I once expected an aftermarket industry to pop-up to hybridize old cars. Old rear-wheel drive manual cars sound easiest.
Generator attached to the flywheel instead of the starter motor, and then find some way to squeeze a drive motor by the rear diff (probably more complicated, but surely not impossible). I thought something might pop up once companies like Bosch started making generic e-axles for manufacturers to use.
With a small Li-ion battery (and all the usual inverters, etc.), it could work like a manually operated version of the dual-motor Honda hybrid system. Put it into neutral, and whatever energy is in the battery could drive the motor on the rear axle. The engine could automatically kick-in and drive the generator if there's not enough in the battery.
It would never be as economical as a purpose-built hybrid, but old manual cars are often reasonably economical on the open road, and terrible in city traffic. Targeting only the urban fuel consumption would go a long way towards keeping them useable, with the added bonus of making manual shifting optional in stop-go traffic. Small motors would be enough for city speeds, and with a small battery, it sounds cheap to me at least.
I doubt it could ever be a simple kit, but I thought people would have a go.
My 1994 Toyota Celica had a vent beneath the steering column. It didn't have airbags, ABS braking, cruise control, electric seats, a 5th gear - it was missing all kinds of features that more luxurious cars had then, and even basic cars have now. But it had that vent! It was such an amazing feature, and I can't believe that it's not in more cars, especially ones a lot more upmarket.
I'm always a little frustrated by all the little features that are scattered across car models, that would be so easy to add, but are only available in some cars. I suppose putting absolutely everything in would be expensive and overwhelming, but some of them seem pretty easy. Off the top of my head:
- The button to dim all the dials except the essential ones (in Subarus and Saabs)
- The little flap to block sun above the sun-visor (in Audis and probably others)
- Being able to turn the radio on again after the key has been taken out
- Being able to use the residual heat for a short time after the engine has been turned off (Usually in VW/Audi cars - becoming more common?)
- Being able to hold a button on the remote to shut or open all windows (for a coupe with frameless doors, this could make getting in and out of the car in a tight supermarket parking space massively easier)
- Fuel cap holders inside the fuel flap (have these become universal yet?)
Those all feel like they would cost very little extra to implement. There are a few more that I feel were complicated or expensive, but I still was surprised weren't universal
- Having the remote/key recharge while driving (less useful now you rarely need to take the keys out of your pocket, but strangely missing from many luxury cars even when you did need to insert the key).
- HUD
I don't feel this is a very good list, but most of the things I only remember when I see them. Most of the items above have gradually become more common. I remember noticing cheap but fantastic features more often with cars like old Peugeots and Volvos (and obviously Saabs), and also somewhat in 90s Japanese cars. Sure Mercedes and BMWs had nice features that other cars didn't, but it's the ones where they've thought of something really useful without it costing a lot that really felt impressive. And then disappointing when you never saw that feature again.
Always loved this from The Big Short (movie):
"In the years that followed, hundreds of bankers and rating agency's executives went to jail. The SEC was completely overhauled, and Congress had no choice but to break up the big banks and regulate the mortgage and derivatives industries.
Just kidding.
Banks took the money the American people gave them, and they used it to pay themselves huge bonuses, and lobby the Congress to kill big reform. And then they blamed immigrants and poor people, and this time even teachers. And when all was said and done, only one single banker went to jail."
Edit: I see I'm not the first to quote The Big Short in reply - such a good movie (and book)!
I have visited very few Indian government sites, but the list does include indianvisaonline.gov.in. Some have been horribly confusing, but some haven't. I did manage to get my Visa, complete with 17ish identical confirmation emails (I've forgotten the exact number). One common theme was that to me they looked old, and information dense.
I'm not against old-looking websites with lots of text. If done well, I think I even prefer it to nice looking modern pages with almost no information on them. We are, after all, having this discussion on HN.
The websites of Japanese mobile providers strike me as similar (I don't have any experience with Japanese government webpages, or probably any other Japanese websites). I found some of those had a similar vibe, which seemed very dated to me, however, I assumed that was a style choice rather than being old. Could be something similar going on for Indian sites. They're just not targeted at my design sensibilities.
As an addition, I thought most of the confusingness about indianvisaonline.gov.in wasn't in the web-design, but in the questions. I've found similar frustrating options on some lovely looking websites, or even paper forms. When forms are for important things, extra effort should be put in to make them as clear and obvious as possible. Perhaps the general rule for our current situation would be that the more important the form, the less intuitive it is. The Indian government isn't alone in this.
