On the test drive I did last week they said it’s free for 7 years, but I didn’t think to ask if that includes cellular data for the car or if it can use my phone. Still, I’d much prefer to just use the phone I’m already paying for anyways. Feels like yet another company looking for that sweet recurring revenue of subscription fees.

I wonder if the automakers noticed the hit when people stopped paying to update the maps on their built-in navigation and they’re trying to get it back this way?

Yeah, although I did a test drive last week and someone had already installed Waze and Spotify in the car I tried, which made me feel a little better about it. Would still much prefer it to run off my phone, though.

She’s who The Devil Wears Prada was purportedly about

We had to make an emergency trip to Quebec in January 2022 because of health issues with the in-laws. Father-in-law advised to get the stuff rated to -20°F, but it wasn’t available where we live and I’d gotten the car serviced before we hit the road and they filled the washer fluid with what they had, I’m guessing 0°F. I bought some -20°F in Buffalo but didn’t have room to add any. The temperature was rapidly dropping as we headed farther north and as we neared Watertown, NY the fluid wasn’t spraying well. I tried adding what I could of the -20°F but by the time we stopped east of Montreal that night it was -45°F and the whole system had frozen solid. Tried using a hairdryer at the hotel, but we couldn’t melt it until we got it in the in-laws garage. Without fluid running the wipers can mean just smearing crud across your windshield, making it impossible to see.

Now I always make sure whenever we leave Quebec that I have a bottle of -49°F rated fluid and fill the reservoir at home before heading up in the winter. If there’s a lot of warmer-rated fluid in the car I’ll actually siphon it out.

I switched to YouTube TV years ago, but now it costs as much as cable (still somewhat better functionality for me though). If I could do a few sports streaming subscriptions I could drop that also. Use an antenna for local TV news when needed, but most of them do free streaming of their news and weather emergencies.

In general I like Carr but as Panthers fan I hate the Saints so let’s GOOOOOO!

This article acts like it’s a big deal that the discount only applies to new vehicles in inventory when that’s a pretty standard move from most carmakers, especially at the end of the year.

I think most people won’t mind getting a discount regardless of whether they need it or not. And there are always plenty of people trying to stretch at the maximum range of their budget for various reasons; someone who can afford something at $80k perhaps really can’t go to $90k. Even if some people’s budgets are beyond our wildest dreams, there are very few people on earth for whom there are no purchases that come with budgetary restraints.

This article ignores entirely well over a century of electric railroading via overhead catenary or third rail

This content and this system, Meta said, has led to an 8 percent increase in time spent on Facebook and a 6 percent increase in time spent on Instagram, all at the expense of a shared reality and human connections to other humans.

It’s certainly has the opposite effect on me. I used to spend a lot of time on Facebook in my younger days. That has been steadily declining over the years, especially the past 6-7, but even more the last year or two. I’ll open it up, see nothing from people I know right off the bat, and close it again. For a while they also stopped letting me scroll until it played an ad; that really helped me break out of a doomscroll since I’d just close the app.

I see this as a benefit to me in helping me not waste time there.

This article seems to argue that governments don’t need to worry, the ‘big 4’ are already doing a good job not giving in to conflicts of interest in a sort-of-related field so they don’t need additional regulation. I find the argument to be weak and the intent of the article suspicious.

Wasn’t a major company consulting at the same place they audit one of the contributing factors to the Enron collapse?

As a side note for the Oregon Trail generation, there is a retro-styled Oregon Trail game available now on multiple platforms.

However, according to United Daily News (machine translated), the golf course’s club members are blocking the acquisition because they demand a NT$1.8-million (approximately US$56,000) buyback price for each golf certificate.

This amount is based on 80% of the average NT$2.2-million price of one golf share for a course based in Central Taiwan over the past two years. Given that the Hsing Nong Golf Course issued 1,750 certificates, that amounts to a total of NT$3.15 billion or over US$98.5 million. However, the current average price of a single golf certificate in central Taiwan has already exceeded NT$3 million (around US$94,000). Nevertheless, the Hsing Nong Golf Course expects to net between NT$15 to NT$20 billion (US$470 to US$626 million) from the sale, even after paying the members’ asking price.

I think it’s a thing in the US, and I guess Taiwan and probably other countries too, that when you join a country club, in addition to the monthly dues, you typically have to put a fairly substantial chunk of money (probably $10s of thousands+ depending on the prestige of the club), but if you leave the club you get that chunk back (or at least a large portion of it, whatever is contracted). It might not come back very quickly, but will at some point after new members join.

Granted, I’m getting this second-hand from an article that used machine translation on the original article in a foreign language, but it sounds kinda sketchy that the club owners seem to be trying to avoid paying out to the members.

🎼is/can/should be/do🎶
—Frank Sinatra

How did you end up working for him a second time?

So it’s a tiny view camera? But with no movements? 007 gear from the 19th century!

Huh, more truth to these stories than I would’ve expected. It’s wild to think people used to sell baby alligators to tourists as souvenir pets!

A friend lived in a similar small town and if I went down to see him Applebee’s was the only place with TVs where we could watch sports. We were so happy when they got a Buffalo Wild Wings, even if they’re overpriced and I can go to better, local sports bars at my house, it’s a dramatic upgrade for his town.

Over the years, Flutter has attracted millions of developers who built user interfaces across every platform. Flutter began as a UI toolkit for mobile - iOS and Android, only. Then Flutter added support for web. Finally, Flutter expanded to Mac, Windows, and Linux. Across this massive expansion of scope and responsibility, the Flutter team has only marginally increased its size. To help expand Flutter’s available labor, and accelerate development, we’re creating a fork of Flutter, called Flock.

Just kind of a simple “how it’s made” but no explanation of the why