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Small-Scale Question Sunday for October 13, 2024

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.

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I've not seen any recent technology advances in cars that I'm willing to pay a premium for.

Me neither, but occasionally I drive a modern car as a rental and there's a lot of safety and convenience features that have arisen in just the past, call it 8 years alone.

This hasn't always been so. There are still many use cases (mostly offline specialized stuff) that is seldom updated. It was feature complete when it shipped.

But this model seems dominant now, and consumers generally don't seem to be en masse demanding one-time purchases (although for video games this is still a thing).

And from the standpoint of "everything is internet connected and thus a possible security risk" I can see the basic logic of paying to keep vulnerabilities patched, at least!

consumers generally

These are the same people that were renting their landline phones from the phone company, are renting their cable modems / firewalls from their ISP and own a timeshare.

Maybe everything doesn't need to be connected to the internet?