Most credit cards in the UK at least (same cap) have no standard account fee. Those that do come with other perks / beyond the 'world elite' etc side Mastercard/visa aren't seeing that money - its going to the issuing bank. Bank accounts also generaly have no standard fees (and a lot of other things we take forgranted - faster payments (if I send money to a friend/business I can do it instantly for free without needing a third party solution), standing orders, direct debit etc. - that make banking far easier than in the US).
There is also regulation in place that restricts predatory fee practices, getting customers into revolving debt and protection that makes card issuers liable for purchases (Section 75 - e.g. if I order something paying with my credit card and the merchant doesn't pay, the card issuer is legally liable / I can claim from them and its on them to get it from the merchant)
Difference being it doesn't fail and if it does you know exactly how it was made and under which process. There will be an investigation to see what went wrong - was it the screws fault or was more force placed on it than it was certified for.
Vs the one from the hardware store could have come from Alibaba and be a plastic core with a thin coating of metal for all you know.
The OP isn't about hospital wheelchairs, but daily use wheelchairs. It's just most of the commenters here showing ignorance or ableism by suggesting the two are equivalent.
I'm not saying otherwise - my comment reaffirms this. There are two separate things going on here -
- You can buy a reasonable wheelchair for moving people relatively short distances across flat surfaces for less than $1000. E.g those used in hospitals and for the partially mobile.
- You cannot currently buy a reasonable self propelled wheelchair for full time use for less than $1000 (give or take the manufacturer in the article).
We've gone over a month without burning any coal, but then the Ukraine war happened and we were at risks of blackouts. That 1.1% is likely heavily concentrated as a much higher percentage on a relatively small days over winter and/or where wind levels were low.
We probably want to be sure if gas imports are heavily hit again or a major interconnector goes down we'll be fine before entirely demolishing it.
There was an issue with gas in the 2022/23 winter as the Russia-Ukraine war affected supplies and caused prices to skyrocket. More coal than usual was burnt because of this. But it's a moot point now: coal-fired plants have continued to close in line with UK government policy, and the last remaining one is scheduled to close in September.
I suppose gas and coal are sourced from different places and that may give some resilience to the system. They also serve very different functions in the grid. Coal is for baseline and gas is for peak.
Coal is very much used only for peak in the UK in recent years. The remaining plants (in fact, there’s only one still in service now) are kept on standby during winter and activated only when demand is forecast to exceed supply (plus a safety margin).
Gas is now more of a year-round flexible baseload, taking up the slack whenever demand is high and/or renewables production is low.
Nuclear is now the only true baseload in the UK - always generating more-or-less the same output except when they have to be shut down for maintenance, refuelling, or decommissioning!
These days, it's nearer the other way around in the UK - gas is closer to baseload (sort of) and coal has a profile closer to a peaker (especially when turning up/down rather than on/off).
It's not a case of can they be. It's a case of can they cheaply be.
The camera app on your smartphone likely searches for them by default. That means feeding at least 1-2 frames a second through it.
Basic pattern matching for the position markers is a rounding error overhead vs processing a video feed. Fancy computer vision is not - on lower end devices you may not have enough resources to do both and on higher end devices it'll still impact power usage.
Approximately 10 years ago, I played with an Android app that takes the camera video input, looks for a Sudoku puzzle and then solves it. (AR Sudoku solver)
Detecting a QR code in real time should be possible on all devices by now...
Even just crashing the device has significant impact.
A bank robber, terrorist or totalitarian state could benefit significantly from bringing down all cell phones in the area for a few minutes (or even just crashing them in a loop as they boot up).
That's a great incentive to fix such (bluetooth) vulnerabilities! Surely your message was because you're in favor for fixing such bugs urgently I hope?
I clarified a bit in a sibling comment but this was in response to folks who respond by wanting the flipper banned. I think I just misread the author's tone.
I hope so, but to me it sounded like they preferred security through obscurity. I admit my comment was quite tongue in cheek, mainly because I've seen a lot of people react to the flipper's existence by saying that the device shouldn't exist, instead of that vulnerabilities should be fixed. The comment sounded to me more like the "flippers should be banned" type, but that's my perception of the comment.
The only thing I can think of is if it was widespread it would be a security risk. Not exactly difficult to broadcast a stronger signal with the wrong time.
Similar problem with GPS being used for clock sync in mobile/cell base stations in much of the US. You can buy an (illegal) jammer off Ali express and bring down a tower for very little money.
I don't know where you live, but here broadcasting such a signal would mean having the police knocking at your door really quickly. Unauthorized broadcasts are taken very seriously
We're talking something the size of a cell phone that can be powered for days on a battery. Hide it near the cell tower and leave. It takes specialist equipment to locate it so by the time someone has figured out what has happened and either got that equipment in or just done a manual search it's been hours to several days.
Or for some mayhem just stick a few of them under seats on public busses / trains set to activate at the same time.
There is also regulation in place that restricts predatory fee practices, getting customers into revolving debt and protection that makes card issuers liable for purchases (Section 75 - e.g. if I order something paying with my credit card and the merchant doesn't pay, the card issuer is legally liable / I can claim from them and its on them to get it from the merchant)