But people still understand that they need to put gas in their car to make their car go, and if they run out of gas, their car can not go. We don't have to know what gas is, but it is still a quantity of something.

But our concept of files and data is becoming so abstracted that we do not even know where our data is anymore, how much we need, or how long it takes to transfer it. But until we have much more bandwidth and storage, there will be problems.

Imagine a world where we tried optimizing our cars interfaces so much that we removed gas gauges, and just had reminders that told people that they had to go to a gas station. And as a result people would frequently run out of gas, or be shocked by how much gas costs. But gas gauges were considered a power-user feature, and everyone was convinced that users would just never be able to understand them.

Nowadays, carburetors are gone, replaced by fuel injection, which controls the fuel mix so tightly that sparkplugs rarely get dirty. And the whole assemblage is so tightly tuned that if you need service, you take it to a dealer and let a professional deal with it.

The world you're asking us to imagine already exists, you've just forgotten enough of the old world that you only remember the gas gauges.

Even in cars, you still need to clean/change your air filter an change your oil and oil filter, even if you pay someone else to do it. There's still coolant, that needs additives (e.g. antifreeze), and windshield wiper fluid that needs to be checked and filled.

I don't think it's asking people too much to have a basic concept, maybe 1 or 2 why's deep, of how the devices they own and use function.

But, there is a very simple and direct relationship between fuel in, movement out. And most new cars can also estimate how far they can go on how much fuel.

I think that this is actually the perfect relationship, and any more optimization at this point would be harmful.

There's this phenomena where anything invented before you turn 10 is just part of the natural order of things, anything between 10 and 30 is a great new opportunity that you might be able to make a career in, and anything invented over 30 is a threat to the natural order of things that must be resisted at all costs. I've put a lot of work into maintaining the ability to see change as opportunity past the age of 30. I suspect that most of this site is just hitting that demographic where new things become offenses against the natural order of things, though, and that's why we see such resistance to things like self-driving cars and cryptocurrency.

I really think that you're being overly optimistic about this. Kind of like people were about the cloud 10 years ago. There is going to be all sorts of new bullshit that you can't even imagine. I bet there will be surge blackout periods, where only rich people can travel. This will only trend worse over time, to the point where poor people are less mobile than they were when they could own cars. And you might have to subscribe to different car fleets, and will get screwed a bunch of different ways that way too.

> There's this phenomena where anything invented before you turn 10 is just part of the natural order of things, anything between 10 and 30 is a great new opportunity that you might be able to make a career in, and anything invented over 30 is a threat to the natural order of things that must be resisted at all costs. I've put a lot of work into maintaining the ability to see change as opportunity past the age of 30. I suspect that most of this site is just hitting that demographic where new things become offenses against the natural order of things, though, and that's why we see such resistance to things like self-driving cars and cryptocurrency.

I try not to be a luddite. But I think you are discounting how people with more wisdom can see how things have degraded over time. Obviously those in power have a vested interest in you believing that things are only getting better. Phone manufacturers don't want to remind you of the days of headphone jacks and user swappable batteries.

As a 26 year old working in the tech industry, I see lots of newer tech around that I'd say is threatening, and I have for several years now. Though I suppose I'm probably in the minority. :)

The trend of technology today seems to be towards more centralized ownership of everything we interact with, when the platform providers can get away with it.

20 years ago you would buy a book and it was yours. You obviously still can now, but if you buy an ebook from Amazon, they can take it back from you. (Or if you poorly chose to buy an ebook from Microsoft... well, they all stopped working recently.)

IBM, though never a bastion of openness, had a very detailed repair manual[0] for the original IBM PC. Sure, modern machines don't have nearly as many user-serviceable parts, but in many cases today you'll find legal and technological barriers to repair in place of even the most basic of repair manuals.

It's a trend that's hard to fight, and opting out means sacrificing a lot of convenience, but I try all the same.

[0] http://classiccomputers.info/down/IBM/IBM_PC_5150/IBM_5150_H...

> I've put a lot of work into maintaining the ability to see change as opportunity past the age of 30

I do agree with you mostly and most younger coworkers don't seem to want or care about hacker news. I remember when I was in college and found this website, it was the greatest discovery ever and there was so much interesting content. But (purely anecdotally) the viewership seems to be limited to that demographic.

