Just do yourself a favor and stick with using what already works. Don't upgrade to the new shiny thing unless you already know the reasons why you want to.
Among all the other technical issues, Wayland devs have an attitude issue. Users asked for fractional scaling for years and were faced with flat refusals and insulting quips from the wayland developers. The only reason they've added it now is because Valve asked them for it. Wayland devs think users are worms and corporations are gods.
Only if you narrowly define 'people' to mean the tiny minority of people who are thieves, and exclude the overwhelming majority of people who aren't thieves. Thieves are safer on the street but everybody else is safer with thieves off the street. You've got your priorities skewed.
Right, pawn shops are held to a higher standard. They have a relationship with the local police and are made to keep records. Amazon is a better fence than your average pawn shop.
That's not necessarily a smoking gun; public libraries often give away old books they don't want to keep around anymore. About a quarter of the books in my personal library are ex-library books, but none were stolen.
Of course if it's some popular in-demand book, it was almost certainly stolen. Most of the free library books I've scored are 50 year old textbooks about obscure/obsolete topics.
> But surely Amazon is literally handling stolen goods? Is there a smoking gun email?
If Amazon were a mom and pop fence, the local cops could bust them in a sting. But Amazon is a huge megacorp, so even if the cops try to catch them in a sting nothing will stick because Amazon will claim their shear scale rendered them completely oblivious to everything and therefore not criminally culpable.
This is not an intrinsic limitation. Naval nuclear reactors can power up to meet demand very rapidly. Civilian nuclear reactors aren't built like this for various reasons, including gas turbines just being cheaper for this purpose.
I don't use one of these. But I have heard that they're very convenient ways to set timers when you're working in the kitchen with both hands dirty, and because they support more concurrent timers than a microwave.
IMHO, Risk is one of the few board games worth playing specifically because it's so engaging. Most of my friends who are "into boardgames" tell me that Risk is a terrible game because it starts fights. But the games they want to play bore me to tears. (I can't even read the manual for Settlers of Catan without dying of boredom, but from what you say maybe I should give it another try.)
I think in the future, products like Alexa will be simple products purchased once for a profit (not loss leaders) that do all the processing locally, not service subscriptions. I mean, do you really need an internet connection and "cloud" services to implement an egg timer you can talk to? Maybe they'll have an internet connection to check weather.gov, but that's about all that's really needed.
You're comparing the cheap end of scooters to the expensive end of smartphones. The cheapest smartphones cost about 10x than the cheapest scooters. Tens of dollars (if not free) vs a few hundred dollars.
> Many people miss the larger point that the scooter troubles have brought to light: this is a preview to what a post-ownership society would look like. It quickly becomes a tragedy of the commons when everyone uses public resources (rentable scooters and the space to park them) with little regard to the larger impact of their collective actions due to the absence of consequences for antisocial behavior.
There is more going on here. Compare the condition of subways or buses in American cities, to those in Japan. In some cultures, collective property is rapidly vandalized and destroyed by the same people who rely on it. In other cultures, collective property is treated respectfully.
How do you explain Germany having stringent drivers licensing requirements, and Germans being skilled and generally lawful drives? Just a coincidence? Do you think Germans would be just as good at driving if they dropped all the licensing and education requirements? Seems farcical.
Since advanced education and licensing requirement work for German car drivers, it should work for e-scooter and e-bike riders too. And for that matter, it should also work for American/etc car drivers too. If drivers' ed and the licensing tests for car driving in America weren't such a farce, our roads would be much safer.
What is the point of these being scooters instead of bikes in the first place? Scooters seem strictly inferior and more dangerous than bicycles. The small wheels are much worse on dodgy road surfaces, and without being able to pinch the vehicle between your legs, the rider has less control over what it does.
Is the whole idea that a scooter is cheaper because it has less structure and smaller wheels? Seems like a bad tradeoff, since it's a vehicle that can get you killed (I've seen this happen. The scooter rider got into an unrecoverable wobble, fell, and hit his head.)
Among all the other technical issues, Wayland devs have an attitude issue. Users asked for fractional scaling for years and were faced with flat refusals and insulting quips from the wayland developers. The only reason they've added it now is because Valve asked them for it. Wayland devs think users are worms and corporations are gods.