I joke, I drink, I play. Sometimes all at once.
17 stories
·
2 followers

Peter Valdes-Dapena Reviews the Tesla Model 3

1 Comment

Perhaps unsurprisingly for a review for CNN, the video seems like the “real” review, and the written article seems like an afterthought extracted from the video review. He makes three main points:

  1. The car drives and performs well, about how you’d expect given Tesla’s reputation.

  2. It’s expensive for what you get compared to other cars in this price range — but this point seems hard to quantify, because none of those other cars have Tesla’s excellent electric drive train.

  3. Having almost all of the controls, including things like controlling the air vents, go through the touchscreen is not a good design. He writes:

    To do almost anything, from adjusting the mirrors to tweaking the car’s speed while driving in Autopilot, I had to use the screen. There are two unmarked knobs on the steering that are involved in various functions but, before you can use the knobs, you have to poke around on the big screen first. It’s annoying and most people will hate it. More importantly, it’s terribly distracting.

I feel like #3 is by far the most interesting point, but Valdes-Dapena seems ill-equipped to make it. He just says it’s very annoying, rather than explaining or illustrating why it’s annoying. Perhaps because he’s used to writing about cars, not about user interfaces?

I’ve long been frustrated by the fact that car reviews seldom devote attention or expertise to the design of the controls of the car. They matter a lot to me (shocker, I know), but I think they matter a lot to everyone, whether they think about control design consciously or not. The Model 3’s touchscreen centric design is so radical, it deserves a thorough review of its own.

Read the whole story
endlessmike
2454 days ago
reply
It's bad, OP.
Share this story
Delete

Mike Allen’s iPhone X Review

1 Comment

Mike Allen, writing for Axios:

My nephew Anders texted me an animated dog — an Animoji, from the same family as the alien you see above — that said, in the 19-year-old’s voice and with his facial tilt: “Hey, Uncle Mike, it’s me!”

I knew Anders had figured out to set up the iPhone X (“10”) that Apple loaned me ahead of its release in stores this Friday. Preorders for the $999 “future of the smartphone” began last Friday in 55+ countries. (The Animoji choices include unicorn, pig and panda.)

Anders, a college freshman, is our family’s designated early adopter (he followed 4G blogs long before the fast broadband rolled out nationally), and a longtime Apple connoisseur.

Thank god Apple seeded Mike Allen with an iPhone X review unit. Such great insight from his fucking nephew, the emoji expert.

Read the whole story
endlessmike
2532 days ago
reply
*Someone* is salty they didn't get a telephone a week early
Share this story
Delete

