I'm not really sure how you could know this? For all we know all the employees are unionized and haven't felt like they need to push management for official recognition.
Cars you've been able to lease since before I was born probably. Dishwashers and other home appliances are possible to finance here too, effectively renting it until you "own it", in comparison with leasing.
Still, not as bad as the "digital licensing" hell we're in when it comes to video games, but there is zero ownership at the end of it.
> Just wait until they manage to apply it to physical goods like cars and dishwashers.
This already happened... It's called subscription or mortgage loan.
Most households don't have that kind of money at once, they are already forced into a loan with regular payments. This means not the buyer but the bank owns the car until the last penny is paid.
Won't this be a bit of a problem when your new microservice includes an ad for Diet Coke? Has someone patented a mechanism for putting ad delivery into someone else's vibe coded consumer project yet?
The only reason CFCs exist is because the US established a de-facto ban on propane as a refrigerant. You can't trademark, copyright it, or any other form of IP.
How is that a de facto ban, you can't trademark the common names of plenty of substances ubiquitous in daily life. The manufacturers of refrigerants don't seem like they could completely dictate what appliance manufacturers choose to use in their products.
It seems for refrigerators there are actually specific carve outs in EPA venting regulations to allow R-290 (propane) along with a couple others.
If vendors don't use it, possibly due to flammability, whether a real risk or as imagined by consumers that's a completely different situation. I can't find anything claiming it's banned or even discouraged by the government.
There are commonly sold flammable refrigerant things now in the USA, I see a bunch of small fridges using alkanes and cycloalkanes, not sure about HVAC.
Yes, if you release propane into an enclosed space like a mechanical room and then introduce a spark, it could cause an explosion.
The explosion risk (in a commercial setting) is mitigated by having gas detection sensors and an exhaust fan that runs when the gas detection alarm trips along with horn/strobes at any entrance to the mechanical room and inside the mechanical room.
In a residential setting, I’d only feel safe if the condenser (outdoor unit) used propane with a liquid to liquid heat exchanger and separate glycol loop that runs inside to the air handler coil.
Propane, butane, etc. are not explosives. They are not going to just energetically decompose. They are combustible, but it turns out most things worth having on earth are combustible
Indeed - it is only explosive when it leaks out and mixes with air in the correct quantities. Unfortunately this happens occasionally - with the common case being someone trying to use a knife to get ice out of a freezer or AC which is frozen up and accidentally cutting into a pipe.
They're pretty explosive when they have the right mix with air. This can easily happen in, say, a utility closet with a water heater or air handler, or a fridge in a kitchen, etc.
A small leak on the outside unit probably isn't going to be a big risk. A small leak on a unit in a closet with stuff that sometimes makes small sparks...
reply