that’s probably why they put an actual value in the title preceding it

I cannot upvote a paywalled source

yes, blurring the article if you don’t disable ad blocking is a paywall

just like headlights that are so bright that they blind everybody in front of them

I never feel safer than when I’m approaching the crest of a hill on a corner with a 15-ft deep rocky ditch to either side at 80 km/h on a narrow road with almost no shoulder and I can see the night sky lit up in front of me like it’s a football stadium because the car on the other side of the hill has LED high beams on. Then we reach the point where we can see each other’s headlights, and I am flash banged from the intensity going directly into my squinting eyes. I see a barely discernible flash as their auto-highbeams recognize that I am a vehicle and it switches to low beams, which are the exact same intensity and still going directly into my eyeballs, except now it’s not lighting up the night sky as well as the treetops.

I turn my own LED highbeams* on in response in an attempt to see some of the road in front of me so that I can avoid the ditch, and I steer towards the middle of the road where there is only a chance of danger instead of guaranteed danger from driving off the road. Hopefully the other driver sees me well enough to avoid me if I get too close to center or even go over the line.

We complete the pass, my night vision returns over the next 30 seconds, and I start saying a small prayer thanking God for how safe I was kept during that interaction, but I am interrupted by the exact same scenario happening on the next hill.

• I installed LED highbeams bulbs just for this reason, trying to see when somebody is blinding me. I only use them in this situation because my halogen low beams are enough for all other driving conditions that I find myself in. I disabled the DRL module so that the LED bulbs don’t come on unless high beams are on.

spell check probably “helped” them

it does that shit to me all the fucking time nowadays. I’ll write a perfectly fine and appropriate word for the context, and spell check will just change it out for the wrong spelling or just completely the wrong fucking word. it sucks now. probably driven by AI or something.

lane keep isn’t exactly self driving

quarterly profits have been great or something

yes, it would. their elected officials did this.

right, meaning everybody will need to get a VPN, defeating the purpose of the law

looks like I know what my next phone purchase will. and new, even.

I do recommend against things that suck, however

which is just about everything microslop touches

well they won’t literally have performance metrics. they’ll have data that they will use as performance metrics. important distinction

It’s capitalism

again

yes, but which tree?

I mean isn’t it more of that the industry is just recognizing the war that Adobe started years ago?

full disclaimer all I’ve read is the damn headline

even my screenshot tool (Samsung) on my phone is called “ai-something or other”. when they made the switch, it became laggy, unresponsive, generally slow to use, and far shittier than it was before.

great branding for AI, though, or something

just ask grok, duh

the best I’ve found stopped being made over a decade ago

Toyota Matrix / Pontiac Vibe

Hyundai Elantra Touring

yep

I bought a 2012 because it was the most palatable vehicle to replace my 2008

there’s like nothing after that that remotely interests me, at least in a reasonable used price range. and there’s certainly nothing new that interests me due to all the overcomplicated shit, touchscreens, bright dashboards, and LED headlights

I finally gave up and subscribed, but only because the people I wanted to watch weren’t all available elsewhere and because I was lazy

but this year I will be canceling YouTube as my last subscription

I used to do this on Apple TV before I paid for premium. I wonder if they track that behaviour, because I swear they started showing me longer ads more often and no ads less often.

I used to back out and restart the video half a dozen times and I’d get it to play without ads. it went up and up until it seemed like I was doing it dozens of times and it would still play ads