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Comment by albert_e | Hacker News Reader

We had physical buttons for decades. That required a certain amount of deliberate physical action and force by a person to press the doorbell.

Now designers and manufacturers have decided that everyone wants and needs touch sensors.

Sacrifice in the process -

Inadvertent triggers and lack of tactile feedback.

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They didn't even decide that we want them, from what I've heard, capacitive "buttons" are simply cheaper as they require not additional parts.

Yes, now the cheap cooking stoves have touch interfaces which is an OBVIOUSLY bad idea, much worse even than touch buttons in cars. The expensive professional stoves however...

Expensive stoves also have touch screen, just with much better UX.

The touch buttons on my stove are easy to clean, but I think that's the only advantage.

> The expensive professional stoves however...

…have people whose job it is to clean everything every day anyway.

They are cheaper and they pass IPXX requirements on dust/water protection easily. But they seem to be good enough because customers, despite some complaints, keep buying devices with capacitive buttons.

Also, mechanical stuff eventually wears out - at best with good quality ones, the product becomes obsolete before they do. For instance potentiometers [1] used for volume control on stereos rust over time and eventually become unusable. So there's a durability argument too.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Potentiometer

In the case of cars, isn't it simply that there is no other option on the market?

I didn't realise that it was a touch sensors, and was wondering through the article how on earth a slug was pushing the buttons to bell people, and maybe somehow its slime was conductive enough to get inside and short things?

if you look on the top of its head its got two arm like appendages that it can touch things with, probably did it with those

Those are its eye stalks. I don't imagine pressing with a lot of force on its eyestalks is something a slug likes to do, but then again I haven't asked any yet.

it was ringing the bell somehow, what else could it have been? even a particularly fat slug would have trouble pressing the bell as its vertically aligned.

Still miss the keyboard on my HTC Tilt2

Indeed. Especially as I get older and my accuracy on a virtual touchscreen keyboard gets worse.

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