And just like old modems, sometimes the handshake takes forever, makes everyone uncomfortable, and still fails to establish a useful connection.

Being trustworthy and being perceived as trustworthy aren't the same thing. I think a lot of us who dislike small talk forget that the other person hasn't necessarily had a chance to establish the former yet.

In theory, yes. In practice I suspect a lot of these fixtures are not using integration to achieve better thermal design, they're using it because it makes the product cheaper and lets the manufacturer control the whole assembly.

I think the annoying part is that LEDs themselves can last a very long time, but the cheap driver electronics often don't

There's something very 2020s about taking two durable, repairable household objects (a ceiling fan and a light fixture) combining them into one visually complicated object, and then making the LED non-replaceable

Ceiling fans with light fixtures are very much not a new thing. The new thing is the ‘sculptural’ light fixture using a bunch of irreplaceable leds.

Just needs subscription charging.

I've never seen a ceiling fan that didn't also have a fixture.

At that point you're not wardriving, you're doing a neighborhood-wide ceiling fan penetration test

People will be blown away by the results!

16 possible fan identities for an entire neighborhood. What could go wrong?

It's 16 possible fan identities for the range of a single remote. That should be enough for anybody.

It doesn't matter if two houses have the same identity as long as the remote in one doesn't reach the fan in the other.

If you live in a 2-d neighborhood the "four color theorem" proves you only need four codes to not share a code with a neighbor, assuming perfect information.

The wikipedia article for the four color theorm discusses higher dimensional life like being in a 3-d apartment building. If you live in a Klein bottle you got other problems beyond ceiling fans.

A lot of EV design seems to assume every familiar control is a problem that needs to be reinvented

I think there's a surprisingly large market for an EV that's basically "a Corolla, but electric" rather than another attempt to make the interior look like a concept car from 2035

It's not even "concept car from 2035", it's "concept car from 2015 trying to look like a car from a sci-fi story set in 2035"

And I agree. People like normal cars, people like normal door handles, people like A/C and heater knobs, people like PRNDL levers. None of that has changed just because the drivetrain uses a different kind of engine. Why is it so hard to make that, but electric? Why does "electric motor" somehow mean "all controls must be on the iPad"?

I hope it's just a phase that's about to reverse. Maybe they felt the need to go all futuristic design to cash in on how electric drivetrains used to feel futuristic. Maybe, as electric drivetrains just become "normal, boring" technology, we get options with normal designs too.

Toyota still sells 10M cars a year and has an enormous manufacturing, supplier and dealer network. That doesn’t disappear overnight because BYD can sell a $14k EV in one market

> BYD can sell a $14k EV in one market

Outside of the US, are there any markets BYD can't sell that car into? The Dolphin is currently listing at well under €20k here in Spain, which means its only real competition is the equivalently incredibly cheap Dacia Spring

Dacia Spring is also made in China.

I'm sure, but the Dacia brand as whole has been here for a long time, so they should have a reputational advantage over a newcomer like BYD. The Sandero compact SUV in particular is extremely popular (in a large part due to how cheap it is)

Europe isn't good example either as it's heavily tarriffed

That makes it even worse for european automakers, if they cannot compete even with a heavily tariffed BYD

We don't have materials, we don't have energy.

Not sure how are we supposed to thrive in a world where cars are very simple and our know-how is borderline useless.

Imho cars are a dead race-to-the-bottom business, that was true in ICE world, that will be even more true in the electrified/autonomous driving one.