LarryDarrell

The 80s were a weird decade. GM didn't want to give up vacuum lines, Ford had electronic fuel injection and little else, and Chrysler had those K-Cars that broke a lot, but they were at least cheap to fix.

Toyotas, Hondas and Volvos of that era lasted a long time, and it would have been simple to predict had you bothered to look. Simplicity + Robustness = Longevity. Because of that equation, the domestic long running vehicles are all pickup trucks.

The last era where we had any semblance of simplicity and reliability was probably the 2000s right up to the recession. Those cars and trucks were just the perfected versions of their 90s version. (Except Chrysler, it's best to avoid all era of Chrysler and I say this as former K-Car and Ram owner.)

Post recession we added turbos to everything. Then came CVTs and variable timing and a slew of new engines. And then came the slow and steady computerization and electric motor actuators for everything. The length of wiring harnesses exploded. Why does my car seat now weigh 300 pounds and have 1200 position settings and climate control, etc. etc.

Simplicity + Robustness = Longevity is true for any era.

This is a great question and I actually go back and forth on it myself. I do tend to be harsher to consumers, because that's who I'm around. My friends who work directly at the auto makers or their suppliers like to blame "MBA's". But find me an engineer that doesn't blame it all on MBAs.

I have a friend who has been a Automotive Engineer for 20 years and we have this conversation all the time. If I were to distill all our conversations down to one take away it would be this: There was a paradigm shift sometime shortly after the Great Recession. Before then, vehicles operated and degraded in expected and manageable ways.

I'm in the vintage camp at the moment. I just replaced the Chrysler ignition system that was in my old 80s Volvo for a Bosch one that came in a later model. That and replacing the timing belt took all of one weekend and $500 (I splurged on some new parts that I didn't technically need to). The next week I drove it cross country and had a blast, somehow having the time of my life despite not having the last 35 years of features that many people can't live without.

I understand. There are many consumers like you.

We are simply speaking different languages because we value different things based on what we want from a vehicle.

My perspective is one from someone that does their own car maintenance/repair and has only owned used cars. When I look at a new car or truck today, I'm looking at components that are most affected by entropy. Of the features you listed, how many are likely to still work in 2033? 2043? Will any of them create a no-start condition or poor running condition if they fail? Is there a way to bypass the automatic lights with a manual switch if some part of the automatic light system becomes unobtainable at any price? Having any part of the engine ignition process connected to a DRM'ed internet connected remote start system seems insane to me, considering how many cars have problems with non-internet connected remote start systems.

I fully admit that my perspective is the minority, and it's rare to have someone agree with me on HN. However, I do find many comrades at the junkyards.

The 2022 Chevy Silverado I rented died at 488 miles on the odometer. The roadside assistance mechanic said the transmission "lost data connection to the engine". Later, a tow truck had to drag it onto it's flatbed as the rear wheels were locked up.

Also, apparently the tailgate is electric now. And for some reason it stopped working when the transmission died. Also also, there is no way to turn the truck off? When it entered the error-state, the dash stayed on and the cabin motor stayed blowing, but the "Start" button wouldn't turn anything off.

I know I'm an odd case, my newest car is from 1997... but I am gobsmacked at just how terrible modern vehicles are. I know customers are dumb and are easily impressed by cheap gadgetry, but why did we have to throw the baby out with the bath water?

So when I hear that GM is going to build their own CarPlay or whatever I can't help but laugh. They can't even build a good fleet pickup truck.

Or just have two Desktop Environments. One for the hoi polloi where the designers can go wild and the bean counters can push MSN "news", and one for Enterprise/Professionals that is more or less "Classic".

I do roughly the same thing, but I use Syncthing. I always had trouble keeping my phone connected reliably enough to run a long running script, and Syncthing works well.

I have a 1TB sdcard in my phone that has a mirror of my 600GB+ library. I use Foobar2000 on my phone because it's easy to just pin my Music folder from the filesystem and navigate through the folders. Just about every other music player out there seems to be designed around importing tags into a library, which I don't like.

We get to design the UI ourselves, but we use MahApps[1] to make WPF look Metro-ish (which sort of pushes you into a certain direction). Our product is for engineers and scientists who tend to be very opinionated. We do our best, but we end up redesigning based on feedback now and then. We don't have many users, so we don't mind bending over backwards for them.

I will say that the constant feedback is how that they love how "modern" our application looks compared to our main competitor. So I try to never ignore the power of that perception, even if it is just a bias.

[1]https://github.com/MahApps

One of my theories is that organizationally and culturally they are still mourning the loss of the Windows Phone.

