The thing is that places that historically didn't have to worry about this, now have to worry about this.

If they want it preconditioned? Yes, welcome to 2025, they can install the app on their phone. Or they use the 'remote climate start' option on the keyfob. Or they shoot you a quick text asking you to hit the button in your app.

You keep trying to paint these advancements in convenience and comfort as terrible burdens, and it's weird.

https://neildegrassetyson.com/...

Great. Tapping the 'climate start' button in your car's app on your phone not only will absolutely not 'make you late for work,' it will potentially get you to work quicker, *and* in a better mood, *and* more safely than driving an unheated car in -30 weather.

Because it's more pleasant to drive in a warm vehicle than a -30c vehicle? Especially when all it takes to accomplish this is three taps on your phone's screen?

The Dreamcast/PowerVR architecture was pretty awesome. But if there's one thing computing keeps teaching us, it's that in the end, brute force beats specalization. That said, we're about at the point for somebody to wire up eight SATA lanes in parallel, and make Super Parallel ATA or something. Then, in another twenty years, move back to serial when they realize that it's faster to blast eight bits down whatever new system there is, than to synchronize eight lanes. And so on.

Gasp, same as an EV! Hell, my EV 'heats up' faster than any ICE car I've ever driven, what with the heater being independent of having to warm up an entire engine block through inefficient combustion.

Perhaps, but it's not a battle that is solved by choosing an ICE car over an EV, so I'm not sure how it's relevant.

How are you 'delayed' by getting into a cold EV? Are you 'more' or 'less' delayed than climbing into a cold ICE car?

How is 'some people forget to tie their shoelaces' an argument against shoes?

I do. I also assume that everyone will remember to not swerve into oncoming traffic.

But, and here's the important part, *even if they don't remember to preheat their car, all that happens is that, at worst, their EV car then operates like an ICE car being started at -30, which is to say, takes a bit to warm up.*

Only faster than the ICE car will, and with less wear and tear.

I forget what the exact year is, I believe it is 1946.

We have only had one president born since 1946. Yeah - think about that.

Hmm. Lost the end of my sentence there somehow:

And, of course, the companies that are going out of business are also the ones who are least likely to spend time filing out a survey

The BLS monthly numbers are always off when the underlying economy is changing rapidly, because of the "birth death problem", meaning that when large numbers of companies are being created or closed (born or died), the surveys that provide the quick data are guaranteed to be quite far off because the surveys go to companies that are already establish, i.e. those that weren't just born and didn't just die. So when there's a lot of market change, they're sampling the part of the market that is changing less. This means the estimates are off, and the faster the economy is changing the further off they are.

A related issue is that the survey results are only a sample, but BLS needs to extrapolate to the entire population of businesses -- but they don't actually know how many businesses there are in the country, much less how many fit into each of the size / revenue / industry buckets. So their extrapolation necessarily involves some systematic guesswork. In normal, stable economic times good guesses are easy because it's not going to be that much different from the prior year and will likely have followed a consistent trend. But when the economy is changing rapidly, that's not true, so the guesses end up being further off the mark.

Second, it's worse when things are turning for the worse, because of something kind of like "survey fatigue", but not. The problem is that when lots of the surveyed companies are struggling, they're focused on fighting for their existence and don't have time to bother filling out voluntary government reporting forms. It's not that they're tired of surveys, but that they just don't have the time and energy to spare. And, of course, the companies that are going out of business are also the ones w

The phone thing is a red herring, because these BLS surveys are not conducted over the phone.

A new issue compounding the above is that the BLS was hit hard by DOGE cuts and early retirements. They've lost over 20% of their staff, and the loss in experience and institutional knowledge is far larger than that, because the people who were fired and the people who took the buyouts tended to be very senior. So a lot of the experience that would be used to improve the estimates has walked out the door.

Anyway, the core problem is that the economy is going into the toilet, really fast. The BLS didn't break out how much of the 911,000 fewer new jobs were added 2024 vs 2025, but I'll bet a big percentage were after Trump started bludgeoning American businesses with tariffs. Most of that pain won't really be known until the 12-month report next year, because the monthly reports are going to continue underestimating the rate of change. Well, assuming the BLS staff isn't forced to cook the books, in which case we'll just never know.

Well, first of all, no, you're not running three thousand-watt block heaters off of one 120v/15a circuit.

Second, actually, you can get chargers like the Grizzl-E Duo that have multiple charging heads off of one circuit.

Third, 'fuel injection' doesn't heat up your oil. Nor does it defrost your windshield.

Yes, assuming that in this made-up scenario of yours, you're sleeping, fully clothed, on top of the blankets, with your work phone strapped to your ear, your go-bag handcuffed to your secondary hand, and your car keys strapped to your dominant hand.

Otherwise, you get the call, you use your car app to preheat your car (shit, mine ties into siri, so I can just tell it to preheat the car while I'm, you know, getting dressed, using the washroom, getting a coffee, whatever.