Something that you are required to do by every single venue that offers a service in order to participate is not really what I would call opt in. Yes, you can opt out by never going to a nightclub, but that seems different.
You can’t really call something opt-in if opting out means that you are barred from participating in an entire class of activity unrelated to what you opted out of.
As a counter example, the TSA in the US is now starting to use facial scans for ID, but you can opt out by telling the agent. It does not mean that you cannot go flying, it means that they use a human to identify you without the use of computerized facial scans.
I mean, the TSA already scans your passport/id, and knows every other detail about your trip. Is a facial scan really adding much more? Last time I entered the country they used facial recognition and I didn't even need to show my passport. So they obviously already had the data to recognize me from my passport photo. And this was over two years ago.
Do you really not see the difference between having to pay for a service and having to upload biometric data in a centralized database under someone else’s control?
For one, I don’t have to buy a ticket. Many theaters participate in programs where you can get a ticket as a reward for other activities (credit card points, eg). The ticket sale is determined by the theater, and is not part of a government supported scheme to prevent some people from ever seeing a movie in any theater, ever.
Finally, the sale of a ticket is necessary for the operation of many movie theaters. It is intrinsic to the business model. The nightclub could operate the service, and even work with ban lists without the centralized biometric database.
One of you is pointing out that cars are a necessity for some in the current reality. The other is pointing out that we could change that reality like other places have.
You are both right.
I am very against the continuation of car primacy in urban design, but I live in a place where that is the current reality, so for all practical reasons I need at least one car in my household. I advocate for the changes so that isn't true and see that it is possible to live otherwise, but it isn't reality right now, so I own a car. Me owning a car isn't to "rationalize [my] bad choices and poor capacity for civic organization." I do it because the housing that I can afford, in the country that I live in is in an area where that is necessary. In the meantime I advocate for better transit and other options, but I am not omnipotent, and even those with tremendous amounts of power cannot make these changes happen quickly given the 75+ years of infrastructure and urban design.
You are tremendously mean-spirited and un-empathetic in proclaiming that those that don't agree with you are 'lazy' and 'not willing to sacrifice their own convenience for some communal benefit'.
Try understanding where people are coming from. Many believe as strongly as you do, and can provide just as many backing youtube videos, that cars are an unalloyed good. If you come at them this aggressively telling them that the places they live are just plain wrong, you will not convince them of anything.
As an aside, the Dutch aren't nearly as car free as you are presenting. They are in the top 25% for per capita car ownership worldwide, and have higher rates of car ownership rates than Denmark, Sweden, Greece and Croatia which isn't even all of the countries in Europe with lower rates of car ownership. Hell, they have more than double the rate of car ownership of Saudi Arabia, a country that subsidizes fuel prices to encourage car use.
But I'm also pointing to the fact that this is easier to change in some places than others. It doesn't just take will to change. It takes more will in some places than others. Because you have to fight against the layout and built up infrastructure of the area.
Conversely, the other person is pointing to how friendly Amsterdam is to not having a car. The fact that lots of people there have cars doesn't take away from the fact that it is easy to live there and not have a car. Just like the number of TVs in America don't take away from the fact that it is easy to live in America and not own a TV. (Case in point. I live in America, and haven't owned a TV in 20 years.)
This means that you at least consider a possibility of living without a car. You at least understand that there is nothing about the US making it impossible to work towards car independence. I have no reason to argue with you or people who share this sentiment.
I do get upset at the people who think that this situation is static and that it can not be changed, ever. But I get more upset at the people who complain at the North American reality only when they are directly suffering from it, and act like when the systemic problem doesn't exist anymore just because they manage to "solve the issue" for themselves.
> As an aside, the Dutch aren't nearly as car free as you are presenting.
They have high rates of car ownership, but they are not car dependent. Even the people who have to drive for work use cars only for longer distance trips, and walk/bike/use public transport for shorter ones. In Greece, much like in the US, people assume that you have to have a car to do anything.
The Dutch have a lot of cars because they are rich.
The ugly truth (for public transit zealots like the parent poster) is that there is no amount of investment that can make a person with the ability to afford a car willingly choose public transit, unless they live and work in a place with extremely high population density.
They keep ranting about how cars are a luxury, and they are right, but basically want to change human nature to suit their preferences IMO.
I’m wealthy and live in the Netherlands. I find cars kind of annoying. I bike and take the train for 99% of trips, and use occasional hourly car rental otherwise.
I know plenty of people who choose transit even though they own a car.
