This is like asking why would anyone need more than a standard 110v North American electrical outlet in their home? Why would you ever install a higher capacity 220v socket somewhere?
Because it's a utility and there's a wide world of use cases out there.
For electrical maybe someone wants to charge an electric car fully overnight, or use a welder in their garage. Or use some big appliance in their kitchen.
For Internet maybe they make videos, games or other types of data-heavy content and need to be able to upload and download it.
I agree with your assessment on the high end of China's development and the lack of awareness of that from people in the US. But I think the story on the low end /lower class is more interesting and I think there is lack of awareness there too.
Even within the US a lot of upper class people don't know what it's like for lower class people here. It's so easy to slip into homelessness because there aren't reasonable options available to many people to live anymore.
In China they still have a huge amount of their population in a developing stage so they still have ample tools and options and knowledge for how to maintain a reasonable life in a less developed state. So it's easier to fall back to a cheaper lifestyle, and culturally it's easier too.
But in the US were generations removed from these other ways of life, so there's no options or cultural acceptance of not living a highly developed way of life. So people just go straight from a nice house or apartment with modern stuff to being homeless with little to no tools to survive.
Just my probably naive thoughts. Would love to hear others takes on this.
I think your assessment of homelessness in the US misses some things, though (or at least leaves them unstated):
First, that it's not just that people "don't know how to live more simply", and thus cling to their homes too long when they "should" otherwise be downsizing and cutting expenses. For a lot of people, the fall is sudden—some medical emergency drains all their savings and leaves them unable to work (at least for a time), and there it goes.
Second, what are they going to downsize to? We don't have whole rural villages in the US that are living, essentially, pre-industrialized lives (except with the Amish, I suppose, but that's a whole other kettle of fish). (Also, I don't know for sure that such places exist today in China—I know that they did not too many years ago, but my information is not current.) There isn't really anywhere you can go in the US to live securely, but simply, on $100 a month or whatever. And even if there were, that would involve leaving whatever job you had to begin with, which removes the "securely" part.
i agree with that. It's as if they tried to outlaw poverty. i mean look at all the insane housing regulations (zoning laws, regulations, permit costs, land usage policy) that prevent low cost housing from being built.
I've seen in thailand, how even the poorest can just build a small hut on a piece of land they own and actually live in it. You'd be risking jail time if you did that in the US.
As someone living in a city with a significant homelessness problem I think this comment misses the point. The vast majority of homelessness in the US is not people falling on hard times and needing a boost to get back into a home. They are drug addicts or the mentally ill. A completely different problem that also needs to be addressed. Few other nations that I can see allow blatantly mentally ill to roam their streets or let people do drugs openly on the streets...
I'm not the person you asked, but on my OG Pebble, I get about 2 full days of battery on a full charge. However, that's down from about 4 or 5 that I recall from early adoption of the device.
The battery is clearly unhealthy, but hanging on. When I charge my old Pebble, after about 15 minutes or so, it claims to be fully charged. It isn't. If I take it off the charge after only 15 minutes, it will show a full charge, but deplete rapidly, usually within about 20 hours. If I leave it on the charge for a few hours, then use it, I get 2 solid days or sometimes a bit more than that.
My OG model is also one of the originals that does _not_ have the fours screws in the back, making it impossible to change the battery should it finally fail. A few years back, I picked up some original Pebbles on eBay for cheapr since the batteries would no longer hold a charge on those, all models that did not have the four screws on the back, just to see if I could find a way to open them clean. Every attempt I made failed, damaging the display and housing.
If you want to try an old Pebble, find one of the ones with the screws on the back panel and you can buy fresh batteries that will fit. Or get an old Pebble Time/Steel model, which are easier to maintain. I see them go on eBay for between $30 - $50 USD and maybe like $10 USD for a new battery. That's nothing for a basics smartwatch with a cool history.
I think a lot of people do want these things, but car buying is not always up to just one person. It's often a decision made in the context of a family or group who will share a vehicle or otherwise have input on the buying decision.
These studies should be surveying these groups instead of individuals I think. Sometimes the "group" will just be one person, and that's okay. But I wouldn't want someone's opinion if they're making it on behalf of a group without the groups input, because that's not realistic
Exactly. And this is the "magic" behind the Jeep Wrangler. It's the person driving it who you have to please but buyers have all these other spurious "requirements" forced upon them.
So they went out and built a 2dr jeep with a shitty 2nd row so people can pretend like it's optimized for people hauling and sell the "lifestyle car" they really wanted to their SO. They retained the soft top and manual at non-insignificant cost to appeal to additional swaths of buyers and then added a hybrid option as a checkbox exercise.
When it comes to Wranglers they used to only do 2 doors, but then they introduced the 4 door which is supposedly now 90% of the sales (I'm guessing the extra doors make it easier to compete with other SUVs)
At my last doctor's appointment the nurse asked if I was okay with AI conversation transcription and summarizing that the doctor uses. So I had the option to decline.
I'm not sure how I feel about it yet. There are contextual details you might include when talking to your doctor that you wouldn't expect your doctor to write down into your medical record.
I'm in a similar boat. I really (really!) wanted to love the jelly star (when I used it for almost a month), but on Verizon I didn't have an LTE signal most of the time in the Seattle area, including downtown, which I find unreasonable. Also the battery life was horrible, 20% per hour of active use and 4% per hour of standby.
Using the jelly star proved that using a small screen is not a problem for me and I would gladly pay money for an experience like that.
But it also proved that it is not an acceptable option in terms of quality. Hopefully the Jelly Max is better in these regards.
I think Jelly Max the ideal size for me too (jelly star was a little too small for doing driving navigation). I'll keep an ear out
I used basically this algorithm in college with the following setup:
Make a word document that lists all the keys to memorize vertically. Save as PDF
Open the PDF in a viewer with annotation tools. Make a clickable note in the margin just next to each key. Write out the value to memorize in the note field.
Cycle through the clickable notes. When you get one right easily, drag the note more to the left in the margin. As you cycle, focus on the ones furthest to the right. If you get one wrong, move it a bit further to the right.
In general the notes will move to the left until you're comfortable with all of them. And the balancing of which ones you need to see and focus on plays out very naturally and you feel in control the whole time.
There are many downsides with this compared to a tool like anki (e.g. I only used it on a laptop), but there was also something about it that just worked really well for me, so I never ended up switching to a different tool. But this was before anki had the similar algorithm described here. Maybe my experience would be different today
Small correction, pebbles use a TFT "e-paper" display, not e-ink. This is how they have reasonable refresh rates for animations and no after image problems. It's the best compromise imo
Because it's a utility and there's a wide world of use cases out there.
For electrical maybe someone wants to charge an electric car fully overnight, or use a welder in their garage. Or use some big appliance in their kitchen.
For Internet maybe they make videos, games or other types of data-heavy content and need to be able to upload and download it.