u/TheQuarantinian

Planned obsolescence is the common practice to make products to last a specific, pre-planned lifespan then wear out, forcing you to buy a new one.

It started in 1924 when the largest light bulb manufacturers Osram, Philips, and General Electric formed a secret club that agreed light bulbs should be designed to cut the existing expected lifespan from 2,400 hours to 1,000 wirh steep fines for anybody who broke the rule. History fans, look up Pheobus cartel.

In 1932, real estate broker Bernard London published his pamphlet Ending the Depression Through Planned Obsolescence which called on the federal government to establish expiration dates on just about everything - clothes,.cars, radios, appliances - to force people to buy more replacements. He was ignored.

Many companies today hire engineers to figure out how to force parts to fail after a specific period of time. A fridge with a 3 year warranty may have a compressor with a targeted time to fail of 42 months, or a kitchen stand mixer trades gears that were still in perfect condition after 50 years with plastic gears expected to fail in five.

Epson France took it to a new level.

In their inkjet printers there is a sponge in a tray designed to catch excess ink. You can not get to it without major surgery, they do not sell replacements anyway, and it is tied to a page counter: after so many pages the printer bricks. Epson is generous enough to publish a utility that gives you 50 more pages so you can finish your last print job, but the utility will only work once, then the printer is bricked and you need to buy a new one.

There exist hacks to unbrick it, but the possibility that somebody puts malware in a third party, unsigned app is not zero, and these would be illegal in the US anyway under the DMCA (that people ignore until they get sued).

Epson says this is for your safety, if the spill sponge is full it might leak ink onto the electronics and cause a fire, and at any rate they are entitled to maximize profits and the French Government has no right to interfere.

France passed a law specifically targeting planned obsolescense in 2015. In 2021 this was expanded to require durability information on the products as well.

Companies that violate the law get hit wirh a 300,000 Euro fine. This is the base. They can get hit with up to 5% of total company revenue above this.

The executives get two years in prison.

To date bo company has been formally charged. Apple was headed that way over the battery scandal, but their settlement resulted in France abandoning the criminal route. Apple continued to argue that it was their right to slow the phones down and they were entitled to do whatever they want (you can thank Europe spanking Apple for every phone using USB-C now) but they read the tides and stopped rowing against the current.

On July 2, Epson became the first company in the world to be formally charged with breaking a planned obsolescense law. They continue to argue that it is their right to do so and are entitled to less interference from the French government.

Here's hoping they don't blink and settle - filling the role of executive inmate is so hard to do.

William Nieporte, co-founder of Bramshill Investments co-signed with the other two co-founders a letter sent to all employees saying return to the office five days a week or take a severance package.

He himself did not return to the office and was fired by his partners. A bylaw of the parent company they set up, Ironmen, required that anybody fired for cause was required to sell their stake in the company.

He is now suing the both the company and ADP, the latter being the HR company that processed his termination.

He says it was obvious that such a rule would not apply to an owner, so in his words he "appropriately ignored the email".

Another claim was that he was not notified of pending action via fax, hand delivery, courier or certified mail, which were the only valid methods of notification, even though he acted on the notice and later complained that he wasn't given as much time as the invalid notification he didn't accept said he wpuld have.

He now works for a startup, with remote work explicitly allowed. At least for him.

In the region served by the PJM grid (everything South of Michigan and Nrw York, East of Indiana and North of North Carolina and Tennessee) is running put of power as the heat wave causes people to run AC units like there is no tomorrow. The grid is at max capacity, any significant spikes in demand or any problems with the lines or generators will push things into the "this is really bad" category.

While construction booms led to part of the problem, the data centers are by far the biggest category of new power draws. They did not pay for new power plants, they did not pay for higher transmission capacity, they demanded the residential consumers pay for it all and demanded the right to build NOW do they can start making money.

Now they have used up all of the safety padding and the entire grid is in.a precarious situation.

They did plan ahead so they could still operate during blackouts by installing massive backup generators to keep that money coming in. They don't like using them though, between maintenance, fuel, inefficiencies of not producing in grid level quantities they refused to turn them on and reduce the demand on the grid.

