As you didn’t read the article:

“This move seems driven by the government’s interest in collecting and centralizing biometric data for identification, tracking, and surveillance purposes,” he said. Omar agreed: “Probably to keep track of the refugees.”

They hand out SIM cards to track those SIM cards. Using a certain messaging app on the phone or not doesn’t change SIM card tracking within the network.

Especially living in a city, this looks interesting to me. ‘Fast’ charging I’ve seen was in the range 30-60 min but then it’s like the phone, from about 20% up to 80%. So living in a city, I’d have to wait for half an hour for half the battery.

With a swap-station, it could be nearly as fast as a fossil fuel stop. About 2 minutes for a 0% to 100% stop.

This also allows for smaller batteries, for smaller cars, for lighter cars. You don’t need to carry a lot of overall range if you can swap/refill to 100% in 2 minutes.

In a way kinda. It’s problematic though that China is using Uyghur forced labour to produce cheap solar panels.

This of course allows them to undercut any other manufacturer, driving them out of the market. So the delivery chain is getting kinda small and the products have forced labour attached to them.

“China uses Uyghur forced labour to make solar panels, says report” Published 14 May 2021 (Source: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-57124636)

The article is quite harmless compared to the silly title.

But the main argument is that Android has too many settings and options where users don’t even know what they are good for. And with further development it’s getting more features and more options.

That seems to be a very minor and rather luxury problem to have more and more features and options.

On the PC, there are lots of programs that already use a short list of options available and then a checkbox with ‘I’m an expert’ or ‘Advanced settings’ to show them all. More settings means more freedom for the user to chose from. Hiding them would be a simple task. But just because they exist and are shown, this doesn’t mean that anyone has to click on anything without even knowing what it does. So it’s not really a problem besides reading 3 more words in the list of settings but not doing anything with it.

For options I don’t know, I just use a web search in case I’m interested. Or I just ignore them as long as I don’t have a problem related to the topic.

In the 1st step, maybe a year ago or so, they updated the Kasa app (v 3?) to only function with account and while being logged in at TP-Link servers to use your devices. And in now the 2nd step, they integrate Kasa into Tapo, which was always account-bound. The 3rd step is then probably the discontinuation of the Kasa app.

Kasa was their more premium product line, that was usable without internet connection and without manufacturer account - which is why I paid more to get those instead of the cheap Tapo products. But now my ‘smart’ power outlets are in a box in the basement collecting dust and I cannot recommend anyone to spend money on TP-Link smart products, as they remove features after sale.

I understand ‘worst sales’ but ‘worst performance’ doesn’t really fit. It’s in my opinion this is a fantastic performance on the market. With right to repair, longer software support, some models with replaceable batteries, we can use the phones longer and make the industry more sustainable and consumer friendly. For the last years already, the model feature upgrades were marginal and it’s fine that way.

In the future, I’d hope for further technical and regulatory development in that direction, resulting in further reduced annual sales numbers.

The old Hue app still works and I’m also using Hue Essentials, both without any account.

I have a Hue bridge of the 1st generation and a few years ago, the original app was showing pop-ups, that I need to get a new bridge because of the new app that will no longer support my old bridge. So I just kept the old app and the old bridge. Works like a charm all offline.

When I added a motion detector two years ago, the old app didn’t find it for setup. That’s when I tested the alternative app Hue Essentials and it works just fine offline.

This article is only about the branch “T-Mobile US” but not mentioning it. And yes according to Wikipedia there are about 70,000 employees. The parent company is listed with about 210,000 employees.

The siren system was just not used, I didn’t see any reports that it failed.

Already days ago right after the fire, it was reported the fire services communicated to the public they had the fire under control. So it makes sense to not use the emergency siren system in such a case. But then suddenly - according to media and fire fighter reports - the fire started spreading super fast and it was no longer under control. But then it was too late for many.

As per the intro, this whole article is only about southern Europe with extreme heat. Same for the solar output, which across Europe fell in July 2023 compared to 2022. It’s just higher in southern countries compared to 2022.

In most of Europe, this summer is cold, wet and windy. So for most of Europe, without that much sun in summer, it’s the very windy conditions causing the cold summer, that pumps most of the renewable electricity. Just last week, wind generated 22% more electricity compared to the week in 2022.

So overall it’s split and respectively the other renewable technology having large gains, depending on where in Europe you look.

In the 1st paragraph is a link to the previous article of the same experiment a few months ago, that has some more details mentioned:

researchers have managed to release 2.5 MJ of energy after using just 2.1 MJ to heat the fuel with lasers.

the positive energy gain reported ignores the 500MJ of energy that was put into the lasers themselves.

