i don't think you fully understand how many edge cases there really are, and the full range of conditions people here expect autonomous cars or even driver assist systems to function in.
As a very simple example, i sat my driving test in the Netherlands. Literally the first thing my driving instructor taught me was that tires have finite grip and that changing speed or direction requires grip. Doing both at the same time, as you do while driving along a curved highway off ramp can be very dangerous in slippery conditions.
Many, many times, the auto braking and lane centering system in my hyundai car has caused the car to skid in light snow. i have lost count of how many times this has happened. With my previous "non smart" car, this never happened because i know how to drive in the winter.
Respectfully, not all driving conditions and styles are dangerous.
a better analogy would be a toyota hybrid, which is basically the same as any other hybrid car, except for the one issue of reliability.
So yes, a toyota hybrid and a chevrolet hybrid should be exactly the same, but they are not, the price difference reflects it, as does the number of twenty year old toyota hybrids still on the road.
My wife has gone through a large number of iPhones in the past 14 years, where as I've had a total of 2 android phones. Way easier to repair, and add software well past the end of life date.
Why has she gone through so many iPhones? I’m typing this on my iPhone 12 from 2020. Before that I had an iPhone 6s from 2015. I’m considering upgrading this year, but I could hold off for another few years if I wanted to. My phone still runs like it did when it was new. I get through most days with 60%+ battery remaining.
The biggest problem with my phone is modern software bloat. I only have the 64gb model. Modern software - especially iOS itself - has gotten ginormous. Every time a patch comes out I’ve gotta delete a bunch of stuff in order to update. And running unpatched software seems pretty dangerous right about now.
I had a Galaxy S3 from 2012 to 2024, then got a hand me down Galaxy S9 for free.
I don't like that I can't remove the battery, but it's got a SD card so I don't have to worry about storage ever and a headphone jack, so I don't have to worry about my headphones running out of batteries.
what i personally find most insightful about this website is how the techbro culture will do anything except consider the needs of the many. why bother with good transit when we can automate cars? why bother with copyright when we can just steal content at a scale that few can comprehend.
The “needs”, or rather revealed preferences of many, is to live in detached single family homes on minimum 3,000 sq ft lots, with space for personal car storage.
There is no way public transit works in that kind of non dense living arrangement.
Do you have data to show Americans want to live in Manhattan/Tokyo style or even European style 4 story apartment/shared wall buildings?
Population trends in the US show me the suburbs are far more popular, at least among those who end up having children.
People in the US don’t magically “want” giant pickup trucks and pedestrian killing SUVs. They want cheap and practical vehicles, neither of which are available in large quantities. Notice how the advertising for pickups works? Straight, white, rural men in jeans telling you how your expensive pickup can drive off road? And then you read the manual and warranty where that exact usage is either forbidden or discouraged.
Same with the suburbs. Those we designed and pushed by the car lobby and the US made it illegal or very unprofitable to build any alternatives
Where is your data showing that people “prefer” this?
My data is the far lower prices for equivalent sized townhouses (homes that share walls) compared to detached single family houses, the increasing volumes of larger vehicles sold over smaller vehicles, and higher proportions of children in suburban areas compared to urban areas.
People like space, people like choosing who to share space with, and people like feeling more powerful (sitting higher up in bigger vehicles).
In my area, Zillow shows sold home prices for comparable townhomes vs detached SFH at roughly 30% lower price per square foot. People are willing to pay a couple hundred thousand dollars to not share walls.
>Those we designed and pushed by the car lobby and the US made it illegal or very unprofitable to build any alternatives
The US (federal government) didn't make it illegal or unprofitable to build more dense housing.
Local city and county level voters made it illegal and unprofitable, because more dense housing means poorer people, and poorer people means schools with kids who have poorer parents, which typically means a peer group that may not perform as well.
For anyone curious, this is hyperbole that people of certain political persuasions love to mischaracterise.
