The newer controls are more affordable. In the case of the non-button "buttons" a chip and some megaohm resistors and a piece of plastic with some labels screen printed on it replace a whole bunch of custom-designed injection-molded buttons with special labels which have to be applied with sub-millimeter accuracy, and switches for them which have to be able to survive hundreds of thousands of cycles in an extreme temperature environment. Only in the most basic vehicles which still have manual climate controls, if such a thing even exists any more, are the buttons potentially cheaper because they are attached directly to functions.

I had an A8 Quattro. It was a fairly marvelous driving machine when it was working well enough for that, but it was a horribly overcomplicated rolling nightmare when it comes to system design. It had a vacuum system about as stupid as the one on the infamous 300ZX TT and the electrical system had a truly peerless level of unneeded complexity designed apparently only to make the vehicle easier to assemble. There was a sealed-ish plastic "e-box" containing the principal control units and a bunch of junction plugs which then connected through to a related box inside in the center console, into which interior harness components would plug. This is unnecessary and only adds a lot of cost and points of failure. Put the fucking computers inside the cabin where they belong (because as hostile as environment as it can be, it's still less so than the engine bay) and you don't need any of this bullshit. Even Nissan got (and gets) that one right.

The Germans know how to make an amazing vehicle, but they are today apparently uninterested in making it reliable. Maybe Porsche is better, I can't speak to that brand.

Yes, you need the windows to do that to get a good seal when the doors are frameless. It is not strictly necessary, but it reduces wind noise.

People only think there's something special about BMW or Mercedes because they have not worked on cars. Once you have worked on a couple dozen different vehicles and gotten to know how they are put together you realize there is nothing at all special about modern BMWs or Mercedes compared to other modern cars. After the Lexus LS ate their luxury car lunch they all have been relentless cost cutters, but even before that they were starting to worsen the value proposition and depend on their logos and interiors to sell cars. The interiors matter, but if the underpinnings aren't as special as they are, they also aren't sufficient.

The Japanese figured out much better ways to design and build cars than the Germans, and it has showed since the nineties, and it still shows today. German cars are overwrought, with unnecessary complexities in basic components like electrical harnesses which cause more problems than they're worth, instead of overbuilt like they were in the 80s. This isn't even so much about mass because the W126 wasn't very heavy at all, it's about design iteration and spending money perfecting parts and systems. They don't even care about mass any more except for the most special or most budget cars, everything else is now heavy AF.

German cars aren't special since the nineties. The last time they overbuilt them was in the eighties. The W126 Mercedes was the last great S class. The W140 was a rolling electrical failure. Well, sometimes it rolled anyway. BMW followed exactly the same trajectory. They had to learn to complete with the Japanese after the LS.

That's not having more computer, that's having more computers. DCs are concentrations of power, it doesn't matter how many computers are in them really but we have to organize the logic into many computers because otherwise interconnection becomes unmanageably expensive. Drones inherently depend on many distributed computers, but none of them have to be very powerful. The more processing power you have the more fancy tricks they can do, but drones are inevitably energy-limited and therefore have limited loiter capability, so the types of tricks you will want them to play are also limited.

Yeah, it's called fast fashion.

How do you know he doesn't also say things about those, coward?

Trump is demented. That's a different disability.

While he was never a good legal businessman, he seems to have been a capable gangster. But now he's lost most of his marbles, and the rest are rolling away rapidly.

Demonstrate that they're being enforced before claiming they're enforceable.

Here you are crying about Marxism again while also being a person who wants your relatives to get more free money. Shouldn't your family be paying for that if you're so against collectivism? You don't have beliefs, only arguments, so why should anyone care about your emotional appeals?

Nvidia doesn't need to care because people are stupid and will buy their shit whether they are assholes or not. A few informed customers may switch but most people aren't informed.

The Republican plan to dumb down voters until they are stupid enough to vote Republican has secondary effects, who knew?

You don't know enough to speak to that, which I covered elsewhere in this conversation. Your opinion about it is uninteresting.

Sure, just not many 8 year olds are customers. It's teenagers.

It's not stupid if chaos and destruction are the goals. It's only evil.

To maggots anyone not on their party line is wrong. Too bad that party line is an unprotected signal chat.

You were mad that efforts were being made to make up for prejudicial treatment that you have benefited from and now you want to cry about it here and get other people to comisserate with you over it. You proved exactly how necessary such efforts are with your crybaby reaction.

I have at least one persistent moderation troll. The usual one mods down three in a row without concern for appearances because he knows that slashdot protects anyone who increases post count