Good to know, glad you take advantage! Amazon is one of several companies I avoid on ethical grounds but I fault nobody else for shopping there.

I was mostly being facetious, I try not to use Amazon. My wife does off and on and has used a free trial 3-4 times a year.

The trials are 30 days (in the US) and years ago, 4-5, I would just use a throwaway email and do a new trial every 30 days to keep Prime. Not sure if they guard against that at all now or not.

I always sign up for the free Prime trials just so I can get the satisfaction of cancelling.

Yeah! What a terrible job they’ve done raising those bullies!

Thank you for the reply! I hadn’t consider the regulation around the government as the purchaser.

Wyden, who released the Dec. 11 letter, called upon U.S. intelligence officials to stop using Americans’ personal data without their express knowledge and consent, saying it was unlawful

Anybody able to explain how this is unlawful?

Is there a restriction on intelligence gathering agencies that would apply?

I don’t believe this is right or fair but I’m not clear on how it’s illegal.

I can only imagine. You guys get that lake effect cold and wind. I’ve seen it a little in Duluth, I can only imagine what it’s like in a city nicknamed the “Windy City”.

Never. I have had some hard starts when I’ve owned older cars but I’ve never had it not start.

My biggest issue was actually my first car with the headlights. It didn’t chime to remind you they were on and those didn’t turn off automatically. I had to tape a reminder to turn them off on the steering wheel because I killed the battery a couple times.

Still, winter performance wouldn’t stop me from getting an EV. It’s probably be a bonus because when it’s super cold out who wants to go anywhere? Good excuse to stay home.

Sorry to hear that! You might benefit from a battery tender or one of those jump starter devices like the Halo.

I had to jump my mother in law last week and we might get her one as a birthday present. Her situation wasn’t directly cold related though, her negative terminal was super corroded. Ended up needing a battery and the terminal cable replaced.

I’ve lived in Minnesota for decades and I’ve never had an ICE not start in the winter.

That said, the cold weather performance isn’t enough to stop me from getting an EV. The same general rules apply for all vehicles in cold weather climates, which is to always have an emergency kit just in case.

There was a time though when I commuted 35 miles one way to work and the charging parking spots were always full when I got there. Range loss would worry me a bit there but in that case I’d buy a hybrid and plan for full EV on the next go round.

Hey @doctordevice and I also have that cat tree! We should start a club because it seems popular with the humans and the cats!

We all know it’ll never fully go under

No, it likely won’t, and part of that is also because of who’s invested in the company’s success. Just another example of “too big to fail”.

Just like Amazon who is a cloud computing company with a side hustle in e-tail or Google which is an ad company with a side hustle in tech.

In general most people don’t really understand this about big companies.

God, I hope the wrench has access to less of the network than the employee.
It’s an IoT device.
You never trust IoT.

Hahahahahaha!!! Does solarwinds123 sound familiar?

Best practice ≠ real world application. Based on my 10+ years in IT I’d be very unsurprised to find that the networked wrench has greater access than the person.

Sorry, I assumed the context was obvious, but it’s hard to hack a person standing there turning a wrench.

What’s easier to hack? That person standing there turning a wrench or a network connected wrench? Especially considering the points you made; the wrench turner probably has access to less than the network connected wrench.

Human error caused the issue in the first place, why are we assuming a human will always find and fix the problem on a second pass?

I’m not sure why you should trust a piece of technology to be infallible.

I mean, if a networked tool can be hacked then should it be trusted to be accurate? How do you know it hasn’t been hacked and maliciously modified to report correct torque even when wrong?

Didn’t GM just suspend sales of their new cars without CarPlay because their new system had software issues? Trust a company trying to save money to skimp on the implementation costs of any technology they put in place too.

Hard to hack a person. Sounds like sacrificing security to save a buck if that’s the only reason, especially considering you’re not just paying for a tool when you network it.

Why not have a two stage torque process?

I know aerospace ≠ automotive but many years ago I worked in a shop and any time the wheels came off a vehicle the mechanic/tech torqued the lug nuts to spec, then a second person independently verified and re-torqued the lug nuts.

It seems like adding a network connection and all that goes with it also introduces additional points of failure, no?

That would be nice weather for Christmas here in Minnesota if you moved the letter down the alphabet a bit.

As an American you have the right to be exploited, to serve and enrich the billionaire class, to fund pointless wars, to not be able to afford housing, education or really to live, but by God do you have “freedom”.