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Comment by violentvinyl | Hacker News Reader

It's interesting that Smart TVs seem to have two lives, the first as a Smart TV, and the later as a dumb display.

At least in some cars, you can still replace the ICE if it accomodates single or double DIN units. The newer cars with hidden "brains" and a proprietary display though, will that be the equivalent of having an 8-track player mounted under the dash in a few years?

It reminds me of a very good Mitch Hedberg quote: "An escalator can never break: it can only become stairs. You should never see an Escalator Temporarily Out Of Order sign, just Escalator Temporarily Stairs. Sorry for the convenience."

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I've certainly seen escalators undergoing maintenance where the floor at the base was opened up and workers were standing inside. Wouldn't want to take those stairs in that case :)

And I've taken some escalators which might as well be broken when they "become stairs", I wouldn't walk up and down the StPetersburg metro escalators (most of the stations are >50m below ground).

Not true at all! Escalators don't necessarily fail safe. If the brake is faulty, it is very dangerous to use an out of service escalator as stairs.

What happens?

Best case: "I don't seem to be making any progress going up."

Worst case: "This is moving down way too fast! Aaaahhhhh!!!" -screamed by hundreds of people, many of which will die as they pile up at the bottom of the escalator.

Now imagine the brakes failing on an escalator that leads down into a subway with an electrified rail.

You've really upset my lunch break

The weight of your body will set the escalator in motion and it will keep accelerating. As you approach the bottom end at ever increasing speeds you will have a few moments to contemplate on what a mistake it was to not take physics class in high school. Once you reach the end of the line your journey will end in a rather unpleasant manner due to the high velocity. You could get injured very seriously or even killed.

Sounds like a gravity powered human rail-gun.

That describes a playground slide.

This [0] is the first thing that comes to mind. IIRC the elevator had an OOO sign on it but this women went on it anyways.

[0] NSFL https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RcpjOIH7bG4

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