Comment Re:The costs are higher because we use credit card (Score 1) 160
Services like paypal allow me to pay for online purchases with my bank account rather than a credit card - so not sure why you think you can't make internet purchases online without a credit card? But yes, generally you do need a card for hotels and rental cards.
Comment Re:Where do I listen to podcasts? (Score 1) 109
I used to listen to podcasts when flying - it's a great way to kill a few hours
Comment Re:Ahead of Toyota (Score 1) 86
I'm waiting to hear about people intentionally jumping in front of cars, knowing full well they will stop, in order to try and rob those inside. The other concern I have is people screwing/trolling self driving cars since they know how the car might react. A human might try some defensive maneuvers or be able to recognize a bad situation about to unfold. Will cars? How will self driving cars handle snow covered roads with no visible lane markings, or very icy conditions where if you don't brake early enough, you slide through intersections or fishtail wildly around corners. I still firmly believe that full self driving (that is, a car without any steering wheel or input device) is decades away. Everything seems easy on open highways, but inner city streets in poor conditions is where the real challenge lives. I also feel like determining the liability on who's responsible for crashes is also big challenge that's going to hold this back.
Comment Re:You know what is enormous competitve threat? (Score 1) 35
I actually looked into switch to a Credit Union here in Ontario. The only one within an hours drive doesn't have a website at all, only a phone number and physical services. Are Credit Unions just not a thing here in Ontario outside of the major cities?
Comment Re:USB is good enough (Score 1) 193
It's a CalDigit Mini Dock (which I originally picked because it had two HDMI outputs)
Comment Re:USB is good enough (Score 4, Interesting) 193
My experience has been... less than impressive. Granted, I'm using a MBP, and most of my experience revolves around a "dock".
The dock provides 2x HDMI, 1x USB 2.0, 1x USB 3.0, 1gbps ethernet, but no passthrough charging. That's fine, but the USB ports spontaneously disconnect, so I use a dedicated USB 3.0 hub. So now that's 3 cables. Bought a new monitor, but need 8k HDMI, which none of the docks supported, so I'm using a thunderbolt to DP 1.4 cable. That's 4 cables on 4 ports, to allow me to charge, get gigabit ethernet (probably going to replace the now useless dock for a 3.0 ethernet adaptor), use my keyboard, and use my ultrawide.
As an aside, USB-C ports don't seem very robust compared to HDMI and USB type A. I was debugging some networking equipment so dragged my little dock around and I had to be careful how I positioned everything because either the doc would hang, putting it's entire weight on the plug, or try to balance it on the keyboard. Honestly, it doesn't seem much better than microusb.
As an aside, USB-C ports don't seem very robust compared to HDMI and USB type A. I was debugging some networking equipment so dragged my little dock around and I had to be careful how I positioned everything because either the doc would hang, putting it's entire weight on the plug, or try to balance it on the keyboard. Honestly, it doesn't seem much better than microusb.
Comment Re:No (Score 1) 184
I lived in Ottawa for many years - apparently they use chloramine (they switched in 1992) - I can still confirm that the water tastes like pool water. Not as bad as other places I've been to, but you could still tell. I now drink straight, unfiltered well water and find the flavour to be excellent, it sucks to go back to city water. You really notice it when you go out to eat and order a fountain pop/glass of water from a small restaurant that either doesn't have, or needs to replace their water filter.
Comment Re:Hey there it is! (Score 1) 184
It's too much work for the ROI (to return for deposit). As a kid I remember we used to keep bags and bags of it in the basement, before finally taking it in for like, $20. It was a tonne of work. But there was a hidden benefit: University students would put their empties on the curb after the weekend and the homeless would come by at night and take them in for a refund. This actually worked REALLY well. Living out in the country, I burn what paper I can in the woodstove, everything else just goes to the curb on Wednesdays to get picked up by the township.
Comment Re:Or... (Score 1) 184
So let's just actually enforce those "$1000 minimum fine for littering" signs that are posted along all the freeways. Or even better yet, go full-Singapore on their asses. This is a solved problem in many other countries as well. You'll hardly see any litter when walking through Tokyo, Seoul, or Taipei either, for example.
I suspect this has more to do with the culture than the fines. And good luck trying to enforce it.
Comment Re:Microsoft does not care about LibreOffice (Score 1) 165
I don't see a rename, this is the closest I was able to find on how to do it in sheets: https://webapps.stackexchange....
Comment Re:Microsoft does not care about LibreOffice (Score 1) 165
If Sheets would let me easily rename cells I'd be sold. Instead, it's buried in menus.
Comment Re:unique passwords (Score 1) 25
unifi-video? I have it running on my own hardware. No need for their NVR hardware. The cameras expose the RTSP stream directly if you don't hook them up to an NVR (ie, unmanaged).
Comment Re: Skip returns, pay twice (Score 1) 89
You just described the chinese dystopian social credit system. I am not comfortable with a Corporatocracy that colludes and shares data between each other.
You mean like this? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Comment Re: The Rich Pay Fines (Score 1) 66
I thought they could write the fine off on their taxes, so doesn't that mean it's paid for by taxpayers? In 2018, their operating income was $10.4B, $2.5B isn't that big of a deal for them.