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/dec/12/breakthrough-in-nuclear-fusion-could-mean-near-limitless-energy

Those are various ideas regarding charging problematic.

I’m still on the range topic that people apparently see as the main problem with EVs but I don’t. I’d be even fine with less range than the current top models offer.

Regarding the range problem, that is my personal conspiracy theory. It makes a lot of sense but no way that I or anyone can ever prove it.

Theory: Range was never a real problem and car manufacturers seeded that topic to journalists/press, as the companies already had the solution available before communicating the problem.

More range is done with a larger batteries, usually higher quality cells/chemicals. So making the car bigger and more expensive. That’s what manufacturers desire to do and sell anyways.

It never was or is a real problem. They can just charge the customers more and it’s solved.

As I’ve already seen posted, the real problem that cannot be easily solved is the charging time. Right now I ‘charge’ 0% to 100% in 1-2 minutes. No preparation, no special fuel, no special fees or subscriptions, no fuel stations only for specific brands, no apps, summer or winter same 1-2 min, no strain on the fuel tank by filling fast, sometimes waiting lines at the stations but they move quickly with 1-2 min per vehicle.

I don’t see battery or charging tech anywhere close to that in the next 5, 10 or even 20 years.

That’s hard to advance, with decades of research behind us and decades ahead, so car manufacturers focus on their favorite topic: range, where they can just throw their customers money at to solve it immediately.

I’m quite disappointed by most comments so far talking about RAID and data loss. That is not what RAID is for at all.

RAID is for uptime/availability. When a drive fails, the system will keep running and working. For companies, that would lose thousands of currency per hour with a downtime, this is super important that the system keeps running. At home, it’s convenience that you can order a new drive and replace without hours of setting up and copying before you can watch the next episode again.

Backups are against data loss. If a single drive fails, a RAID fails or you get some encryption malware or an employee destroys stuff on purpose, then everything is destroyed. It doesn’t matter if it was a single, any RAID, HDD or SSD. You order a new drive, make a new volume and restore the data from your backup.

I get that it’s not ideal. My issue is just that a big part of Cities Skylines is to solve the traffic. Try to keep it flowing with a more and more complex city around it, changing main routes, changing infrastructure options. You cannot just make it Smart iTraffic 3D without removing the major challenge from the game. Fixing some bugs and not having traffic that dumb like in the 1st game would be appreciated though.

The term ‘AI’ just gets used way too loosely, only getting worse in the recent months. ‘Traffic’ and ‘AI’ in Cities Skylines just doesn’t fit together well.

Remember the time when every server space suddenly got called ‘cloud’? Or when every device needed to be ‘3D’? Or every household item got Bluetooth to make it a ‘smart’ item? Or you needed the word ‘crypto’ included your software products? Or when all the products had a lower case ‘i’ in front to make them look advanced?

In a few months we’ll look back at the time a the time, when everyone suddenly called their algorithms an ‘AI’. Paradox could just call it Smart iTraffic 3D to hit more buttons.

Judging from the 1st game, it’s probably mods and player ingenuity to solve the issues with the traffic. Which his honestly a part of the experience of playing Cities Skylines. Getting around all the problems with your own solutions. Sometimes I completely (had to) redesigned parts of the city to solve one junction.

The difference is that we are talking about mobile phones and tablets here. A manufacturer can easily argue his device is intended for water immersion or intended to be washable. And the exception is fulfilled.

I mean they don’t really have to argue to begin with, they just keep selling their IP-rated phones as they are. Only if someone starts a motion that this would not be legal, then they can start the argument I mentioned above. And that’s all it takes.

One article about that topic that finally mentions it: There is a descriptive sentence is the resolution that exempts devices with water proofing from it.

As I saw in the past, there were lots of hype posts and what manufacturer X, Y or Z is going to do now. Most of the high-end phones already have an IP-rating, haven’t they? Well, there is the answer. They just keep what they have been selling and it already complies with this new resolution.

Well now they have to take over the subs and get new moderators. They won’t just sit there and watch Reddit burn further.

For the 2 days private protest, their comment that it will be over soon was appropriate. As giving an exact time frame allows to know the exact end of it. They could just sit there and wait it out.

Now with the indefinite protest, they have to act. And to get to content onto Reddit again, they will probably be looking for new unpaid strike breakers mods for those subs, so they don’t have to actually hire and pay people to moderate content on their soon publicly traded company website.

I just tried it and no account required (yet?). Uploading works fine.