Elsewhere in the thread someone shared one of the originals where text that’s mucked up in the above meme is clear as day. The crazy artifacting must come from some bizarre compression or automated touchup by an editing software. Maybe automated upscaling?

From what I’ve seen of my in-laws’ Ford vehicles they’re generally pretty good, but I honestly prefer what I’ve seen from the Korean and Japanese manufacturers. They seem to really have the attention to detail down and be far less about spectacle or catering to a type of person I’m not

Honestly I strongly suspect my car seat challenge was just another example of that car being a poorly designed POS. It had all sorts of bonkers design faults, like water bottle holders in the doors that were simply the wrong size to hold any kind of sealable bottle and too aggressively angled to hold an unsealed container of any kind

Another example was that the trunk was absolutely massive, but with the places things stuck down into the trunk and the gigantic lip at the bottom fitting anything bulky or awkward was next to impossible. Or the bright screen that used tons of blues in its design language and couldn’t be fully turned off while driving, and while it was a touchscreen, the angle to reach over and press anything even as a passenger was so awkward you’d just avoid using the touchscreen at all, but certain common actions required using the touchscreen to access

But yeah I love small cars, and someday I’ll probably import a Kei van or car because I would absolutely rock that, and it lends itself to the joke that you’re compensating for something with the super tiny car ;)

Backup cameras are required by law since I think it was 2015? But the trend of gigantic screen with no physical controls seems to be in a “will they/won’t they” kinda situation right now with some manufacturers flirting with the idea, some trying it then reverting, etc.

That sounds like the kind of bonkers oversights I saw on my last Chevy, so it’s not by chance a Chevy work truck is it?

My 2019 Kia seems to give the best of both worlds. I’ve got a small I think 10" display for reversing camera and Android Auto/Apple Carplay/radio and physical buttons and knobs for climate controls, volume, etc. the display is just big enough to be useful for maps, and Kia’s UI for the screen on the display is really nice with almost entirely white on black so it’s not distracting nor too bright at night and it really blends in when you aren’t looking at it while being there and ready for you when you are

I have mixed feelings on this front. On one hand, a locked down computer encourages either extreme compliance (so no learning how to do new things) or encourages the kid to figure out a bypass which might be far worse than if they had an unmanaged computer to begin with.

Right now my oldest isn’t reading yet so I have controls primarily to enforce a time limit particularly for dopamine-heavy media apps, and to prevent how much she can accidentally do by clicking without a clue of what she’s clicking on and just clicking the colored button. I’ll play it by ear for how much control is necessary to ensure my kids can develop to be the best adults they can be. The one thing I’m not looking towards is that my oldest is only about 4 years away from the window where I’ll need to have “The Talk” with her, because many men in this world suck.

I’ve noticed how kids seem to get into far nastier dopamine drip addictions with a tablet/phone than the same kid does with a TV where there’s more friction to changing videos. I’ll probably do something like this to encourage healthier content consumption habits once mine are old enough to do more that pause/unpause the TV

As a kid I was effectively given unlimited screentime, and that definitely shaped me into adulthood for better and for worse. My wife has severe insomnia so she often sleeps until 11am, and my 4 year old always gets up around 7:30am so before she started school we setup an old phone with a managed google account with a 2.5 hour screentime limit, and a 30 minute limit for the YouTube Kids app (grandma got her hooked on YouTube of course so no putting that cat back into the bag) to encourage more enriching content (I preinstalled the PBS Kids apps, as well as a number of age-appropriate games) She’s at an age where she’s extremely impressionable and without locking things down will end up installing things by clicking ads or watching weird stuff she probably shouldn’t be watching.

In the near future my plan is to gift my 4 year old an old ewaste laptop I acquired off a friend and a Minecraft account since she’s really been getting into Minecraft when she gets to play on my or my wife’s computers, and I’ll probably play it by ear for when to raise the parental controls, but right now she’s simply not ready for unrestricted internet access. I probably won’t limit screentime on the computer other than telling her its time to do something else when she’s been on the computer for too long, but we’ll play it by ear.

Currently my family’s only vehicle is a Kia Sportage. At the time we had a Chevy Cruze that could not fit 2 rear facing car seats in bases in the back due to terrible design decisions, and also at the time my wife found herself commuting home on unplowed roads during the winter and bottoming out in the car so we went for the smallest most efficient SUV we could find and got it.

