truly the power of innovation

The Sono Motors Sion shouldn't have failed, but unfortunately it did. They promised an open system and were fairly open during development.

Without giving anything specific away, I am a software developer and a consultant, and mostly work on web stuff.

I'll try to keep this short, but in general, yes. Basically, computers keep getting faster, which allows software developers to use higher-level libraries, which are actually less efficient, and thus your average piece of software actually takes more processing power and RAM than back in the day.

As well, because of those high-level libraries, programming is a lot easier than it used to be. Unfortunately, that means that we just hire cheaper developers that aren't as skilled, and they have a harder time tracking down and fixing bugs. Which is doubly worse because those higher-level libraries are black boxes, and you can't always fix things that arise inside of them easily.

But software development companies have basically figured out that shitty software doesn't really hurt their bottom line in the end. For the most part, people will use it if it's a name brand piece of software, like Google or Apple or Microsoft. They don't need to build high quality software because it's basically going to be used by default. The money will come in if you corner a market or if you build something unique, or contract with another business. It doesn't actually have to be high quality.

As well, websites make more money the more ads you put on them. So it doesn't matter how efficient you build it, it's going to be slow. And it doesn't matter how slow it is, because you're going to make more money the more ads and tracking you have. All you need is good search engine optimization and you will get traffic by default. SEO Is easier said than done, but the point is nobody really focuses on performance when it's more profitable to focus on search engines.

I'm the millennial version of a tech illiterate, I have very basic coding skills in Java and that's it

Being able to code at all already places you in the 90th percentile for tech literacy. Many people don't even know what a file is.

When I was young I actually didn't know what the BSOD was because I literally never experienced it. My first BSOD was in 2017 on Windows 8, even though I've been computing since 1998

You've never gotten a BSOD on old versions of Windows?? My personal experience is that old versions of Windows (XP, 7) were much more unstable than new versions of Windows (10, 11).

The golden age for "normie" consumer computing definitely feels like it took place in the 2000s, and ended somewhere around 2014

Why would the golden age of "normie" consumer computing have taken place in the 2000s, when there were pop-up ads that gave you malware and adware toolbars?

The 25th percentile user today has literally never interacted with a hierarchical filesystem. They do not even know what a file is. The Apple mobile ecosystem is so locked down that it's actually impossible to accidentally install malware. I say that now is the golden age of "normie" consumer computing, because tech has never been easier.

I say that for normies, tech has never been better.

• old webpages (like from the 2000s) are fast and snappy
• new webpages take much longer to load

Modern webpages are less like a page and more like a full blown application. If you're not careful you'll get an unoptimized mess, which is exacerbated when you put a bunch of ads on top.

That being said I don't have memories of everything being snappy 20 years ago - there were messy scripts and gigantic images that made Geocities and Angelfire sites near unusable back then as well.

Tech doesnt suck, its the software quality that sucks.

old webpages (like from the 2000s) are fast and snappy. new webpages take much longer to load.

This part is true, especially on phones, but those old webpages were not fast at all when they were first published.

I remember trying to watch videos on dialup Internet. I'd make it start buffering and then go do something else for half an hour before coming back to watch the video. I also remember avoiding certain websites even on DSL because they had 1 or 2 whole megabytes of JavaScript and it took forever to load.

Increases in bandwidth and processing power has made those old websites seem a lot more performant than they were at the time.

Today we can put a lot more stuff on our websites than we used to, which makes things slower, but we're also much more aware of major performance issues. Google uses it as a factor in their ranking algorithm, and offers a pretty intelligent tool to help developers figure out where to optimize their websites, so it's essential for most companies to optimize for that. Giant companies like Amazon and Facebook can ignore it because they'll always be on top, but the rest of us are getting really excited about new frameworks like solid and qwik that will make it a lot easier to optimize our sites.

I’d expect the same out of a machine I might potentially have to, say, deliver a pregnant wife to the hospital in.

lol first thing I thought of too. I've been in emergency situations where I needed to get to a hospital immediately and if my car did this I'd be fucking livid. As dangerous as motorcycles are at least I know that mine will never fail a software update or some shit, and if it doesn't start I can just bump start it to get it going and then figure out what's wrong later.

I'm no luddite but there's beauty in a machine that's designed to be as simple to operate and maintain as possible

Yeah, but reflashing a motherboard is far less dangerous than reflashing a $30,000 car. Your computer couldn’t kill someone if something fails. As much as I hate this image and wished repair instructions were made public, this may be the wisest move from a liability perspective.

I would guess that the techbro "genius" who came up with this idea is rich enough to afford an ambulance and didn't even consider that people might need to drive somewhere in an emergency.

And depending on what kind of update this is, it's a 15 minute reprogram.

So far Ford has been pretty cool about taking care of things like this. Their dealer service network doesn’t know shit about the EVs and corporate has been mostly helpful to customers while they get things figured out. I fully expect this to change in the next 3-5 years when they either declare things to be working as intended or that EVs are a failure and buyers are now on their own.

Yes pretty much. It has 2 functions, rotate and press. The UI is a cluster fuck as the dial becomes context sensitive and requires you to take your eyes off the road to adjust anything.

What would solve it is not building cars that needs fucking software upgrades to function.

This shit is utterly ridiculous.

It would.

Anyone could flash a previous version known to work, for example.

Anyone performing an intentional upgrade would also know how to revert it. Or any independent repair shops they trust.

Uh it does solve this 😂

On Android you could flash new rom using twrp or fastboot. On pcs you can do similar by tapping F12.

(and obvi there should be a basic mode in case the update fails)

Yeah, it's more of a software issue that there's no override than a financial one... but honestly proper public transportation infrastructure would definitely make this less of a problem.

I mean if the fact that a failed update diables your car, would be open and easily auditable from day one, would that knowlage change your decision of buying this car, as opposed to the other ones?