Between all of the data centers they were sitting on 35 GW of generating capacity, enough for 26,000,000 (26 million) homes, but to save money...

There is a glimmer of hope though. The US Energy Secretary wrote an order giving PJM permission to order centers to turn on their generators or go without power, in which case they would just turn on the generators anyway, and keep making money while the grid is repaired.

Link to order 202-26-33 https://www.energy.gov/documents/doe-order-no-202-26-33 - 11 pages of fedesl bureauese if you are interested.

And a related website that you've never heard of, gridstatus.io which lets you see how much electricity wholesale rates are, how much us being used, a breakdown of electricity generation sources, all in real-time.

In the past 7 days power costs went from $72 per MegaWatt hour to $308 (the DA means day ahead). Heat causes spikes in price, but with the centers throwing in their 35 GW the spikes are cut by 50%-75% and more importantly can prevent grid collapse.

But they are unwilling to do it without a federal order.

Friend of mine allowed his nephew to stay in his house, rent-free, all food provided, while the nephew "figured out his next move". Unwilling to hold a job for longer than a month, unwilling to use his GI benefits to take classes, unwilling to give up pot just long enough to pass a drug test to get his dream job. And as an added bonus, he found a lonely gossip-hungry neighbor twice his age who grew her own pot who happily gave him unlimited weed for hanging out with her ans keeping her company.

One day I was hanging out with him amd his nephew happened to be around. We were watching some historical documentary, something like "the history of economic policy evolution of the post WWII Republican party" and this deeply, mortally wounded the nephew.

The nephew had been adopted and was of a different race than everybody in yhe family. In the same room, he started playing a podcast with the most racist, separatist extremist content I have ever heard, including calls for violent revolt and killing the evil people. On speaker, full volume, while we were watching our show. And the hosts seemed to be using swear words instead of the letter e. I didn't know the nephew that well, but I had never gotten a vibe that he was into that mindset, but it was extremely offensive to me (the swearing and the fact that he was blasting the volume over our show, if not for that I wouldn't have noticed because I come from a big household so I'm used to tuning out noise). I left, too much drama for me.

Later on my friend told me his nephew was bragging to his wife at how effective he was at teaching my friend a lesson for bringing hate into "their" home, and how he had gone looking for content my friend would find most offensive, since my friend was only watching that show to offend him.

That's when the wife realized that the nephew viewed her as an ally against her husband and she concluded that the unlimited, never ending free ride was coming to an end.

A month or so later, after more drama that included threats to move out and be homeless if they weren't nicer to him, let him correct their parenting mistakes and buy him a car they told him he could either move out or have the sheriff escort him out. He agreed to accept a one way plane ticket to Los Angeles (comfort + or better) and a promise to store his stuff in the basement for as long as he needed.

My friend bought the ticket within an hour, bought a stack of plastic storage totes and scheduled an uber for the next day. Then the nephew changed his mind, didn't want to leave after all, but by now he had alienated the wife by trying to drive a wedge between them, and when -she- said it was really, really time to go, he finally accepted it, thus shutting the door on the last family members willing to share their home (including his own parents who were unwilling to risk a government job by allowing their kid to use and sell pot out of their house in a state where recreational pot was illegal. He needed the money and wouldn't keep a job, so his own parents were unreasonable and controlling).

A 32 year old Florida woman was arrested on a petty theft charge. Her car was inventories and towed.

She was soon bailed out of jail and went to the yard to retrieve her vehicle, only to discover that some of her items were missing, including her debit card which was already being used.

Upset, she called the sheriff's office to report the crime, with Polk County Sheriff Judd saying in a morning briefing. "She called us back and said, 'You know, I might have been arrested for petty theft and stealing somebody else's stuff, but I really don't like people stealing my stuff.'"

Bonus story: the items were stolen by the tow truck driver, who had been hired by the company contracted by the sheriff despite having active warrants for burglary out for his arrest in the next county over that didn't show up until they ran a background check for the first time after the debit card theft.