My in-laws live in Rotterdam, and cycle and transit for most day to day stuff. But they also own and use a car, when appropriate (they do have big box stores and suburbs in - gasp - bike crazy Rotterdam).
People will use transit if it is pleasant, fast, and affordable. When I lived in Vancouver, you would be nuts to commute by car if there was a train line near you. It was cheaper and faster to take transit, especially during the working hours.
But as you stated, most people who can afford a car do end up with one, even if it isn't their primary mode of transit.
I don't think so, but partially because the person I responded to is off the charts in the anti-car direction.
> I know plenty of people who choose transit even though they own a car.
Most people choose what makes sense for them, myself included. I drive most of the time, but have no problem taking public transit when it makes sense.
> People will use transit if it is pleasant, fast, and affordable. When I lived in Vancouver, you would be nuts to commute by car if there was a train line near you. It was cheaper and faster to take transit, especially during the working hours.
The issue is that there are very few places where it's cheaper and faster to take public transit.
The solutions most transit advocates come up with involve kneecapping car usage so public transit can compete or insisting people live at density levels most find unacceptable, neither of which are practically feasible.
> there is no amount of investment that can make a person with the ability to afford a car willingly choose public transit
But also:
> Most people choose what makes sense for them, myself included. I drive most of the time, but have no problem taking public transit when it makes sense.
I apologize for taking your word as literal. The first quote is what I was really responding to.
There is a middle ground, it just sounded like you didn't know it existed.
Dutch person with a car here: Like many people, I own one because they can be very useful to transport heavy stuff, and there are several low density areas where it's a pain to get by train, like visiting family in nearby Belgium. But for most of my trips biking or public transport is just quicker. I drive maybe twice a month.
The battery allows you to bring a weight-saving device; your phone.
It can - within reason - replace maps, guidebooks, emergency satellite beacons, a camera, a secondary flashlight, etc.
You can, if you want, go out with your pockets stuffed with high calorie emergency rations and no pack at all. The weight savings will be tremendous, but at a certain point the tradeoff for weight over comfort and utility becomes too silly.
The "American desert" can refer to an absolutely huge portion of the continent, and many, many different ecosystems. Its a big enough area of land that it is like saying I like hiking in Europe.
I'm partial to Utah's canyonlands, and a lot of the adjacent pinyon forest (still desert) in Northern New Mexico and Colorado, but that's just where I grew up. The Saguaro forests in southern Arizona are also amazing.
If you've never been to the desert in America, a good plan would be to fly to LA, and drive to the Grand Canyon. You will pass through a number of very different desert ecosystems.
The tagline for the sleeping pad category is "Find the best backpacking and camping sleeping pads for comfort and support. NEMO sleeping pads are lightweight, packable, and built for your next adventure." Comfort is definitely a concern.
The pads do list their insulation value, but so do non-ultralight sleeping pads.
The reason is that the insulation value is incredibly important to comfort. From experience, a sleeping mat that is thick, but with bad insulation will lead to a way less comfortable night than a thin one with good insulation.
Sleeping bags don't provide much insulation on the bottom because they are compressed under your body (the insulation from a sleeping bag typically comes from air trapped in the fill). Any insulation between you and the cold ground has to come from the sleeping mat. That's why it is important to get one that is cushioned enough for your body as well as being insulated enough.
R values aren't an ultralight camper thing, they are an informed camper thing.
This is my problem with a lot of literature and movies. The Nazis are always unfathomably evil, when in reality, most of them were just people doing their jobs.
I read Eichmann in Jerusalem recently, and the reality is that what Eichmann did was incredibly mundane for the most part. There is someone in ICE right now doing exactly what Eichmann was doing: Coordinating roundups of people made "illegal" by law, and then transporting them to foreign camps and foreign countries. The final solution came very far into the whole sequence of events, and Eichmann presents that he didn't like it at all, but really had no choice in the matter if he didn't want to be made a pariah or face severe personal repercussions. I would be willing to bet there are any number of people inside the US federal government who are thinking exactly that line of thought.
>Eichmann presents that he didn't like it at all, but really had no choice in the matter if he didn't want to be made a pariah or face severe personal repercussions
Which by the way was largely false, for both low and high-ranking Nazis. It was usually possible to slowly or even quickly distance yourself from directly committing atrocities (or coordinating them) and get fobbed off into some low-key administrative position without fearing anything like serious punishment. The Nazi machinery was harsh towards openly voiced disobedience and discontent, but surprisingly tolerant of a "weak stomach" or a lack of what their fanatics called moral fiber (being able to protect the race by butchering innocent others).
