I went to the first couple of Amazon Go stores in San Francisco several times. I've also been to our local Go store a few times in LA County. The experience has always been perfectly fine, and the invoices always correct. It's basically just a small junk food and liquor store similar to a 7-Eleven.
Interestingly, we only went to our local Amazon Fresh store a handful of times but it was always a perfectly fine experience. It seemed reasonably clean, well-stocked, and well-organized. Other than those new self-checkout shopping carts (which also actually worked well, even weighing produce), it was fairly indistinguishable from other grocery stores in our area.
Amazon Go, on the other hand, always seemed like a dead man walking. It's a fun novelty to check out and grab some junk food, but it must be far more expensive to build and run than a 7-Eleven, and it's not even meaningfully more convenient.
I should also add that we've been pretty happy Amazon Fresh delivery customers for a couple of years now (we resisted regular grocery delivery for a long time...until we had a child).
I'm going to miss those. Two nice things about them compared to a normal self-checkout: 1) you see things ring up as you shop instead of at the end, which is nice in case of errors or unexpected prices, 2) you can shop directly into a reusable bag or backpack instead of repacking everything at the end.
They had Amazon Go by Grand Central Terminal and it was great to grab a snack and drink on the way to the train, with no worry about being delayed by the checkout line. I figured they had people in India verifying things but saw no reason to care as a customer.
It sounds like the external dimensions are going to be exactly the same or nearly so. I'm hoping the battery compartment is also identical so that third-party mounting and extended battery packs continue to work.
I recently picked up a few of these extended battery packs and it would be nice to eventually upgrade the AirTag if the extended range turns out to be meaningful. They're pretty neat, you remove the battery cover completely and only insert the half of the AirTag with the electronics and radio.
Their description does say “Works with AirTag generation 1 & 2.”
Thanks for putting me on to these. Really clever products. I always feel stupid with my airtag dangling off of my camera.
Can vouch for the nomad. Battery is about 6 months and can be wirelessly recharged in a day. Speaker is a bit quiet but functional. Updates reliably and frequently.
There are none from Apple but in the past I have used Chipolos. They have some which are the size of about 3 stacked credit cards and fit in my wallet easily. The (at that time) did not feature UWB tracking but had a decent loudspeaker. Unfortunately they are single-use only and once the battery ran out (happened to me after about a year) you had to throw it away...
Yeah, I picked them up along with some AA lithium (non-rechargeable) batteries. I also didn't know those batteries existed until recently. I knew there were rechargeable lithium AAs with a charge plug and charging circuitry built into each little cylinder, but I've heard mostly bad reviews of those.
These non-rechargeable ones have pretty good reviews though, and apparently last much longer than normal AAs (both in terms of capacity and storage). I'll probably start putting them in the handful of things I've got that still take AAs.
Typically, yes. Although I chalk much of that up to traditional ICE companies being extremely slow to adopt new technology and implementating it poorly or only superficially.
Depends. They get a virtually continual supply of standby power that can last for months if left untouched. So from a technology standpoint that enables them to do many things - from being connected to the network, aware of their location on the map, recording camera footage and other remote capabilities. ICE cars do have some of these but the huge battery packs on EVs make these very feasible.
EVs use 12V for standby just like ICEs. I guess it could occasionally recharge it from the main battery, but needing a jump is a thing for EVs also in theory. I’ve also had issues with the 12V disabling remote systems because of abnormal discharge (well, BMW has an issue with their lock on weak away in that it keeps drawing power if the fob gets near even if the car is locked).
I was under the impression most EVs cut off the connection to the high voltage battery almost all the time they’re not in use.
They rely on a 12 V battery or a 48 V battery like a normal car.
The only thing I’m aware of that special is that if that low voltage battery gets low enough the car will detect it and recharge it from the high voltage battery, temporarily connecting it for that purpose.
> They rely on a 12 V battery or a 48 V battery like a normal car.
Which leads to "fun" situations when that battery runs out, like not being able to get into your car or start it. However not much power is needed, so a tiny portable jump pack is enough to get things going.
Both me and my sister has experienced this, me a Nissan Leaf and her a VW ID.4, good times.
Fair enough, at least my Leaf had that too, and I guess the ID.4 as well. However for the Leaf and my current car it's just the driver side, and you still can't get the car started, or turn on the heat say.
The latter can be an issue as my sister got stranded in the mountains during winter. Battery ran flat while they were on a long ski trip, and they couldn't get it fired up when they got back. Took a few hours before rescue vehicle arrived and gave them a boost.
Well that was what I meant - the battery pack meaning the entire system of batteries, be it 1 or 2 or 3.
That really enables them to have a continuous state of power supply for a long long time.
This cannot be achieved by ICE cars and not even hybrids for that matter.
In theory. In practice, a lot of EVs (and hybrids, which could do the same thing to a more limited extent) ship with the same cheap flooded lead acid 12v batteries that ship with ICE cars and don't handle constant charging/discharging well.
This puts a cap on how much the "smart" systems can do because it dramatically increases cycle count and thus the risk of the 12v battery losing the ability to produce enough voltage to start the car, leaving the driver marooned somewhere.
It could also result in a noticeable "vampire" drain on the high voltage battery which looks bad and could put you at a disadvantage vs. competitors.
It depends on your definition. Tesla Model 3 has a dedicated low-current connection to the high-voltage battery that bypasses the main contactors, specifically to power the 12V system.
How many allegations of fraud need to be taken to court and dismissed before it’s no longer conceivable that this is a good faith non-partisan search for evidence of fraud?
Sure, and my point is that we shouldn't apologize for people deliberately "investigating" bogus allegations on the grounds that investigating legitimate allegations is a good thing.
>Sure, and my point is that we shouldn't apologize for people deliberately "investigating" bogus allegations
But I'm not "apologizing" for them? I'm pushing back on OP's phrasing of "they did it with the intention of overturning elections". It's possible to push back on some person's criticism of [bad guy] without being accused of "apologizing" for [bad guy].
From my original comment:
>we shouldn't be trying imply that intending to overturn elections in cases of fraud is bad in and of itself
You said "The badness comes from inappropriate access to the data, not trying to find evidence of fraud." I disagree. I think that a blatantly bad faith partisan investigation demanded by a politician who stands for gain and executed by public servants would be bad even if they didn't inappropriately access this data. Both things are bad and would be still be bad independent of one another.
>I think that a blatantly bad faith partisan investigation
Sounds like you agree with me, because you're still not objecting to my original premise of "we shouldn't be trying imply that intending to overturn elections in cases of fraud is bad in and of itself". You might think "bad faith partisan investigation" is bad, but not the act of trying to overturn elections itself.
You explicitly applied it to this investigation, saying the investigation itself was not bad. If you intend to weaken your claim to "not all conceivable investigations of election fraud are bad," then yes, I agree, but that's such an extraneous comment that I would question the intent of including it.
It seems to me that objective moral truths would exist even if humans (and any other moral agents) went extinct, in the same way as basic objective physical truths.
Are you talking instead about the quest to discover moral truths, or perhaps ongoing moral acts by moral agents?
The quest to discover truths about physical reality also require humans or similar agents to exist, yet I wouldn’t conclude from that anything profound about humanity’s existence being relevant to the universe.
