It has those as “skills” that can be enabled. You only get certain streams though, but it does include CNN, BBC, NPR, etc. You put them together as a “Flash Briefing” and she’ll cycle through them. It has several ones you wouldn’t expect ranging from Slate to the Daily Show.

The saving grace of the ecosystem issues is neutral services like If This Then Than IFTTT.com it can receive inputs from Google, Apple or Alexa and send them over to your lights. I have both Google and Alexa controlling my lights in the house and you are correct, it does make you feel like a master of all you survey.

Totally doable using your phone today. Ingredients: combine a smartthings bridge (ranges from $40 on sale to $100 retail), 1 cree connected bulb ($15), Tasker for Android ($5), and a Tasker add-on called Tasker Now ($2-5 can’t recall). Stir gently and follow the wizards. You can now say “Ok Google, turn on lamp.”…

This happened a lot where I grew up as well. That said, this is really an excellent business opportunity. Just create a side business selling blanks for the holidays. Drunken yahoos get to discharge their weapons at the sky and no one gets hurt. Perhaps even special colored flame blanks are doable so it’s more like a…

I made the mistake of buying that exact tool to toss in a random car kit for pliers. An interesting thing happens to them when it gets hot in a trunk during summer, all of the glue that holds on the plastic grips melts off into everything else (and there’s way more of it than you’d expect). It glued the blades shut…

Agreed, but only if you aren’t using pre-check and are only going to terminal A. If you are flying on terminal B or C, the extra walking time vs the tram would likely offset any of the time saved. I made that mistake once and it’s a surprisingly long hike to Southwest on C.

Precheck is really quite good. My typical wait time went from 45 minutes to 2 hours at Denver to 1-10 minutes. Boston dropped from 90 minutes to say 15 minutes. Austin from 30 minutes to 2 minutes. Pretty notable. That said, you might want to get Global Entry instead of Pre-Check. It includes Pre-Check and is only $20…

Correction: Away does not have a proximity alert, or anything else smart aside from an integrated battery pack. That said, I’ve traveled around the world (not an exaggeration) with mine and it’s a wonderful bag. I have both a Mynt beacon and a Motorola Connect, so that feature isn’t something I’m worried about - a $30…

I sold my ‘91 with 365,000 miles and it was on the stock engine and transmission. It dribbled a little oil and had minor issues here and there but it was still insanely capable off-road. Over the decade and half I had it, I put over 250,000 miles of that on it myself with massive rock climbing road trips that spanned…

To be fair, I have one of those big darned Fibrox knives and I’m very comfortable using it for turkey carving, even smaller birds. It is easily my favorite kitchen knife by far and I don’t find that smaller knives necessarily give me any more control. So, personal preference maybe?

Lazy vs efficient, not sure what wins out. I currently rent a house with no overhead lighting whatsoever so it’s a dozen different lamps and no central light switches. This is quite practical compared to the fire-drill of turning lamps on every evening as I enter or leave rooms.

Lazy vs efficient, not sure what wins out. I currently rent a house with no overhead lighting whatsoever so it’s a…

SmartHome stuff has gotten 100x easier in the last couple years, that said, some of it is non-intuitive. If you do not have a hub or any sort of “smart” stuff in your home yet, you’ll want to pick something that does integrate with Alexa. If you just want lights, Phillips has an option, but for about the same price…

SmartHome stuff has gotten 100x easier in the last couple years, that said, some of it is non-intuitive. If you do…

I’ve got an Echo Dot - it’s an extremely powerful tool, especially if you have any smarthome technology. “Alexa Lights on.” all lights come on in the house, “Alexa, movie mode on.” (my lights dim and TV turns on), “Alexa, play Pandora.” (it plays through my sound system), “Alexa, what’s on my calendar?” (I get my…

I’ve got an Echo Dot - it’s an extremely powerful tool, especially if you have any smarthome technology. “Alexa…

I think you are correct. From my understanding, a stun gun would basically be the high voltage converter, battery and the spark gap as they are basically the same parts as above. You’d simply need to add the coil to build the magnetic field.

Ouch, that sounds miserable.

I recently tried this on a flight from San Francisco to China, unfortunately the flight ended up fully booked so me and my wife had to explain to ask a gentleman who’d booked the middle if he’d move to the window or aisle for the flight in my horrible excuse for speaking Mandarin. With a bit of confusion he eventually…

You’re forgetting about pitch sir. Turbulence isn’t a straight drop, but can affect the wings on the front and then rear of the wing and it hits it, causing the nose to raise or lower at a different rate than the wings.

I used to use KVM’s heavily, but as an industry I think we’ve moved largely to remote desktop for day to day and baseboard management tools for low level configurations. I believe, largely to that move, the home users have kind of followed suite as the other consumer grade tools have become so good and easy to use…

Kind of curious as to which trail this is. It’s not like there’s a lack of information about the trails around here (Colorado), usually with details about clearance and risks. That said, it sounds like if the owners had just waited it out, they might have been perfectly fine with stock tires/wheels.

The carry on is exactly the maximum dimensions for most airlines (there are a few less strict like Alaska). Do you feel it’s tiny because of lack of interior space due to say the layout for the handle or wheels, or because you’re used to cheating on the carry-on rules with a bag larger than what’s normally allowed?

The carry on is exactly the maximum dimensions for most airlines (there are a few less strict like Alaska). Do you…