From the opposite perspective of a 20 something, my more technical friends with a genuine interest (the type to build their own PC/NAS clusters, Arch Linux/Gentoo users) are the ones I know that do browse HN regularly. We're still around but I also can see most people would rather browse Reddit.

I'd like to think the conversations here have more substance than on other sites and that is still a major draw.

> > I've put a lot of work into maintaining the ability to see change as opportunity past the age of 30

There're a few big skills, both of which are really about mindset and worldview than anything else:

One is to recognize and embrace impermanence, and to do so as a way of inoculating yourself against sunk-cost fallacies. So for example, I put in a lot of work to learn Python, Django, and web development when I got out of college, and then to learn C++, scalability, and optimization while I was at Google. When I left Google, I had the idea to do an API-compatible reimplementation of Django where all the framework bits are written in tightly-optimized C++. But as I started evaluating that idea, I looked around and realized a.) Django was no longer the preferred way to build webapps b.) The web, arguably, was no longer the preferred technology to build apps at all and c.) users of Django either didn't care about performance or they'd gotten to be big sites that can afford massive AWS bills. Sucks to be me. Better to recognize that early before sinking a lot of work into that project. I've still got those skills (though both Django and C++ are moving targets), and they came in handy when testing and rejecting the following couple startup ideas.

A second skill is to view learning as rewarding for its own sake, and something that you do lifelong rather than just when you're young so you can get a job. I'd internalized this pretty well as a kid.

A third is to pay attention to people around you, and when they're doing something seemingly stupid, ask yourself why they're doing it rather than immediately judging. And a fourth is to pay careful attention to things that disconfirm your previous hypotheses.

As an example of both of these - when I first heard about Bitcoin in 2013, I read the whitepaper, mentally filed it under "Distributed database; might spawn 2-3 interesting companies but won't go anywhere else", and then forgot about it for a few years. When the bubble hit in 2017, I was like "Pyramid scheme. Actually double pyramid scheme, which is kinda clever. Wait for it to burst."

But then from that assessment comes a hypothesis - when I looked in detail at the ICOs being funded, I should expect to see 100% scams. I only saw roughly 35% scams, plus another 50% that were well-meaning teams who were in well over their head. With over 6000 ICOs being done, that's hundreds of projects that might actually have a chance of being something real. So while the vast majority of crypto projects are scams, there's still something very interesting going on, and perhaps its younger boosters may be onto something.

I haven't worked on cars old enough where this would be an issue, but, as far as I know, all you need to do is disconnect the ignition coil before removing the spark plug.

60s tech was rotor and coil. Modern tech needs running ECU.

Also AFAIK the spark is mostly just painful and not particularly dangerous (memory of spark plug lead with cracked insulation). I have also had a shock from a charged CRT tube (youch!), and the occasional 240V mains shock (careless me).

But spark plugs and air filters are still a thing.

I've owned my car for 10 years now, and the total number of times I have had to change my oil, air filter, spark plug, or any other part of the engine is zero. My A1 service indicator comes on and I take it to the dealer, where they relieve me of a large amount of money and give me a car back that drives okay and has no maintenance lights on. I did have to change a tire once and jumpstart a car once, but that's about the extent of car maintenance I've needed.

If you genuinely enjoy the process, and it is cathartic and serves the function free time and leisure needs to in your life, then fantastic. But otherwise it's a false economy.

I have a 30 year old car and there are one or two specialists in my city that people recommend. One of them told me I needed an engine rebuild due to an oil leak, when it was actually a specific seal that was relatively minor to replace, and the other correctly diagnosed the problem, and apparently fixed it for a reasonable price, but insisted the oil I was using was too thin, and when I deferred to their expertise, they put an even thinner oil in (I found out later) and lied about it...maybe because they thought I would come back with more leaks...so the only local mechanic I currently trust is a dealer that will work on classic cars and they charge a ridiculous amount.

So, comparing cost and expertise and tools is kind of missing the point. I would always take a new or newish car to a dealer. I have no idea how to find a decent independent mechanic, and I've tried quite a few over the years. If it takes me several times as long to do something, it doesn't really matter if that's my only practical way to get it done right.

It really depends on what service you plan to do. If you're going to do things like changing bulbs, air and cabin filter, wipers, and the battery, you could get along with just a conventional socket set if that.