Wifi vs Cellular

15 Comments and 23 Shares
According to the cable company reps who keep calling me, it's because I haven't upgraded to the XTREME GIGABAND PANAMAX FLAVOR-BLASTED PRO PACKAGE WITH HBO, which is only $5 more per month for the first 6 months and five billion dollars per month after that.
Read the whole story
endlessmike
2635 days ago
reply
This is definitely not the case in my house. My internet connection is very stable and I have a good enough router that I don't have issues. Meanwhile my cellular data connection is much slower due to it being a popular provider here.
Share this story
Delete
13 public comments
CaffieneKitty
2631 days ago
reply
Unless you live in an apartment building from the 70's, which due to an excess of stucco and rebar are nigh-perfect Faraday cages. (I don't mind not having a cell signal in my apartment so much, but when I get delivery I have to walk with them out to the freaking parking lot to get their 'debit at the door' machine to work. :-P)
emdot
2634 days ago
reply
Same, but at work not at home. (Ironic: since we're on a network backbone.)
San Luis Obispo, CA
Belfong
2632 days ago
Same to me. My work internet sucks. Probably because they throttle.
mrobold
2634 days ago
reply
#same
Orange County, California
zippy72
2635 days ago
reply
Weirdly this was already true in the UK for 3G and then reversed for 4G. Now I'm in Portugal it's pretty much evens.
FourSquare, qv
kazriko
2635 days ago
reply
This was often true when I was on Verizon. Now that I'm on AT&T though... It's almost never the case.
Colorado Plateau
fxer
2635 days ago
reply
ouch, too close to home. I'm going to wear out the wifi toggle button in the iOS quick panel.
Bend, Oregon
freeAgent
2635 days ago
I currently use a Linksys EA9500 and my home wifi is rock solid and never goes down or has any trouble whatsoever. Router/AP selection makes a huge difference.
duerig
2635 days ago
I have excellent wifi as well. But the problem seems to be that no matter how good your wifi is, there is a region around your house where your phone tries to connect to wifi even when it isn't available. Getting better wifi just changes the shape and size of this border region. Maybe cell phones err on the side of trying wifi when it *might* work because of cell phone data charges.
freeAgent
2635 days ago
That's one advantage to living in LA. Houses are so expensive that you probably can't afford one with enough square footage to make signal strength from a powerful router/AP an issue :P
duerig
2635 days ago
Hahaha. I never have wifi problems inside my house. But if I am ever using my phone as I walk away, I always go through a deadzone. Surprisingly, my SSID seems to be visible for half a block away, much further than the actual wifi can reasonably be used.
dreadhead
2635 days ago
This used to be the case for me until I switched over to some Ubiquiti equipment.
Frankenab
2632 days ago
We got in on eero's in the kickstarter phase, and love them. We couldn't stream Netflix before.
satadru
2635 days ago
reply
For me it is connections to wifi outside the house which turn out to be shitty, but yes.
New York, NY
dianaschnuth
2636 days ago
reply
Yes. This.
Toledo OH
schnuth
2635 days ago
Yep. :)
acdha
2636 days ago
reply
Between 2.4GHz congestion and various other congestion handling features, getting a high-quality AP makes a huge difference but most people won't replace them until they break.
Washington, DC
llucax
2636 days ago
reply
Pretty much it, except that cellular data still have a cap, which really sucks.
Berlin
Ironica
2635 days ago
Technically we have a cap too (well, it throttles after we reach it, rather than cutting off or charging more) but no one in our family has been able to use more than 60% of it in a month. And unused data rolls over, to a cap of 2x the monthly allotment. So I would have to use more than 30 GB in one month to get throttled, and I don't see that happening anytime soon, even though I almost never turn on wifi. (And I almost never turn on wifi because... see above comic!)
JayM
2636 days ago
reply
Ha
Atlanta, GA
alt_text_bot
2636 days ago
reply
According to the cable company reps who keep calling me, it's because I haven't upgraded to the XTREME GIGABAND PANAMAX FLAVOR-BLASTED PRO PACKAGE WITH HBO, which is only $5 more per month for the first 6 months and five billion dollars per month after that.
olliejones
2636 days ago
It's actually called "bufferbloat." It's a real thing. It's due to too much RAM (yeah, too much RAM) in your router.
francisga
2636 days ago
reply
Read it for the alt text
Lafayette, LA, USA

How Apple Won Silicon: Why Galaxy S8 Can’t Go Core-to-Core With iPhone 7

2 Comments

Rene Ritchie, writing for iMore:

Conversely, Apple’s silicon team also doesn’t have to carry the baggage of competing vendors and devices. For example, Apple A10 doesn’t have to support Microsoft’s Direct X. It only and exactly has to support Apple’s specific technologies and implementations.

In other words, what iOS wants fast, the A-team can deliver fast.

I’ve said it before and will say it again: I’d prefer the iPhone over Android even if it were Android that had the massive lead in CPU performance. But Apple is literally over a year ahead of the competition — even the iPhone 6S and SE outperform the S8 in single-threaded performance.

Read the whole story
endlessmike
2721 days ago
reply
The sadder part is that despite the S8 having the fastest processor of any Android device, Samsung's code is so horrible that it runs visibly slower than the Pixel, which uses an older, slower SoC.
Share this story
Delete
1 public comment
jimwise
2724 days ago
reply
...

Artifacts

4 Comments and 8 Shares
I didn't even realize you could HAVE a data set made up entirely of outliers.
Read the whole story
endlessmike
2831 days ago
reply
I'm sad that Randall used "data" as a singular.
Vilhelm
2830 days ago
Randall didn't. The intentionally-incompetent character he created did.
Share this story
Delete
3 public comments
Covarr
2831 days ago
reply
Wernstrom!
East Helena, MT
Lythimus
2831 days ago
reply
The world's first combined stand-up comic act / scientific paper presentation.
alt_text_bot
2831 days ago
reply
I didn't even realize you could HAVE a data set made up entirely of outliers.

Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal - The Superhero We Need

1 Comment and 2 Shares


Hovertext:
Later, it turns out Patient-Man and Existential-Crisis-Man are the same person.

New comic!
Today's News:

Just two weeks left till BAHFest West!




Red Button mashing provided by SMBC RSS Plus. If you consume this comic through RSS, you may want to support Zach's Patreon for like a $1 or something at least especially since this is scraping the site deeper than provided.
Read the whole story
endlessmike
2911 days ago
reply
Gary Johnson after he loses the election!
Share this story
Delete
Next Page of Stories