tal

The length I figure mostly isn't an issue aside from maybe street parking. But the width thing seems like a hassle.

I drive a (by American standards) narrow sedan, but I have to say that I keep seeing people have trouble getting out of their cars in older parking lots because there isn't enough clearance between two wide vehicles. Lot of people just lapping over two slots or avoiding parking next to another car.

I suppose that some of that is self-solving -- I mean, if there's enough inertia, parking lot operators will reallocate space in their lots. Or maybe vehicle manufacturers will step in and minivan-style sliding doors will just become the norm (like a two "sliding door coupe", maybe?)

I'd rather just have either (a) the protectionism go away, or (b) if that's not possible for political reasons, at least slash the misincentives associated with it. Just outright say "if it's an American-made vehicle, it gets a subsidy" if that's what industrial policy actually is. All of the associated regulatory stuff is creating inefficiencies of its own.

I think that some of that is fuel efficiency requirements forcing convergence.

The sedan thing weirded me out too -- I mean, when I think of a "car", I think of a sedan -- but as I understand from reading, that related to people wanting larger maximum cargo space in the car, like if they had to shove a piece of furniture or something in it. I'm in the sedan camp -- in the very rare case that I need to move something really large, I'm just gonna U-Haul it. But I can at least understand the concern people have.

The truck and generally-large vehicle thing, I think, related to a combination of:

• The chicken tax. American auto manufacturers have a 25% protective tariff covering the "light truck" class, making it much more profitable for domestic sales.

• Fuel efficiency exemptions granted that class (which I suspect may have something to do with regulations resulting from lobbying from said manufacturers and them having incentives surrounding the above chicken tax).

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

  CAFE standards signaled the end of the traditional long station wagon, but Chrysler CEO Lee Iacocca developed the idea of marketing the minivan as a station wagon alternative, while certifying it in the separate truck category to allow compliance with less-strict CAFE standards. Eventually, this same idea led to the promotion of the SUV.[106][107]

  The definitions for cars and trucks are not the same for fuel economy and emission standards. For example, a Chrysler PT Cruiser was defined as a car for emissions purposes and a truck for fuel economy purposes.[2] Under then light truck fuel economy rules, the PT Cruiser had have a lower fuel economy target (28.05 mpg beginning in 2011) than it would if it were classified as a passenger car.

• High American towing requirements. That is, American vehicles have far more restrictive towing requirements than in most other countries -- you need a larger vehicle to legally tow a given load than in many other countries. I suspect that the regulations may also have something to do with American automakers lobbying for protective regulation; it pushes American consumers to buy from that protected class of vehicles.

Long story short -- I think that you can probably chalk a lot of that up to rent-seeking out of Detroit.

Newer, but I quite like the gentle amber LCD (not LED) displays of my car. At night it’s bright enough and sharp enough without being visually loud. I wish more of these displays were still being made, I’d love to use them in car-centric Arduino projects and data displays that would be consulted at night or that sort of thing.

Not sure if you mean VFDs or amber LCDs, but Matrix Orbital sells both sorts in small quantities that you'd use in a project and can interface to a microcontroller -- I was interested in them myself when looking for small VFDs, years back. They're going to be segmented alphanumeric or grid displays, though, not things with physical custom display elements like those car dash things, but that's kinda part and parcel of small-run stuff.

https://www.matrixorbital.com/

https://www.matrixorbital.com/blc2021

Just choose the "amber" option if it's an amber LCD you want.

Can also get their displays via Mouser or Digikey.

The birth rate, or the average number of children that are born to a woman over her lifetime, has dropped from 1.58 children per woman in 2021 to 1.35 currently. 

In the years from 2011 to 2016, Germany's fertility rate rose from 1.39 to 1.59 due in part to better overall conditions for families with children as well as the arrival of immigrant families with higher fertility rates.

So, basically, all the recovery since 2011 has been lost.

I don't log in or post there any more, but there are still a few occasional subreddits that don't have analogs here that I'll sporadically browse anonymously.

I still use it if searching for information on a search engine; like, doing a site search on Reddit for answers on certain things.

I don't expect to be going back unless something blows up here. For most purposes, the Threadiverse has passed the traffic threshold I need to be engaged.

Horsehide bomber jackets of the sort worn in WW2.

