And the TSA wouldn’t do anything to stop that

Hell the TSA doesn’t do much to prevent that on commercial flights, but requiring private flights to start going through commercial security would be completely pointless

Doesn't work.

If TSA were added, there still wouldn't be any lines at private terminals.

Even if you're flying commercial, wealthy people can just pay Perq Soleil $250 a pop to waltz them through the employee line with no wait.

It does depend on what car you get. A RWD Ioniq5 can do about 3 hours on the highway with 20 minute stops (though the stops are a lot longer at the more-available Tesla chargers).

There’s other good roadtrip friendly options out there too, but ya with monthly drives like that you’re really limiting your options and ICE cars still make a lot of sense

Isn’t that their entire point?

yes, i think you're right that such was the point, and i misread it.

But it creates other issues, especially for a non-techsavvy user

I've never seen a website break because of ublock, at least not in the default config. If it's that much of a problem you can just remote in on grandmas computer and disable it for whatever website.

I think that beats remoting in when granny inevitably gets scammed by an ad.

There really is no excuse in my mind for not running an ad blocker. It's as vital to personal computing security as firewalls and anti malware.

Blocking ads helps grandma not accidentally leak private information that could have disastrous consequences, for example, getting scammed out of their money.

Not blocking ads helps grandma visit a few more websites that don't work well with adblock.

Pretty badly for both sides

It's primarily done for security and secondarily a benefit making it easier (for everyone!) to identify denomination by feel

What security benefit is unlocked by varying the size of the bills?

For (very fancy) cloth/paper bills like American ones, some counterfeiters wash the inks out of $1 bills to make $100 ones. Only possible if the $100s are the same or smaller size.

https://www.nbcdfw.com/news/local/counterfeit-currency-warni...

I believe the US made washing much harder with other techniques because of this in recent years.

Are there any furnaces that do that?

Certainly, the standard smart thermostat set up is that your ecobee is connected to the Internet, but controls the furnace using good old-fashioned signal wires

Well that brings up two immediate issues

A standard furnace and thermostat won’t even know if you pull the thermostat off the wall, much less have any way to handle it beyond “full blast heat 24/7”

More challenging: you expected the sprinkler setup to do the opposite. Instead of following its last-known plan (the schedule) it should stop doing anything (possibly killing the plants it’s watering)

Good off-line only mode in a reasonable plan for what to do without the Internet makes a lot of sense, but at some point, there’s a control system and you need to change it (or even just have one in the thermostat example)

> there’s a control system and you need to change it

Why does the control system have to live on someone else's server in "the cloud"?

There's no reason for smart home devices to require an internet connection to the producer's service. Companies could just as easily put compute on device, or sell some sort of "bridge" (aka a home server appliance) that runs the compute and the accessories connect to.

Fully offline, local network only.

Save the online stuff just for analytics or other value-add features, but core functionality shouldn't require a web service.

The only reason it's 100% internet connection required all the time is to sell subscriptions, aka consumer hostile behavior.

I agree?

In both cases the control system is physically in your house. It sounds like the sprinkler system did work completely offline (though it's not clear if you'd actually be able to change anything without internet - that would be a problem if not), they didn't set up an account so the system was in "offline" mode and dutifully ran the sprinklers on the last known schedule.

For the thermostat the example was physically removing the control system, which is typically not connected to the furnace through any sort of internet connection, and expecting the furnace to know what to do.

The way I see it is... I'd rather my lawn be yellow, plants dead, than a burst pipe underground causing significantly more expensive remediation.

I agree it's not likely (especially if the system is running as-scheduled), but it was a surprise is all. What if I didn't set up the service at all, and it dropped below 0 C? I would be in for a nasty surprise in the spring.

That's fair, though it's not a given that the sprinklers are for turf-grass instead of something more important.

More interestingly (to me): did it have a local interface or was the only way to update it tied to the internet?

There was a local interface, but I don't think it had advanced scheduling capabilities.

All the irrigation lines I've seen in Canada are just a foot or so under the grass, and it's cheap plastic with cheap couplers.

You have to drain them yearly.

Yeah both my furnace and sprinklers require a local controller to do anything, and that just maintains my settings. Idk what an internet connected version of those things looks like, but would hope it's the same except local settings can be read/written remotely.

It wouldn’t _have_ to, that’s a political decision not a mathematical requirement.

But, even if you did it would still help tremendously and possibly still be sufficient. There’s diminishing returns where lower income people get a higher percentage of their income as a social security benefit. As long as that policy is maintained the ultra high wage earners would be contributing far in excess of the benefit they get paid back out

In that case it’s no longer about social security it’s just a 12.4% marginal tax increase (employer + employee).

they're regularly revised up or down because they're (very openly) preliminary numbers released just days after the month ends and before many employers have even answered the survey. When the economy reaches an inflection point they tend to be streaky (multiple revisions down or up in a row) but that's nothing new and mostly just means that the economy has been getting worse over the last year and a half, which... that's one of the big arguments for Trump's victory so I'm not sure why it would be a surprise.