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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: June 21st, 2023

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  • Only touch screen controls for important controls are a safety hazard, and the upcoming safety standards in the EU will withhold the top ratings because of this: https://etsc.eu/cars-will-need-buttons-not-just-touchscreens-to-get-a-5-star-euro-ncap-safety-rating/

    Controls for things like the radio or cruise control are fine on the wheel as buttons. Indicators absolutely aren’t, and are the example I used for good reason. Honestly I have no words if you cant see that they are an actual safety hazard on something like a roundabout, particularly one you would navigate at speed.

    Simple left or right turns at say traffic lights or other junction aren’t the problem, trying to activate them while the wheel can be at some random orientation is difficult, so you end up not bothering.

    Not signalling when at a round about is an offense in the UK. Its rarely enforced due to lack of traffic police, but its enough that its an actual offense that the car should be designed not to make it considerably harder to use them. In the event of an accident serious enough for the police to get involved if you didn’t indicate then that’s going to count against you.


  • Which ones aren’t? Also deciding to copy dumb ideas from elsewhere is even more dumb as someone else did the alpha testing for you, showed it was dumb, and you still copied it.

    I forgot the yoke instead of a wheel. That’s another Elon special.

    Buttons for indicators I know are on modern ferraris, I can’t afford one but I still wouldn’t buy one because of them. Try using buttons on a steering wheel when doing a right at a roundabout, just the dumbest shit.


  • BYD is eating everyone’s lunch at the bottom not just Tesla.

    Tesla could have prospered by sticking to the mid range but their build quality is appalling even for a lower mid car.

    Couple that with some truly dumb design ideas from Elon (no lidar, no physical buttons, indicators as buttons, stupidly high repair bills due to design choices) and some even more stupid personal behaviors from him and he has just cut the legs out of his market.

    EV buyers who are spending more money care about this kind of thing, budget buyers it is mostly about price.



  • Seems to be missing stenotype keyboards like this one: https://stenokeyboards.com/

    They have to be the fastest way to type if you can learn the chords properly, around 200wpm.

    I have always wanted to move to a steno keyboard but not had the focus to put in a an hour a day for a month or so to get good at it.

    I do use a lot of 30 and 40% keyboards and use chording on those but not for actual letters, just stuff like backspace or enter. Smallest I can actually do work with is the Pain 27 thanks to using home row mods and chords but that step to remembering all the letters as well just needs a lot of extra practice.





  • I watched this today and really enjoyed it.

    I’m not going to pretend it’s the greatest or deepest sci-fi film ever made, but it’s fun if you are into dystopian; it’s almost Gilliam esc. but it doesn’t quite embrace it fully.

    The Messianic cult leader is a little on the nose and as 2D as his realife inspiration is.

    It doesn’t explore all the possibilities or offer real depth to what is a complex topic, but as a soft sci-fi story it’s a fun and sometimes funny way to pass a couple of hours.


  • Which EVs have front drum brakes?

    Regen comes in all different strengths depending on what the automaker decides is appropriate for that car and the budget assigned to it. Cheap EVs like this one you can normally turn it off or on, and may be get a one pedal mode.

    Something like the latest Taycan is pretty brutal with it set to its highest level when traveling at speed and that’s just lifting off the throttle. I feather the throttle when using regen to adjust the level it gives me, otherwise it would be an awful experience for my passengers, bit like some one stamping on the brake every time you want to slow down. Using the throttle to adjust the regen is no different to using the brake pedal progressively once you get used to it.

    Regen is there to supplement the brakes not replace them for emergency or other unplanned stops. Once you doing an emergency stop you are at the mercy of the ABS system anyway, as that will limit your stopping distance based on the actual grip you have at that moment in time.



  • If I am relying on it, I buy from brands I trust. No brand is going to be perfect but some are clearly going to be lower risk than randoms from aliexpress. Its as much to do with reliability, achievable duty cycle (rather than promises of duty cycle), support (especially how easy it is to get a replacement under warranty), how long they will push firmware updates for, than just security trustworthiness.

    Pretty much any device is going to have a vulnerability or potential for a back door at some point but the company being transparent about the issue and fixing it promptly is worth a lot. Its the same reason I would have a Google or (premium) Samsung phone, I trust that they will support the phone for the time period they say they will, something I would not do with say Oneplus based on my past experience of them.

    I buy electronics from aliexpress all the time, but nothing I rely on day to day like a router, simply because I am shit out of luck getting it replaced quickly if it goes wrong, even if I want to get a replacement. I have a cheap mikrotik hex I keep as a backup of a backup (my APs are my primary backup for my router), and this is fine for a week or so but I would not want to be out a month or more with it.

    I guess you could plan in proper redundancy as I have, or may be you can afford a an outage, so may be you don’t need that. If I cannot work, I cannot earn, so I have backup internet, routers, wifi etc. planned into my install.

    I think what someone else wrote about defense is depth is the real key here. I have my network divided into separate VLANs that are firewalled off from each other, so one for IoT, one for cameras, one for my TVs and other screens, one for my devices. This means if something is compromised they still have to get across the network and it simplifies my firewall rules as I am applying them to subnets rather than individual devices in a self maintained group. It makes it easier to say block external DNS queries and redirect to my pihole for my IoT and TVs but not my personal devices as I would have a good reason to go external.

    May be you do not have a lot of devices, I realize I am nearer the upper end of a home network with over 50 active devices and it will be over kill if you only have a laptop and a phone on your network.




  • Yeah we gave up and paid for live sports streaming once it came in 4k HDR for sports. It isn’t cheap but no real alternative that doesn’t have risk and unreliability associated around it. Anything that isn’t live there are plenty of reliable, high quality ways to obtain things for free, but live, I need it to work and not look like a potato on a large screen if I have people round. I did try that method for a few years, its ok on a phone or laptop with just me as I will put up with the problems but absolutely not on a big screen.




  • Alien franchise that we’ve never been before, and to discover things that you’ve never seen before.

    this just smacks of writing a film by devising a bunch of action sequences and reveals then smushing it together hoping that the big shinny sequences distract from the plot and characters being wafer thin cardboard cutouts like last time.

    Its terrible writing to work like this, cobbling together a script around predefined points. Its typical of film writing by committee where everybody on the committee has to add in their idea they came up with independent of the script to demonstrate their value.



  • Tesla have a CVT gearbox? Like actual gearbox that ice cars have? First, I’ve ever heard of them having a proper gearbox. First production ev I heard of with an actual gearbox is the taycan, that has a two speed, fully auto gearbox. Nit aware of any others with an actual gearbox.

    You know how regen works right? And that the brake pedal on modern evs don’t engage regen as fully as they are engaging the brakes as that’s what that pedal is for. Engage the brakes and you aren’t going to get anywhere near the energy back from regen as a ton of energy is being wasted by friction and thus heat of the brake pads.

    I’ve owned a lexis 400h, i like the idea of them, but cvts are garbage to drive, even in hybrids. They also completely unsuitable for evs due to their wide torque band, they work best for ice engines have have narrow torque bands as the entire function of a cvt is to adjust to a narrow rev range to optimise that narrow torque band.