"Artificial" voices in telephone calls have existed since 1971. That is when the Votrax speech synthesis device was first developed by a company known at the time as the Federal Screw Works. The engineering was done by Richard Gagnon.
'Right to repair' is important and I hope a good law along these lines gets passed, but other tougher problems to solve are also emerging, for example:
My understanding is many late model cars are moving the fuel filter to being part of a larger assembly inside the fuel tank. On an older car, a clogged fuel filter (a common problem)could be replaced cheaply and easily. My car's fuel filter cost less than $15. But once they put it inside the gas tank, the repair is much more costly. The shop needs to pump the gas out of the tank, remove the tank from the car and take the tank apart to replace whatever the replaceable assembly is on that model.
It appears that car makers are doing this to increase service revenue and to greatly increase customer cost and inconvenience. The inconvenience is a two hour trip to Jiffy Lube or an even faster self-repair becomes a two or three week wait for a major repair appointment and a bill hundreds of dollars more.
I commonly replace discrete (stand-alone)fuel filters 6 to 8 times over the life of my vehicles.
If anyone has a list of car brands that have or have not adopted this design change, please post.
Is it though? Worst case call road side assistance and what an hour or two. Now if you live in the back country, okay, but for the majority of people it’s just an extra 40 pounds to lug around to use once or twice.
Sure, as long as you have a charged, working cell phone and can afford to pay for roadside assistance. If your phone died or your bank account is in the red, you're screwed.
Actual worst case, you're stuck on the side of the road god-knows-where, for god-knows-how-long, hoping that someone will drive by and have the decency to stop and help.
I love having a spare tire, but some people are STUPID about them. Especially those dumb donuts. They will drive on them at excessive speeds and for obscene amounts of time. They are kind of a public hazard. Full size spares are cool though.
The tricky thing is that there is a thin line between doing something to screw over consumers and doing it to make the product better. For example on earlier iPads and the current non pro/air/mini iPads, the screen glass can be replaced separately from the display, but on newer iPads (other than the entry line) they can’t because the screen looks noticeably better if you don’t do that. Same deal with soldered SSD’s and RAM- arguably it lets you build more compact and lighter computers than you can without soldering those components.it’s possible putting the fuel filter inside the fuel tank reduces cost, increases reliability, or makes the fuel tank take up less space or be lighter in some way.
I think the important thing is that right to repair should make repairs possible even if challenging.
A manufacturer may want to solder on an SSD, but they shouldn’t make it so every part is monitored by the software to be “manufacturer certified” with no secondary market part availability, no way to override the software controls, etc.
"Every car with pump in the tank has filter located in the tank in front of that pump"
In cars that use the older convention, this second "fuel filter" (always in the tank) is technically called a "strainer". My experience is the downstream fuel filter which in older cars is outside the tank needs to be replaced much more often than the strainer which is typically replaced as one unit with the fuel pump. I assume this is because the strainer does less rigorous filtering than the downstream filter which historically has been much easier and cheaper to replace.
Since you talk about fuel filters, an interesting fact on 1st gen BMW Minis (2001 to 2006): the very first models, up to 03/2002 had an enclosed fuel filter, which was costly to replace. After that, it was changed to a design with a replaceable fuel filter (so the same $15 or so part cost).
The fuel filter is inside the gas tank, but replacing it only involves removing the rear seat (which is easy) to have access to a cap under which the fuel filter lives.
I'm actually planning to tackle that in a few weeks, it looks like a medium-difficulty DIY, with some pitfalls that could make the car not start afterwards if the seal is bad.
On an unrelated note, another design change on more recent vehicles I've seen is to fuse the wheel hub and wheel bearing in a single part. You go from a $50 wheel hub and $20 wheel bearing (approximately) to a $200 assembly. While replacing the hub automatically involves replacing the bearing, the reverse is not true, and bearings are a wear part, which WILL have to be replaced eventually.
When you do this repair just make sure that the float arm can move freely and won’t get stuck on anything (will cause your fuel gauge readout to be inaccurate).
To be explicit, the outrageousness of this GM policy is that it forces the customer to pay in advance for GM's marketing promotion costs and then some for product optional features they may have no interest in.
An acceptable marketing approach to this problem would be for GM to make these features free for an initial period of one month or one year. After the initial period was up, interested customers could pay for the feature(s) to be continued.
