I remember landlines fondly, it felt like I could hear people better back then. At the same time, I also remember the 4khz cutoff. It was the reason music sucked over landlines. Like if you were listening to music with a friend from highschool over the phone, it'd have no depth and you couldn't understand half of it from lyrics to beats. Hold music was a lot worse back then, these days it doesn't sound near as bad.
I think for a lot of us later Gen-X and older Millennials, as we age our ears don't work as well as they used to. Especially those of us like me that didn't heed good ear protection. I can't speak for everyone, but I suspect if today me tried to talk to someone on a landline back in the early 90s it'd still suck as bad as it feels like it does with cellphones today. We get more range with our phones now but our ears have a harder time processing it.
Very good point – the "landline generation's" ears have aged considerably since the 90s.
On top of that, I think many remember "landline quality" in terms of a relative comparison with potato-quality early mobile phone codecs, analog mobile phones, heavily compressed discounted long-distance calling circuits etc. of the time.
Yes, landlines were better than any of that, but it doesn't mean that they were actually good by today's standards.
Not for me; it's way better than any landline I've ever used.
Not sure what we're doing differently – are you sure it's not your or the other party's speaker or microphone?
> Mobile phone calls sound shit.
Not for me either, at least not when EVS ("HD voice") is used, which is more often than not these days when calling friends/family.
2G connections used to sound quite bad, but since 4G, the limiting factor for me has been the other side being on a landline (mostly for business calls), which usually doesn't support wideband audio.
A lot of people can't look beyond their own generation and if it's something that takes 20-30 years to realize they just simply think it's too difficult. I see this with my generation (Gen-X), newer generations and even older generations.
I ran into an old diplomat BMW 7-series in the junkyard in the 90s and that thing was so cool. It had a gun holster in the rear arm rest, like 2" thick windows, probably weighed like 7,000lb from all the armor and everything.
Which has me thinking, all this is cool, but the EV portion and all that weight just feels like you'll be a heavily armored sitting duck if you can't get away quick enough and the battery runs out. Probably doesn't matter though, even if it has 200-mile range this vehicle will probably be used at most within 20-50 miles of its home base.
And if you're the kind of person that travels in one of these, you likely also have a few additional vehicles in front of and behind your vehicle filled with highly-paid professionals ready and willing to carry you the last mile if your vehicle stops reason for any reason, to include mechanical failure.
The whole armored vehicle market is a relatively small one; it's interesting to learn that BMW is direct participant; I previously had no idea. I foresee a lot of wasted time scouring eBay looking for a project my family will resent me for later in my immediate future!
On the other hand, I'd expect the EV to deal much better with sudden acceleration and deceleration as well as aggressive cornering. Also everything required for the car to work is low to the ground, either between the wheels or on the undercarriage, with much lower part count. Fewer things to fail, and much harder for an attacker to disable (no stereotypical "sniper shot through the engine block").
As long as you only drive short trips (e.g. airport to destination) an EV sounds like a big upgrade.
Many cars like this have their own private jet to deliver it where it is to be used. You'll see many such cases around any major environmental conference.
I would bet money that this is exceedingly rare. You'd probably have to have a 767 or larger for this to make sense, and only a tiny fraction of private jets are this large. And then it would still have to be extensively modified to be able to fit a car. Not saying it never happens, I'm sure there's some oil prince or oligarch with a 787 that has a garage, but "many cars like this" is likely a huge stretch. Happy to be proven wrong.
Now, do some people who buy cars like this have them shipped via cargo plane to wherever they're needed? That's slightly more believable, but I bet it's still very uncommon.
Interestingly, I had my first real world encounter with the other end of the carbon credits just two days ago. A friend of mine told me she had tried to get her neighbours (she lives in the woods) to apply for carbon credit grants in unison. They promise not to chop down their trees and/or to protect endangered plants on their properties, and get paid a certain amount by the Mexican government (obviously nowhere near what they'd get from chopping down and selling their trees...)
You propose that if I don't do something, you will pay me because it benefits you in some way.
I agree to not do that thing and happily walk away with the cash. Everybody gets what they want. Why does it matter whether or not I was planning to do the thing?
Because they are selling them as carbon credits in carbon markets for full price per ton of CO2 using fraudulent measures of how much carbon is additionally being averted (additionality). To be clear, the bad actors are those selling the credits claiming that these properties would have been chopped down otherwise (not the property owners).
Then actors like Apple, airlines, etc. get to claim they have fully offset their supply chain despite nothing of the sort occurring because of counterfeit carbon credits.
e: And fwiw, I have done analysis of this offline as part of a personal project - based on what I saw looking at global forestry data, the evidence is strong that the vast majority of REDD (deforestation) carbon credits are fraudulent IMO - areas being sold at the cost of carbon if the whole plot was cut down despite there being effectively no risk of that.
Reality: the kids get 100 liters of water a month from a river (yeah not enough).
You: pay a contribution hoping to get them more water.