Does anyone have hopes AI will make things better for us in this area?
I think you're right, if you're referring to the hardware.
But there are also ever rising hardware requires for the built in apps and the rest of the operating system.
An iPad which we bought around 5 years ago, which was still on sale just over 2 years ago, is now painfully slow compared to when purchased (thanks to iOS 26) when using the the Settings app, the App Store, Safari, etc.
This is very important for devices with only one choice for operating system, like Apple iPads and iPhones.
It's true that the device only feels slower because the apps are have had feature updates, but there isn't a way to only choose security updates (except sometimes briefly after Apple release a really bloated new iOS version).
A similar situation applies for Android devices. While you can usually install something like LineageOS or GrapheneOS , if you also switch to a newer Android version to keep receiving security patches, the phone will feel considerably slower. If you stay on an older version, the OS will stop receiving updates sooner.*
*I haven't kept up with this lately, so I'd be happy to find out this isn't the case. If, for example, you could stay on a version of LineageOS or GrapheneOS based on Android 13, and still receive security updates.
Cider9986 answered for Android, so I'll throw out a suggestion for iPhone.
Assistive Access on iPhone might be an option for people looking for something drastic. Turning it on is simple, but it's pretty brutal and a bit crude in some ways even compared to a feature phone. Your mileage will vary! It's something I often suggest, and never quite recommend.
You pick the apps you want access to, and the permissions each should have, set a password, and then when you turn Assistive Access on, the phone reboots into a very limited mode. You can have every app you want, but when I've played with it, I've still found it felt too limited for daily use. Maybe I wouldn't find that if I was at the point of buying a feature phone. I can't remember what frustrated me, except that I remember being pleasantly surprised by how much worked, and frustrated by some basic things.
As an example, I was impressed that I could turn on and off a VPN through an app, even though I couldn't see the status of it outside the app. On the other hand, the location permissions felt buggy, and the locations permission changes in Assisted Access mode seemed to mess with the settings in the normal mode too.
Hmm - I’m not an expert on this, but I thought the e:HEV system was quite different.
More like an engine connected to a single very long gear (like top gear), to avoid converting from physical motion to electricity and back to physical motion, at motorway speeds. And also a clutch, to disconnect that system completely, in which case the combustion engine can drive a generator, and send electricity to another motor driving the wheels. Plus there’s a battery involved, and the motors can assist or regen when the physical drivetrain is connected.
It’s all very cool, and I expect even more efficient than the Toyota system on the open road, but a little less during city driving. I can go into why I think that, but I’m not even sure I’m right :)
Edit: I just wanted to add, that Civic with this drivetrain always seemed like a good choice.
I’ve tried to test-drive a Honda with this setup twice. Once the dealer misunderstood me and I drove some boring mild-hybrid CVT Insight or something. I would have even been happy trying out the dual-clutch hybrid they were using in some models then. I’d already driven their mild hybrid a few times. It got good mileage, but not as good as Toyota’s system, and didn’t have anything else going for it. The second time I hadn’t realised that they didn’t even bring this Civic into the country. We drove the regular CVT anyway, but it was a huge disappointment, knowing other countries had the e:HEV.
2nd edit: I incorrectly called the combustion engine “the motor”, which is something I do all the time, but need to avoid when talking about hybrids
I have been considering this since Apple Passwords implemented a way to export. I've just seen that the iPhone Passwords app has an export to another app you have installed on your phone, but I previously tested the export from Safari method.
I realise that this is moving even more of my eggs into Apple's basket, and even further from self-reliance towards convenience, but today it doesn't seem significantly worse to just trust Apple with this, than Bitwarden.
But isn't it a pain to use those passwords on any other non-Apple device? Am I missing something, or is that just not an issue for your use-case? Ah! I've just learned/relearned about iCloud Passwords through iCloud for Windows, but nothing for Linux?
Can I ask questions about your setup? I don't intend to grill you on it or pick it apart - I would like to go down this route further, but find myself gradually moving away from it. I switched from Keepass to Bitwarden in 2020, knowing it was just a move towards convenience.
I suppose you realised you could protect against the scenario where you run outside without any devices, by just having a copy of the encrypted data sent to some cloud service, e.g. iCloud/OneDrive/Google Drive, but decided you couldn't trust any?
I know everyone's threat models are different, but I'm still curious to know your thoughts. There's no one you would trust with an encrypted copy?
Do you have any automated backup of your phone to a cloud service, or only local? If a cloud service, do you make sure it excludes your password manager? If no cloud backup, then do you make sure you have a copy of your data outside the house?
