Wasting time waiting for computers reminds me of a bug in Windows XP, Vista, or 7, or maybe all of them. When the background was set to a solid color, it added an extra 30 seconds to the boot time. The function that loaded an image as the background would wait 30 seconds to load the image before timing out, even if no image was set.
There was another bug in Windows Update on XP (I think) that caused an exponential delay. Each patch that was not needed doubled the amount of time taken to process a list of patches. As time went on and more patches were applied to your computer, the list of unneeded (already installed) patches would increase, until running the list of patches took hours.
So sometimes it isn’t your own impatience, but the actual software engineers fucking with you.
Oh yeah, good question. In my car I have to manually disable, each and every time, 2 things:
ASS, Auto Stop Start AB, Active Braking
TL;DR — you can skip the parts in (parens).
(ASS is a PITA. My brand new car’s battery was only 7 months old and the battery was weak and needed to be replaced. Not an uncommon problem with new Subarus, per what I read. I disable ASS every time. It can’t be configured off.)
(AB is also a PITA. I do NOT need my car telling me when to brake! One example: coming out of a business driveway and into a main street, if the light on that street is red then traffic can be backed up and blocking my exit from that driveway. Often, there’s just barely enough room between two stopped cars for me to squeeze through that gap and get into an adjacent free lane. So when I proceed (and you must look carefully to make sure oncoming traffic isn’t approaching in that adjacent free lane!), I need to get smartly through that tight space before the light turns green, after first ensuring I’ve made eye contact with the driver at that gap and s/he acknowledges my presence. It’s the infrequent situations like that where AB activates and slams on the brakes just when I need to be moving smartly!)
(AB is an effing PITA.)
ASS can be disabled while driving, and that control is conveniently on the Home Screen. But for AB I have to navigate to it (3 button presses to different screens), and it can only be changed when my speed is 5 MPH or less.
But wait, there’s more! While driving, a touch screen pretty much requires you to take your eyes off of the road to interface with it. If there is significant delay after touching a button as I navigate the screens, that means I must take my eyes off of the road several more times.
I understand. I’m a network administrator, so I’m connected to virtually everything, so I experience the same thing. Our servers are top of the line and, with school out for the summer, our bandwidth is like 3:00 am traffic on a super highway. The problem is that I have an underpowered desktop that is 6 years old and is so pathetic that it can’t even accommodate Windows11. Could that be your problem?
By the way, if you’re still using spinning magnetite, switching to a device with a solid-state main drive will make a huge improvement in your wakeup/bootup times, as well as a number of other waiting tasks. That’s the biggest difference I noticed when I switched to my current computer.
The auto start/stop drives my wife nuts. I’m able to ignore it. On my car, it is turned off with a button.
The Active Braking has helped me twice. Once, I had forgotten I pulled my bike out of the garage. It was sitting in my driveway right behind my car. I got in my car and tried to back up, but was stopped. Sure - stupid of me, but glad I didn’t hit my bike.
Another time, I was driving home, which involves a left from one busy road to another. There is an immediate right driveway after the turn which is RARELY used. One time I was messing with my CD player as I made the turn, and apparently wasn’t paying enough attention that someone was using the driveway. I think I woulda seen them and stopped in time anyway, but didn’t mind the tech stopping me.
Not to hijack, but my stupid car tech complaint involves the radio. Every time you start the car, the radio/CD turns on - rather than staying in whatever state you left it. My wife handles this by turning the volume down all the way.
ASS is a pain in the butt. Apparently the mileage & testing regulations require that it not be fully configurable off. But like @Dinsdale, mine has a physical button and remembers the setting (“off” in my case) from drive to drive.
Automatic impact-avoidance braking has also saved me a time or two. As has the urgent beepbeepbeep that precedes it stomping on the pedal for me by a second or so. At least on my car there’s an adjustable sensitivity. If you routinely need to squeeze into spaces that trigger it, see if you can turn it down a little.
Not precisely on point, but John Stuart Mill noted in 1848 that “It is questionable if all the mechanical inventions yet made have lightened the day’s toil of any human being.” Of course the point of innovation was to reduce labour costs, not lighten our work, and perhaps that reasoning continues today.
Industrially, there’s no such thing as a Labor Saving Device, only Productivity Increasing Devices. You’re still working that 8-hour shift. But now you have to make 200 units per shift instead of 150.
I mean, our current economic system is based on the assumption that everyone has a job, because everyone needs one. If less people are needed to do some particular job, then new jobs will be invented to keep people employed. The hope, at least, is that the new jobs will at least be better jobs, that the individuals doing them will be well-suited for, which sometimes but not always happens. One also hopes that all of those new invented jobs provide some benefit to the people as a whole, which also sometimes but not always happens.
Agreed. One wonders if it really saves anything, or if it is just a sop to feelgood token environmentalism?
Presumably it increases wear on the battery, starter motor and engine. I would not be surprised if, taking those factors into account, it is actually worse for the environment.
They do save gas, but it really depends on how much time you spend stopped on a particular trip. The following article (with data from the SAE) says 7-26% fuel savings. SAE reports a 7% savings on the Federal Test Procedure, and a 26% savings on the New York City Cycle.
So probably barely any savings on a highway trip with only a very few stops that don’t last long. Potentially lots of savings on trips where you spend a long time waiting for traffic lights. It isn’t just some green washing to annoy people; it can save gas.
I’ve only experienced it in rental cars, and I just leave it enabled. Saving 10-20% on what I have to pay for gas seems a reasonable exchange for not having to do anything.
Sometimes the noise and vibration of starting is a little annoying, but I just get over myself, and don’t worry about it. The stupidest was a rental car in Texas, where at a stop light the engine would turn off, and then immediately turn on again so the AC could run.
If it caused a noticeable hesitation at a stop light, then I’d disable it, but for normal driving I find the engine is running as soon as I lift my foot off the brake.
ASS does save gas, and that’s great. When I was using ASS, before my battery died and had to be replaced, on one tankful of gas where I had a lot of start-stop driving I saved about ¼ gallon. Cool. That’ll definitely add up over time.
But if my Subaru’s battery and charging system cannot handle the demands adequately, and it has already shown it cannot, then I disable it.
I’m pretty amazed that any new car, fancy, budget, or in between would be inadequate to handling the ASS system they designed for it. That kind of mismatched capability sounds a lot more like 1970s automotive engineering than 2020s.
Not disputing your experience, just musing on my reaction.
Kinda related - how much time do you spend trying to figure out if texts/emails are scams? I tend to figure the all are, but I got one today that sure looked official - something about a charge to Apple cloud services. Just disappointing that so many folk spend so much time trying to scam you through your devices/accounts.
I was surprised by how bad it was when I switched to an iPhone for a few weeks. On Google Pixel phones, the spam is just blocked automatically. I get maybe a couple a year, if that. On the iPhone I would get several a day.
Tried a few different paid apps but none of them were as good as the Pixel’s free blocking. And they didn’t block calls very well either.
The Pixel does both automatically, for free, and if any unknown calls slip through, the Google bot will answer for you behind the scenes and ask them to provide more info. Most spammers just hang up then. The ones that actually say anything get turned into a text transcript and you can choose whether to answer, send them to voicemail, or block them.
The iPhone situation was so bad in comparison I had to sell it and switch back after a few weeks
