Nope, there's no monthly fee for basic functionality, you can pay for full remote admin (vs dashboarding which is free) and for a protection service which does cloud backups and includes a device replacement service. Neither of those are required, the monthly fee goes to offset their costs for running servers in AWS or whatever cloud they are on and to provide a recurring revenue source plus it's a hardware replacement plan. Personally I've had zero reason to pay for either service, though with the zwave migration service of the protect offering I might do that in the future if my setup becomes complex enough (right now it's 3 zwave devices, so definitely NOT worth the fee).

Um, they did a paper after the Tesla semi was announced and redid their calculations based on the .35Cd that Musk mentioned, suddenly cost was the primary barrier, with a target of $150/kWh for the pack (something Tesla has already achieved based on estimates derived from model differences).

Musk has said recently that the 300 mile semi will have a 500kWh pack, based on the 167.7Wh/kg of the Model 3 that puts the pack weight at ~3.3 tons, the fuel tanks on a typical semi are about that when fueled. Even if you double that pack weight for the 500 mile semi you're still in the same range as the drivetrain with fuel for a long haul semi, I wouldn't expect significant cargo penalties vs traditional tractors.

I get protecting trade secrets and preventing working with existing or prospective clients

Except non-competes don't accomplish either of those. The first is covered by an NDA and the second is covered by a non-solicitation agreement. I will gladly sign either of those if they are correctly crafted, but I will never again sign a non-compete unless it covers 100% of my salary and benefits for the duration of the agreement. Having been screwed by an overly broad agreement and a petty former boss once I will never put myself or my family in that kind of risk.

It's not that I don't expect politicians to be swayed by big corporations, it's just the fact that they're so cheap to buy that bothers me. I mean you're representing several hundred thousand to 10's of millions of people, you should cost more than a couple thousand dollars of schmoozing to have your vote swayed.

Yup, this sounds even worse than the FCA system that killed Anton Yelchin, we've had systems that are proven, safe, effective, cost efficient, and reliable. Throwing them away to do something cool but less effective at all of the above metrics is simply STUPID.

Not really odd to me, at the office I have 3 monitors, full keyboard, trackball, etc. When on the road or at home (pre-Covid) I deal with the limitations of just having the laptop and a power supply. Work isn't going to buy me a desktop for in the office and a laptop for mobile use, so desktop + dock it is.

Thunberbolt dock, one BIG dongle that does everything. Back when I was in the office I got power, audio, 3x monitors, ethernet, USB hub all from 1 cable. It's actually very slick.

Yeah, I came to say this, USB4 is basically standardized Thunderbolt 4

https://www.bloomberg.com/news...

Plus you can opt-out by putting up a bond in pretty much every state.

They will lose, in fact it likely won't get to a trial. Parler surely knows this, they're just trying to get their name in the news to try to get users back now that they have Russian hosting and to get the donations flowing.

Also, they clearly violated Amazon's ToS, no private entity is or should be forced to do business with you if you violate the contract that you signed when initiating service.

Robinhood doubled down on their stupidity and started liquidating peoples positions! I think they just lost a LOT of customers. I know for sure that I won't be using the services of a retail broker that arbitrarily decides what I can and can't buy and what I shouldn't be holding!

My understanding is that the brokerage in this announcement were all just blocking leverage buys yesterday. Today Robinhood blocked new open positions on GME but is allowing anyone who holds it to liquidate their position. Personally I find that repulsive and wouldn't utilize a brokerage that didn't allow me to buy a stock because they didn't like how risky it was.

Though today Robinhood DID block long positions in GME on their platform, which frankly is stupid. I can see restricting leveraged buys, that's their skin in the game, but to simply tell investors that you think the stock is too risky for them to invest in is pure BS, they're adults let them invest it how they want. If they wanted a less risky investment they'd go with a mutual fund or index fund.