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Comment Re: That's a bad look on Marriott. (Score 1) 46

They didn't.

They did. From the summary:

Paul Strack, 63, visiting Boston from Little Rock, Arkansas, told CBS News he received an email from Marriott on Sunday about his Sonder stay, but he initially mistook it for a scam. The email said that Marriott's agreement with Sonder had ended, and that "we are unable to continue your reservation beyond today."

I don't know how to read this in any other way besides that Marriott contacted these people and told them that they no longer had reservations.

I also don't know how to read this in any other way besides that Marriott's cancellation of the contract with Sonder was directly responsible for this, which must either mean that the stay was at a Marriott hotel contracted through Sonder, or that it was at a third-party hotel and Marriott decided to not pay Sonder for the rest of that person's stay. In either case, Marriott is at least partially responsible, and in the latter case, may even be guilty of tortious interference with that person's stay.

Comment Re:What about top speed? (Score 1) 53

Also, the only realistic way to create a true "unintended acceleration" without pedal misapplication is something getting stuck in the pedal or the pedal getting stuck down

I see you didn't read the Toyota unintended acceleration report by the Barr Group, and have nothing of value to add to this conversation.

Comment It's a trap (Score 1) 3

These are basically websites that are wrapped by an app. These developers can currently get most of what Apple provides without using Apple tech, and keep 97% of the profits. Why would they want to keep only 85% for such minimal benefits? For that matter, why are they providing an app when a website will do?

Comment Re:I'm not worried... (Score 1) 53

Too bad Rush didn't know that EVs can out-accelerate any ICE sports car of that era by a huge margin despite weighing 50% more, and even out-accelerate any current ICE vehicle quite handily. Outside of maybe super cars, any sports car of that era would feel pretty anemic to modern drivers. Corvette in 1981 could do 0-60 in 8 seconds and for a time was considered America's fastest car. Today my SUV with a Pentastar can do it in about 7.5. California drivers would think anything under 10 seconds is unsafe. The difference is torque, though. My pentastar downshifts at the slightest hint of a hill, whereas the 80s sports car wouldn't even notice.

Comment Re:What about top speed? (Score 1) 53

Also, the only realistic way to create a true "unintended acceleration" without pedal misapplication is something getting stuck in the pedal or the pedal getting stuck down, which is not actually a subtle thing (again, these things have happened, but they're dwarfed by how often people hit the wrong pedal). Just sensor readings alone don't cut it. As a general rule, pedals have multiple sensors reading the pedal position (typically 2-3). They have to agree with each other, or the target acceleration is set to zero. A sensor failure doesn't cut it. Also, Hall-effect sensors are highly reliable.

Oh, and there's one more "failure mechanism" which should be mentioned, which is: creep. Some EVs are set to creep or have creep modes, to mimic how an ICE vehicle creeps forward when one lifts their foot off the brakes. If someone forgets they have this on, it can lead to "unintended acceleration" reports. There have been cases where for example the driver gets in an accident, but not intense enough to trigger the accident sensors, and the car keeps "trying to drive" after the accident (aka, creep is engaged). People really should not engage creep mode, IMHO - the fact that ICEs creep forward is a bug, not a feature.

Comment Re: in soviet russia we fail you! (Score 1) 105

The U.S. rarely attacks or occupies those that didn't recently attack someone.

I mean, the most recent war with Iraq was something of a stretch, though there was at least some justification because of Iraq not holding up its end of international agreements regarding their nuclear program, which were made at least in part in response to Iraq attacking Kuwait just over a decade earlier. Otherwise, it's pretty much peacekeeping actions in response to U.N. decisions, helping out neighboring countries whose leaders ask, etc.

And when we say "keeps alternate parties off ballots", we don't mean "keeps alternate parties off ballots unless they can get at least n% of eligible voters to sign a petition. In the U.S., any party can get on the ballot, including those who just list one of the major party candidates as their candidate (yes, this is weird) just by getting enough signatures. If you can't get that many signatures, you were never going to win anyway, and all you can do is cause less desirable candidates to win by drawing votes from more desirable candidates.

