BluePen8

I feel like that’s more the nature of luxury-priced products than reflection of their actual capabilities.

Out of the box a Range Rover is a better off roader than a Jeep, more locking differentials, and more ground clearance, but simply the average buyer isn’t going to use it that way.

Putting both those vehicles to shame is the Mercedes G-wagon, but only once in my life have I ever seen one of those on the trails.

Realistically the best capabilities will come from the aftermarket, and that depends on how many people can afford to beat up that vehicle.

By the time you’re a young professional your credit is honestly pretty decently established, hell I tried to buy a house on an internship and they qualified me for a 250k mortgage with a 48k salary.

Hell I know guys that went straight into the workforce after high school, nothing stopped them from financing 6 figure pickup trucks, and those depreciate badly in comparison and are harder to repo and re-sell.

Problem is, most places with work that won’t get you a place to live. Houses used to be 3x the median income, nowadays it’s more than 10x.

The idea of housing only being for very established people is new, and only due to its staggering costs nowadays. When my father moved to a town to wash dishes at a pub, he bought himself a house. Cost him 3x his salary.

For the ability to comfortably use my phone one handed, I found the battery trade-off worth it.

But I don’t really travel far enough with just what’s on my person for it to be noticeable. At the very least I have a small bag, and some form of small power bank has always been in there. The 12 Mini charges incredibly fast in my perspective.

I was stubborn enough to use an iPhone SE until almost the release of the 12 Mini, and that thing has atrocious charging speed and battery life. But back then I was just amazed at how much better it was than the 5 I’d been holding out with previously.

Sure it was a downgrade from the X I used for 6 months battery wise, but I just never got used to the size. Maybe the long battery life was partially because I hated and avoided using it the whole time.

TLDR: Every 4-5 years Apple releases another small phone, and I generally refuse to upgrade until then.

I agree, and don’t really get it either. Some stores it’s even advertised that their goods are appraised at more than their price.

Maybe it’s a marketing thing, but to me it just feels like fraud against whoever has to insure it (if I list it on my home insurance for example).

That’s how I got a lavish engagement ring for my wife, I simply bought it used from a guy who’d bought it a year ago for a relationship that fell apart.

Met him at a jewelry store and had it verified and appraised, he had the receipt for the 12k or so he paid, it appraised for 16k (not sure why they appraise for more than the retail price), and I paid him 5k (CAD).

This was years ago, and I think it was a 1.4ct VVS2.

That same budget in store had me looking at sub 1 carat SI2 crap that was cloudy as all hell.

Diamonds have 0 resale value, not sure why people think otherwise when it’s so easy to see simply browsing used ads.

Maybe I’m projecting my own personal experience, but I doubt public chargers are a significant percentage of most people’s charging.

Before buying an EV, I was super concerned with public charging infrastructure.

Now as an owner, I’ve only used public charging enough to verify it works. With 300+ miles of range it just isn’t a concern, I either have enough to go and return, or am staying long enough to charge the car enough to return (I visit family 200 miles away at least monthly).

I’ve owned the car for 2.5 months and 5,200 miles. 12% of my charging has been public, and 43% of that was in the first 3 days because the car didn’t come with a charger and it took a week to arrive.

So based on my own experience, I’d expect public charging to be a negligible single digit %.

As someone recovering from a back injury, I was excited as hell to work from home.

6-8 weeks later, I wondered why my back hurt so damn much.

I had no idea how much my office’s slow elevators and 5 flights of stairs had been helping, had to manually add that back into my life.

Do you just use virtual box for something like this?

I split my time between two places, and game infrequently which means my SFF gaming PC is often still in the box until I need it, at which point Windows updates can waste the time I had for gaming.

Would love a way to use my laptop to keep some Windows VM snapshot up to date. Windows has ruined more gaming sessions than it’s provided for me lately.

Unless you go through the bother of paying cash every time, it's probably pretty safe to assume VISA is selling the same data.

Most gas stations are owned by large chains, I assume they're doing it too. Some stores I visit literally pull up my email for e-receipt from my credit card alone.

There's also tracking systems (often used in malls) that use our phone's Bluetooth and Wifi signature to track us as we go store to store. Some use facial recognition as well.

There was a lawsuit here in Canada because police cars are equipped with license plate scanners which run 24/7, and retain all the data. Wouldn't even be a lawsuit if it was a private entity.

Our cell phone carriers also sell this data. Anonymized sure, but there's enough data points to figure out who is who, especially if paired with another data source.

There's also companies that sell a constant feed of satellite imaging. Hedge funds buy it so they can track cars in an out of oil refiners, to better estimate production figures, or setbacks if they see a bunch of emergency response vehicles.

I also have an appreciation for my older non-connected vehicles, but let's be real, the ship has sailed on being tracked everywhere we go. I may not like it, but I accept I'm always being tracked a dozen different ways no matter what I do.

I'm just glad I'm not anyone important or a political dissident, this would not be a good era for that.

I'll be frank, the MacBooks are overpriced, and do have some of their own issues, but they're actually still the best choice.

At the very least based on my own experience you should avoid HP Elitebooks, and Microsoft Surfaces, also Asus Zenbooks, and Dell Inspirons.

...As you can tell from that list I've tried very hard to avoid paying the premium for a MacBook before giving in. They're still not perfect, but they're good enough that I am never going back to a Windows laptop.

Same, I was in university and kept showing up to class with my Dell Inspiron having killed it's own battery in my bag regardless how carefully I put it into sleep/hibernate.

Or I'd find it nearly dead and burning hot, fans spun up wildly, in the process of cooking it's own motherboard.

It heat suicided itself through 2 motherboards during the 1 year warranty.

I have my complaints about MacBooks, but at least I had a laptop I could count on being reliable and ready to work when I showed up to class every day.

I couldn't trust the Dell, making it absolutely worthless.

Sure but in this scenario it's a high earning google employee. I'm sure there's something they can cut back on.

For anyone average or lower earning, a 2 hour commute would cost you at least 10% of your income anyways (after tax).

On the flip side, I wish EV makers would advertise range at higher speeds.

Hell, I wish ICE car makers would advertise MPG at higher speeds.

Every weekend I head up around 200 miles away, and it's on an empty mountain pass with a 80MPH speed limit.

In town, my sports sedan gets the same fuel economy as my old Tacoma, but on that trip the Tacoma consumes over 50% more if driven even remotely comparably (80+). The sports sedan has surprisingly little variance between 70-90MPH.

While the truck's aerodynamics aren't helping, I've experienced the same in other "fuel-efficient" vehicles, where the fuel economy falls off a cliff once you go above 60MPH. A Chevy Aveo I owned was actually one of the worst offenders, you'd get on the highway and get SUV-tier fuel mileage.

What about frequency of charging?

I once commuted on a motorcycle with the range of my daily commute (about 120 miles). Despite how ubiquitous gas stations are, and how fast I could swipe by VISA and pump 2 gallons, it was still incredibly annoying.

Those daily 4 minute pit stops were infuriating, I can't imaging having to spend half an hour at a EV charging station twice a week.

I'm excited for this, my wife is an accountant and often asks me to help her with VBA macros.

Which means that for this reason alone I have to dedicate 40GB of my laptop's hard drive to a Windows partition with office, adobe, and other stuff installed.

And if she's not physically near me, I have no way of getting the script to her with any guarantee it'll behave the same or work at all on her work computer.

Having worked within unix for so long, I'd started taking it for granted how everything is either portable, or can be easily containerized, Windows and accompanying products are incredibly environment finicky and janky overall.

To be able to just do the remote version of "handing over the laptop" will be a godsend.