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Consumer backlash against touchscreens in cars is winning; automakers concede, return to buttons.
  • I drive a car built in 2018 and I'm really happy with the balance between buttons and screen.

    I've got stalks for indicators, wipers and cruise control. Physical switches for lights, windows, mirrors, climate temp, fan, air source, defrost front and rear, odometer reset, driving mode, master door unlock and opening the boot/tailgate. Vents are manually operated and the glovebox and fuel tank flap are too. The steering wheel has physical buttons for media source, track skip/radio seek, phone calls, starting the voice control mic, and scroll wheels for volume and cycling through information displays on the small screen between the large analogue gauges on the dashboard. And a 10 inch touchscreen for everything else (reverse camera, media and maps, mostly, but includes all the car settings you don't fiddle with often, like light delays, beep volumes, summer time offset etc.).

    Basically anything I'm likely to want to use whilst driving I can find and operate with at most a quick glance, if not by touch alone, and have immediate feedback that I got it right because I felt the switch/stalk/button move under my fingertips as I expected.

    I've wondered what functions I'd be happy with moving from a physical control to the touchscreen or capacitive button. I haven't come up with a single one. Yet if I were to buy the latest version of this car just about anything that is currently a physical button is now a capacitive touch button. Yeah, no thanks.

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    Are there any household gadgets you found unexpectedly useful after you'd gotten them?
  • When we built this house we specified power outlets in each toilet for exactly this reason. The low light levels from the motion sensor lamps we have don't sear your eyeballs when you get up in the middle of the night to pee.

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    Are there any household gadgets you found unexpectedly useful after you'd gotten them?
  • I am choosing to interpret the instructions as dumping a full bottle of pancake mix into the rice cooker, cook twice, then tip out the resulting pancake-cake and slice it up thinly like a pressed ham. I guess slice extra thinly for crepes?

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    China’s Carbon Emissions Are Set to Decline Years Earlier Than Expected | Rollout of 300GW of new wind and solar power last year was for the first time enough to cover its new electricity demand
  • IIRC, the Mandarin for "four" sounds similar to "death", so it is considered unlucky/inauspicious. I think OP was subtly suggesting that the CCP would rather do something to avoid the consequences of climate change than not. Those consequences including social upheaval, resulting in an unhappy populace, resulting in their possible removal from power.

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    The four houses dads belong to.
  • I always lean towards Bosch where possible, mainly because of their charitable work. The founder set things up so that it's perpetually funded from the company profits. That just appeals to me as the tiebreaker when deciding between a bunch of similarly priced tools that will otherwise do the job well enough.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Bosch_Stiftung

    That said, I tend to go for corded options where practical. I have some corded tools that I've owned for over thirty years now that still get occasional use. Battery tools are convenient for their portability, but they do have a limit to their useful life.

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    The four houses dads belong to.
  • We have Volkswagen and Skoda at our place and there are a lot of common parts under the skin. The towbar electrics module I added to the Skoda is badged Audi.

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    What habits or tastes did you keep from your teenage years and that slightly ashame you as an adult?
  • Mine was similar. As a teenager I used to make sandwiches as you describe with instant coffee granules instead of sugar. The granules would dissolve into the butter to form a brown caffeinated sludge. Yummo!

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    2023 United States Grand Prix - [POST RACE] discussion thread
  • Bad strategy choice. Looked like he was going for a one stop. He was the last to pit for new tyres after a long first stint. Not sure if his switch to softs at the end was an attempt to salvage something, but by then the damage was done.

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