This way GM would not be perceived as cheating customers interested in their base product, but not in their extra-cost optional products they are having trouble selling in an honest and non-coercive way.
This policy is a big mistake. The Board of Directors should remove GM's CEO for this and other bad business judgements.
This high voltage hot chassis was clearly a dangerous design but at least there has been little use of it in the last fifty years. I find dangerous designs in current products fairly frequently.
As an example I was debugging my electric clothes dryer that stopped drying and found the wire to the nichrome heating unit was disattached. It had been attached to the heater with a push-on, pull-off spade connector at the factory. I maintain it should have been attached with a bolt-on connector with a lock washer. Having what is probably a 230 volt wire slip-off its connection due to normal dryer vibration and bounce around the steel chassis is concerning. If the dryer ground had been faulty (it was good) that could have placed a 230 volt potential on the entire metal cabinet of the dryer in a laundry room that may have a little water on the floor and usually has other ground paths like turn-off faucets for the washer as well - a super dangerous situation. This danger is increased because dryers are heavily used by kids, women, and non-technical men, most of whom have no idea of the risks involved.
Katherine is correct, shutting down public schools was sheer foolishness for COVID.
This extreme safetyism is a recent development. No US schools were shutdown during the height of the Hong Kong flu in 1968-69. Not only that, but the University of Illinois at the time housed 1000 freshmen men on cots in a single large room (the Armory) at the time in the fall of each year. Those people were moved into a normal dorm in the Spring semester when space became available due to flunk-outs.
Admittedly, COVID-19 was probably worse (1 million dead in US vs 100,000 for Hong Kong flu) but the actual numbers are probably much closer, given recent trends to over count for financial reward reasons.
RT-11 (a real-time, largely foreground/background operating system for the PDP-11)
I have heard that the RT-11 OS was a one man effort at DEC, which for many years was more popular than Unix on the PDP-11, but I don't know the details. Do any DEC experts know more about this?
The Schaum's book of most interest to the original poster (Abigail Rabieh)is the following:
Schaum's 3000 Solved Problems in Linear Algebra by Seymour Lipschutz. Below is a precis:
"Master linear algebra with Schaum's--the high-performance solved-problem guide. It will help you cut study time, hone problem-solving skills, and achieve your personal best on exams! Students love Schaum's Solved Problem Guides because they produce results. Each year, thousands of students improve their test scores and final grades with these indispensable guides. Get the edge on your classmates. Use Schaum's! If you don't have a lot of time but want to excel in class, use this book to: Brush up before tests; Study quickly and more effectively; Learn the best strategies for solving tough problems in step-by-step detail; Get the big picture without spending hours pouring over long textbooks. Review what you've learned in class by solving thousands of relevant problems that test your skill. Compatible with any classroom text, Schaum's Solved Problem Guides let you practice at your own pace and remind you of all the important problem-solving techniques you need to remember--fast! And Schaum's are so complete, they're perfect for preparing for graduate or professional exams. Inside you will find: 3000 solved problems with complete solutions--the largest selection of solved problems yet published on linear algebra; A superb index to help you quickly locate the types of problems you want to solve; Problems like those you'll find on your exams; Techniques for choosing the correct approach to problems; Guidance on choosing the quickest, most efficient solution. If you want top grades and thorough understanding of linear algebra, this powerful study tool is the best tutor you can have! Chapters include: Vectors in R" and C." Matrix Algebra. Systems of Linear Equations. Square Matrices.Determinants. Algebraic Structures. Vector Spaces and Subspaces. Linear Dependence, Basis, Dimension. Mappings. Linear Mappings. Spaces of Linear Mappings. Matrices and Linear Mappings. Change of Basis, Similarity. Inner Product Spaces, Orthogonality. Polynomials over a Field. Eigenvalues and Eigenvectors, Diagonalization. Canonical Forms. Linear Functionals and the Dual Space. Bilinear, Quadratic, and Hermitian Forms. Linear Operators on Inner Product Spaces. Applications to Geometry and Calculus."
The official settlement memo says that key information is all in Attachment A. However, Attachment A was not attached, and as far as I can tell, is nowhere to be found. If anyone should find Attachment A, please inform us of its location.
