I have no idea what I'm going to do next time I'm in the market for a car, because every trend I see in the industry is stuff I do not want. And it's not just cars. It's freakin' everything. I don't need a touch screen on my fridge. Like that joke tweet from a decade ago, I feel like it's just a matter of years before all the couches on the market are wifi connected.

I'm just sitting over here hoping there's blowback that keeps some reasonable stuff on the market. Otherwise, I'm gonna have to become some sort of personal expert on keeping things from 1990 or older running.

I had a slight preference for an automatic transmission but ended up looking mostly at manuals since those often lack a few of the "modern" anti-features. I wish I had better advice to give, the experience honestly bummed me out quite a bit.

The dual clutch automatics that are in better cars today are legit pretty amazing tech, but, it just doesn't fit my vibe so to speak. In any case, I'm quite sure my next car is going to be pure electric so it may not even have a transmission, or if it does it'll be a two speed automatic you don't control. Meh.

My current car's getting to about the number of kms that I usually sell at.

With covid making secondhand cars expensive for some weird reason, and all these terrible modern car trends, I just haven't been able to bring myself to "upgrade".

There's nothing compelling me to get a newer car, except for engine wear.

I'm at the point where I'm considering physically disabling the radios in my appliances.

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/09/zipcar-int...

That's a real error Windows 11 gave me this week. I know, never install a Windows version less than two years old. It's been so long I forgot.

Hex error codes, or generic "Something went wrong" errors are the norm at Microsoft.

http://blog.tyrannyofthemouse.com/2008/07/setting-sync-strai...

Also, whenever the power goes out, I always express thanks that the toilets still work, and they didn't introduce some npm-style pointless dependency.

Can't have those upstarts worming their way into elite circles now, can we? I thought you'd understand. Once a poor, always a poor, you know.

There's a rather depressing trend of this sort of stuff lately, and a lot of it is coming from people who claim they care about lower income classes - but then conveniently just so happen to do things that are the opposite of what they claim to support. When called on it, you mutter "unintended consequences," "nobody could have foreseen that," and shut the mic off for anyone who predicted exactly what just happened.

All that is needed is for the advertising to be required to make it clear which features require an ongoing subscription.

I don't see the problem for the used car market - if anything, the fact some features won't be functional without a subscription ought to depress the used price of the car. If you take it to an extreme - say, a car that requires a daily payment to run at all - you'd find that the market price of such a vehicle wouldn't be far above the scrap value.

And it probably applies even more broadly as things that were historically just hardware have an increasingly large software component.

I recently bought a new car. All of the things on the window sticker that required a subscription said "(subscription required)". Is this not enough?

Or are you talking about things like TV/Internet/Radio advertising?

I'm planning to drive mine until it dies, and suspect that salty winter Midwestern roads will render it unsafe/broken before anything else does.

Luckily no required monthly services. I have no interest in a car with that.

For me, even if I had to pop the hood of the car I need a mechanic, that is probably a couple of hundred to start with, and add anything he says I need to buy whether I actually I need to or not, it can quickly add up.

It is like me saying why pay for managed email or website hosting, when I can run those myself for much cheaper, even if my time was not a factor, I cannot compare those costs I would have to costs for someone without the skills needed .