No smart watches, home automation devices, wearable fitness devices, none. I've used some of them at one point or another and in hindsight, while they did bring some benefit (mostly convenience), I found their privacy, financial, environmental costs to be just too high to justify the marginal benefits.
Give me a minimal Linux machine and the vibrant Linux community where we fix each others' issues and I'm a happy engineer and a human being :)
Luddites were right in their own way: their point was not against technology in abstract, but about the destruction it brought to their line of work with no alternative offered.
But, Luddites aside, being enthusiastic for any application of technology is a sign of the idiot consumer or the naive futurist.
The actual technologist knows that some tools are good for X and not for Y use cases, and also knows when to cut down technology (as opposed to add for the sake of it).
(Same way we don't add features to our programs for the sake of it, and many features are put there by demand of the marketing team to get more money out of users, not to give them something better).
The way I would frame it is that the Luddites weren't against the technology and automation, they were against the how the gains from that increased productivity were share - with 100 % going to the owners and none going to the workers.
The reason why people think of them as of "dumb people breaking the machines" is because history is written by the victors.
Then, I blocklisted all Google and Facebook domains on my Pi-Hole… except for YouTube’s content servers so I can use Invidious.
In fact, I might follow your example and add an outbound allowlist to my firewall. Seems like the next logical step.
In my own profession I'm extremely wary of my peers and the services they provide for the simple fact that I know how much and how often things can go wrong, and when I've needed those services myself, it takes me a very long time to vet people.
Not really. And, Not everyone have good intentions.
Risk analysis is part of software development. And, we know where it lands once corrupt forces will take over.
Eventually people get used to it. That's the main selling point, always. We are commoditizing literally everything, it's happening under our nose and we just let it happen. Until finally alternatives come and we need to pay double to have something we used to have 20 years ago (conceptually speaking, not technically) for a normal/cheaper price.
Can we boycot this? Yes, by buying products whose pricing model is old and outdated. And that's typically not the shiny one...
Paraphrasing upton sinclair: It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his stock options vesting depends on his not understanding it.
See also: privacy, right to repair, app stores with 30% markups on in-app transactions, intrusive advertising, the death of journalism, internet connected lightbulbs, bitcoin CO2 emissions, electronic voting, etc.
Look at the European market: manual gears everywhere. Look at the UK, South African and Autraslian market: the car is inversed, with the wheel on the right.
The car market seems way different than the phone market. It's not an information platform, it moves matter. It's not virtual, it's real. It's not luxury like the phone used to be, people life depends on it already. It's not a free market, but heavily regulated.
And a car is very, very expensive. Second hand is a huge thing. You don't replace your car every 2 years. The market for maintenance and service is it's own industry, and the state is deep in it. Not to mention the the huge quantity of material you need just to build one car.
Finally, if a car fails, a BSOD becomes quite literal.
These aren’t really great examples of marketing to a niche. Automatic transmissions cost more money, so manuals are more popular than they are in the US in every country that has less disposable income than the US. The primary reason it’s so easy to get a left hand drive car in Australia is because the UK and Japan drive on the left.
So you argue almost all country prefer manuals? It's not true at least in Japan.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disposable_household_and_per_c...
Automatic is more expensive. If they had the same price tag then most people would buy automatic in Europe too, because it's more convenient.
For the record, I just had a look at the local second-hand market; cars with automatic transmission are cheaper and more available, while the demand for cars with manual transmission is higher.
These are of course my perceptions; maybe they're correct, maybe not, but I do think it's a common way of thinking.
I can still start my engine if the battery is dead.
When I rent cars in Europe, I usually get 50/50 manual/automatic.
Because "screw the fuel economy I shift when I want" is the only way to have a decent driving experience when you have 1L of displacement responsible for 4000lb of vehicle.
>The market for maintenance and service is it's own industry, and the state is deep in it.
It's pretty amazing the stuff the state trainers have to say about what the state thinks about safety emissions. It's a hot take to say the least.
>Finally, if a car fails, a BSOD becomes quite literal.
This is really over blown. Even "the wheel fell off" type mechanical failures result in the vehicle grinding to a halt, usually making it to the side of the road (AI that thinks a pole is an HOV lane notwithstanding)
Farmers equipment is being bricked when they try to repair their multi-$100K machinery. It's the food we all eat that is at risk over some software update or a farmer had to perform necessary repairs by swapping a tractor's ECU.
The classic car community continues to thrive and the aftermarket has plenty of parts available. My daily driver (perhaps not so daily for the past year or so...) doesn't need any software to start and drive, and that's the way I like it. It doesn't have the fuel efficiency or cleanliness of a modern car, but I guess that's just the cost of freedom and comfort for which I don't mind paying.
