Beep boop - this is a robot. A new show has been posted to TWiT…
What are your thoughts about today’s show? We’d love to hear from you!
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What a great tribute to Bill Atkinson! Leo, thank you for making this the lead on the program.
People wanting to learn more about the genius of Atkinson’s implementation of rounded rectangles may find this article of interest: Code Critique: RoundRects - Apple QuickDraw Source Code — CCS Working Group 2020
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This Palantir stuff is legitimately something for the “Don’t Tread On Me” crowd yet they are oddly silent. Where the hell are they? Finally this is your thing!
Same goes to the Tea Party re: the big dumb bill that will add 3.5 trillion to the national debt.
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In Germany, the civil service provides the portal for uploading your taxes, with a digital form for filling out the return. But, you have to know what you are entering and you have to know what you can claim and what you can’t claim.
If you are happy with that, you can do it yourfelf. Alternatively, for 20€ and up, you can buy commercial tax return software, which has wizards, AI advice etc. and steps you through making your return, points out errors and makes suggestions for areas where you might be able to claim more.
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Regarding GPS and navigation, I only use navigation maybe once or twice a year, I prefer to drive without the nav active.
Unlike Cathy, I’m all for a car intervening if it sees an issue. A few weeks back, I was reversing a rental car slowly out of our apartment’s parking space. High hedges to the left. It put the brakes hard on and sounded an alert.
Whilst I was still wondering what was going on, a couple and their dog walked right behind me. The cross-traffic detection had seen them even though they were hidden and stopped me. Clever.
What was less impressive was the lane-keeping assist that defaulted to on. It would pick up irregularities in the tarmac and try to follow them. My wife thought we had a flat, as the car would lurch a bit. So that seems to be the issue, inconsistencies in the environment that it is trying to react to.
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I’ve had too many bad experiences with driver assistance features.
My first experience with a reversing camera showed everything was fine, but I was so engrossed in the camera, I wasn’t looking out the windows and in the mirrors. I slammed on the brakes, only to find I was less than 1cm from the car next to me, even though none of the sensors had alerted.
Worse are the lane assist features, I’ve driven VW, Skoda, Audi, Toyota, Ford, Nissan, Kia and Tesla around here and they all had problems with tar strips on the road. Each of them tried to drive the car into the concrete central divider, because that is the direction the tar strip went.
At another location, on the off-ramp of a dual-carriageway, there is another tar strip and the lane assist tries to drive you back off the off-ramp and down a grass bank, back onto the dual-carriageway.
I much prefer the assist on my 2014 Qashqai, it beeps when it senses you are leaving the lane, but it doesn’t actually affect the steering. Having to fight the onboard computer to keep it from causing an accident isn’t my idea of an assistant!
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Becoming over-reliant on the tech your car has is also a real issue, especially if you drive different cars. The two times I have reversed into something is when I wasn’t in my own car, so was expecting the parking sensors to help me. Problem was, the cars had reversing cameras but no sensors.
Learnt my lesson now!
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