Since then we’ve not once needed to go out on unplowed roads due to a job change and a deer found itself rapidly in the engine compartment of the Cruze, so I really miss driving a sedan. We’re looking at another needs change very soon due to my work laying everyone off so I might be shopping for a sedan or a cute little hatchback very soon…

Starlink doesn’t monitor the weather, in fact it could actively impede that soon given the amount of frequency noise they’re creating

Correct, and I wasn’t talking about Starlink, I was talking about the various GPS, climate and weather satellites spaceX has launched recently (and that’s just the missions I can remember off the top of my head), and their capabilities to continue launching satellites for any purpose at an incredibly cost effective and potentially less destructive manner than with single use rockets

Plus this isn’t just a matter of SpaceX good/bad. SpaceX proved 98 times this year alone that reusable rockets work, something that before them was theoretically possible but appeared to be too technically complex and too costly to be a worthwhile endeavor. Now other space agencies have a proven model to point to when choosing whether or not to invest in their own reusable rocket designs. The US Federal Government could even simply compel SpaceX to license it’s designs and software for reusable rockets if it felt so inclined

Oh and you’ve moved the goalposts in your Elon-hate because first you were complaining about rockets using fossil fuels instead of being electrically powered and now that I’ve pointed out how uninformed that is you’re complaining about Starlink, which is unrelated to the original point. Yes I agree, Elon is an ass to say the least, and Starlink poses a hell of a danger to the world’s ability to continue studying anything in the sky. But let’s be honest with ourselves about what we’re talking about and the facts of the technologies we’re discussing.

If your argument is simply that “the CO2 emissions from accessing orbit aren’t worth the global services that they enable” guess what that’s an opinion, which everyone is entitled to. But let’s form these opinions based on an accurate understanding of the industry you’re talking about

Bruh, global spaceflight contributes less than 0.01% of global CO2 emissions and enables climate resiliencey through weather and climate monitoring satellites, plus technological skunkworks (many of the challenges in the microclimate of a space station happen to be the exact same challenges of the macroclimate of the Earth, plus there’s a proven path of technology developed for space directly improving lives on the ground here on earth)

If you can build an orbital launch vehicle that doesn’t rely on fossil fuels, please do! Seriously that is a greatly needed technology and you’ll have earned the wealth and fame that would bring you. But until then I’ll take the next best thing which is having a space program and compensating for it’s (absolutely tiny compared to basically all other industries) emissions in a larger global climate plan over not having a space industry

I’d love to see Musk ejected into the vacuum of space and abandoned by one of his own vehicles as much as the next guy, but you can’t deny the incredible effectiveness and just how incredible the advances in rocketry that SpaceX has pushed. SpaceX is writing a new chapter in space exploration as we speak, with the introduction of truly reusable rocketry

The problem with fossil fuels is that they’re incredibly energy dense. Gasoline has about 12000 Wh/kg of energy density compared to about 250 Wh/kg for lithium ion.

Space is hard, and the paradox of launching a rocket is that you need a lot of fuel to fuel an engine for long enough to escape the Earth’s atmosphere and achieve orbit. All of that fuel adds weight so you need more fuel to compensate for more weight, which adds more weight meaning more fuel. Burnable fuels have the advantage of depleting as you burn it, so as you get higher your rocket gets lighter and therefore requires less fuel to pilot.

In case that’s not enough challenge, in the vacuum of space there’s no great way to propel a vehicle on electrical power alone. Wheels ain’t gonna work and neither will propellers, and while solar sails appear to work, they offer such incredibly low specific impulse (thrust basically) that realistically no manned mission that isn’t a generation ship can use solar sails

So in short, space is going to require fossil fuels for the foreseeable future. Hopefully we as a species can find the technology to make a fully reusable and renewable space program at some point, but until then we’ll have to burn chemicals get vehicles off of this planet.

Additionally, right now, until another organization actually builds and launches reusable space vehicles (and can demonstrate the competence and safety record) SpaceX is the world leader in reusability. SpaceX is one of two members of the exclusive “has relaunched a space vehicle” club, shared only with NASA’s space shuttle program which ended over a decade ago

I think maxar might even be the company Google licenses the Google Earth imagery from

We had a discussion of employee email address formatting and how to handle collisions in a workplace that hires many, many immigrants. One idea that came to my mind (but wasn’t voiced for obvious scope/feasibility concerns) is to do firstname+nickname+lastname so John.Brickman.Smith@contoso.com displayed as John "Brickman" Smith then during the onboarding process users can select from a list of approved and not-yet-assigned nicknames (I imagine a webpage with a search bar and a “regenerate” button then it shows a list of 10 or 20 nicknames they can select from) and pick something that they like and thinks fits them. It would add some whimsy and worker empowerment but also still prevents interesting situations like someone selecting an inappropriate nickname

I have a cheap label maker and honestly it’s a game changer for home storage

Seems some if not all of the big online adult stores run frequent promotions, be that for “get a free X with purchase”, buy one get one or just flat “40% off one item” so wait for the right promotion and jump on it.

My thinking was in terms of a malicious website, if it does a fake redirect to a fake bank webpage it will then be able to harvest your bank login as well, which is worse than a credit/debit card being harvested

I honestly felt wireless charging was stupid until I finally got a phone that happened to have that capability and a cheap charger gifted to me. It’s so nice especially if you use your phone as a secondary screen. And on IOS with that new thing where it shows your calendar and the weather when “docked” on a wireless charger is just a *chefs kiss*