These were not "protests", they were a sustained attempt to appeal to the wrong level of government for policies of a foreign government by a bunch of people who were riled up on the internet. Highlights included nazi flags, guns, harassing and threatening women and local residents, etc.
what is most telling is that when you search for commentary about the Canadian federal government freezing bank accounts, a significant portion of links are from reactionary, right wing websites.
They did freeze bank accounts though, and in other countries with democracy, citizens are allowed to protest, “occupy” and nazi flags are free speech. Mentioning guns is hyperbole, zero protesters shot anyone. Now, the government DID take peoples rights away and their bank accounts . Very important.
Why is "occupy" in quotes? The trucks jammed downtown Ottawa and were making a tremendous amount of noise. That isn't some peaceful protest that got a permit ahead of time, it was an attempt to shutdown the nation's capital.
this tech bro utopia ALWAYS ignores relatively basic solutions. A great example is reliable, regular, and efficient public transit. We don't need self driving cars and all that mumbo jumbo. A bloody train, tram or a bus would solve most of these problems.
This! I live in Western Europe and have never owned a car. I mostly travel by public transport or bike. I rent a car about once a year, but could do without that as well. Before people tell me that I am an exception: I know other people like me in various other places in Europe! It is possible and actually good for your body to have to move, at least to the train station, carrying groceries etc.
>This! I live in Western Europe and have never owned a car.
I'm also in Western Europe and almost always needed a car for my commutes to work, unless I was willing to accept a 1-2+ h public transport commute each way, because tech employers where I live love locating their offices in the sticks where land is cheap because they're broke and cheap, and the city hasn't significantly updated public transport infrastructure in ~30 years, but the population and size of the metro area grew by like 3x.
>Before people tell me that I am an exception: I know other people like me in various other places in Europe!
The thing is, Western Europe is not a country, but a collection of various countries with various economies, cities, and infrastructure, and various people with various housing and career locations, some close and well connected to public transport, some not at all, and from my circle of acquaintances, yes, you are the exception, as most people I know get to work by car.
So, you can't possibly throw such blanket statement over everyone in Western Europe, unless you're massively obtuse or living in a bubble without realizing it.
Like, I'm sure most people in Munich, Paris, London, Madrid, Vienna, etc can easily get to work on the excellent public transport they have, but I don't live there and don't have such amazing public transport, so then car it is for us.
>It is possible and actually good for your body to have to move, at least to the train station, carrying groceries etc.
Bruh, I only need a car just to get to work in reasonable time, not to move or carry groceries.
I get my groceries from the supermarkets 5-10 minute walking distance to my place, but I don't have the luxury of employment jobs within the same distance, so car it is, unless I want to be wasting my life switching connections between slow and infrequent trams, busses and trains which often suffer delays.
And regarding the "body movement" as a pro for public transport, I'd rather have more free time to move in gym and to the workouts my body condition needs, rather than waste my time walking and sitting/standing on public transport, as that's not an actual workout but a waste of time, as all you can do is browse HN on the phone with the hand that's not grabbing the bar. Driving is also a waste of time, but at least it saves me almost 1 hour each way which is massive time save that I can use how I like.
removing the cellular modem from a car can have several unintended consequences.
The geniuses at hyundai refuse to let you operate the heating in some of their electric cars without an internet connection. Yes, you read that right - the only way to operate the HVAC compressor in several hyundai EVs is via their stupid app and the internet. I found out the hard way when i kept noticing that my hyundai EV was not heating the cabin in winter even though i turned the HAVC on. Turns out, as soon as you plug into the wall outlet, the compressor stops.
There is no technical reason for this, other than enshittification.
Most reasonable people want support for both keyboard and mouse-based navigation. For example, why did Edge and possible chrome, remove support for Back via the backspace key? Literally, why remove something that exists and that some people might use?
Same with some web forms where hitting enter in a text box does nothing. I expect it to submit a form, but very often, it does nothing.
Yes it was an error because backspace does function as a backspace when a text input field has the focus. Making something that should be muscle memory context-dependent.