But I don't touch Windows, I use a mouse & keyboard and a 38 inch/3840x1600 monitor. Why is MS designing Windows based on how some kid is using his thumbs on an iPhone/iPad?

I'm half-joking. I know what you mean, but I think a larger picture is that touch-interfaces have their own problems/solutions that the traditional Desktop doesn't have, and vice versa. I think that the desire to have One-Interface-To-Rule-Them-All leaves a lot of people (and possibilities) behind.

It would be a lot of work, but I think Microsoft needs two entirely separate Desktop Environments. One for touch-based devices, one for Desktop. I'm not holding my breath, we've been debating this since Windows 8. And I'm fully aware that as a middle-aged Windows Application developer that my opinion matters less with every year that passes... but I can't help but feel that maybe we've thrown the baby out with the bathwater.

I would love to see a similar paper by the Windows 11 design team. The 95 group seemed to be very responsive to how users were using or failing to use the OS. I've been on Win11 for a few months, and I'm confused who these changes are for. It could be that the Eternal September means things have to be dumbed down and locked down, catering to the least capable users. Or maybe design decisions are being made at a higher level for inscrutable business reasons. Either way, I'm feeling left behind.

I think there's a tension between Desktop, Laptop and Tablet users that the Windows Team has decided to just ignore. Or they have decided that Desktop users are not important. I spent extra for a widescreen monitor that would give me more vertical pixels. What does Windows think I want to do with these pixels? Use them to display a big, honkin' new Taskbar, apparently. Why did they take away the option to make it thinner? Why is "Every user must have a Big Fat Taskbar" the hill they want to die on? And the modern-ish design language feels like it was designed to waste space and hide information. I have a huge screen, I don't want a 3+ click minimum to get to any setting.

Third-party bloatware, permanent rounded corners for some reason, the take-it-or-I-dare-you-to-switch-to-Linux attitude does not give me warm fuzzy fealings. I would switch to linux, but I make my living with .Net/C#/WPF, so great job Microsoft, I feel trapped rather than valued.

For now, I'm still able to cobble together the tools that make Windows a mostly-pleasant Desktop experience. I use Directory Opus, Open Shell (with ExplorerPatcher for Win11), Everything Search, and some registry edits to do things like bring the normal Context Menu back.

This is all kind of theoretical. Low income people rent from landlords that will not install EV charging infrastructure unless the Federal Government pays for it.

So the correct answer is c) buy a 2005 Honda Civic.

Higher electricity prices at night will hit the poor who will be driving older EVs with degraded batteries. They'll have to charge all night so that they can make your McMuffin at 7am. They will also have to drive from further away because we also can't get a handle on housing prices in this country.

Higher earners live closer to work. In addition to being able to afford the higher nighttime rates, their workplace may also offer charging as a perk. So you see, those with money form their opinions about electricity pricing schemes involving the invisible hand that has already been so kind to them.

I have a evaporative cooler and it works well until the temps hit 100F (which has been a more frequent occurrence in the last few years). My neighborhood seems to be slowly converting to mini-splits.

I think there's still a lot of low hanging fruit to pick to keep structures cool that we just aren't utilizing because of aesthetics/tradition/fashion. Solar reflective paint, retractable sun shades, etc. "Low-Tech" solutions to knock a few degrees off of the structure's internal temp could make a lot of difference.

I use it with uBlock on a $250 "budget" Android phone and it's as fast as Chrome. The last time I remember Firefox being slow on Android was when I was running it on a ZTE phone running FirefoxOS.

The only bugs I find belong to websites, which I don't count against Firefox. I used to have to support IE8... if the site broke it was my responsibility, not the browser.

I order a lot of new-old-stock auto parts from eBay. Best of both worlds while it lasts.

You both can be right with Christmas! (Red & Green)

... and the first class passengers simply exit and fly off in their jetpacks.

It's not a bus, it's a train. Best case you can slow it down for a few people to jump off.

Carter told people to wear a sweater and the American people flipped out and elected a ghoulish union-busting zombie. Twice.

There will be no change until it is forced upon us when the treats stop flowing. And even then you just have to hope that the populace has an accurate story in their heads as to why.

I'm reminded of the 7th Day Adventists.

The thing is, I don't want Android smushed into a less useful, more fustrating to use, form factor. I want a dumbphone that calls, texts, and has a wifi hotpspot.

No battery draining screen, no app store, no navigation... if I need any of that, I can use the hotspot and a tablet/old phone...

The best-case ordinary person is going to store them in "<user name>/My Documents/Security Keys/keys.txt".

