This reminds me of when rsilvergun mentioned that he was waiting for the day when he'd be able to order dog food online.

"The ship's sailed, the horse is galloping after it, the barn's on fire, and the genie’s live-streaming the whole thing." - ChatGPT (so don't read it)

I was just neutrally pointing out that gas tends to be more expensive in California. Any political or ideological bias that you're reading into it wasn't implied. For context, I live in Florida and based the gas prices on what I see here. Also, I drive an EV so you're preaching to the figurative choir.

You're technically not wrong, but your post has fuck-all to do with cell phone carrier locking. It really is a very back-burner issue that few people care about. Hell, I put a video on YouTube about it when I first noticed that Verizon broke the "C Block" spectrum rules by implementing carrier locks. It's sitting at a little over 450 views. It's basically that Jurassic Park meme.

Granted, I'll give you that yes, there's far worse things to worry about in the current political climate than buying a phone that's stuck locked to Verizon. Still, it kind of demonstrates that even when the Democrats do win, they're so utterly incompetent that they can't even fix a minor under-the-radar issue like Verizon being a bit more of an anti-consumer dick than usual, because the previous administration let them. Funny thing was, this wasn't even an issue they needed the votes in the house and senate to fix; all it would've taken was the FCC to tell Verizon "Party's over, either straighten up or we're gonna make it painful!", but they couldn't even do that. So of course, with Trump getting back into the White House and putting his cronies in charge of everything, it's open season for Verizon to be even worse.

Verizon owns several various prepaid brands. The main reason they want this unlocking exception is because they tend to sell prepaid phones at a subsidized price, which they might not recoup if the phone is only used for 60 days. Some prepaid companies have mitigated this issue by requiring ID verification on phone purchases, others have required that the first several months of service be purchased upfront in order to get the subsidized price on a phone.

As much as I hate carrier locks, I'd be fine with the exemption on two conditions:

#1 It should only apply to phones sold under prepaid brands. With postpaid service, the carriers can simply write into the contract that if a customer cancels early, they're on the hook for the outstanding balance on the phone (and most carriers generally do this) - there is no need for postpaid phones to be carrier locked at all.

#2 All carrier locks should automatically expire after 1 year from initial activation. If a carrier hasn't made back their subsidy by then, tough shit, that's the risk you take. Anything longer and you're just creating more e-waste and hassle for used electronics resellers.

But hey, I'm not in charge of the FCC, so I'm sure Verizon is going to get their wish, which will probably be locking all of the damn phones they sell until the heat death of the universe.

It's not really the same this time around, though. We can enviously see the Chinese zipping around in their neat little BYD cars that we're not allowed to have. Whereas nobody in America is looking at Russia and thinking what we really need is, uh... internet troll farms? Rip-offs of Starbucks and McDonald's, because the real companies won't do business in their warmongering shithole country?

China is fascinating because we've been told that without freedom, the end result is Russia, North Korea, and some of the more unpleasant areas of Africa and the Middle East. China somehow managed to beat the odds and that creates quite a bit of cognitive dissonance when it comes to the concept of American exceptionalism.

It's fairly difficulty to invest in the stock market when you're living paycheck-to-paycheck. Plus, I thought we were talking about income, not stock portfolios.

Oh, and a note to Californians, just mentally add however extra dollars are necessary to those gas prices to accurately localize them for CA.

People pretty much only nit-pick over the digits past the decimal point when it comes to gas prices.

$3.02/gal "Oh, that's not too bad."
$3.23/gal "Hmm, better fill up now before it goes up any higher."
$3.59/gal "Did a refinery blow up or something?!"
$3.89/gal "Fuck these fucking gas prices in their fucking ass! I'm voting for the other political party now! Fuck!"

Meanwhile, a pack of prepared chicken strips can jump up by a whole dollar and people are like:
"I can't remember what that cost the last time I bought it. Seems like it could be higher. Oh well, whatever, I still need it.".

Boy, that must be nice. One can still dream, I guess.

Rather than rounding, retailers should let you keep your cash overpayment as a store credit on a gift card. Yeah, rounding is supposed to ultimately even out, but at least this way people wouldn't feel like they're potentially being ripped off.

Back in the day, Disney did something similar for cash customers, by offering to give change in "Disney Dollars". IIRC, there was some mixed reactions from guests at the time, but apparently they're now considered collectable items.

The cost of producing energy varies quite a bit. I can go to Harbor Freight right now and buy a solar panel that'll produce electricity for free, but somehow the power company still insists on billing me about $0.14 per kWh for the electricity I use at home.