Mind you, we've evolved into a two-party system that basically gives third parties little chance of actually winning any major election, which is, at least in part, a flaw in the way we do vote counting, but that doesn't prevent them from being on the ballot.

Comment Re: That's a bad look on Marriott. (Score 1) 46

- These aren't Marriott bookings

So why is Marriott the one telling them that they have to vacate? That kind of notification should be coming from the property owner or Sonder. And more to the point, it shouldn't matter if Marriott cancels their contract with Sonder, because Sonder got paid already, or should have.

Just because you booked your Sonder stay in the Marriott app, doesnt mean Marriott is responsible for the booking.

Actually, it does. In fact, that's possibly way worse, because unless they kicked you out to an outside website, Marriott literally took a payment from you.

None of this makes the slightest bit of sense. Either Marriott took the payment, in which case they are duty-bound to fulfill or reverse payment, and in the case where this causes severe harm, are liable for damages from that harm, or Sonder took the payment, in which case Marriott's contract cancellation with Sonder shouldn't affect your stay.

Comment Re:What about top speed? (Score 3, Informative) 53

All the person in these "runaways" had to do was lift their foot off the accelerator. Or even leave their foot on the accelerator and just press the brakes, as the brakes can overpower the motor (think of how fast you accelerate when you slam on the pedal at highway speeds vs. how fast you slow down when you slam on the brakes).

Regulatory agencies the world over are constantly getting reports of "runaway unintended acceleration". Nearly every time they investigate, the person mixed up the pedal and the brake. When the car starts accelerating, in their panic they push said "brake" (actually the pedal) harder, and keep pushing it to the floor trying to stop the car. In their panic, people almost never reevaluate whether they're actually pushing the right pedal. It's particularly common among the elderly and the inebriated, and represents 16 thousand crashes per year in the US alone.

If your car starts accelerating when you're "braking", get out of your panic, lift your foot up, then make sure you *actually* put it on the brake, and you'll be fine.

Comment Re:Apple way or the highway (Score 1) 58

Wait... you have a 26" android tablet?!? You referenced the largest iPad Pro, at 13", was even smaller than you'd like. How do you jump up to 26"? Maybe you're using two of them?

Yeah, you missed the part where I said that doing it with an iPad would be impractical because you'd have to find a way to synchronize two of them. :-)

If you're using two of them, that's not a 26" screen - it's two 13" screens (which is approximately half the area of a 26" screen, cause that measurement is a diagonal).

Sorry, slightly off. I think it's actually 24". It's about the size of two 8.5x11 sheets of paper, and it is widescreen aspect ratio, so it ends up being pretty much the same size as two 13" iPad Pro tablets side by side, with a little extra unused width.

I don't see why you'd need integrated storage, nor why that would be much more reliable, especially when you're comparing it to cheap Android tablets. Just use a microsd card in it, and get a spare one to keep a copy of it all.

  • I've burned out more micro-SD cards than I can count by overuse.
  • The micro-SD card contacts are a point of failure when equipment gets moved around. And concert day is exactly when you don't want things to go wrong.
  • We'd have to manually sync things like PDF annotations between the micro-SD card and the backup, because there's no network at the rehearsal building.

There's just no way in h*** that I'd trust something that boots off an SD card, much less micro-SD, when a failure would be catastrophic. Way too much risk, all of it concentrated on a day when people are rushing as hard as they can to get things set up in under three hours before the concert starts.

Personally, I regret going with a pre-built photo frame and really wish I had put in the little bit of extra time to just build it with a Pi and a cheap portable monitor (photo frame pulled the rug out from under me and broke all of its advertised features).

I'd much rather have a generic Android tablet for something like that than a pre-built setup or a custom-built setup. It has pretty much the same advantages as the Pi in terms of being able to write software for it or whatever, but likely fewer opportunities for things to go wrong, because the storage is self-contained.

Just my $0.02.

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