The average-case person is going to ignore the generated keys because they are deluged with nonsense every day and can't filter out what is important anymore. Lots of people will get locked out of accounts before they learn that there is now yet another unwanted tech bureaucratic layer to take seriously.

I'm guessing in 5 years it will be normal to set up security questions for 2fa recovery keys. Or we'll add another 2fa for 2fa key recovery. The adding of layers will continue until we are all "secure" and we'll all have to ask for our misplaced keys from the NSA.

It seems his complaints boil down to:

1) You don't have the choice of multiple Desktop Environments (When was the last time this was not true? Litestep?)

2) Windows applications and utilities tend to be GUI based. (I thought that was the whole point of Windows...)

2a) Stuff is stored in the registry (I thought linux people loved digging into and tweaking settings)

2b) Paths are different. (No kidding. But we've known this since DOS vs Unix)

3) Windows sometimes restarts itself (Again, there are settings that help, but Windows has done this for quite some time now.)

4) No apt-get|zypper|etc, must install exe or msi from the internet. Or use the awful Windows Store. (No debate there, the Windows store is awful. But installing the latest Firefox is a lot easier on Windows than Debian Stable. I rather like not having to fight with a central repository of applications.)

Those have been the complaints of linux users for over 20 years. I feel like I'm arguing on Arstechnica circa 1998.

Use the tool that's best for your job. I don't bitch about my socket set being metric when I need SAE. At this point the differences are known and well understood.

I currently make a living in the MS ecosystem, so I'm stuck with Windows for a while. And I truly do love some of the applications I run and I take for granted the hardware support.

While it's sad, it's not unexpected. It's money just lying on the table. Apple and Google do it [Edit: nevermind, they don't technically require it currently], so MS will do it too. Now we have younger generations that only know walled-gardens and locked down devices. The era of client-side general purpose computing looks like it's a blip in history rather than the dominate trend.

I built a AMD TR 1950X system a few years ago, and it should carry me through 2025 just fine. After that I plan on using Debian Stable to just run Windows11 VMs (I'm assuming by then that there will be some solutions to visualize the hardware requirements that Windows says I don't have).

See also Tom Lehrer's Christmas Carol (1959):

Christmas time is here, by golly.

Disapproval would be folly.

Deck the halls with hunks of holly.

Fill the cup and don't say when.

Kill the turkeys, ducks, and chickens,

Mix the punch, drag out the Dickens.

Even though the prospect sickens,

Brother, here we go again.

On Christmas Day you can't get sore.

Your fellow man you must adore.

There's time to rob him all the more

The other three hundred and sixty-four.

Relations, sparing no expense, 'll

Send some useless old utensil

Or a matching pen and pencil.

("Just the thing I need! How nice!")

It doesn't matter how sincere it

Is, nor how heartfelt the spirit,

Sentiment will not endear it.

What's important is the price.

Hark, the Herald Tribune sings,

Advertising wondrous things.

God rest you merry, merchants,

May you make the Yuletide pay.

Angels we have heard on high

Tell us to go out and buy!

So let the raucous sleighbells jingle.

Hail our dear old friend Kriss Kringle,

Driving his reindeer across the sky.

Don't stand underneath when they fly by.

...but you are a review site... The data quality is your MVP.

And yet ExpressVPN is rated 5th on your site. A reputable review site would have ExpressVPN and NordVPN rated 0.0, or even not rated at all and shoved into a separate section, "VPNs to Avoid."

I thought the general consensus was that the only VPN worth a damn was Mullvad?

I'm not interested in a review aggregator. Individual reviews are the problem in the first place. What I want is someone to have a set of criteria and then rate the services individually based on that criteria.

Also, your family of review sites are for VPNs, backpacks and knives. This sounds like a writing prompt.

I've been using MahApps.Metro[1] and MaterialDesignXAML[2]. Those two libraries have made me feel like sticking with WPF until I retire in 5 to 10 years. I'm constantly getting feedback from clients that the applications look so modern. It's been a nice selling point as my niche is rewriting VBA/VB6 engineering software.

[1]https://mahapps.com/

[2]http://materialdesigninxaml.net/

It's fine to have religious beliefs. No one was forcing churches to perform gay marriages, so there was no reason to get the state constitution involved. There was no real reason to support Prop 8 unless your goal was to "lessen the status and dignity of gays and lesbians, and classify their relationships and families as inferior to those of opposite-sex couples."[1]

It was 2008. He was asked to run Mozilla, not Focus on the Family. It was an exceedingly dumb hill to die on.

[1]https://www.scribd.com/document/80680002/10-16696-398-Decisi...