> Old tools with brushed motors arc during normal operation!
I have all of my grandfathers old Craftsman steel-shell electric power tools with brushed motors. I put a new cord on one of the hand drills a few years ago (the old cloth covered cords are terrifying) and tried using it for a project. That thing throws sparks like a Zippo.
I can vouch for this first hand. Music has absolutely zero meaning in my 16 year olds life. They don't listen to music - new or old. They don't know who current artists are, and they certainly don't have an opinion about who is their favorite.
Thankfully, they are also just as disinterested in social media.
My first experience with 3D was with AutoCAD 10 or 11 when they had "2 1/2"D. I've used ProE, Catia, Unigraphics, SolidEdge, Solidworks, Inventor, etc.
The workflows in FreeCAD are completely irregular and alien compared to those others. It's incredibly frustrating to use and I have had zero luck becoming fluent in it.
> Pandora had decent algorithms for recommending things, but it had such a small library that it would frequently repeat the same handful of albums for anything I searched for. This irks me, as I hate wearing out good music.
I've been a daily user of Pandora for something like 10 years. It's been getting steadily worse the whole time, and especially in the last two years.
I like to create my own station that is "seeded" by a few artists, and then allow the algorithm to do what it wants to play related music. This used to be great, until one day I noticed that it had become stuck playing the same 50 or so songs. This was after about three years of listening to that station on a weekly basis. As an experiment, I created a new station and seeded it again with similar artist. Again, it was fine for 2-3 years until it got stuck on a handful of songs. I did this again recently and it has become stuck within four months. There are even a few of my seed songs that it simply ignores and never plays.
* As the population ages, the elderly will pass laws and policies that favor themselves at the expense of the younger. Social services will become more and more of a burden on wage earners - even to the point of unsustainability (as long as those in power as a "ruling" block get what they believe they are owed.)
* As the elder population gradually loses their political power, the younger leaders will pass laws and policies that favor themselves at the expense of the elder. Social services will become less and less meaningful - even to the point of neglect and abject poverty for those who need it (as long as those in power as a "ruling" block get what they believe they are owed.)
Those two paths are not necessarily divergent and are quite likely sequential.
> Would be nice to see people start tinkering again - really go crazy on protocols, experimental PHYs, etc. that’s the only way it’s ever going to be exciting again.
I was hoping to see some innovation after the FCC lifted the baud rate restrictions[1], but so far nothing seems to have changed.
I honestly picked up a calculator and converted my annual salary to daily (based on 45 weeks per year) just to verify the absurdity of what I just read.
I got the impression that OP was referring to total deferred maintenance of transmission lines in the entire Texas grid. If it is only storm related, that that seems more ballpark-accurate.