There's this whiff of snooty superiority all over the word "quietly" that I just don't like. I can't quite put my finger on it but it's like I'm being talked down to.
I drive a 13+ year old car with retro-fitted android navigation from a now bankrupt Chinese manufacturer so no updates in the last 4 years at least. I have really gone to great lengths to leave the bare minimum (given that I self-host everything except for maps). It easily took a day of fiddling about with the navigation and OpenWRT alone and I don't know anyone else that has gone as far as I have. In fact, just about everyone I know doesn't care. If I had to guess, I'd say the answer is a firm "no".
Probably not large enough to pay for all the engineering needed to pull it off. Some of us would be interested, but it's no longer easy. There are too many useful things from connectivity too. My car for example shows me the current speed limit on all roads and when the speed limits change it gets updated because it has connectivity. That is a useful feature but it comes with all kinds of other things I don't want and so just stripping out is a complex work of stripping out just the parts I don't want while keeping the good.
If you'd asked in 2010, well yeah, just pull the fuse for the modem and done. since all it does is a little bit of connectivity and there's nothing else useful from the, from that, I wouldn't care. But now connectivity has useful parts, that I don't want to lose.
Both approaches are fraught with issues. Vision based systems fail to read sings properly, don't know about default limits, struggle with or don't evaluate conditional speed limits, etc. And map/data based systems can struggle with locational accuracy, temporary changes to speed, conditional speed limits, etc.
For example, my car's vision based system always shows the limit on a school zone speed limit sign, even when it is not in effect. It also fails to read speed limits which are posted on signs it wasn't trained on, like digital signage.
And map based systems e.g. smartphone maps are often wrong in work zones, and areas with variable speed limits.
Its surprisingly difficult or impossible depending on how they set it up. I had an Chevy with firdt-gen OnStar, disabling it was as simple as unplugging the OnStar box under a seat.
In a first gen Chevy Volt that's not possible, the computer and screens are so integrated with OnStar that physically disconnecting it leaves the car effectively useless.
I don't know, but there is a small market for something similar: taking older cars (often oldtimers) and building in a new electric motor. My guess is that those cars will have little privacy problems.
I would love new open source cars by the way, that would be really cool
As long as we have more compute than the people who want to manipulate us differently, and an ability to get sufficient attention (advertising, influencers, etc.) while they own the communication channels.
"The startup wants to push how its Claude AI can direct robotic units to carry out science experiments with limited human intervention..."
Why? Why??? Isn't this one area you'd want extreme human intervention? I'm not against trying out new research tools. I just wonder why you'd want to allow the tools to work autonomously?
To find cures for diseases faster, find new ways to produce useful chemicals, find ways to make crops resilient against changing climate, etc
> Isn't this one area you'd want extreme human intervention?
No? There are an essentially infinite number of potentially useful experiments that could be run that have no risk or downside. It's not like they're doing this in a BSL-4 lab mutating smallpox.
If I had handwritten this, there would be at least one (likely lots more) errors in writing crossed out mingled in with the text. That there isn't makes me wonder why such a lengthy sample contains seemingly zero handwriting errors. Is that plausible?
EDIT: After seeing the comments, I am realizing how little I ever rewrote my own writings, an admitted weakness of mine. It was the blindspot behind which I made my reply!
You can handwrite more than just your first draft. It was common before the proliferation of computers to handwrite early drafts in pencil, and then handwrite the final manuscript with ink.
> It was common before the proliferation of computers
We always had to write our first couple drafts in pencil/handwritten in school. Eventually we moved to typing the final draft by the time I hit high school but exams were always handwritten still and now I feel quite "old" at 38 knowing that there are adults on this very forum that probably did not have to handwrite much beyond elementary school.
In grammar school in the 90s, I used to write in pencil, then retrace in pen when done, erasing the underlying pencil after the ink dried. I'd proofread the pencil version, find missing words, and you could rewrite to balance out space
I think that was pretty common amongst "keeners" doing writing assignments.
In what ways does it look that way, if you recall?
I hear this semi-often, but I don't really get it. The base UI of Discord is pretty normal / looks just like every other chat app out there. Is it the ads for nitro and stuff like that were the issue?
I think the base UI of Discord is fine, but having used it for almost a decade at this point, the UI has gotten worse. Besides the ads you've mentioned, they've added a lot more clutter (random icons, rarely used features, hidden menus, etc.). When I look at screenshots from 2019, I weep.
There's a bit of clutter for sure, but I don't find it too objectionable. As the sibling comment mentioned, the super reacts are really annoying, and so are the ads, but it's overall alright.
Most of the clutter I would complain about comes more down to Discord making it really easy to bloat a server (and a cultural expectation to do so).
I’m in more than one Discord that has more channels than routine users. Like there are 4 people that use it on at least a weekly basis but there’s a meme channel, a pet photos channel, a news channel, yada yada. Managing notifications is a lost cause because the server owner redecorates the server every other week into new channels and what not.
Profiles have gotten weirdly wild, to sell Nitro stuff. Statuses, emojis for the status, now flairs from a server, profile pictures, etc.
Constant notifications for junk. Nitro is on sale, some game I don’t play has a quest, etc.
It’s fine, but it feels like Discord wants to be more than a carrier for voice and chat and I really just want them to do that. I don’t need “Facebook with VoIP”
> I’m in more than one Discord that has more channels than routine users.
Likewise, and I find it quite annoying too, but I don't think it's really Discord's fault. They default to one text and one voice channel, after all. The ability to add new channels easily is a good thing, but people do go a bit crazy with it.
> Statuses, emojis for the status, now flairs from a server, profile pictures, etc.
The server flairs are kind of odd, but aren't the rest of those pretty bog- standard features for a messaging app?
I do agree the notifications are annoying, though. At the same time I get it, they do need to make money somehow.
Animated server logos, colorful /gradient and tonally-varied usernames & avatars, the super emoji or whatever they're called, etc all feel like they're pushing more towards Twitch chat than anything else. Which as another commenter remarked, is essentially aligned with their original and biggest target demographic.
> Animated server logos, colorful /gradient and tonally-varied usernames & avatars
Fair, but all of these things are user controlled. If you're using Discord for work or something, presumably you don't have a bright flashing animated server icon and avatar, your server doesn't have gradient roles, etc.
The super emoji are spot on though, those are fun but were really dumb from the get-go, and waste space in the reaction UI.
Discord is honestly not great for work, but there are lots of other tools. I think they should focus on what’s made them successful, which is gamers and communities.
They should realize charging people $100/year per person for Nitro and $500/year for server boosts means that they don’t want to be advertised to and have their data stolen.
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