When arrested the driver was found with enough illegal drugs in his possession to merit some extra charges.

Mount Evans Wilderness, Colorado allows dogs but requires them to be kept on a hand held leash at all times.

A recent video shared shows an off leash dog that was allowed to chase a mountain goat and her kid, ultimately separating the two, with the dog chasing the monster across a road and out of sight down a steep slope. The kid was left behind, alone.

No word on what happened after that.

A man, a plan, a canal, Nicaragua

In the 1890s-1910 era Nicaragua was sitting large. A president named Zelaya was a proud nationalist, and wanted self-determinism foe his country. The US and banks wanted to try building a canal again for military use and to get gold and other trade between the Pacific and Atlantic, but wanted exclusive control and rights. The conversation went like this:

US: we want a killer exclusive deal with you. Let us build a canal through Lake Nicaragua and let us run the whole show.

Zelaya: nah. You can build, but no exclusive deals.

US: c'mon, we'll be your friend

Z: Yo! Japan and Germany! Wanna go in on a canal with us?

US President Taft and Secretary of State Knox (of Ft Knox fame): he's gotta go

There was a Leftist general chilling out in the Atlantic coast jungles named Estrada who hated Z. Z hated him, but didn't have the resources or skills to even dream about getting him out, so they sent really nasty thoughts that way and if dis tracks were a thing would have just flooded Twitter with sick burns. Estrada taunted his hamster mother and farted in his general direction, but otherwise didn't worry about him.

The US banks, working with Taft and Knox showed up. With offers of money, assistance and weapons they asked Estrada if he wanted to rule the country, so in 1909 Estrada declared a revolution to topple the government.

The accountant.

Adolfo Diaz was an actual accountant for a mining company in Los Angeles. He was tapped to get money from the US to Estrada to buy guns and mercenaries, making sure the rebels were funded.

Z caught a couple of American mercenaries planting bombs and executed them, so Taft sent the US Navy to park offshore and protect the rebel base. Marines say up camp on the beach and said we aren't officially at war, but we cut diplomatic ties, are occupying this lovely beach, and prohibit you from attacking the rebels. Do you want us to declare a formal state of find out? Didn't think so.

Zelaya declared that he didn't sign up for any of this and Sir Robin'ed out of the country, leaving the door open for the accountant to sit in the big chair as vice president, pulling the strings of now President Estrada.

As president. Estrada was useless so he was encouraged to retire in 1911 leaving the accountant running the whole show, answering to the president of the US and whoever he answered to.

Diaz's first order of business was to give the national bank, the railroads and the customs houses to Wall Street. The people revolted, back come the Marines in 1912 - 2500 of them - to keep the peace for the next 13 years.

In 1916 the US inked a killer deal. $3 million in gold (either $90 million or $500 million or $1.6 billion depending how you calculate) for

• permanent, perpetual elusive rights to build and run a canal.
• 99 year lease on a couple of islands
• 99 lease to build the Guantanamo of Nicaragua

The Senate ratified the treaty, gave the gold to now President Wilson who diverted $3 million dollars of the $3 million to Wall Street bankers for overhead and expenses, resulting in nothing for Nicaragua.

The country said enough, picked a new president in 1917 who entered office to find the entire national treasury drained. Literally. Nothing left. He asked where the money was, and was asked "what is this mo-ney you speak of? Never heard of it". The corruption of the US government had stolen all of the money from an entire country.

Nicaragua, Costa Rica and El Salvador sued the US in the the Central American Court of Justice, the international court in the region for a list of treaty violations and one and won decisively. Wilson said the US doesn't listen to courts, everybody needed to get stuffed and carried on with his hobbies. This resulted in the court collapsing, and everybody in Central America hating the US for a century to come.

The guy from Shark Tank (Kevin) is building a new AI data center in the Utah desert that is planned to about double the power consumption of the entire state with just his one project.

Enter state Senate President Stuart Adams (bonus story at the bottom), longest serving Senate President in the state's history. His support was instrumental in getting the project going with state financial and other support. The locals and people statewide were opposed, but he charged ahead anyway.

