At various points, I've gone years at a stretch without using a pen -- except maybe to scribble my signature on a paycheck or something. I just never encountered anything that required using one during those times.
It's not very far-fetched -- especially for regions where paper checks became outdated long ago, like my European friends have told me has been the case there since the Earth cooled.
So how, specifically?
These days, I get paid electronically. I pay my bills online. I bought some Forever stamps and mailing envelopes once about 5 years ago, but I haven't had any reason yet to use any of them. If I have to send out a package, I'm using a service like PirateShip and printing a self-adhesive label to keep it consistent with other packages. My work is usually done with a computer -- and when it is more hands-on, then it's usually work that doesn't imply writing anything at all.
When I want to take a quick note, I use my pocket supercomputer. For longer notes and correspondence, I use a real computer. If I need to draw a diagram to share with others, I'll probably be sharing it with them electronically so I produce that diagram electronically from the start.
I did use a pen the other day to draw a napkin sketch of a wiring diagram for some changes I want to make in my garage. AFAIK, I only have 1 working pen at home. I knew exactly where to find it; it was sitting in the last place I used it, about 3 months ago.
But now I'm inclined to reproduce that diagram electronically so I can easily move elements around and label it all clearly (so I can formulate a complete plan and spend more of my time doing the work instead of thinking about it once I get up on a ladder in the dark), so drawing it on paper may have been just a duplication of effort.
So maybe the future is to draw a picture, and go from there?
For instance: My modelling abilities are limited. I can draw what I want, with measurements, but I am not a draftsman. I can also explain the concept, in conversational English, to a person who uses CAD regularly and they can hammer out a model in no time. This is a thing that I've done successfully in the past.
Could I just do it myself? Sure, eventually! But my modelling needs are very few and far between. It isn't something I need to do every day, or even every year. It would take me longer to learn the workflow and toolsets of [insert CAD system here] than to just earn some money doing something that I'm already good at and pay someone else to do the CAD work.
Except maybe in the future, perhaps I will be able use the bot to help bridge the gap between a napkin sketch of a widget and a digital model of that same widget. (Maybe like Scotty tried to do with the mouse in Star Trek IV.)
(And before anyone says it: I'm not really particularly interested in becoming proficient at CAD. I know I can learn it, but I just don't want to. It has never been my goal to become proficient at every trade under the sun and there are other skills that I'd rather focus on learning and maintaining instead. And that's OK -- there's lots of other things in life that I will probably also never seek to be proficient at, too.)
They already do bulk imports, and they have have been doing it for years.
With their "Standard Choice" shipping, for me where I am, that means that my stuff is sent from New York to me in Ohio with USPS. There's no customs forms attached when it comes my way, nor should there be: I didn't import anything.
How it gets from wherever it started to New York is not my problem -- just as it isn't my problem with the other imported stuff I buy, from any other place that I buy it (whether from Amazon or the bricks-and-mortar store on the corner). They import things in bulk, and the importer pays tariffs as they do so. The cost of them doing this is built into the price that I paid up-front.
The recent non-committal slapstick comedy approach of the current administration does make things hard to predict, but: I predict that a widget that used to cost 50 cents to buy on AE with Standard Choice may end up costing me a dollar or two -- a huge increase as a percentage, but meh. It's not like that 50-cent widget going to suddenly cost fifty bucks or something.
(Now, that said: I have bought inexpensive widgets from China that I imported directly -- sans Standard Choice. But that's different. In these instances, the seller just puts my widget in the mail on their side of the world, and it shows up in the mail on my side of the world -- with a customs form stuck to it. Elimination of de minimis will affect the things that I import in this fashion in a very expensive way because that customs form is going to have an additional price attached to it.)
Ah, I didn't know that with Standard Choice they already did the importing themselves. I figured they were doing something like bringing the bulk containers into a customs free zone, splitting the individual packages up to get them ready for delivery, then brokering them as individual imports so they fell under de minimis and sending them out to be delivered.
Since what you say would imply that if I order something from Aliexpress right now (so it wouldn't clear customs until May 4th or so), that my package wouldn't get tariff-impounded but Aliexpress would just eat the increased tariff cost - how sure are you about this? The last Standard Choice packages I received I didn't really pay attention to if they had customs forms, and don't really know the rules around that anyway (ie could there just be an electronic customs form and not a physical one attached to the package)
I'm 100% sure about the differences in customs form presence.
Stuff that ships regular-way comes via usually comes via China Post and always with a customs form that is usually somewhat dubious (wrong item description, wrong value, checked "gift" box, etc). This always feels like just I'm buying from an individual seller and importing directly; like the equivalent of how buying internationally from small sellers on US eBay is.
Stuff that ships Standard Choice comes without any of that (and also often gets consolidated into a singular larger bag that has smaller bags from different sellers inside of it). When they're not consolidated, then the individual bags are always re-labeled with a paid USPS mailing label over the original. However it is that my Standard Choice orders are handled, they always show up in my mailbox looking like very-normal domestic mail and there are no customs forms to be seen.