...and every time someone brings up the "safety" argument, I tell them that motorcycles are still legal.
In the context of current cars classic volves are pretty garbage too. Here is a 90s volvo being absolutely smeared by a renault 10-20 years newer
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-7_H_aZtLl8
See also unsafe at any speed.
I think that video is about the 940 vs the modus from fifth gear. I won't watch the 15 minute video to find a few seconds of crash test buried somewhere. If that is the crash test from Fifth gear: that Volvo 940 had the engine removed. Usually cars who have crashes have engines.
Unsafe at any speed. By Ralph Nader. A guy who wrote a book about the safety of cars while not having a drivers license. The discussion the book started was good, the book itself was not. You cannot really complain about safety features being an option instead of included by default if you don't pick them. And yes, rear wheel drive requires some driving skills to master. If you don't want to learn, get a chauffeur or a car more fit to your skills.
Yes. Plus: I want it to be like a simple microwave that does what I need: heats for a certain amount of time at a certain power level. 2 physical knobs.
Give me back my late grandma microwave. Two knobs. Nothing more.
0. https://www.samsung.com/levant/microwave-ovens/solo/mwf300g-...
Mine does and that is super annoying. Annoying enough that I'm thinking of removing the buzzer or just buying another microwave. I do like the simple dual dial design though.
Also, in an industrial microwave the magnetron itself rotates, so there's no silly rotating plate business. Just put food in, turn the dial, take food out, and clean up is a snap.
For microwaves, my ranking is inversely correlated with price.
Every bmw, Mercedes Benz, and every luxury car does this today. Millions of them on the road.
And it doesn’t brick the car, just anything in the path of the unapproved device (which guess where your radio sits)
But this is to avoid fake parts from being installed in your car.. so catch 22?
For the happy path of interstates in good weather, sure, that's not too hard.
And no, i like driving. I would hate a future where driving would be illegal.
The last 5% of anything is the hardest, and on this particular problem it's even harder.
But it's generally not true when you're talking about advances in technology and market dynamics where there are multiple inflection points. If I told you that the products Apple is planning to build over the next 3 years are going to be harder to build than anything it's built in the previous 45, simply because the last 5% of anything is the hardest, you'd probably say, "That's not what I mean!"
I think it's pretty obvious that building autonomous vehicles that can understand human driving behavior without direct communication is harder than building autonomous vehicles that only have to worry about other autonomous vehicles, with which they can communicate in data-rich ways. The fact that the former needs to happen before the latter because of market dynamics doesn't change the fact that it's a harder technological problem.
Services grafted on to various appliances and consumer articles are going to be the norm unless we push back. Hard.
[ ] a connected microwave
and
[ ] no microwave
Just like almost all newer cars now have some kind of wlan connection to the factory built in.
LMAO! OK, who's gonna tell him about the ads on the radio?
- be turned off by turning off the radio - are not inherent to the operation of the vehicle
How long will it be until there is an ad that makes it confusing how to dismiss it and uses a police siren to get your attention? How long until someone uses the radio to ransomware your car using a remote code execution vulnerability?
When I was in high school, the local radio station played a siren as part of the intro to their traffic update segment. Being a high schooler, I naturally had my volume cranked up pretty high - leading to at least a once-a-week near-swerve on my way to school as the segment began.
Radio is optional as you can switch it off at any time, change the volume, is not imposed by the manufacturer, and you had the option to listen to your own cassetes and later CDs and digital for 50+ years.
So no, you can't switch it off at any time.
And this exception points to the current trend for manufactured control + everything as a platform, so it can be seen as a further argument towards the point we're making here against this trend.
I know it’s what you want but is it preventable? What’s the difference when today there are LED screens across the intersection you are trying to navigate that are intensely bright and displaying moving images? I’d argue that dimmer images in the car would be less distracting. However we appear on track to get both these dismal options. I won’t be buying a car with build in advertising, but given the frequency I change cars, this isn’t really any change.
Could you imagine ransomware on your CAR? While you are driving in it?? No thank you.
And you should not be able to issue OTA without some manual hardware operation, like turning a key somewhere that is far from the wheel.
As long as companies (or people) are allowed/able to make cars without ads in them, then it will be possible.
If the government mandates, or market conditions dictate (due to monopolies or insufficient demand/profit incentive), that ads will be in cars, then it will not be possible, at least for new cars.
I don't care what I have to do to attain that. If that means replacing the radio. I will do it. If you brick my car if I don't have a Manufacturer Approved radio, I will go rebuild some grandfathered antique car.