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Comment by fragmede | Hacker News Reader

It's about mechanical empathy and greater control. Mechanical empathy is where you just really know a machine with character, and know how to handle its foibles, and it's like an extension of you. Where earlier automatic transmissions were less efficient, there was greater efficiency to be had from a manual transmission, but since dual-clutch automatics, that's less true. Even So, an automatic transmission can't know what you're thinking (yet), and so can't down/upshift when you want it to.

It's like running Linux. At some point it's just another OS, so what difference does it make? And for some, it doesn't make a difference. For others, having more control, and being able to dig into the guts of a desktop Linux system and replace whatever you want let's them feel more connected to the computer, making it less of a mysterious box that operates on magic and black smoke, and more of a predictable machine.

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That first part puts it really well.

I almost never know what an auto will do if I put my foot to the floor. And often just 50% it interprets as you wanting to floor it and shifts down 2 gears which is often an overreaction given the car's torque and power.

I dislike the gamble at roundabouts too. They're everywhere in the UK and they're busy - you often pull out in front of cars where there is a gap and you need to know your car will do exactly what you need it to do.

Also start-stop is trickier to control in an auto and it's linked to how hard you brake rather than the clutch pedal (it's getting harder to disable start-stop in cars these days). I never want the engine to turn off at the entry to a roundabout but if you brake too hard, it will

That said if I am regularly doing 100s of miles on motorways I absolutely love an auto

> It's like running Linux.

To me it's more like "running your own-compiled GNU Hurd Kernel", probably on your own-assembled kit :D

Linux has very "tangible" use cases, far beyond wanting the machine "be an extension of yourself". No?

Can you break down the analogy to a casual like myself? Genuinely want to be in on it as i enjoy driving and am always wanting to learn more linux to grasp a better understanding of OS’s

I'm sorry but you'll have to go into /etc/tangibles.conf and use_cases = "beyond_extension", and then run systemctl daemon-reload to get that behavior.

I mean sure. Obvs I don't speak for everyone that runs Linux. Knowing how Linux, works from Kernel to user space, from an LFS install, or simply being around it that much lends itself to being the kind of person who's able to setup, or gets paid to setup the kinds of tangible use cases others want. Like a webserver, back when it was hard. Like eg mounting files as a drive. It's just losetup then mount /dev/loop0 /mnt. That's a tangible use case where you can copy files off a dvd ISO. I'm sure you can find a program to do that on Windows, but it's basically a built in feature on Linux. Linux at the base level is workshop full of tools, it's up to you what you want to build.

It's even more fun driving a stick when you put the machine together yourself, and know every nut, bolt, shaft and gear.

I'll bet! Glad we can agree on something. :)

You’re the first person to verbalize how i feel about operating machinery, something I've always been unable to do and feel awkward about.

What are some hobbies you enjoy?

I wish I had more money and time for it, but shifter carts are pure joy (if that's your thing). For adults they come in 100cc single speed or six-speed 125cc, both under 200lb and are pure racing machine.

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