I just like being snarky. I get the idea. I far prefer a big center-mounted analog tach with a digital speedo off to the left, as I've said elsewhere in this thread. Everything else can be sprinkled about as necessary. I did actually use the oil pressure gauge in the Mercedes today, though... I really need a new wastegate diaphragm.

It doesn't matter what they agree with, I know two women who have been raped by licensed taxi drivers, taxi licenses don't prevent crime, stop repeating that idiocy.

No, no it isn't. Put a date and a number of miles on the sticker.

The amazingly shitty experiences I've had in amazingly shitty taxis disagree

No, my car will only do 178. And for that, I need different wheels+tires, and the missing plastic belly pan.

Of course they will. Headlights are meant to spread light to the sides. Any decent ones will do that. Even the Hella H4 sealed beam replacements have lenses that do that. Just make sure you get the right ones for which side you drive on...

Google, of course. Any DNS sizable enough to trust is likely to be a tool of the state, but at least Google is competent.

that's why these cars have three or four seating positions, right? One for me, one more for me, and if there's any left then maybe I'll let someone else have one... but I'm going to also need a backup of my primary settings in case someone craps on them

The MFD in the middle of my 1997 Audi A8 (from which all other MFDs today are descended, it seems... esp. in VAG-land) is no more distracting than the MFD which was in the middle of my 1980 280ZX, but it's actually useful because it does more than just show me system status during the POST. It then provides the trip computer. If I had infotainment then it would show me tracks. If I used FM it would show me radio stations. But since I don't do either it only shows me driving-related information; MPG and the like.

I only find the center MFD design to be stupid for sports cars. The tacho belongs there, damn it! But they could still have a MFD off to the side opposite the speedo.

That's because you're not a driver. You're a passenger behind the wheel. If you were a driver, you'd like dials. Maybe not so much for the speedo; you don't need to see how fast you're going faster than you can read a number. But in a driver's car, the front-and-center-mounted tachometer needle is absolutely critical. You can't function without it.

With that said, I like the idea of self-driving cars, and of being able to be a passenger myself. But as long as I'm driving, I like to really drive. Also, note that I have literally never owned a vehicle with a center-mounted tach. I did get a gauge cluster with that for my 240SX, but I never got the cabling to install it and then I sold the car. Still have the cluster, want to use it with my PC for racing sims. Sooner or later I'll figure out how to drive it, I have too many projects already. I've ticked off some minor ones recently, though, so there's hope.

The color bar tachs take up too much space. If you make them big enough to have any resolution worth mentioning, they are massive. That is stupid. One good-sized dial tach and a medium-sized digital speed off to the left of it is my ideal layout, obviously with oil pressure, water temperature, and a real live voltage gauge next to it, plus boost when applicable. That tells me everything I need to know, and right now.

No, no it would not. Nintendo games don't model the road. If you tried it, you would be very sad very quickly.

Facts are useless if you don't comprehend their relevance. While you drive down the road, it's normal for your night vision to be impaired anyway due to reflections, oncoming traffic, stationary light sources...

The world is neither simple nor pure. If you wanted simplicity and purity, you should have become a theoretical mathematician. Applied arts feature complexities.

Yeah, Saab used to put a "night switch" into their cars to dim the lights. Saab who, you say?

I like HUD, but I think that GPS-enabled cruise control (with camera backup) is the best way to handle avoiding excessive speed with technology. The hardware for that is in most cars now.

That actually seems like a pretty easy thing for a computer to handle detecting, so the answer is probably yes. A lot of cars will now not only detect that but actually brake for you.

You mean front, top and center? Well, that's just bad design, right there. There should be a tachometer there.

Blaming your speedometer for bad ticketing practices is like blaming cotton for slaves getting whipped.

That doesn't really reflect on the validity of the idea of a HUD, though.

snicker

The right way to do it is reputation. Reviews on TripAdvisor are generally ignored if they are not attached to a human with good reputation. Nothing else matters but the web of trust. It's difficult and time-consuming to fake enough content to get a whole bunch of accounts good fake rep in such a system.

Are there any SBCs that don't cost twice as much as the equivalent ARM? And preferably, made by a company that knows that "minicomputer" already has a meaning?

Seems like ARM got cheaper than MIPS a long time ago, and the only reason MIPS is still hanging on is inertia

It became a rational fear when we began to get the technology to deal with it. If you can't do anything about it, then you just go about your business. Once you can, then it's worth worrying.