Becoming the first sitting senate president to lose in a primary election, he declared that his data center suppory cost him the election, but the only thing he would do differently was demand the state explain why they were forcing it down everybody's throat.

Two Box Elder county commissioners who supported the 40 000 acre project also turned the primary from what is usually a formality into inglorious defeats. Maybe the new data center's AI can help them figure out why.

Bonus story: Stuart's 18 year old granddaughter was charged with a rather severe penalty for having sex with a 13 year old and was facing 50 years in prison. Being responsible and ethical Stuart recused himself from any legislative action related to the charges.

He did, however, call his friend the Senate Majority Leader and had a friendly conversation about how harsh and unfair this law was, 18 year olds who have sec with 13 year olds should be treated just as leniently as 17 year olds.

The majority leader called up the granddaughter's lawyer and asked how the law would have to be altered in order to cut her some slack, then promptly passed that bill.

To ensure that nobody could claim the bill was passed to benefit her they made it NOT retroactive so it wouldn't benefit her. Then the DA said "I know this law change doesn't technically apply, but the will of the state legislature has been made clear" and turned a mandatory 25 to life with mandatory sex offender registration into 8 days in jail, 517 days of house arrest with an ankle monitor, 4 years of probation, a $1,500 fine, and no sex offender registration.

Oh Utah.

Roku stream bar. For several years when I turn on the bar the TV also turns on and I see the list of my channels.

For about a week now when I turn it on I am shown a screen full of Roku Channel and have to hit the home button to see the regular list of channels.

Is there any way to turn off this "feature"?

The setting: airport style shuttle with the doors that open like a bus then several rows of benches inside. People already on almost always have bags they are ligging around.

Pulls up to a stop where a lady is waiting. The second the doors open she grabs the handholds and starts to pull herself up the steps. She could move around pretty well.

The biggest problem is that once on board she stood directly between a bench where a guy with a guy with a rollaboard needed to get off, which he couldn't without knocking her back down the stairs. She wanted THAT bench (once he got off she'd have it to herself). The driver had to guide her further back so the guy could get up and off the shuttle.

It is one thing to rush onto an elevator before people can get off, it takes special creativity to decide to rush onto a shuttle and physically block somebody from leaving when you need him to leave so you can get his seat.

After knee surgery I had a long recovery period in which my knee was stiff and slow. Out of an abundance of caution I stopped driving during during times or on roads that have heavy traffic because if I had to slam on the brakes becayse somebody made an illegal lane change, bad merge, darting out of a lot or side street... I worried that my knee would just be too slow to stop in time. Overly cautious but I'd rather drive only when sudden movement and pressure on my knee could hurt and damage things within the squishy bits.

So on bsd days I take the regional shuttle service. Part of the public bus it offers door to door and seats 10 passengers or 6 + 2 wheelchairs. Out where I live usually about 4.

While I am on the bus I put on my headphones and focus on work: emails, teams, maybe a work call, the point is I need to focus and concentrate. Head down, I don't even pay attention to others getting on and off.

One woman, probably late 60s or early 70s demands that everybody acknowledges her. I usually sit in the back (quieter, less chit chat) but if I don't acknowledge her ahe will come to the back and wave her hand between my face and whatever I'm working on (video call, troubleshooting a script, writing an email or report) to force me to look up and will not leave until I say hello.

She isnt special needs, she has at least a part time job in retirement working in a restaurant, she just expects me to drop whatever I'm doing no matter what it us and say hello, ignoring the obvious universal do not disturb sign of the over the ear headphones (impossible to miss) , and will walk past the open door to wave her hand in my face, not caring if I am talking with somebody or not.

I have been in a teams call and ahe just stood there saying hello until I put the other person on mute to say it back.

Fortunately once she gets a hello out of me she will ignore me the rest of the trip, but sometimes demands at least a nod as she gets off, requiring me to pay attemtion to her stop, even though I have much more important things to take care of than pay attention to who gets on or off just in case it happens to be thus one specific person