So least in terms of logistics, Standard Choice has every appearance of being very centralized and bulk-oriented -- including within the US.
In terms of certainty: That's all that I'm certain of, and I'm only certain that it is this way for me here where I am.
The rest (eg, how this actually plays out in the future) is speculation on my part. I think my speculation may be correct, but I do not know that it is correct. I feel confident, but I won't be able to know if my confidence is misplaced until after the dust settles. They're obviously free to restructure any or all of this, and are incentivized to do whatever it is that makes them the most money.
(baseless speculation) perhaps China Post requires a paper customs declaration on packages, whereas commercial clearance is free to keep that information electronic and present it to US Customs electronically?
FWIW my Choice packages have been showing up by consumer car courier rather than USPS.
I've got a couple of things still coming that I ordered late. They should be clearing customs before the 2nd, so hopefully I won't have to find out what actually happens!
Mine works OK as long as presence detection (using people's phones and Google Home) is operating correctly.
Everyone leaves, and the thermostat adjusts.
Someone comes home (or walks in front of it), and it goes back to the normal setpoint.
Sounds easy. Isn't always easy.
The reliability of this seems to be highly dependent on the phone(s) themselves simply succeeding at not killing useful processes.
Overall, I'm not entirely displeased with it. I procured it very inexpensively by buying it from one of my energy provider's online store in conjunction with a substantial rebate from my other energy provider. I'm confident that it paid for itself very quickly, and it's nice to be able to set the thermostat remotely.
My lament is that there seems to be approximately nothing I can do to improve the presence detection function without gymnastics or spending real money. What I want is a local API that I can enable and do stuff with; what I get is "Good luck! Have you tried buying Nest Protect subscription motion detectors? (Oh lol, we stopped selling those.)"
(I'm OK with the privacy and security aspects of what I'm trying to do. I'm not OK with having a connected device that I can't bend to my will. I'm even less OK with more recurring expenses. The next thermostat I buy will have local control over the LAN, but it probably won't pay for itself quite as quickly as this one did.)
[note: I've never played with the auto-schedule "learning" function at all. It always seemed like a complete waste of time, since I for one do not have a regular schedule.]
Clone meant, at least back in the day, that it was compatible with software written for the IBM XT. There were many clones with more ram, 3.5” disk drives, or better CPU (NEC V20) than the original IBM XT but they all ran MS DOS and WordPerfect and Accolade Test Drive and any other software you would expect so they were considered ‘XT clones’
And until a couple of days ago, I never heard anyone mention an "XT clone" as being an emulated 80186 on an ESP32 with almost none of the IO or expansion capabilities of an XT.
That appears to be a new usement of the term; an invention, if you will, or a perversion if you won't.
(I can emulate an XT with my pocket supercomputer. It's fun to play with that kind of thing sometimes. But to call it a "clone" is going too far.)
Ye olde XT I had topped out with 640KB of RAM, a 20 megabyte and 15 megabyte MFM drives (ST-225, ST-419), two power supplies (the big full-height 15-meg drive needed extra time to spin up), one 16550 serial port card, no mouse, a SoundBlaster 1.5, a clock card, and a 2 megabyte EMS expansion card (with 72 individual DIP chips on it)....with a 10MHz 8088.
Weird times.
Eventually, someone donated a board with an AMD 386SX-33, which I immediately overclocked to 40MHz. Things became a lot different after that.
Perhaps, but it's also inexpensive to (properly) use one or more 18650s with a Raspberry Pi if that's what one wants to do.
I think the main advantage to using phones for random stuff is availability: We here on HN probably have a decent selection of old phones to pick from, so it doesn't cost any money at all to give a new purpose to one.
It's not very far-fetched -- especially for regions where paper checks became outdated long ago, like my European friends have told me has been the case there since the Earth cooled.
So how, specifically?
These days, I get paid electronically. I pay my bills online. I bought some Forever stamps and mailing envelopes once about 5 years ago, but I haven't had any reason yet to use any of them. If I have to send out a package, I'm using a service like PirateShip and printing a self-adhesive label to keep it consistent with other packages. My work is usually done with a computer -- and when it is more hands-on, then it's usually work that doesn't imply writing anything at all.
When I want to take a quick note, I use my pocket supercomputer. For longer notes and correspondence, I use a real computer. If I need to draw a diagram to share with others, I'll probably be sharing it with them electronically so I produce that diagram electronically from the start.
I did use a pen the other day to draw a napkin sketch of a wiring diagram for some changes I want to make in my garage. AFAIK, I only have 1 working pen at home. I knew exactly where to find it; it was sitting in the last place I used it, about 3 months ago.
But now I'm inclined to reproduce that diagram electronically so I can easily move elements around and label it all clearly (so I can formulate a complete plan and spend more of my time doing the work instead of thinking about it once I get up on a ladder in the dark), so drawing it on paper may have been just a duplication of effort.