Christopher Browning in his book about Reserve Battalion 101, mentioned in the comment right above yours, emphasizes this point about a lack of severe punishment for not participating, repeatedly about the members of that death squad.
The ugly black magic of the Nazi system was specifically that it often made previously, otherwise ordinary people internally normalize mass murder into something they could do.
The above aside, image too the kind of empty shell of fundamental human morality you'd need to be to continue sending innocent people, including women and children to their deaths in gas chambers, just so you can avoid looking bad on the social scene around you.
> Which by the way was largely false, for both low and high-ranking Nazis. It was usually possible to slowly or even quickly distance yourself from directly committing atrocities (or coordinating them) and get fobbed off into some low-key administrative position without fearing anything like serious punishment. The Nazi machinery was harsh towards openly voiced disobedience and discontent, but surprisingly tolerant of a "weak stomach" or a lack of what their fanatics called moral fiber (being able to protect the race by butchering innocent others).
Totally agreed. I can see how Eichmann, and many other government functionaries committing evil acts willingly (historical and modern) are perfectly able to believe the lie wholeheartedly. That is all that really matters. The state supports the lie, the culture supports the lie, and the person believes it, despite proof otherwise.
That is the banality of evil. Just follow orders, and you will be fine. There are monsters (historical and modern) who do not see the issue with separating children from parents (or whatever evil you choose) over trivial paperwork, but the ugly reality is that most of the people doing the work know that what they are doing is wrong on some level, but feel shielded by the authority of the institution issuing the orders.
> Coordinating roundups of people made "illegal" by law
It's not "illegal", it's just illegal. The US does not have open borders. It's illegal to cross without a visa or some other authorization. That's a fact, and in fact the law is a very reasonable one, because people who are knowledgeable about how humans work generally understand that open borders are a bad idea.
> There is someone in ICE right now doing exactly what Eichmann was doing [...] and then transporting them to foreign camps and foreign countries.
Is this meant to make it sound like it's somehow bad? If someone breaks the law, they deserve to be punished. In the case of people who entered the country illegally, the sane and rational thing to do is remove them from the country. This is, in fact, one of the most logical punishments imaginable, up there with being forced to leave while trespassing and being required to return stolen property.
Your comment is real "Hitler breathed air, and this other guy breathed air, therefore this other guy is bad because he's like Hitler" levels of manipulative suggestion that's completely devoid of any sort of points or content whatsoever.
The underlying theory that the GP is getting at is that Japan and Germany were easy to rebuild because they had existing institutions and a society that trusted institutions. The idea is that it is kind of a self fulfilling prophecy; germany and Japan will "remember" how to be civilized, but under different leadership, Afghanistan and Iraq cannot revert to that.
It leans heavily on assumptions about countries and institutions.
I don't doubt that, I was just explaining the argument. It has been recently popularized in tech circles by a viral appearance by professor Sarah Paine on the Dwarkesh podcast.
I am fully willing to believe that the US royally fucked up the rebuild of Afghanistan.
Unequivocally, yes. They are absolutely dangerous.
Anything that takes attention away from driving increases danger.
Are they more dangerous than older interfaces? My feeling is overwhelmingly yes, but I would be willing to see a study or hear arguments that some touchscreens are an improvement. A touch interface is fine (not great) as long as it never changes. As soon as you have to search for a control or menu you are dividing your attention away from driving.
The reason they're dangerous is not because you have to interact with them, per se, its simply because they provide to much information that takes a lot of cognitive processing to interpret.
Specifically, text. Reading is "hard". Even things as simple as the title of the song on the radio. Especially when the text changes.
I have a modern LCD on my motorcycle, a BMW, that uses a WonderWheel (rotate to scroll up/down, and push or pull for right/left click) as an interface. It's very reminiscent of The Onions MacBook Wheel[0]. It is absolutely dangerous to use while riding. It's a cognitive black hole.
Obviously, the LCD is not alone in this case, the interaction pushes it all up to eleven. But the old school car interface was numbers and small words, and, eventually icons. Consider changing the temperature in a car, for me, I'd shove the hot/cold slider around until the air coming the from the vent was comfortable vs clicking up and down and deciding "do I want 72 or 73?".
And, yea, maybe it's just me. Perhaps I alone am a hazard when interacting with these things. So, maybe it's not fair for me to project my experiences to the population at large.
So I don't personally find text hard to read or very much focus impacting.
However, it is very person dependent. Personally, I am one of the fastest readers I know.
It's also day dependent. I've had days where my ability to focus switch is significantly impaired.