Of course, the idealistic response would be that I should just get a whole bunch of those solar panel thingies, but immediate budgetary and practical constraints make that idea infeasible. Economics is hard, and apparently, so is getting away from paying for electricity.
 

My condolences to both of them.

Usually the garage lighting is on a separate circuit from the outlets. A combination switch GFCI outlet (one of these) usually lets you add a receptacle to a lighting circuit. Granted, some older homes are missing the neutral wire in junction boxes used for switches, hence the usually. If there's a garage door opener present, that's also typically on its own dedicated circuit as well. Admittedly, though, routing a cord down from the ceiling can present its own set of challenges.

Newer homes often tend to have the breaker panel in the garage anyway, in which case it makes sense just to go whole-hog and put in a NEMA 14-50 outlet or hardwired EVSE.

Lighting circuits are usually lightly (pun intended) loaded, especially if most of the home's bulbs have been upgraded to LED. I actually installed one of these fixtures for my brother because for whatever reason, his house actually had no exterior outlets (my guess is the siding was replaced at some point before he bought the house, and they ended up covered up). The outlet inside the fixture is a genuine UL listed decora style 15A GFCI outlet. Granted, yes, having to leave the light switch on means relying on a dusk-to-dawn sensor (which these sort of combination fixtures generally do include) or a smart bulb.

If you rent, swapping a breaker and an outlet is an entirely reversible process when you're getting ready to move out. I certainly wouldn't recommend doing it without the landlord's permission, but chances are if they understand that it's not a permanent change, they'll probably be fine with it.

As for getting a permit, let's just say Home Depot and Lowes would have a lot less customers if every DIY handyman did everything by the book. Nothing about changing a breaker or outlet is particularly difficult, and even if someone doesn't feel confident doing it themselves, it's generally something one can make a post on social media about and get help from a friend over a pizza and some cold beers.

Again, you're in the mindset of someone who probably just came home with shiny new Tesla, Rivian, etc. I'm talking about someone who is browsing cars.com sorted by price and thinking "Man, if I could get home charging rigged up, one of these used EVs might actually work for me!" L1 charging is rather limiting for longer daily commutes and it can take over a day for some EVs to recharge at L1 speeds from a long road trip. A 6-15 outlet cuts the charging time in half.

Yep, if a branch circuit is being converted you've pointed out one of the caveats. Most people usually don't have a great deal of things plugged into their garage outlets, though. So, you run an extension cord to the beer fridge and call it a day, basically. As to being extremely unlucky and having your outdoor outlets on the same circuit as the garage, there's actually a few relatively inexpensive porch lights with built-in GFCI outlets available on Amazon. Yeah, you'd end up with blank plates over your previous outdoor outlets, but that'd solve the issue of ending up with no outdoor outlets.

I never said this was a solution that works for every use case. It's a budget-friendly way of going well beyond miserably slow L1 speeds and makes owning at least a single EV practical for all but the most extreme of daily commutes. Yes, with multiple EVs or a situation where back-to-back long road trips are frequent, a single 6-20 outlet isn't going to cut it. But as more EVs filter down to the used market, it absolutely can be the difference between whether or not an EV will meet someone's daily driving needs.

I'm kinda with that Technology Connections YouTuber on this. We have 240v in American homes. We even have several 240v outlet standards. What we don't have, is builders with enough sense to install 240v outlets for anything other than the kitchen range and a clothes dryer.

In fact, we even have a 240v outlet standard that is a direct drop-in for the same wiring used for standard 15A 120V outlets: the NEMA 6-15. That's right, you can just find some existing outlet circuit that isn't being used for anything else, swap the outlet and replace the breaker with a double-pole model and now you've got 3kw of EV charging capability, without having to run a new wire! Plus, if you're lucky enough that the circuit was originally a 20A (12AWG Romex), you can up the outlet to a NEMA 6-20 and get 3.84kw of output.

Not wanting to spend the money to have a new NEMA 14-50 outlet (or a hardwired EVSE) installed is one of the more common complaints I hear about EVs. Thing is, most people probably don't really need one. Even if you ran a Tesla Model 3 Long Range down to 10%, an overnight charge from a NEMA 6-20 outlet would have you roughly at 78% by morning. That's probably the most extreme use case, I'd still call that quite acceptable. That, again, is something that only requires swapping an outlet and a breaker on an existing 20A circuit in order to accomplish. Most US homes are actually more "EV ready" than people tend to assume.