Same in the Netherlands. They are pretty much the default really. And while theoretically they can be used for surge pricing, they aren’t. First, that’s a great way to lose all trust your customers have in you and make them go to a different store. Second, I’m pretty sure that’s illegal.

On the plus side for you Americans and Canadians, maybe you can finally get rid of that habit of showing product prices excluding tax. There’s no compelling reason for maintaining that if updating your pricetags is a matter of seconds.

Ever heard of Jehovah’s witnesses? Or Mormons going on their mission? They aren’t constant here, but they are definitely a thing in the Netherlands.

At the very least, do so for the infrastructure. I don’t mind companies trying to sell me the service competitively, but the infrastructure should allow for a competitive market.

My BIL got a new Tesla a few weeks ago, my dad has an older one (4 years iirc). I’ve driven my dad’s one and I must say, I don’t like it as a car and the build quality is not great. Too much fiddling with the touchscreen to get basic things done. Then I looked at my BIL’s Tesla and it’s a hard no now. You can’t remove the stick for the indicators. It’s moronic.

It’s not just Elon that makes me not even consider a Tesla. He’s just an extra reason to not consider the brand.

Ah, haven’t thought about youarelistening.to in a while. I should turn it on while working. It’s strangely relaxing and helps a lot with focus.

I had a nice one today. I saved an email for archiving for all to see ( you know, as a .msg) and tried to open it. Windows asked if I would like to open it with Outlook (new). Sure, I thought, only to be greeted by the message “sorry, this function is not supported”.

Why do you do this to me Microsoft?! Why?!

As the owner of a Fairphone, this is indeed my experience. The only non-standard app is the Fairphone app, which is easily ignored or might even be useful.

A friend of mine: liters are not the same as kilograms. She’s 30…

I would honestly hope we would be smart enough not to go the road of the car again but instead invest in good public transportation, at least in cities and other densely populated areas. Flying cars, even automated, would be a terrible idea from both risk and energy/climate change perspectives.

That looks good! I think I’ll try it out soon, thanks for the tip 🙂

Might be a slightly unpopular opinion, but Volumio (software for a raspberry pi to run it as a headless audio system). It’s good, it’s relatively well maintained and works. But paying 7,50 a month for this software to get multiroom audio, Tidal integration and some other stuff is ridiculously expensive. That’s nearly 90 euro a year and the only thing that is actually an addition server side is syncing settings across devices and the Tidal integration (requires license fees iirc).

And sure, I can’t buy multiroom speakers for that kind of money, but damn, is it expensive.

So why not use something like WhatsApp or Signal instead then? Sounds like a terrible user experience to me. Nobody I know uses iMessage, everybody uses WhatsApp instead, which is platform agnostic.

But I’m European, so the iPhone penetration is lower iirc and they can’t stay in their bubble as much.

Wacht, heeft hij nou eigenlijk wel antwoord gegeven op de vraag die hij zelf in de titel stelt? Hij heeft een hoop opgehangen over de koopman, de dominee en de oude man, maar echt iets verklaren doet hij niet.

Dit is altijd een beetje het probleem wat ik heb met zijn video’s. Hij herhaalt populaire Nederlandse mythes die helemaal niks verklaren. De koopman en de dominee? Sure, begin eens met verzuiling in plaats van die nationale mythe er weer bij te halen. Dan kom je waarschijnlijk verder met een verklaring dan op deze manier. Het is echt een stuk complexer dan wat hij hier uitlegt.

Dat zou inderdaad fijn zijn. Ik ben recent overgestapt en het was makkelijker dan verwacht, maar toch nog een hoop gezeur met partijen die niet snappen dat het wel de bedoeling is dat je overstapinformatie ook werkelijk verwerkt enzo…

I don’t buy a U-Haul truck just for the occasion that I’m moving, am I?

In a less snarky response, in case you can downscale your primary car to be more efficient and less costly, you can save significant amounts of money. In my country, weight, size, type of drivetrain and the sticker price all determine the amount of tax you pay on the vehicle. Getting a small, light vehicle instead of a big one you need for towing can definitely make sense financially, even if you are going to tow a caravan once a year and therefore have to rent a car to do so. Of course the individual circumstances really change a lot and in general people don’t do this due to convenience or the simple fact that they do this more often.

But you also missed the point of my reply. The point is that these tow bots will essentially be a second vehicle on their own. It will be expensive to buy one, it will be expensive to rent one and it will be expensive to own one. It won’t make sense as a product, even if you can still use your car when you arrive at your destination. The economics won’t work out, I’m pretty sure of that.

That’s not a problem that a small machine like this will fix though. The problem with EVs towing isn’t that they don’t have enough power to tow, it’s that the energy consumption goes up significantly due to changes in aerodynamics and the loss of regen braking. Petrol and diesel cars have the same problem, but can refuel quickly. EVs can’t.

Now imagine an autonomous trailer drone behind your EV. It’s most likely going to be electric, as most new automotive things are going to be electric by now. Then there are two options:

1. You end up with a small thing that can’t go very far due to limited battery capacity.
2. You end up with a gigantic machine that can go pretty far, but that’s in no way cheap or easy to store.

In the first case you might as well use your own EV to tow. In the second case you might as well just rent or buy a vehicle meant for towing. I don’t see how the economics of it are going to make sense.