"Artificial" voices in telephone calls have existed since 1971. That is when the Votrax speech synthesis device was first developed by a company known at the time as the Federal Screw Works. The engineering was done by Richard Gagnon.
"Every car with pump in the tank has filter located in the tank in front of that pump"
In cars that use the older convention, this second "fuel filter" (always in the tank) is technically called a "strainer". My experience is the downstream fuel filter which in older cars is outside the tank needs to be replaced much more often than the strainer which is typically replaced as one unit with the fuel pump. I assume this is because the strainer does less rigorous filtering than the downstream filter which historically has been much easier and cheaper to replace.
'Right to repair' is important and I hope a good law along these lines gets passed, but other tougher problems to solve are also emerging, for example:
My understanding is many late model cars are moving the fuel filter to being part of a larger assembly inside the fuel tank. On an older car, a clogged fuel filter (a common problem)could be replaced cheaply and easily. My car's fuel filter cost less than $15. But once they put it inside the gas tank, the repair is much more costly. The shop needs to pump the gas out of the tank, remove the tank from the car and take the tank apart to replace whatever the replaceable assembly is on that model.
It appears that car makers are doing this to increase service revenue and to greatly increase customer cost and inconvenience. The inconvenience is a two hour trip to Jiffy Lube or an even faster self-repair becomes a two or three week wait for a major repair appointment and a bill hundreds of dollars more.
I commonly replace discrete (stand-alone)fuel filters 6 to 8 times over the life of my vehicles.
If anyone has a list of car brands that have or have not adopted this design change, please post.
To be explicit, the outrageousness of this GM policy is that it forces the customer to pay in advance for GM's marketing promotion costs and then some for product optional features they may have no interest in.
An acceptable marketing approach to this problem would be for GM to make these features free for an initial period of one month or one year. After the initial period was up, interested customers could pay for the feature(s) to be continued.
This way GM would not be perceived as cheating customers interested in their base product, but not in their extra-cost optional products they are having trouble selling in an honest and non-coercive way.
This policy is a big mistake. The Board of Directors should remove GM's CEO for this and other bad business judgements.
This high voltage hot chassis was clearly a dangerous design but at least there has been little use of it in the last fifty years. I find dangerous designs in current products fairly frequently.
As an example I was debugging my electric clothes dryer that stopped drying and found the wire to the nichrome heating unit was disattached. It had been attached to the heater with a push-on, pull-off spade connector at the factory. I maintain it should have been attached with a bolt-on connector with a lock washer. Having what is probably a 230 volt wire slip-off its connection due to normal dryer vibration and bounce around the steel chassis is concerning. If the dryer ground had been faulty (it was good) that could have placed a 230 volt potential on the entire metal cabinet of the dryer in a laundry room that may have a little water on the floor and usually has other ground paths like turn-off faucets for the washer as well - a super dangerous situation. This danger is increased because dryers are heavily used by kids, women, and non-technical men, most of whom have no idea of the risks involved.
Katherine is correct, shutting down public schools was sheer foolishness for COVID.
This extreme safetyism is a recent development. No US schools were shutdown during the height of the Hong Kong flu in 1968-69. Not only that, but the University of Illinois at the time housed 1000 freshmen men on cots in a single large room (the Armory) at the time in the fall of each year. Those people were moved into a normal dorm in the Spring semester when space became available due to flunk-outs.
Admittedly, COVID-19 was probably worse (1 million dead in US vs 100,000 for Hong Kong flu) but the actual numbers are probably much closer, given recent trends to over count for financial reward reasons.
RT-11 (a real-time, largely foreground/background operating system for the PDP-11)
I have heard that the RT-11 OS was a one man effort at DEC, which for many years was more popular than Unix on the PDP-11, but I don't know the details. Do any DEC experts know more about this?
The Schaum's book of most interest to the original poster (Abigail Rabieh)is the following:
Schaum's 3000 Solved Problems in Linear Algebra by Seymour Lipschutz. Below is a precis:
"Master linear algebra with Schaum's--the high-performance solved-problem guide. It will help you cut study time, hone problem-solving skills, and achieve your personal best on exams! Students love Schaum's Solved Problem Guides because they produce results. Each year, thousands of students improve their test scores and final grades with these indispensable guides. Get the edge on your classmates. Use Schaum's! If you don't have a lot of time but want to excel in class, use this book to: Brush up before tests; Study quickly and more effectively; Learn the best strategies for solving tough problems in step-by-step detail; Get the big picture without spending hours pouring over long textbooks. Review what you've learned in class by solving thousands of relevant problems that test your skill. Compatible with any classroom text, Schaum's Solved Problem Guides let you practice at your own pace and remind you of all the important problem-solving techniques you need to remember--fast! And Schaum's are so complete, they're perfect for preparing for graduate or professional exams. Inside you will find: 3000 solved problems with complete solutions--the largest selection of solved problems yet published on linear algebra; A superb index to help you quickly locate the types of problems you want to solve; Problems like those you'll find on your exams; Techniques for choosing the correct approach to problems; Guidance on choosing the quickest, most efficient solution. If you want top grades and thorough understanding of linear algebra, this powerful study tool is the best tutor you can have! Chapters include: Vectors in R" and C." Matrix Algebra. Systems of Linear Equations. Square Matrices.Determinants. Algebraic Structures. Vector Spaces and Subspaces. Linear Dependence, Basis, Dimension. Mappings. Linear Mappings. Spaces of Linear Mappings. Matrices and Linear Mappings. Change of Basis, Similarity. Inner Product Spaces, Orthogonality. Polynomials over a Field. Eigenvalues and Eigenvectors, Diagonalization. Canonical Forms. Linear Functionals and the Dual Space. Bilinear, Quadratic, and Hermitian Forms. Linear Operators on Inner Product Spaces. Applications to Geometry and Calculus."