avoid it if that were only an option.
Around here the 2D showing is once per day at 2pm on a weekday, the 3D showing is at 6:00, 6:15, 6:30, 6:45, 7:30, 8:00, 8:45 and 9:00. But people choose to watch in 3D instead of 2D so people are demanding 3D! (No, people just want to watch the movie and don't really have a choice!)
I will ALWAYS choose 2D where I can. I have been known to drive across town instead of choosing a closer theatre just to avoid 3D, but because the theatres get a couple extra bucks per ticket out of you for the 3D showing they do their best not to offer any alternative.
Maybe I'm missing something, but this doesn't seem like how I'd design or build this thing.
First of all, there's no reason to store, even for a few seconds, anything before you detect the hotword to wake up. Next, the device does need to record the next bunch of time and forward it to Amazon for processing. But once the audio is processed, and the command detected, what can be gained from storing the raw audio? it would take a fair amount of storage space to keep the audio from every device for long periods, and you've already done whatever it was you needed to do with it anyway.
I can't come up with any reason why the raw audio would even exist more than a few seconds after the original use, let alone be available days, weeks, or months later to obtain by law enforcement.
Now if what you're looking for is evidence that someone activated the device, or issued a command (or even what the command was), then sure, I can see that existing in log files for troubleshooting, use analysis, marketing data, etc. But background audio? I just don't see why that would even exist.
Canada Post is the worst of the bunch. They absolutely REFUSE to knock or ring a doorbell, instead leaving boxes in plain sight on my front porch next to a busy road for anyone to see. Additionally, despite having a post office 2 blocks away, they refuse to send any packages there instead preferring to send them to a much further one. Not to mention that packages can sit for multiple weeks sometimes with no accountability (I had one sitting at the sorting centre a few blocks from my house for 2 weeks at one point, nothing I could do but wait)
FedEx, UPS, and even Purolator (despite their Canada Post association) have all been willing to ring doorbells and/or hide packages from view, and their pick up points, while further than my closest post office, are all much closer than the post office Canada post decides to actually use.
Of course I've also had issues with many other couriers. UPS, don't bother with their next day guaranteed service, the guarantee is worthless, they won't even reimburse the shipping cost on a package that's delivered over a week after the "guaranteed" time. I also had DHL "accidentally" ship a next day overnight air package by ground adding a 4 day delay, (they were also unwilling to reimburse anything, even the premium paid for the next-day service). I recently had a FedEx package do an extra lap of the country (tracking info showed it arrive in my city the day before delivery was scheduled, over the next 2 days the tracking info showed it go back out and visit 3 other cities, some over 1000km away, before returning to my city for a late delivery)
Honestly, the only shipper I have never had issues with is Greyhound, but they don't do express overnight, so their use is limited, I also don't know any online retailers who use them.
There is a difference. One has the authority to throw me in jail, or worse take me somewhere offshore and torture me. The other might show me more ads.
I don't want either one spying on me, but there's certainly an order of preference here!
Because you believe Apple doesn't ever look at all the data they collect about you? That they would never share it with anyone?
At least with Android it's your choice. You can root the phone and decide exactly how much you want going where. Now if you want to actually use any services you'll have to share something, but it's up to you what the trade-off is. On iPhone you have no choice, Apple gets all of it no matter what you do.
People don't put landline phones in their pockets. Having to take your phone out of your pocket to charge every day would be an immense hassle. And yet, people have figured that it's worth the hassle.
I've already admitted that these smart watches don't make a great sleep tracker because of the charging, but they do so many other things well that I wouldn't give up on the whole genre because it doesn't do something that you couldn't do before anyway.
Your landline phone doesn't require charging at all, yet people still bought cell phones. The increased convenience outweighed the inconvenience of recharging.
A good smart watch is the same idea. It may need charging almost every night, but the convenience of having it outweighs the inconvenience of charging it. I have to plug in my phone every night anyway, no problem putting my watch beside it. I never liked wearing a watch to bed anyway.