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Comment Re:Up next (Score 1) 51

Even if it seems to save some money (probably not THAT much in the end), it'll still cost them.

In 10 years, the Vibe coding kids will be middle-aged vibe coders, but the entry level engineers would have been senior level engineers. Eventually, once you were ready to retire or move to management, one or more of them would have been the new you.

Instead, now when you retire, they'll be swimming in a sea of middle aged vibe coders and nobody left will have a clue how to fix the horrors that they produce. They won't be able to hire a new you from outside because the other employers followed the same strategy. They will be no replacements available.

They might be able to eek out a few more years by paying someone a king's ransom to come out of retirement for a couple years, but for obvious reasons, that won't last forever either, even if they can afford it.

Comment Re:Should be a CPSC order (Score 1) 29

Vapes with replaceable 18650 tend to be higher quality and use safer IMR batteries (which also have lower internal resistance for a higher performance vape). Vape pens tend to be lower quality disposables powered by whatever was cheap when battery stocks got low at the factory. In part, that's because few will see the sealed in no-name battery.

Note that the popular 18650 is a little longer and thinner than a C battery and won't even fit in a vape pen. They're not absolutely impossible to short with keys but it's a bit of a challenge. The terminals are on opposite ends of a 65mm cylinder, not a quarter inch apart. They make silicone rubber socks that fit over the ends of spare 18650 batteries.

Many camera batteries are crazy over-priced and proprietary. To be fair, others are much more reasonable but still tend towards proprietary.

So yes, let's keep the red tape brigade on a leash for now. Let it get involved with SPECIFIC demonstrated problematic products.

Comment Re:Should be a CPSC order (Score 1) 29

That depends on the formulation of the battery. There are several.

The problems tend to happen with the batteries that maximize capacity over safety crammed into a too-small space with cheap or absent protection circuitry.

Let's not roll out the red tape brigade prematurely here, it harms innovation and makes everything more expensive. For example, you can greatly reduce costs and regulatory friction with little effect on safety by exempting removable batteries (for example, camera batteries, flashlights with 18650 batteries). Those tend to be better quality and be better protected from damage. They're also avoided by the manufacturers that want to pinch every penny even at the cost of safety and reliability.

Meanwhile, 50 incidents only seems like a lot until you consider how many million person-flights there have been this year. That's not a call to do nothing, but most of this can be handled by air liners having a small metal box and an oven mitt on board. Also a place for the box next to an air outlet.

Comment Re:It's a weird perversion of Communism (Score 1) 111

I am well aware of what actual Communism is, that's why I know this is a perversion. I even know the differences between what might be broadly called Communism and Socialism. Yes, words have meanings. Sometimes people want to be hyper-specific so we don't realize how much their proposal resembles something else. Sometimes they want to be overly broad to establish a false sense of similarity. Sometimes people use words like 'perversion' to call that out when they see it.

Comment Re:"If plaintiff didn't read her contract ..." (Score 5, Insightful) 77

I wouldn't be fine with that. Someone would probably "buy" something because they wanted to have it available indefinitely. If they later found that their "permanent" purchase was revoked, they might no longer have the option to buy it elsewhere because it was no longer available, even if they did have that option available when they first "bought" the product from the other vendor. It's still a scam in the lying vendor's favour.

Comment Re:Retesting old dogma... (Score 1) 126

I remember hearing, years ago, that the EU no longer recommends beta blockers as a first-line treatment for hypertension (high blood pressure) for a similar reason: They don't seem to do anything. Sure, they lower your blood pressure numbers, but (as I recall) the meta-study showed no appreciable difference in outcomes. That is, people who received beta blockers experienced the same number of heart attacks, strokes, and other hypertension-related problems as the group that didn't take them.

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