Live data from Hacker News

Car showed pop-up while driving

glitterkitten.co.uk

191–200 of 248 posts

Re: Car showed pop-up while driving

#191
post #22

What country do they drive in MPH with the steering wheel on the right side of the car? I've heard a lot of references to "miles" in British culture, but I assumed that was habits of older people. I thought the UK was all metric by now?

Metric in many things, and I was taught metric exclusively through school in the early 80s in England. Road signs and limits all still in miles exclusively. People still refer to each other in feet and inches although official stuff often wants cms. TVs still in inches. It's not as bad as America, because Brits have a very solid understand of metric and tend to use it whenever we can, but still needs work :(

The US will switch to metric when we have 10 months in a year, 10 days in a week, 100 (or 1000) days in a year, 10 hours in a day, and 100 seconds in a minute.

Seriously, one thing that I've realized living in a country where metric went over like a loud fart in church is that metric only works when units are arbitrary; but many times we need to measure things that are not arbitrary.

Re: Car showed pop-up while driving

#192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It might be best to turn on “do not disturb” during such a session.

Doesn't prevent the very rude iOS updates. When there's a system update, it's not a notification, it's an alert, followed by a fullscreen modal to "enter your passcode to install overnight" with a small button to dismiss at the bottom. That's, I have to say, from a company that prides itself on the best UX in the industry.

But don't you see — it's for the greater good! They can only give you the best user experience if you update to the latest version of iOS!

Re: Car showed pop-up while driving

#193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had that in a car from 2008 or so. Camera feed switched on when you were reversing, but no touch screen.

Radar parking sensor are very useful. Not sure if you had that in 2008. In my car, this all comes in via the head unit. Critical driving stuff isn't allowed to be in the head unit (wisely), parking display doesn't come up as critical although the sensors are technically available even if the head unit is fried, which I found out when my head unit failed (car was still drivable, but many nice things gone).

It wasn't radar, it was just a camera feed that activated when I put it in reverse.

Re: Car showed pop-up while driving

#194
post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nah I like having an app for my car. The ability to preheat/precool the car from anywhere as well as see detailed stats for every journey is worth it(for me).

It's fine to leave it in if you like those features but many people couldn't care less about them and hate the distracting popups, spying, and auto-updates that change functionality.

I have that in an EV that doesn't even really have a screen to show you any popups on(Volkswagen e-Up). The car has remote connectivity that I can use to set climate control to selected temperature and see detailed energy consumption stats but inside the car it's very analogue, there is a basic screen for the radio(operated with buttons, not a touchscreen) but that's literally it, even the driver cluster still uses analogue gauges.

Re: Car showed pop-up while driving

#195
post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Name and shame

My Samsung phone has forced updates even worse than this. It will download an update silently in the background and will nag me with a new notification every couple of hours. It will let me delay the update for a random length of time before just rebooting on its own. The last update let me delay for something like 10 hours, but I've also had it reboot in the middle of the day while I was using my phone to show somet…

You don't have an "Auto Download Over Wifi" option under Software Update in settings? I can uncheck that on my S23.

Re: Car showed pop-up while driving

#196
post #61

I cannot believe the amount of screens that have been allowed into cars. Touchscreens that beckon not only for your attention, but also your interaction are somehow fine to just put wherever in the car. It's illegal to use my phone for non hands-free calls while driving (technically, but it's not even remotely enforced) but it's okay to use my television-sized device connected to my phone because it's integrated into…

> Imagine being able to both see the road AND quickly sketch out an idea with a co-worker on the windshield during your commute This is quite a disingenuous take on the screens in a car though. They usually only allow limited interactions while the vehicle is in motion, so that example of sketching out an idea with a coworker already isn't supposed to be happening with the current systems while the vehicle is in moti…

Is it disingenuous? I'd say perhaps hyperbolic or satirical. I remember a time when cars came with DVD players that wouldn't play if the car wasn't in park. People didn't like that so they worked around it. The lockout systems that you describe sound like the impetus for a market of bypasses. I would argue that if such restrictions are necessary then we should reconsider if the screen which necessitates them is necessary.

We seem hard-pressed to consolidate all of a car's functionality into a touch screen, but the UX is often much worse than a physical input whose position never changes and can be felt with your fingers in the dark or in situations where you cannot look at it. This consolidation also seems like it creates a single point of failure: what happens if your screen breaks?

It all seems like tech for tech's sake, things to justify charging more and more for new vehicles while providing manufacturers with a means of pushing updates, displaying ads, and selling services to extract more incremental value from consumers.

I'd like to see a car w/ a screen for a map. That's it. You input your destination on your phone, it shows the map on the screen. The screen is for display only and it's decoupled from all other controls in the car.

Re: Car showed pop-up while driving

#197
post #18

Just FYI - you can replace your head unit even on newer cars. There's a bustling aftermarket industry for this kind of stuff: https://www.belsee.com/android-car-radio/hyundai-radio.html This way - your data gets abused by the Chinese government instead of Hyundai! (I kid, sort of, but these head units let you exert more control over your car, as they often ship rooted, or can be rooted) If you DIY install the head un…

It's worth mentioning these screens are not crash tested and can become shards of glass in an accident.

Re: Car showed pop-up while driving

#198
post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The accept button is a one time deal. You click it and never hear about it again. Deny on the other hand causes the same question to come up again and again. They want you either to get fed up and accept it or accidentally accept it.

> Deny on the other hand causes the same question to come up again and again. Not in my experience. I click deny almost everywhere, even if it takes more clicks, but rarely do I see the banners come up again in a second visit. Tracking my choice is a functional cookie after all. I do, however, simply close the tab when the banner occupies half the window (or I use reader mode to bypass it altogether). That's just obn…

So they only pop up every time if you force them to respect your decision by not letting them store persistent cookies in the first place? To avoid the recurring interruptions all you have to do is trust the organisation that's employing this user-hostile pattern in the first place to respect your wishes and not be user-hostile more discreetly instead?

I'll tell you what is a one time deal: the explicit do not track preference that my browser automatically sends to every site I visit. They already know they don't need to bother asking me about these things every time. They just choose to overlook it.

Re: Car showed pop-up while driving

#199

I'm religious about never, ever interrupting the user. It's unfortunate that way too many other software developers consider it acceptable. No, I don't care about your updates and onboarding and ToS changes, I opened your app with one concrete goal in mind and you're getting in my f***ing way. You aren't being helpful a tiniest bit. If you need to inform the user about something, put a banner at the top of the screen…

The web version of Twitter/X is an example of this. Way too many modals

Re: Car showed pop-up while driving

#200

Tangent: I would love if there was a place that did car reviews that actually talked about UI. Car interfaces are such a huge part of the experience of driving now, and none of the car review channels I watch give it more than a couple sentences. If they ever mention the UI at all, it's to say whether it feels "snappy", or if it supports CarPlay, or how large the touch screen is. I want a deep dive into more of the d…

Doug DeMuro

I like his channel, the videos I've seen do not really go into depth about UI.
Post reply on HN