I'm surprised the person responsible for <backspace> mapping to Back navigation didn't mandate that <del> would be super awesome for Forward navigation.
right now, i cannot even enable Backspace = go back on Edge. I am forced to use Edge on my work computer and i hate that this feature is gone. Not disabled, just gone.
About enter to auto submit, i've been running into this problem more often where some web frameworks just ignore the Enter key. There is a submit button, but i cannot trigger it via the enter key.
Every small feature is used by some subset of users, but if you don't trim your software from time to time then feature creep will eventually make it incoherent. Yes, it involves even small details like this one. I don't think learning another hotkey is a big problem, and anyone using keyboard navigation on the web should generally be at least aware of a ton of existing Vim-like navigation extensions (and even browsers)
> For example, why did Edge and possible chrome, remove support for Back via the backspace key?
Because alt+left is a better choice? Really f**ing annoying when some dumb javascript removes focus from a text box you're editing and the page navigates back.
I specifically had to disable that via about:config in Firefox ages ago because I pressed it by accident all the time. Often while I was going through a 30 point form, only to then lose all my progress. To be fair, browsers probably should try to not undo progress like that, so you can just go forward again and get right back where I started, but I've never trusted them to actually do that. I've been burned too many times.
Agreed. I'll say the same about accessibility. People really need to test for this more. If your app is not accessible I literally cannot use your app regardless of how useful it might be. This is pretty much why I currently don't use IDEs like Zed: even if I wanted to I can't because it presents no accessibility tree.
> For example, why did Edge and possible chrome, remove support for Back via the backspace key? Literally, why remove something that exists and that some people might use?
Because web pages don't preserve element focus well, web was originally meant for documents in the first place, not UIs. If you're trying to erase a character and the focus has been lost, you go back in history instead. It's a real existing problem in poorly designed pages, not a nefarious plot to annoy power users by Google, Microsoft, or Mozilla. It was always janky as hell.
it is quite telling that wikipedia has pages upon pages documenting pokemon, but relatively limited context about maths or science, beyond what's in textbooks.
Telling what? STEM academics are busier than Pokémon fans to contribute to Wikipedia? Or they care less about the cause of Wikipedia? That as a society we produce more of the latter than the former? There’s no definitive rationale to be told simply by that observation.
All the data about India's demonetisation points to it being a complete and utter waste of time. The goalposts kept shifting and the whole aim was never clear. People died, please do not minimise their deaths.
The absolute disaster of how COVID was managed was a shame, and is a borderline crime against humanity. Again, please do not minimise the deaths of millions of Indians as "the media was blaming every single death on the government". The government of Indian was directly responsible for that entire fiasco.
but then you are not present, you are distracted by a computer. Just because that computer does not have a clunky monitor, doesn't mean that you aren't any less distracted.
Some of the attitudes on this website, especially ones like yours, are the literal reason we are in this mess today.
Please, please, if you have the power, push back on this nonsense from the inside. We need more people talking to other people like real humans, not like notes in a digital diary.
It's XR, for them it's a notes app in the convenient place, for me it might be a next meeting reminder on the wall next to my work screen, so I can work less distracted and more focused.
Why is their way of enriching their connected life a problem?
I think some of the worst attitudes on this website is projecting own worst case scenarios and implying bad intentions to the most innocuous or honest signals. That's the problem much bigger than someone's glasses - you support polarisation and teaming (us vs them) instead of seeking connection or understanding.
Nothing I described replaces or impacts talking to a human. If someone is going to distract themselves in XR, they can already do it more efficiently on a handset. The only change would be your posture and eye strain could possibly improve.
As a very simple example, i sat my driving test in the Netherlands. Literally the first thing my driving instructor taught me was that tires have finite grip and that changing speed or direction requires grip. Doing both at the same time, as you do while driving along a curved highway off ramp can be very dangerous in slippery conditions.
Many, many times, the auto braking and lane centering system in my hyundai car has caused the car to skid in light snow. i have lost count of how many times this has happened. With my previous "non smart" car, this never happened because i know how to drive in the winter.
Respectfully, not all driving conditions and styles are dangerous.
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