jonathanberger

I don't think it's that anyone wants the interface to be chat. I think it's that the underlying technology is inherently words in and words out. It's similar to how devices with capacitive screens are most naturally going to support tapping, dragging, and pinching.

> ideal for the customer to not have a choice

Let's say you and I bump into each other in the town square and we each have some things we might be willing to give the other if we get the right thing in return. In that situation I'd think both sides have the right to offer what they like and both sides can choose freely whether to accept what is offered.

What is different about this town square and your relationship to say Dell?

I agree that's reasonable. But does the world you're thinking of have a law that forces that to be the case?

Let's have consumer laws but have the right ones. A company shouldn't have the right to hurt me, for example.

I wouldn't argue for no regulation. I don't see the regulatory problems though as similar. Isn't one health and the other... monopoly? Expensive laptops?

> There's a distinct difference

What's the importance difference?

I make the analogy to highlight that just because something is desirable to a consumer doesn't mean we should have laws to enforce it.

The theory and law around monopolies is something I know at only a surface level. Up until I read Thiel's Zero to One I would have told you monopolies are bad but his chapter comparing airlines to Google made me question this.

> Consumers should have the right to decline pre-installed software

As a consumer I should also have the right to free ice cream and a pony ride.

Many of us have tried to start or run businesses small or large. Does it make any sense for a government to start telling us what software the business should use or not use?

Consumers already have the right to decline pre-installed software: don't buy the laptop. There, you've declined it.

Are you referring specifically to agentic engineering with locally hosted models?

It’s not getting worse. We are just getting older.

Note that the site that generated these does not support any San Francisco Bay Area cities. I learned this only after being forced to "Sign in with Google".

Does anyone have suggestions for when I need to use bearer auth and the token is super long?

With curl I end up finding the command becomes hard to read, even taking advantage of backslashes. With Postman, it tidily hides the token out of the way on a separate tab and gets out of my way.

Flat doesn't seem best to you? Next best for me would be a symmetrical bump. But the asymmetrical bump (I think) all iPhones have seems the worst of all alternatives. This results in that bad restaurant table wobble feeling.

You have a different reaction than most Tesla owners [1].

[1] https://www.marketwatch.com/story/tesla-has-the-most-loyal-b...

The UX designer, Jenson, cites interesting concepts like 1+1=3 and cognitive load. But forgets an even more basic concept: design for the common case.

The common case is the driver being the owner. Tesla has real world data about how many times the defrost button is tapped. Their UX decision to make the bottom bar customizable is smart.

I personally choose to only put the defrost button in the bar during months of the year when I use that button frequently and remove it at other times. Keeps it easily accessible when I need it and out of the way when I don't. Elegant, functional.

It might even be the case that defrost is in the bottom bar by default and the owner of the Tesla he drove had removed it, I can't remember right now what Tesla does for newly shipped cars.

Does a business have to be widely deployed or profitable to be real? The public and private capital markets say "no". If you were to ignore any business that isn't widely available you'd miss the beginning of both Apple and Facebook.

Waymo is a real business serving 50,000 rides each week delivering paying customers to their destination. If you haven't tried it yet, the product is amazing. Private, doesn't cancel, safe, and smooth. I will never take Uber again if I have the choice.

By “sit on” do you mean “keep using” or “avoid”?

Cool site! You might consider deleting the cookie notice?

I run a similar site (dateful.com) and I promise the EU regulators don't come after sites like ours. :)

One of the most surprising things about getting an EV four months ago has been how little range matters.

Since you always leave home with a full tank and it’s rare to drive more than 150 miles in a typical day any range over that is money I’d rather save buying a smaller battery.

The main place more range helps is with road trips. But even there I run into the human comfort limit before the range limit. My family needs food and restrooms more frequently than the battery needs charging.

If I were to purchase an EV again I’d ignore range and focus more on other aspects.

Do you have or have you considered a car where the glovebox opens via touchscreen control? And if so, does this car have alternate storage, i.e in the center console?

I'm not sure I'm understanding you when you say "definitively". Do you mean if I can't be 100% sure about my answer?

The answer to your question is: the same way you determine when it's safe to cross the road on foot. When there are no cars in sight I'm 100% sure it's safe. When there are cars in sight, I'm not 100% sure but I still cross because I've developed judgement about the situation and the risks are acceptable.

I think this is one place where this debate goes off the rails. People don't switch cars frequently and haven't experienced or studied deeply both sets of interfaces. I completely understand why because I was the same.

I only recently switched from a 20 year old car. Wipers was one of my main concerns.

Tesla, contrary to popular belief, actually has a physical button for activating the wipers. It's one I rarely use because the automatic functionality for this works so well. There's a physical control to mute sound too.

Would you acknowledge that touchscreen controls have some benefits, such as adaptability?

Do you mind if I ask if the car you most interact with has touch or physical controls?

I can tell we're going to disagree but I love the clean look of the dashboard. As a result of Tesla's product decision I've moved anything I use on a regular basis to the two large consoles. They put the glovebox button at the top of the menu tree and this product decision tradeoff hasn't bothered me.

Since it bothers you, I'm genuinely curious, what do you store in your glovebox other than I'm guessing car registration?

One of my favorite parts from pg's What You Can't Say is The Conformist Test:

> Do you have any opinions that you would be reluctant to express in front of a group of your peers?

Here's one of my answers if I think of HN readers as peers: Tesla made the right decision by making most of their controls touchscreen-only.

HN guidelines suggest comments should get more thoughtful and substantive as a topic gets more divisive. If you disagree with me but acknowledge thought or substance in my comment I'd love to hear why instead of garnering a downvote.

The reason I believe Tesla made the right decision is that the physical buttons on the steering wheel and stalks cover the common cases. They've made many things automatic: lights, wipers, garage door, seat heaters (edit: lights and wipers also have physical buttons). Things that aren't buttons and aren't automatic voice handles well (e.g. "set climate to 72").

And finally, and I realize most controversially, while it's still important to monitor Autopilot the technology is already to the point where it's safe in the right conditions to take your eyes off the road for some number of seconds at at time.

I love Hey (https://hey.com) for its "screener" feature. It supports custom domains but not Gmail migration.

The screener keeps new senders out of your inbox. A rich set of keyboard shortcuts helps triage new senders into one of a few categories including simply blocking them. You can choose to block at the address or the domain level.

Most product decisions represent a tradeoff. The tradeoff the author doesn't mention is one of a clean look versus ease of use. The author also doesn't mention how frequently they actually open their glovebox.

From my personal experience I probably open my glovebox four times a year. How many times do I look at my glovebox? That's much harder to estimate but I'd guess dozens. Do I like a clean looking dashboard? It was actually a major selling point for me when I recently went car shopping. People obsess about how their cars look on the outside but how things look (and thus feel) on the inside is more important.

A glovebox latch only minimally affects the look and feel but I don't find the tradeoff that automakers have chosen as obviously bad as the author.

Have you tried Amcrest?

I love this post. Thanks Ben. It's especially generous to share pageviews and revenue numbers which are so frequently kept private. I didn't though understand this point from the post:

> One other weird downside is that .. I sometimes catch myself thinking "should I build something just for the upvotes".

Is the author saying the attention from social media sites like Hacker News sometimes seems like motivation enough to build the next project?

Why... why whoever made this page, would you choose to display a feedback modal right as first time visitors view your page? If collecting feedback is the most important thing you want someone to do make it front and center page content. And if it's not, then don't.

I was mildly curious about the site but upon seeing the modal it was an immediate back button click for me.

I had the same problem until I discovered the “Filter Unknown Senders” setting that appears about 80% of the way down the settings screen.