I have incomplete thoughts about the robustness of my password/OTP code backups. It is the 2-factor codes, which one day in the distant future, when I am overseas holding a new replacement for a lost phone, looking at the text "Enter the 6‑digit verification code", I will wish I'd thought about more carefully.
In Singapore, the largest local bank, and three large overseas banks (Citibank, HSBC and Standard Chartered) all require my to be near my phone to login. However, I haven't tried just saying I don't have a phone from the beginning. I know they used to have physical security tokens, perhaps they still would have provided one if I had insisted.
In New Zealand, I've only come across one bank that requires you to provide authentication from your phone (Rabobank), and in Australia I have less experience, but it's not universal either.
This feels like a dumb question, but is there nothing to distinguish the USB 2 port from the USB 3 port? I think there is an alert to tell people if they are using a fast device in the slow port, but I wonder whether their target market will read the manual and know which is which. I feel they will be surprised when that pop-up appears.
The Apple Take a tour of [the] MacBook Neo page describes the ports by location only:
"The left port can support one external display and transfers data at USB 3 speeds (up to 10 GB/s). The right port transfers data at USB 2 speeds (up to 480 MB/s). You can charge your MacBook Neo and connect accessories using either port."
...and...
"Tip: As a best practice, charge your MacBook Neo using the right port (USB 2), which leaves the left port (USB 3) available for a display or for connecting accessories that can take advantage of the higher speeds."
I find it very strange - I don’t really know what to make of it.
I have the wallet shortcut in my control centre. If I use it while on the Home Screen, I end up in the wallet app where I can rearrange and change settings for the cards. If I swipe down the Notification Centre, on my still unlocked phone, and then also swipe down the control centre, and then use exactly the same shortcut, I now end up in the “double-click to pay” version of the wallet, with no rearranging.
Sometimes there seem to be two different apps - the transition to the full app is a sideways transition, while the double-click version slides down from the top of the screen.
However, if I am in the full wallet app, with rearranging options available, and I double-click, it changes the wallet app to the double-click to pay version with no transition.
This one seems harder to get right to me. The cards are stacked so that the card further down the screen is the top of the stack (the card overlap indicating which is in front of which). I would guess this was done because if you can only see part of the cards behind, seeing the top of the obscured card is more useful than seeing the bottom.
I could be missing something, but where there is no perfect solution, I want to be slower to say the option they chose is dumb.
My work laptop (HP ZBook Studio 16 G11 - the current model) will will only charge from the USB C ports on the left side, not the right side. Unfortunately, that is low down my list of charging complaints for that laptop. It will not charge from USB C unless it is given a power supply that is at least 100W, even if it then only draws a fraction of that.
There is an exception, where it will charge from a lower wattage power supply (like 60W) when in standby or turned off. Often, it is happily charging away, and as soon as you wake it up, it stops taking any power. As soon as I need more, it takes less. And it is definitely not the case that it is draining faster than it is charging. It just stops charging.
Presumably, the justification for all this mess is that it is only supposed to be charged from the barrel plug 180W power supply, but with a weight starting at 1.73 kg, I would rather not lug a 1/2 kg power supply too.
Perhaps in all their efforts to make it slim and lightweight, they wanted to avoid extra power circuitry. After all, in their efforts to slim it down, they also cut an HDMI/DisplayPort, a camera cover - everything in fact except 3 USB C (not all thunderbolt), a USB A and a 3.5mm audio port. Our office meeting rooms are nicely wired with HDMI and USB-C chargers, but people are still forever trying to locate an HDMI adapter, or going back to their desks to get their power supply.
Generator attached to the flywheel instead of the starter motor, and then find some way to squeeze a drive motor by the rear diff (probably more complicated, but surely not impossible). I thought something might pop up once companies like Bosch started making generic e-axles for manufacturers to use.
With a small Li-ion battery (and all the usual inverters, etc.), it could work like a manually operated version of the dual-motor Honda hybrid system. Put it into neutral, and whatever energy is in the battery could drive the motor on the rear axle. The engine could automatically kick-in and drive the generator if there's not enough in the battery.
It would never be as economical as a purpose-built hybrid, but old manual cars are often reasonably economical on the open road, and terrible in city traffic. Targeting only the urban fuel consumption would go a long way towards keeping them useable, with the added bonus of making manual shifting optional in stop-go traffic. Small motors would be enough for city speeds, and with a small battery, it sounds cheap to me at least.
I doubt it could ever be a simple kit, but I thought people would have a go.