How about we put this much hyped AI to good use by employing it to automatically shut the door in such cases?

While we're at it, I could use an AI robot dishwasher that can actually clean pans, determining whether to use scouring powder and then use it or not, and position dishes itself, no more need for the user to carefully position everything, just dump the dirty dishes in the machine.

Too bad all the hoopla around AI was hype, and AI still can't do such simple things.

I bet it uses 4-5x the electricity of a modern one and is slowly leaking Freon too. Nice flex!

You probably could pay for a new basic fridge in a couple years with what you are wasting in electricity to run that old one.

Get a new one without an ice maker and just use ice trays and it'll be rock solid too. (The vast majority of the reliability issues across ALL brands are in the ice makers.)

Part of the problem is that trains are really, really heavy. A double-decker passenger train car might weigh 180,000 pounds and carry only 100 people, for a total weight of 1,800 pounds per car plus the person. So you're carrying half the weight of that Prius. The trains are still vastly more efficient because you have one powertrain accelerating all of those people in Priuses (Prii?) instead of hundreds, they accelerate and decelerate slowly (and rarely), they have low rolling resistance, etc.

Imagine how much more efficient they would be if train cars were improved with modern technology to bring the weight down.

Wow. Their refrigerators reportedly have among the worst reliability stats out of all the major brands, but ads are the reason you're rejecting them? I'm kind of assuming the ads are to recover the unexpectedly high cost of warranty repairs and food loss claims. :-)

Having used a lot of their Blu-Ray players and TVs over the years, Samsung reached peak ensh*ttification a long time ago, IMO. What remains is the long-tail death spiral.

The thin is, the artists WANT to keep the prices down because they (or at least their managers) understand that fans able to get tickets and see concerts is a driving force for their fandom. You don't get big or even stay big by only being seen by a few wealthy patrons (or their kids).

Actually, they own a few and have a contractual lock on many many more.

The big problem with these "smart" things is that it's getting hard to avoid them. Several years ago I was looking for TV. A few dozen "smart" TVs to choose from but exactly 2 non-smart TVs. I don't mean 2 models, I mean 2 TVs in the whole store. Luckily one of them was suitable.

Depends on whether the test pilots were in them at the time. ;-)

Some of it will take care of itself. You can only veg on the couch so long before you die from otherwise preventable disease.

The percentage affected may be smaller than it seems. Some want to veg and watch sports all weekend because they were forced to bust their as all week in a job they hate. Take away the job (and the need for the job) and they might get more active in their free time. The unemployed who sit and veg mostly have no money to do anything and have lost hope in getting a job.

Though I'm sure there are some di-hards that reallywould sit on the couch until they de-compensate and die. But that is a choice they make and it would solve the problem.

Much of the world's Capitalism...

Do you really think a significant portion of the U.S. Adult population really want to go to work?

No matter what, you're still going to need someone in a red shirt to duck into the circuit bays and reverse the polarity.

You're wrong about potatoes. They *are* high in starch, but they aren't "nearly all" starch, like corn or wheat.

I suppose it depends on whether you want a comprehensive solution.

Switching to electric without also providing external ventilation doesn't solve the problem. Adding external ventilation to a gas range does, and still allows switching to electric in the future for even further gains.

In this sense "don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good" doesn't tell you which of the two imperfect solutions is better -- but I'm making the claim that the proper ordering from best to worst is electric + ventilation > gas + ventilation > electric + !ventilation > gas + !ventilation.

What I'm saying is that a minimal safe setup anyways requires an externally-ventilated hood regardless of the cooking fuel type.

Given that this is not mandated by building codes as it is, it's silly to mandate electric over gas. Neither of them are safe without external ventilation.