401–410 of 549 posts
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If I'm the dark pattern developer I'm not logging when the EULA is accepted or how many times they declined it.
Lawyers tend to love it when their opponents think they've found a cute legal hack.
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Mazda doesn't get nearly enough respect for their work identifying and correcting this issue. https://www.motorauthority.com/news/1121372_why-mazda-is-pur... Touchscreens/touch panels are shiny, futuristic, dangerous, dumb, and cheap. Manufacturers use them because they lower BOM costs, at the expense of usability and safety. Vote with your wallet folks.
Does mazdas use rotary engines for ll their cars?
I suspect it's pretty hard to make a rotary meet EU5; that may have been the last of them (the RX-8)
Short answer to the lede: no, the industry cannot cope. Or rather, it will limp along with bloatware, bugs, and malware exactly the same way we see desktop OSes bloat, or the way we see routers and set-top boxes hacked to become botnets. In my 40+ years in the industry I've yet to see code get SMALLER. With the exception of Linux kernel 1.0 in the 90's which was a step backwards into smaller, more compact code, code…
My current one has some "modern" archaic crap in it that was all the rage when it was built, it's GM so it has the OnStar buttons in the rear view mirror that are useless, along with complementary antenna on the roof. It's stock stereo controlled the alarm, it has all sorts of compartments that are nowadays mostly useless and IMO just an excuse to cram something in every spot. A lot of the "features" are just dead fads. The seats have lumbar shit in them and warm up. The warmer is useful in the winter I guess. Still with the bloat it is significantly better than the Frankensteins that commercials have convinced people they need nowadays.
My next car is either going to be a ~1995 4runner or a ~1994 diesel f-350 that I build myself. I do miss the corner windows.
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I own a 2014 Subaru Impreza and my brother in-law a 2017. I've driven both extensively. Sometime during those years, Subaru switched from knobs and levers to a touchscreen and the controls are so much worse! 1. The controls on the 2014 are obvious, easy to find, and my choices are readily apparent. In the 2017 I have to search for them and often guess their meanings. If I'm actively driving, I just give up because it…
Worse, in the 2015 Toyota and 2019 Honda that we now have - if one of us listened to heavy metal on volume 30; and the other one is more of a mellow pop on volume15; they'll have to wait until the car turns on, boots, and timeouts the warning/license messages, before car will accept the volume down / turn radio off input and kill the cacophone. UN acceptable. And yet now the norm. I'll do you one better - I'm hanging…
You could argue that’s because of familiarity. Obviously I like a lot about my car or I wouldn’t have kept it for this long! But truly, it’s not that I don’t think there’s room for improvement on my old car. There have been plenty of advances since its time that I would welcome if I bought a new vehicle: improved efficiency, safety features, practicalities like better external lighting, and so on.¹
For me, those benefits always seem to be outweighed by the horrible state of controls and displays and “infotainment” systems in new cars. They’re cluttered and intrusive and distracting. I’m not sure which is worse, touchscreens that take your eyes off the road, or cluttering the steering wheel with controls for a phone that it is almost never appropriate to be using while driving anyway in my country. Meanwhile, apparently I still have to take a hand off the wheel for a second or two to change gear or switch on various external safety lights. This should have been some sort of meme punchline, not real life.
Between poorly designed controls, the security and privacy problems that seem to be rampant in modern cars, and the sense that EVs might be the future but there are still some big unanswered questions, I expect it will be a few more years before I change to a new vehicle unless some practical consideration forces the issue first.
¹ I’m still waiting for the windscreen that automatically enhances the driver’s full view in low light or poor weather conditions and subtly highlights the required driving line through junctions as directed by the navigation system, but I reckon we’ll have that too before the self-driving flying cars are here.
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IANAL, but I'm curious if you are. In my experience, lawyers tend to get a lot done by intimidation. Remember all those ridiculous lawsuits from the RIAA over downloading illegal music? Well, it turns out when people actually took them to court they won every time. But people settled out of fear. Sure, if the lawyers are actually trying to do things legally first and adhering to the letter of the law, I'm sure they'r…
> Remember all those ridiculous lawsuits from the RIAA over downloading illegal music? Well, it turns out when people actually took them to court they won every time. But people settled out of fear. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capitol_Records,_Inc._v._Thoma... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_BMG_v._Tenenbaum These were widely covered because most people just settled, and there were high hopes for something putti…
There's a much harder burden of proof for the RIAA when they sue people over simply downloading songs or albums when the user can easily make the case for fair use. I mean, how many albums, 8-tracks, cassettes and CD's did you buy of the same artist and album? I know I did it thousands of times.
The burden gets a lot easier when you can show the person was actively distributing essentially pirated music to other users - propagating what is by legal definition, illegal activity.
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You know the dark pattern of presenting a license agreement over and over until it's accepted? I predict one day someone will make the argument in court that they always declined the EULA (perhaps the one in their car) hundreds of times, but one day accidentally brushed "accept" with their finger, and that doesn't constitute legal acceptance, especially since they've demonstrated an effort to decline the EULA, but be…
Fun fact - if you buy the car new, you may have the "option" of being presented with these choices before purchase. And you can actually refuse! The dealer will be confused as hell, but they are hell-bent on selling a new car, and will actually void it if possible. I know because I've done it. You don't want the weird spyware (OnStar, Carnet, etcetera)? After agreeing to buy the car, refuse to accept the terms (they…
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Tesla cars have a distinct look and a "prestige" whereas something like Ford's new F-150 will look nearly identical to its gas guzzling brother. There's an ego carried behind Telsa's branding and marketing that other car manufacturers don't feed into even in their own EV offerings.
Teslas look like Kias. this was a big thing in the early 10s when electric cars looked like i3s and twizys. everyone wanted a normal looking car and tesla was the first one to make a normal looking car. now priuses and leafs look normal and tesla is making cybertrucks.
Big US auto moves so slowly, they’re always playing catch-up. Time for them to die and be reorganized.
Short answer to the lede: no, the industry cannot cope. Or rather, it will limp along with bloatware, bugs, and malware exactly the same way we see desktop OSes bloat, or the way we see routers and set-top boxes hacked to become botnets. In my 40+ years in the industry I've yet to see code get SMALLER. With the exception of Linux kernel 1.0 in the 90's which was a step backwards into smaller, more compact code, code…
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Yeah, I like the tech behind Tesla but am turned off by. 1) The large, distracting screen in the front of the car. 2) The subscription model of the car's firmware. If electric cars ever become widespread I hope I can find a used one engineered without that stuff. Otherwise I may have to stop buying cars.
> If electric cars ever become widespread I have a strong suspicion that soon enough after that we will be able to build electric cars from kits, cheap and with no frills. We are on a cusp of a new technological revolution.
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Audi's 2022 e-tron GT moved back to more physical buttons, and only has one infotainment touch-screen, unlike a bunch of their 2021 models where there's at least two different infotainment screens.
I really miss "real buttons", meaning not just something tactile. Things like a power button that actually opens a circuit. Or a volume dial that doesn't lag because it's actually a potentiometer and not a rotary encoder. Too late for all that, I suppose.