Some peoolle have automated ebay/amazon leveraging set ups - for eg the cheapest I could find a brand name snorkel set on ebay was £19.99 - and since i often find ebay the cheapest, I bought without futher searching.
3 days later the package arrived from amazon, complete with packing slip, where I found it cost £16.
Searching the sellers account they had thousands of random listings - where I assume they can leverage a small profit. Items came and went quickly from their inventory, I assume as amazon prices fluctated.
I'd never make porridge with water at home - but in winter in the office I used to cover a 1/3 bowl of oats with boiling water and then microwave for just 30 seconds.
Once the oirriois cooked (it really should be already) add a teaspoon or two of salted butter to the middle and stir, then sugar to taste.
Suprisingly delicious, quick and repeatable.
I won a few people over who couldn't believe that porridge made with water would be any good, but it was a great winter staple, especially after cycling in, in the cold.
As a USian, I disbelieve in Geographical Indications in food names, thank you very much. There's no reason to restrict Easy Cheese vendors to cheese processors in the Easy region of Wisconsin or for Cheez Whiz to be limited to the Whiz region of Chicago. :P
Had this recently, bought a dehumidifier for a good price, marked as new - arrived and had obviously been opened and didn't work. Out of a desire to have a dehumidifier sooner than later I was about to open it up when I saw it already had been, so I opened a return instead and sent it back.
I can only assume it is worth it for the seller to sell untested goods as new, a good number must work long enough for the buyer to be happy.
I still remember Fry's Electronics and trying to find anything that hadn't been opened-returned-reshinkwrapped. Often it was impossible. Not sure why they had so many but eh whatever, it mostly worked fine.
All cars in Germany need an inspection every 24 months (or 36 months from new) - so you'd expect other electric cars to have similar issues here if that was the case.
Other brands will have dealerships do "pre-inspection" work. The data may be skewed if certain brands are more likely to have pre-inspection done. Some brands even offer it as a free service - maybe they know the public looks at these numbers. Tesla doesn't care, or doesn't have the infrastructure to offer the same service.
Other brands force you into doing yearly/x-1000-km inspections to keep your warranty, even for EVs. If you were to skip their inspection cycle, they may decide not to cover the issue, even if it's clearly a warranty case.
You go to the garage for a Tesla only if it's broken.
In my experience with my M3 2019, I think many people don't even realize they have issues, because the cars are generally silent and decently insulated (the Highland even more so). Also, lots of people pay no attention to sounds and general driving feeling their cars make (e.g. steering wheel shaking, clicks doing certain actions, ...). The main/biggest issues with well-kept Teslas are basically suspensions, for which there is no monitoring/sensors, so the car cannot report to you that something's off.
Example #1: I asked the Tesla service center in Dec 2024 for an inspection, because I was leaving for a country with no service centers. Everything was fine after 6y and ~60'000km, they told me to just break every now and then because otherwise the brake rotors will rust. So it'd have likely failed the TUV inspection only for having a little rust on the rotors, otherwise perfectly fine and driveable.
Example #2: last year (after changing country) my rear axle nuts came a bit loose, not enough to be dangerous but enough that the axle/wheel hub interface would have some play (which could potentially become dangerous if you leave it alone for a few thousand kms). You'd hear a clunk from the back when applying torque from a standstill. My wife and mother in law kept insisting everything was fine, that they couldn't hear anything, that it was all in my head. Took it to the mechanic: rear axle nuts were loose, right more than the left one (and I heard the clunk from rear-right). Fixed with 30min labor. Different people, different reactions.
Now I have the front-right wheel clicking at times that is likely the same issue or may have something to do with suspensions, but again, if you ask my wife, everything's fine. And without mandated inspection cycles, you only learn of issues at the mandatory state inspection.
Someone posted a similar story on one of the other times the 500 mile email was posted - where a car would fail to start if the owner bought strawberry ice-cream from the store, but would work if they have vanilla. I love the processes that go into finding the actual issue (regardless of if the ice cream story is true!): https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/cone-of-silence/
OT, but I find this a perfect example why "data-driven design" is an empty term if you don't know what it's being designed for - i.e. what metrics are used to evaluate it in the end.
Both, optimizing for ease of shopping and optimizing for stringing the customer along as long as possible rely on the same purchase data - they just use diametrically opposite metrics for evaluation.
I enjoyed 'The Art of Fermentation' by Sandor Katz, but is wasn't guide/cookery book enough for me - 'Of Cabbages' hit the right note, and I've been working my way thorough it all.
I'm a little obsessed with fermented chilli sauces, and have been using the brine to make an excellent hot ketchup, than friends keep asking for more of.
When I was in Product, one of my favourite roles was at a company where there was a massive distinction between protoyping code and live code.
To the extent that no prototype could EVER end up in live - it had to be rewritten.
This allowed prototypes to move at brilliant speed, using whatever tech you wanted (I saw plenty of paper, powerpoint and flash prototypes). Once you proved the idea (and the value) then it was iteratively rebuild 'properly'.
At other companies I have seen things hacked together as a proof of concept, live years later, and barely supported.
I can see agentic working great for prototyping, especially in the hands of those with limited technical knowledge.
It has been a long time since fuel was sold here in the UK in gallons, but most cars still are spoken of in terms of MPG (miles driven per gallon of fuel). There are steps to move this to L per 100km - but most people here still use MPG.
We also use Pints in pubs, which are a different size to US pints.
It's worth pointing out the convenient imperial units are the ones that are hardest to get rid of. The "pints" in pubs is because a pint is about how much a drink should be, in fact I've often found drinking 500ml to be just slightly too little to drink, probably because I'm used to the pint, but "1 unit" is also just a lot easier to keep than "500 units" or "50 units".
I would have agreed with you for a long time (especially when I was very aware of how many pints I could drink and still work well the next day), but since homebrewing and having my own beer taps, I now drink any amount I want. I have a few half pint jugs I use, but often I'll pour myself a drink that would be less than this, as that is what I actually fancy drinking at that time.
Everywhere. All the car companies in the us switched to metric in the 1980s. You find some inch stuff once ina while - but only when the part hasn't been changed in the last 40 years.
3 days later the package arrived from amazon, complete with packing slip, where I found it cost £16.
Searching the sellers account they had thousands of random listings - where I assume they can leverage a small profit. Items came and went quickly from their inventory, I assume as amazon prices fluctated.
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