The "offset" sellers: "See those 100 liters? 5 of them are now being paid by HeyLaughingBoy. He's helping!".
The carbon was being pulled from the air anyway, but paying gives you a certificate to say your money did that. Meanwhile the net CO2 output hasn't changed up nor down. Or rather up because you're consuming something that output CO2 to make. (Philosophical argument, the product would have already been made before your purchase, unless it's something bespoke...)
To kill a senior states-person will certainly lead to war which is itself highly un-environmentally friendly. The carbon credits in this case are the expected value of any averted war. A single F-35 burns something like 1,500 gallons/hour.
Taking the car is a small price, economically and environmentally, to avoid the potential of war.
If you are a head of state / billionaire who thinks they need this level of protection, you're gonna trust the security & reliability of some random rental outfit in each city you visit? Zero chance.
Excess is relative. When you have $$billions, $150K extra to have your custom protection vehicle at the venue is no big deal. And, are they even rentable in all locales, and do you trust those suppliers?
I am with you - while this might seem excessive there are enough people that have the cash and the threat model to go with it.
From what I could find the 2009 Protection version (then called high security) was more around 400k-450k€. A standard model 7 runs from ~115k up to ~145k€.
Yes, I must say that I love BMW's approach. Everyone else just takes a frame and hangs off of it all the protection — just a massive increase in redundant weight and decrease in performance.
Far better to take BMW's approach, upgrade the materials so that the protection is structural; each component serves both purposes.
If you own an EV version of a vehicle like this, by the time you're close to running out of range in an emergency your helicopter-borne QRF should be there setting up a perimeter waiting for your backup convey to arrive.
It's actually probably running Android Automotive 4.2.2 (as opposed to straight android auto). I encountered this in my journey in to the Pioneer AVH-W4500nex after the internal SDcard failed (here's my post http://avic411.com/index.php?/topic/90861-fix-sdcard-failed-...)
You should have no problem using one of the available rootkits for 4.2.2. That's how I got root on my pioneer. You can find out a lot of interesting stuff binwalking the firmware. Stuff like diag menus and such, at least in the Pioneer stuff.
Yes, you can run your own launcher and apps on it. Probably stable once you figure out what customizations they made.
This right here. Not just Wind/Solar either. We have a community that was built right next to a coal fire power plant that's been there since the 70s (the neighborhood was built in 2005) and people are trying to work to get that power plant shut down because they don't like it's smokestacks and how much it lowers their land values. If we were to shut down that plant, we'd drop 1/3rd of the power generation in our area. If that plant were to actually shut down they'd lose their collective crap because of blackouts.
So basically their argument is "We want that power plant gone but we don't want to feel the effects of that power plant being gone. FIX IT NOW!!1!!11one!!11". Maybe they shouldn't have moved right next to a freakin power plant?
Maybe they should also have bought all of the surrounding land within sight in every direction. I moved to a remote rural area very particularly because of the dark skies, for my joy of it and an astronomy hobby. A decade later they built a large wind farm a few miles away, with blinking red lights on top of each turbine. It sucks and there's not a damn thing I can do about it other than leave.
Yeah, real estate development is sort of like traffic.
People develop some land / drive somewhere, and then get irrationally upset that others do the same.
You see the similar with transportation too.
People live on a major avenue or thru street in Manhattan and then protest against express bus lanes, lol.
People are completely irrational on green/climate stuff.
Some of my leftiest friends on climate all drive midsize gas SUVs.
Or the ones that pride themselves on not owning a car (Uber black rides don't count) and take 4+ trips by jet per year, lol.
I guess it doesn't take long to fall back on old habits when you're in the trenches though. A lot of translated intercepted calls posted at https://www.youtube.com/@insightsfromukraineandrussia and reports from the front line talk about drunk Russians like it's an epidemic of alchoholism. They also talk about drunk Ukrainians on another one of the podcasts I follow so it's not only the Russians drinking on the front line.
That being said, I have a few Russian friends that immigrated years ago to Florida and they're not big drinkers. They were all from well off families though. Kinda like here, I suspect alcoholism follows poverty.
I've worked with several EMR (Electronic Medical Record) systems that communicate an absolute metric shit-ton of redundant data for no reason other than just because and bad programming habits. Banking and Healthcare thrive in redundant redundancy.
So what you're thinking is if the US AG gets involved with AirBNB all these issues will magically disappear? It sounds like what might be needed is different housing policies. Our area bans short term rentals period (AirBNB, Vrbo or even private) and the issues have decreased significantly. It's also freed up more housing in our area alleviating the housing crisis (a little).
I think for a lot of us later Gen-X and older Millennials, as we age our ears don't work as well as they used to. Especially those of us like me that didn't heed good ear protection. I can't speak for everyone, but I suspect if today me tried to talk to someone on a landline back in the early 90s it'd still suck as bad as it feels like it does with cellphones today. We get more range with our phones now but our ears have a harder time processing it.
Just a thought.