We can make cheaper and lighter synthetic materials. But I like the look that leather jackets acquire with wear over time (and particularly horsehide, which is less-available today than cowhide, as we don't have many horses around any more).

They aren't gone -- it's still possible to obtain them. But in 2024, they're really limited to people going out of their way to get them.

Lighthouses.

Once widely used, the number of operational lighthouses has declined due to the expense of maintenance and the advent of much cheaper, more sophisticated, and more effective electronic navigational systems.

They were quite important for a long time. We used them for thousands of years, and they're often unique in form, iconic. And they're a good subject for photos and paintings, and I think that the light effect from them is neat. Lots of books and such using them, like ones on remote rocks, to get an isolated setting ("the lone lighthouse keeper").

But the past few decades of technological advancement have probably closed the end of their era.

That's true in that absent very unusual cases, we don't lose technology, so all the past technology remains. I think that it's a valid insight.

However, I think that it's also true to say that there are technologies that -- while not gone -- fall into disuse because of a changing environment.

You're saying that a "better" technology will remain, and for certain definitions of "better", I agree. We have no reason, absent maybe a changing environment that makes what is "best" different at different points in time or changing understanding of what is "best" (e.g. maybe internal combustion vehicles going away as we understand the impact of carbon dioxide emissions) to stop using a better technology.

But OP is specific in distinguishing between "best" and "coolest":

I don't mean BETTER. That's a different conversation. I mean cooler.

So I think that his question is valid.

I like the look of vacuum-fluorescent displays (VFDs) -- a high-contrast display with a black background, solid color areas. Enough brightness to cause some haloing spilling over into the blackness if you were looking at it. Led to a particular design style adapted to the technology, was very "high-tech" in maybe the 1980s.

OLEDs have high contrast, and I suppose you could probably replicate the look, but I doubt that the style will come back.

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

EDIT: A few more car dashboards using similar style:

https://s3.amazonaws.com/skillshare/uploads/session/tmp/50c99738

https://www.pinterest.com/hudsandguis/retro-car-dashboards/

And some concept cars with similar dash:

https://www.hudsandguis.com/home/2022/retro-digital-dashboards

Some other devices using VFDs:

https://i.ytimg.com/vi/PkPSDOjhxwM/maxresdefault.jpg

https://ae01.alicdn.com/kf/HTB1_TIdcGmWBuNkHFJHq6yatVXaZ/LINK1-VFD-Music-Audio-Spectrum-Indicator-Audio-VU-Meter-Amplifier-Board-Level-Precision-Clock-Adjustable-AGC.jpg

They already nailed this guy a bit back -- I was confused for a sec, thought I recognized his face from previous coverage. The article is just saying that the IDF is confirming that an earlier airstrike that had targeted him did, in fact, kill him.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/October_2024_Dahieh_airstrike

October 2024 Dahieh airstrike

On the night of 3 October 2024, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) carried out an airstrike on an underground bunker in Dahieh, a predominantly Shia Muslim suburb in the south of Beirut, Lebanon, where Hezbollah leaders, including Hashem Safieddine, had convened in the headquarters of Hezbollah’s Intelligence Branch.[1][2]

It sounds like both Lebanon and Israel had suspected that he was dead prior to this point, just weren't certain:

Fate of Hashem Safieddine

According to the Israeli Channel 12, Israeli security officials were "increasingly confident" that Safieddine had been killed in the attack.[3]

On 5 October, a Lebanese security source reported that Hezbollah lost contact with Safieddine, and that Hezbollah has not heard from him since the airstrike.[9][10]

Al Arabiya and Al Hadath reported that Israel confirmed the assassination of Hashem Safieddine and all Hezbollah leaders that were with him.[11] On 8 October, Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant stated that Safieddine was likely "eliminated". The claim was later repeated by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.[12][13][14] On 22 October, the IDF formally announced his killing along with Hussein Hazima and other senior Hezbollah members.[15][16]

“Europe is the largest consumer of cocaine worldwide, bigger than the United States, so the demand is there,” said Schindler, a former U.N. Security Council and German government official.

Dammit, London.

I remember being outdoors feeling like a relief in the original Half-Life.

In Far Cry, I definitely preferred being outside. Same with Metro.

I think in most FPS games I've played, the player doesn't have the developer ambush them with stuff outside. Maybe that's a factor.