This is tangentially Rivian related, but does anyone else see the inherent danger of stylized tail lights that are just a single red bar across the back of the car?
Travelling on the freeway at night I can't really gauge the distance to the car in front of me if it's far ahead and if there's no discernable left and right brake lights. I'd believe Rivians and other cars like that are more at risk of high speed rear-end collisions.
Readit Newsjanitor61 commented on Trying to find some life on the Usenet (2020) mastodon.sdf.org/@cfenoll... · Posted by u/carlesfe
First the BBSs, then Usenet...
I think that one good thing from these services was the relatively high barrier of entry. Today, online services are all about low friction signup, which makes a lot of sense in the highly competitive Internet of 2023. But when computers were somewhat niche and you really had to figure out how to get things working, users were a lot more committed and thus the quality of discussions was a lot higher.
Interestingly, Hacker News has a fairly low barrier of entry and high quality discussions. Maybe because it's kind of ugly and scares away the average user expecting animated prompts and fancy style sheets.
Speaking of BBSs, there is nothing today that quite captures the full value proposition of BSSs. Back in the day, you could sign up to one of them and meet a lot of locals due to the high long distance phone bills. I made a lot of "real world" friends, even a girlfriend or two, back in the BBS days.
One of the cool things I saw on BBSes back in the day - that I have yet to see replicated - was 'real time chat' in telechat, or being able to see what the other person is typing out as they enter it on their keyboard. It was captivating and made it really feel like an intimate conversation with another person. That could have just been the novelty of it all, as well... ICQ had a similar feature IIRC?.
How long do we need to wait until whatever patent encumberance that's keeping e-ink displays at these ridiculous prices expires and we can start to see affordable e-ink displays?
janitor61 commented on U.S. pedestrian deaths reach a 40-year high text.npr.org/1184034017... · Posted by u/rntn
one variable to take into consideration that I hardly see mentioned, ever - legalization of marijuana in California and other states: there's been a few times on my commute to work where I drive through distinct smell cloud of someone's exhaled pot smoke, and this is in the morning! People might be thinking weed is 'ok' to use while driving and that it's better than alcohol or something...
janitor61 commented on Discord’s username change is causing discord theverge.com/2023/5/6/237... · Posted by u/thm
There's one thing about this I don't see brought up - if someone says "add me, I'm janitor#0832" people usually know they're talking about Discord since that format is ubiquitous, and that's a very valuable thing. They're destroying that and moving for something like "add me, @janitor0832" - which then needs to be qualified (Twitter? Instagram?). Bing tried so hard to become a verb and Discord is discarding something they already have that's similar
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janitor61 commented on Tell HN: Thank you for being fast, almost ad-free and text-only · Posted by u/nojvek
This might date me but I'd love to see a resurgence of the Gopher protocol - maybe a touch more modernized, but still just plain text files with hyperlinks. Some sort of public-commons version of the overcommercialized web where advertising is very difficult but information is dense and discoverable.
janitor61 commented on On the insanity of being a Scrabble enthusiast lithub.com/on-the-insanit... · Posted by u/ohpissoff
I think a 3D version of scrabble would be fun, where you build the words using cubes in 3 dimensions instead of two. You could probably even do it non-digitally if you had magnetic cubes
janitor61 commented on Things CSS could still use heading into 2023 chriscoyier.net/2022/12/2... · Posted by u/corentin88
font-size: [fit-width|fit-height|fit-container]; would be nice
Do newer LED headlights even have a duty cycle?