Oil changes will require a oil filter wrench/cap, a torque wrench, and a funnel. And those tools can also be used for transmission fluid changes.

Once you get to spark plugs and brakes, you'll need more tools, but those services aren't frequent enough to really warrant buying the tools as opposed to renting them.

> takes a bunch of time

I typically will change the oil on my vehicles myself and a oil and filter change takes me about 45 minutes (including the time to drive to the auto parts store to recycle the old oil). The last time I took my car somewhere for an oil change, I had to drive to 5 different places and finally had to settle on one that made me wait about 3 hours before they could get to it and change the oil.

There are certain services or repairs that will take time (brakes, suspension, exhaust) where I would just as well take it to a mechanic to do it for me, but there are plenty of others that don't take much time at all and cost significantly less in terms of saving on labor and your time for setting up an appointment, taking the car there, getting alternative transportation or waiting, getting the car back, etc.

The air filter and cabin filter replacement come to mind (and, at least in my Honda Odyssey, can both be replaced in about 10 minutes give or take).

In fact, the last shop that worked on my car did exactly that and I had to buy a breaker bar and stand on it in order to loosen the lug bolts on my car before I retorqued them to the correct value.

Having to swap out tires is pretty unusual in normal driving these days and it’s not like you carry spares of everything else that could break and strand you in a car. So I sort of understand it even if I don’t really like it.

I also have AAA, and don't intend to change a tire if I don't have to, but AAA will not provide you with a suitable tire and wheel. And I don't see why someone would want to arrange for their life to depend on their cell phone working if they drive anywhere out of town.

In fact, right now, I have run-flat tires, a spare, and AAA.

Or, simpler, wireless powering in most parking spaces so for most people never even having to think about power

Or, robot chargers. Put a QR code on your plug, maybe in infrared so it's invisible, and some simple device and find and start charging your car anytime you park it.

Anyway, as an old computer literate person the idea of not understanding files scares me but if people are getting by without them then it's just probably me being out of date.

I think that is a bit optimistic though. It would be far more obtuse than that. You'll have to subscribe to one of a several charging services, that sort of work with each other most of the time. And you won't be able to inspect for yourself how much voltage your car has left without jailbreaking it.

Oddly enough the iPhone doesn't do this, it will happily tell you how many GB you have left when what the user really wants to know is "How many more songs or photos can I store?".

The first few years of bluetooth headphones would just give you an alarm when they were at 5% capacity, and that was it. And in general, there is very little feedback given about what your storage is doing and where it is located. Just a simple question of "where are your photos" can be hard for most people to answer now. "Uhh, the 'eye cloud', but also on my phone. I mean some of them are and some aren't."

And that is why people are constantly losing their data now. I have seen plenty of people hold onto their old phones because they have data that they don't know how to get off, and it is just easier to hold onto the entire device.

That depends on how large they are, and that can vary widely, which is why abstracting away files (or more specifically, file size) is such a bad idea.

I'd argue the problems will only start when there's enough bandwidth. That's when companies will be able to fully transparently store everything remotely and that's when people will really get screwed. Because if Google locks down your access for TOS "violation" then even having a needy friend will not bring back fully remote data.

Of course the idiot light has achieved an apotheosis in the era of computerized cars, where the car's onboard computer signals a problem and illuminates the "CHECK ENGINE" light. Of course, what that means is that you need to take the car in to the garage and have a Certified, Licensed Professional Mechanic attach a doohickey to the engine computer to tell him what the problem is, so he can tell you.

My father is an old-time car geek. This shit drives him up the wall.

You can buy a OBD-II scanner for around $30 and get that information yourself without having to take it to a mechanic. That should for work for any car built since 1996.

>> But our concept of files and data is becoming so abstracted that we do not even know where our data is anymore, how much we need, or how long it takes to transfer it. But until we have much more bandwidth and storage, there will be problems.

I think you're mixing up analogies at different levels of abstraction... yes people know they need to fuel their vehicles, and they know they need to plug their computers into power or charge the battery, and connect to the Internet. People probably don't know much about fuel injection, and plenty of them probably don't know what a spark plug is. It's possible that they also don't really need to know what the underlying storage abstraction for data is.