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PaperclipPerfector  1yr ago (text post)   28108 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of September 18, 2023

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Isn’t the engine light strictly more information than you’d have had in an older vehicle?

All your same diagnostics still work. You can go pop the hood and observe, shit, I’m out of blinker fluid. Time to walk to the nearest phone booth and call for a tow.

I bet it’s easier to hack new washer cycles, too. Back in my day you only had one knob and one button.

Isn’t the engine light strictly more information than you’d have had in an older vehicle?

No. While the ecu has a lot more information it is hidden. In the old soviet lada and moskvich you had a oil pressure gauge. The design was a lot more in your face.

The check engine light is like your wife being angry with you. What is wrong - if you don't know, no need to tell you. But something is wrong. Give me the fucking error code in plain sight. It was the same with windows when they changed the BSOD to smiley. Why ?

I bet it’s easier to hack new washer cycles, too. Back in my day you only had one knob and one button.

I doubt it. Manufacturers go to great deal to obscure the raw parameters - like RPM, duration and so on. Why?

So…which of those raw parameters was available in the good ol’ washer? From where I’m standing, if you desperately wanted to tune your washer, too bad. Today there’s at least a chance that the OEM left an open port somewhere in the machine. It has strictly more features than its predecessor, even if it doesn’t include all the ones you want.

The loss of an oil gauge is a shame. And a surprise—my car still has one! Why do you think they took it out? My guess would be cost-saving, or maybe wanting a cleaner visual presentation. Arguing that it was a corporate plan to discourage amateur maintenance…well, I find that less likely. There are plenty of better ways to make working on your car less appealing; just ask BMW.

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