"Trailer. Unpaired."

"NOOOO"

The print spooler is basically the Typhon Expanse. You send a bunch of print jobs that disappear, and when you walk down there to see what the fuck is up some ancient print job pops out like Kelsey Grammer wearing the ancient Star Fleet uniform with the stack-of-coffee-filters collar.

Answer: Linux. My Windows machines jist fucking hate printers, I often have to delete and reinstall jist to get them to work. My Bazzite machine; "Sure, coming right up. Btw, you haven't restarted your machine in 70 days, you really need to install updates."

It seems to me that the use-case for this technique is freight hauling, where a series of trailers follow a single, human-driven truck, thereby skirting the law and reducing payroll. And, once again, the techbros have re-invented trains, but worse.

It also needs enough ballast for the whole thing not to become unstable, which also lowers efficiency if it's not itself carrying passengers or cargo.

While that was my first thought, it might actually be useful in the "I rarely tow anything" category.. like a Uhaul rental. So you don't need to actually OWN the towing dongle. Or a car with that much power. You just rent it when you need it.

Which honestly would be nice... we've got too many people who own massive gas guzzlers just for that one or two times a year they need to use it for its intended purpose.

All for what, less wear on your main vehicle

Absurd

I imagine people would rent these, not buy them. And it would mean you didn't need a car rated to tow whatever trailer you have.

I saw this picture many years ago already, so I don't think that's happening anymore...

I immediately checked to see if it was posted on April 1st. It was not

good and bad news, simultaneous: No one can have hitchless towing until patent expiration: 17 years from then, afaik.

I don't think this will be a real product. I did see this several years ago and having a friend that works on patents, for large companies for whom the patent application fees are rounding errors on budgets, the incentive is to patent anything you thought of that could possibly become a product in the future. Even if you have no real plans to pursue it.

A trailer that can respond and assist a hard brake

we already have that, and it's legally required for trailers above a specific weight in many places

A trailer that can respond and assist a hard brake?

Trailer brakes have existed for a long time, and are common. They're often mandatory in some settings.

Even braking systems already exist, entirely in the realm of physics with no digital point of failure required

Why did we skip past cool tech and go straight to idiocy.

We didn't skip past cool tech. We plucked a bunch of low hanging fruit. And now that fruit is gone. So we're getting weird with it to justify further consumer spending.

Guys sliding into the DMs with a "Watch this one neat trick where I disable your wifi" when wifi is so unreliable that nobody will notice.

Another large purchase to foist onto consumers who opt out of the truck market, but fantasize about using this machine to haul stuff all over town.

"Towing" with a small car that couldn't otherwise is the only reason I can think of.

Still dumb, but it's something

Look up the towing capacity of a mid sized SUV. They can't tow shit, you basically need a pickup to tow anything over 1500lbs. That's only a small Uhaul 5x8 trailer.

A Prius can tow like 700 kg if you put a hitch on it, almost the limit for a B class license.

Think it was an "indulge the stupid executives dumb idea so he can say "innovation".