• 23 Posts
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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: June 9th, 2023

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  • 100% agree. I love driving, road trips, windy roads, and take pride in having a clean and well maintained car. But I despise the car-centrality of most western cities. Any chance I get, I park well outside a big city and take a train in. It’s almost always faster and far less stressful. Even though I can parallel park, yield to cyclists, not run over pedestrians, and safely follow the rules of the road, most other people can’t or won’t because of how normalized bad driving is. Even worse, most people don’t really want to be driving and do it simply because their job/home are not properly accessible, so they have no other choice.




  • nbailey@lemmy.catoFacepalm@lemmy.worldDesign flaw
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    23 days ago

    I once found myself in the rat poison isle of a Lawson in Tokyo a couple years ago thinking they were all tasty snacks. Wasn’t until I noticed the tiny little icon in the corner I figured out it wasn’t junk food I was looking at. Packaging design is very cultural, and being less than fluent in a foreign place can have some wild outcomes if you’re not careful…




  • Toyota Alphard van, ideally the Vellfire version because it looks even cooler.

    Minivans are seen as lame and boring in the US/CA markets, because that’s all we had for a generation. Dodge caravans, windstars, uplanders, siennas, ugh. All boring, blob-like, uninspiring, uncomfy, and profoundly uncool. Luxury was only for Mercedes sedans and hulking Escalade SUVs.

    But JDM vans absolutely rule. Doilies on the headrests. Pop-out footrests. Recliners. Curtains. More speakers than you can count. Cool body lines. Leather and wood absolutely everywhere. It’s like a limo you can park anywhere but still shag in.

    But alas they’re exceptionally rare in North America, and difficult to import unless you go for a very old one. Maybe someday I’ll import one if I have the time and money for a silly van…



  • Yeah, real “efficiency” would come from standardizing tools and procedures, getting rid of “shadow IT”, making annual budget requests more flexible (ie if we don’t use it this year we won’t get it next year), and empowering the workers to make more decisions and initiatives without involving committees, managers, etc.

    They are not doing that. It’s not about efficiency, it’s a libertarian crusade to strip out anything valuable from the public sector and leave what’s left to rot.






  • nbailey@lemmy.catoPrivacy@lemmy.ml*Permanently Deleted*
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    9 months ago

    I choose not to think about it or include it in my mental threat model, the same way I choose to not worry about thermonuclear warheads.

    If there’s some exploitable backdoor and Intel gets owned, we’re all boned and there’s nothing we can really do about it. I don’t have anti-ballistic-missile systems, and I also don’t have the capability to make an entire hardware/firmware/os from scratch.

    So instead focus on the things you can control and are more likely to happen. Don’t plan for doomsday, plan for every day.


  • Can’t upvote this enough. It’s not the consumers, it’s the dealers calling the shots. Some examples:

    Looking for a Corolla hybrid: no dealer had one, and all of them said it could be 18 months or more before one would be available

    Looking for a RAV4 suv: we have 8 on the lot take your pick

    Looking for a Mazda 3 hatchback: the only one in the colour you want is a six hour drive away and no we can’t transfer it here

    Looking for a CX5 suv: we have literally a million of them

    In both examples the cars cost almost the same amount to build. They have the same drivetrain, engine, transmission, etc. But since the “suv” or “crossover” is taller and bigger they can charge 20-30% more, earning them more commission and dealer fees, so that’s what they order from the manufacturer. Unless you have months to wait, you take what you get.