The big issue is that while there are people that touch screens are not going to impair their driving, you can't gear your system to them.
You have to aim it at the lowest common denominator.
Personally, I am a fan of my current vehicle which while being at 2015 because it's one of the police interceptors still has the basic ish radio. And has twist knobs for volume, tune, fan speed and temperature.
And while I probably wouldn't mind having the actual Ford sync stuff, I don't find myself missing it either.
> So I don't personally find text hard to read or very much focus impacting.
- Have you benchmarked your speed on text vs non-text controls that are otherwise equivalent? (i.e. both are button presses, both are always in the exact same location, ...)?
- Have you benchmarked how this changes as you loose the similarities? Does this benchmark measure "time to complete task" or "time spent looking at control" (turning a physical knob vs a screen slider)
- have you benchmarked your speed for fixed-location controls vs controls which may be buried in a menu item on a touch-screen?
Do these benchmarks change if the control has delayed onset (pressing "play" takes 2 seconds to start the music, and you get no tactile response to tell you if you have successful pressed the button or not)
Have you benchmarked how these skill comparisons decay with impairment? Do they decay equally, or does the text-based skill decay faster?
Look, given this is HN I fully believe you are in the upper 99% on several aspects, making you with text controls faster than me with manual. But the question is would YOU be faster with text or manual? And how consistent is this?
Even a fixed touch UI is dangerous. You can't brace your hand easily to hit a touchscreen and your hand will bounce around while driving. Hitting the wrong button is as or more distracting than having to search for a control. Then there's the shitty UIs with small buttons that are hard to hit accurately even at a dead stop. It seems like every touch screen UI takes all the sins of modern crappy web design and turns it all to 11.
They're just terrible UX for the inside of a vehicle you're driving.
An easy datapoint is race driving. There's no race car that have touch driving as primary input (or as input at all). As always, designing a tool should start with what master uses and then solving problems for a more general use. Touchscreens don't bring anything that improves car usage.
Parking is a subset of “driving”. When you are parking you are also still driving by most legal and practical definitions.
Once you have completed parking you are no longer driving, you are parked, that is the point at which the danger drops.
Parking itself though, is still driving, and is also when a significant number of minor and major collisions occur. Parking is so dangerous that we design many parking areas specifically to be durable to minor impacts as well as protect from parking mishaps. Bollards, curbs, concrete barriers, planters and other features are all placed to help lessen the dangers of parking.
People exist outside of your vehicle. Danger can be something that you impose onto others by operating heavy machinery. It can also refer to danger of property damage or non-life threatening injury. You and your car might be fine in a parking lot incident, but the kid that you ran over will not be.
For reference, in the US, for just reported vehicle accidents per the National Safety Council:
- 20% of all accidents occur in parking lots
- 500 people per year are killed in parking lots
- 60k injuries per year in parking lots
Given the low speeds inherent to parking lots, and the extremely low share of miles and time spent there, it is a remarkably dangerous place. It doesn't take a genius to figure it out; parking areas are by definition where humans and heavy machinery operate in the exact same spaces.
I do not trust anything coming out of Tesla. If you have a third party report that would be more credible (i.e. a report not made by car companies or their customers).
The report seems focused more on crash rates, accident involvement, rates with Autopilot / Full Self-Driving vs without, and active/passive safety systems. Has zero insight into touchscreen and their safety issues.
Also from the car manufacturer not independent and isn’t without bias.
The Reddit support groups are pretty enlightening. Many people think they're just adding things in to a public library and somehow this is all perfectly legal.
It's charming and reminiscent of the best old-school Wikipedia energy. People on the fringe (and probably some OCD people) finding something to do. Curation and contribution feels good, man.
But yeah, holy shit. Brewster Kahle and Jason Scott have said "upload away, we'll figure it all out later" -- then themselves uploaded hundreds of thousands of items to set an example.
"Please don't upload copyrighted material" would go a long way at the top of that PHP upload form. Better yet a checkbox: "This is copyrighted. Archive it but don't republish it." But I suppose where's the fun in that.
I think you overestimate normal people's understanding of copyright. There's tons of videos on youtube with a description like "I don't claim to own this. No copyright intended". If you put such a form most people would probably think they're "not copyrighting" it or whatever confused idea they've got about how the law works or what the words mean.
You can’t really call something opt-in if opting out means that you are barred from participating in an entire class of activity unrelated to what you opted out of.
As a counter example, the TSA in the US is now starting to use facial scans for ID, but you can opt out by telling the agent. It does not mean that you cannot go flying, it means that they use a human to identify you without the use of computerized facial scans.
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