entrox

I very much applaud the effort in trying to push the boundaries, especially on the front of responsiveness and performance. We are typing on machines with mind-boggling resources and yet editors don't feel snappier(tm) at all, so I appreciate optimizing on that dimension.

However, I can't see myself moving away from Emacs. I've been using it for almost a quarter of a century and have seen many editors come and go in that timeframe: BBEdit, Textmate, Sublime Text, Atom and so on. The current hotness is VS Code, but I personally believe that will be abandoned at some point as well.

It would be great if some of the learnings of Zed can be backported to Emacs, however unlikely that is due to the amount of old cruft there.

Consider switching to Kagi with its feature to personalize your results by biasing certain domains.

I've configured it to lower results from *.fandom.com and am really happy about it.

The clean visual design of these consoles is just beautiful. It reminds me of the aesthetic of Kubrick's 2001 from the same era.

Thank you for the interesting write-up.

It feels like societal satire in this vein is becoming rare. I fondly remember sci-fi movies like Starship Troopers, Robocop, Brazil or even They Live, but not much about recent times. Maybe Don't Look Up comes close, haven't watched it yet.

It‘s fun to imagine that Event Horizon is actually in the same universe as Warhammer 40k.

Not only does the plot fit perfectly with the ship going through the warp, the Gothic design matches the aesthetic as well.

Even if not intended, it just works so well.

I think this is not about his music per se, but more about him being a producer (and marketing guy) as you need specifically (de-)constructed music tracks for this feature to work. The CES demo featured other artists as well.

How about "it makes driving more fun"?

The way I understand this works, is that there are specifically constructed tracks that can be mixed dynamically depending on sensor input. Imagine hearing a low-key backing track while idling, and as you start to accelerate, more and tracks get mixed in - maybe lyrics start to kick in with highway speeds and so on.

This would be similar to how adaptive soundtracks work in some games.

It is no accident that this feature debuts from Mercedes-AMG. The main selling point of these cars has been emotion, stemming from their roaring V8 engine. In a future where this breaks away due to emotionless EV drivetrains, how do you appeal to drivers' emotions and make it more "fun"?

For marketing it as „autopilot“ and not „adaptive cruise control“ like every other manufacturer.

> Does anyone have a reasonable explanation for why this is done?

It‘s cheaper. That’s all there is to it.

Automotive design is heavily influenced by bill—of-materials cost, there are committees upon committees deliberating and ultimately deciding on saving cents per unit.

> Who cares? It's your property.

Authorities care. Yes it's your property and you can do whatever you want with it. The question is whether you're allowed to operate the vehicle on public roads afterwards. Cars go through thorough certification processes (homologation) and that includes software.

Can you prove that your change does not negatively affect a certification-relevant function?

Add one variable to your example: imagine that having variations increases cost such as increased development cost (you need to develop each component, test and certify possible combinations, incur increased logistical complexity, etc..)

This additional cost however is less than just adding the higher trim to every configuration, e.g. the additional room, so it doesn't make economic sense to do so.

But let's assume you now get the ability to sell and unlock a higher trim after the initial purchase. Let's say that 20% of your customers would be willing to purchase such an unlock at a later point in time, resulting in increased revenue.

If that revenue plus the reduced lifecycle expense exceeds the cost of adding the higher trim as baseline you would have a business case, which wouldn't be the case if you just add the room for everybody (where you'd have to raise the base price and lose buyers on the lower end).

It's funny how close your example are to S-expressions, just replace the pointy brackets with round parenthesis and move the closing one to the end:

  (table
    (tr
      (td one)
      (td two)
      (td three))
    (tr
      (td another table)
      (td with more stuff)))

> To be fair when the iPhone 1 came out nobody really said they need it in their lives vs a Nokia or BB

That's not how I remember it, that original keynote was magical. The benefits of the iPhone over current devices (both phones and MP3 players) were crystal-clear, the only damper being high price together with tying it to an AT&T contract.

While impressive technologically, this on the other hand gives rather creepy vibes - the whole presentation looks like a Black Mirror episode.

> You’re completely ignoring the customer (people like you) in favor of the (already mega rich) corporations. What a mindset.

No, I want the company I work for to have similar profit margins as FAANG and thus increase my compensation. Do you also attack those employees because their companies are charging extra for pure software unlocks or subscriptions?

Take a look at the profit margin (and market valuation) of automotive companies and compare them to tech companies. Now also make a comparison of average developer/engineer salaries at both.

Is it not OK for the automotive folks to get to the same level as their FAANG brethren?

Disclaimer: I work for an automotive OEM.

Is charging for a feature unlock in a piece of software also rent-seeking?

The feature has already been developed, I have already downloaded the software to my device. It would cost the developer nothing, deny them the use of nothing, require none of their resources for me to use the feature and yet they charge for it.

How is that different?

Try looking at it from the other side: you're getting a product at a lower base price and can upgrade to a higher model at a later point in time. It's more like buying, and paying for, an iPhone 14 and then having the possibility to upgrade the camera to the iPhone 14 Pro version afterwards.

There's ton of precedent for products that are artificially locked to a lower version. The difference between a NVidia GeForce and the much more expensive Quadro used to be just a bunch of ID resistors. Processor speeds are locked in a similar way.

Same thing with software. There's many cases where you purchase a piece of software and can later buy a feature or "Pro" unlock. You already downloaded all the bits & bytes to you device. Are you not OK with that?

I'm a bit surprised that the people on Hackernews of all places has such a reaction to this. Subscription models and SaaS have been practically invented here.

> You will be charged fucking $6000 dollars for a item that is already present in your car.

How so? The one-time fee is $1950. Also, this is nothing new: top end Mercedes-AMG cars always had an optional "AMG Driver's Package" [0] for years now, which did nothing but electronically unlock Vmax from 250km/h to 290km/h. No changes in hardware at all. It used to retail for around $2500.

Now you have the possibility to order a performance unlock after buying the car. You can even try it out for a few months to see whether you really need it or not.

You might not like it, but it's actually a better deal than before.

[0] https://www.mercedes-benz.co.uk/passengercars/mercedes-benz-...

Exactly my thoughts as well. We're now starting to automate our own culture away: stories, art, music... Why would you spend the years building skills to create something in a sea absolutely flooded by automated algorithms? As these AIs get better, it will be more and more difficult to distinguish the output from human minds.

I keep wondering what the endgame here is. Once everything can be algorithmically created, what's the point of humanity anymore? Just consuming an endless flood of auto-generated, recommendation-optimized content?