They’ve always been kinda crappy. I don’t think that changed so much as competition got better. And then as competition got better, they started doing things like stupidly priced dongles for external audio input. This has been a slow burn in the works for a long time.

You could absolutely have a recall pertinent to your vehicle that turns out to be voluntary and the automaker refuses to honor it if that system has been deactivated, tampered with, or modified.

Yeah, this could happen, but in most cases, you take your car to the dealership for recalls. And the dealer isn’t the manufacturer, they don’t care if you disable manufacturer shit. The dealer could get stinky and say no on the manufacturers behalf, but they would rather do the simple work and get paid for it, then try to upsell you on preventive maintenance like an oil change, tires, etc… Unless you’re doing something that’ll come back to them (like odometer fraud), they’re not gonna go out of their way (and spend 5x the time) to deny a recall claim that even the manufacturer doesn’t give a shit about paying. That was my experience anyway.

Build quality is lower. Parts don’t last as long, and driving dynamics are worse. Also, paint and exterior finishes are prerty trash.

I’ve owned and driven Hondas from the 80s, 90s, 00s, and 10s, and its an easy call to say the 90s were peak. They drove nicely, were cheap to maintain, and had excellent durability/longevity.

They are still decent cars, but not excellent as they once were. Toyota/Lexus are much better in the last 20 years.

One guys opinion anyway.

A time frame when Honda was still an excellent manufacturer.

It’s unlikely that any dealer would disable features. They’ll tell you they can’t do it for “liability” reasons.

Adding to your point… “impaired driver detection” is already federal law, however it is still held up in the federal rulemaking process. There were (if I recall) deadlines in 2024 and 2026, but the rule making process can take a long ass time, so for now, it is still a future thing, but I mention it to say that there is broad congressional support for in-car surveillance tech. It’s definitely coming.

The main problem with this is, 1. It could void your warranty

Manufacturers cannot void the warranty because of aftermarket modifications. They can deny claims for failures that are caused by the aftermarket modifications, but they cannot “void” a warranty. In several years of working on this stuff, the only times I ever saw voided warranties was when cars were salvage branded titles, such as from total loss accidents, flood recoveries and so on. And even in those cases, federal emissions equipment warranties remained in effect. There are reasonably strong consumer protections for aftermarket modifications that go back several decades. They don’t entirely stop manufacturers from doing dodgy shit, but it has limited it.

Congressional democrats demand answers… after voluntarily giving up all the leverage they have.

It’s not about airspace at all. ATC (part of the FAA) isn’t funded by airport landing/handling/ramp fees. Controllers wouldn’t ever get any of this money, and they probably wouldn’t care either way, other than that directionally less traffic probably means smaller federal budget allocations for ATC.

As things go, ATC is pretty egalitarian. If you fly up in hour homebuilt carbon cub, they’ll give you the same respect and attention that they give Delta or JetBlue. Private jets don’t get special treatment. If anything, ATC gives you favorable treatment for being knowledgeable, predictable, communicative, and not actin the fool.

I don’t think they think they’re an opposition party, and they certainly wouldn’t oppose mass surveillance. They never have.

The license is royalty free. AOMedia requires it’s contributors to contribute royalty free, and AOMedia has worked hard to ensure it doesn’t infringe anyone else’s IP, but that doesn’t stop other companies (some patent trolls) from asserting “You can’t do xyz without infringing some obscure patent I own.” These companies (like Dolby) target the companies that license AV1, and say “You’ve infringed my IP. Pay me $x per product that implements AV1, or I will sue you for much greater damages.” So AV1 really is licensed royalty free, what we have here is a third party that isn’t part of AOMedia (that really liked making money the old way) trying to extract revenue on dubious claims of patent essentiality.

The fun part is that nobody really knows (or cares) whether AV1 is really infringing any IP. They know that the threat of litigation is likely to induce enough people to just pay that the whole charade is worth it. And perhaps ironically, the companies like Dolby want to litigate even less than the companies they are threatening because litigation tends to be a winner take all thing. If they lose, then nobody pays them; not even the companies they bullied into paying. The video codec IP world has operated this way for decades. This is what AOMedia hoped to change. It’s Governing Members are some heavy hitters. If they were to defend AV1, they could easily out-muscle players like Dolby. That might happen, but these sorts of things play out over a very long time horizon.

Reddit allows you to appear anonymous to other Redditors, but Reddit knows who you are.

You can create an account anonymously, and you might be able to browse through a connection that can’t be tied to you, but you’ll be shadowbanned from the start.

There’s a chance that leaning out the team makes things better. Bloat kills dev teams.

But… ticketing systems are a bit like fashion. We could see some new shiny system come around that does more or less the same thing, but becomes fashionable for one reason or another and eats Atlassian’s lunch.

I was thinking along the same lines, like they probably spend more on fuel. I remember when Honda pissed everyone off in the 1990s after inflating F1 budgets and then suddenly leaving the sport when the Japanese market crashed. At the time they had Honda factory R&D teams designing and building engines just for F1 teams; that was probably tens of millions a year that wasn’t even part of a team’s budget… in the 80s and 90s.

Anyhow… F1 teams have a budget cap for several years now. For 2026, it’s $215 million, and that doesn’t include engines, nor driver and team manager salaries.

People started buying EVs like crazy due to high gas prices; the utilities responded with big hikes in electricity prices. They work hard to fuck over consumers.

California. Prices vary between $4.75 and 5.75 a gallon. We’re in I think our third decade of paying 2x what everyone else in the US pays.

I mostly drive an EV though, so I can rest easy knowing that California electricity rates are 3x the national average. lol

Agreed, but Safeway was shitty before 2015.

PE acquisition seems more like kindred spirits finding each other than something bad happening to Safeway.

Yeah, Safeway has been shitty for a long time. I’m fortunate like you that we have a wealth of independent grocers and small ethnic markets that are so much better. They’re also a fair bit cheaper too.

+1000, but you still see it in places with plenty of money and space to work on cars.

I worked at a car repair shop when I was younger. I agree that it’s not most (as in > 50%) but the number of people who knowingly drive very unsafe vehicles is bigger than you’d think.

Not to mention the cell phone most of us carry.