I recently looked at used cars, and there was an additional $20k 'Toyota tax' when comparing a Toyota to a similar model of Ford, Kia, Hyundai, etc. The features and feel of the Toyota were also about 10 years behind the other cars - the Toyota felt cheap. I ended up going for a different brand, despite my friends' recommendations to get a Toyota for reliability.
The 'Toyota'/'Honda' tax on used cars is real. I'd say Toyota is the main one who has earned it [0]
The 'Subaru' tax less so... [1]
Mazda is somewhat the exception here; a lot of their stuff is some branch of the Ford tech branch lineage, but they at least went down the path of 'not leaking coolant into cylinders' with their engine design.
But I digress.
It's an information problem because the owner may or may not know about engine/transmission/electrical[2] The the first two parts of that are -fairly- consistent across models... you'll see some cars that frequently sell at certain mileage points, and sometimes part of that is because savvy owners know that it's near a hard maintenance point (or common failure point.)
[0] - Shift Flare on Aisin(Toyota) transmissions is far less of a real problem than many Honda 5 speeds, for example.
[1] - I've found my Subaru, despite having a reputation for being 'touchy' was perfectly fine up to the point an oil change was borked. After that it's been a slow downhill.
[2] - These are the biggest 'money pits' in my experience, baring 'cooling system' issues that were actually engine design issues (looking at you, AMC I6 Grand Cherokee!)
Subaru and Mazda have both gone down the drain when it comes to corner cutting. Their entry level cars are nice to look at with the latest tech but the core driving experience has been compromised. Subaru fully embraced belt-type CVTs and Mazda switched from a double wishbone to a much cheaper torsion beam suspension. They are basically the automobile equivalent of the last 2 gens of pre-M1 Macbooks where all the innovation is in the cheap frivolous parts while the main CPU and graphics (engine, transmission, and suspension) languished. The 2024 Impreza after more than a decade has only seen a pathetic 15 horsepower increase compared to their 2008-2011 generation, this is untenable in the age of electric cars. Subaru and Mazda should have partnered together instead of joining Toyota. Their quality may be improving but they are losing the soul of their brands.
Subaru embraced belt type CVTs because they provide better mileage than an automatic. The CVTs do have issues (mostly around cooling, is my understanding) but Mileage/Emissions are already hard for them I'd imagine.
> untenable in the age of electric cars
Frankly, Subaru is in a tough spot with that. Most of Subaru's unique 'value prop' outside of JDM is that their overall design makes for a fairly cheap but effective AWD system. AFAICT there's no good 'translation' to that for an electric car.
Mazda... I'm of the opinion they probably suffered a bit from Ford divesting most/all of their interest in them. (OTOH, Ford has suffered a bit, the more Ford tries to 'improve' the otherwise very reliable Mazda 4Cyl designs the more problems they seem to have...)
Modern 8-speed+ automatics are competitive, especially if you throw in some hybrid technology. Toyota's eCVTs are best in class (Ford also arrived at the same solution by dint of convergent engineering). They are much better than belt type CVTs. Subaru is now a Toyota partner just like Mazda, they have access to all the engineering they could want. Subaru and Mazda used to be enthusiasts' favored brand, now they are just making same boring commuter cars as everyone else. The WRX engineering has been split off from the Impreza, and the Mazda 3 is evangelizing torsion beams and gating standard safety features behind higher trims in the age of multi link suspension and self driving.
At this rate I might as well get an AWD Prius. Terribly disappointed with Subaru. It's not like they are unaware of the problems, visit any Subaru forum/subreddit and the common complaints are very obvious.
Indeed. They need to be cleaned often - I purchased several dispensing funnels so that I can swap them in and out interchangeably and not have to clean them on the spot. Haven't seen any issues with it and so the benefits have far outweighed the downsides, which ppl must be mindful of.
The Pink Floyd album "Animals" terms them "Dogs", "Sheep", and "Pigs", which is just as cynical (probably moreso) but also has the catchiness which Sociopath/Loser/Clueless exhibits but Opportunists/Pragmatists/Idealists does not.
> Orwell showed the effects of “undemocratic structures” by reducing individuals to animal types, and so does Waters, simplifying the classes further into three (and leaving out humans altogether): the ruling pigs, praetorian and aspiring capitalist dogs, and the sheep, the mindless masses.
What does that mean? Sounds to me as if you were thinking that the CEO might in fact have been working for a competitor (I didn't downvote, just curious)
I think it's perfectly reasonable to move books out of their semantically 'best' organisation if that order results in an aesthetically unappealing shelf.
As a specific example, I've mixed up a shelf's organisation because it had resulted in a row of pure beige. I didn't want that in my living room!
"But what about AWS' NAT Instance AMI?"
The official AWS supported NAT Instance AMI hasn't been updates since 2018, is still running Amazon Linux 1 which is now EOL, and has no ARM support, meaning it can't be deployed on EC2's most cost effective instance types. fck-nat.
I had no idea this was the case. Thank you for making this!
This isn't really reporting a death rate, it's reporting the distribution of heights given you died falling from a height.
I'd guess falls from higher heights are more deadly, but less likely (you're more likely to use fall protection on a 8 story roof than a 1 story roof, I'd guess; and there's also a lot more 1 story roofs than 8 story roofs)
In other words, assuming falling probability doesn't vary with height, its estimating what % of time people spend at each height * probability of a fall being reported at that height * probability of death at a given height.
It probably depends a lot on what you are going to hit as you fall. A drop onto a safety line over an empty void may be safer than a 2m fall onto a piece of equipment.
This isn't what I saw happening during the pandemic.
The (to use your word) 'crackpots' were proposing alternative solutions like Ivermectin and Chloroquine. The people who were shouting 'believe science' were trying to silence the debate.
I offer no opinion on either of those two alternatives, I merely point out that 'believe' isn't the verb that goes with 'science'.
> The (to use your word) 'crackpots' were proposing alternative solutions like Ivermectin and Chloroquine.
People can "propose" all they want. They were also proposing bleach, vitamin D, UV sunlight, and probably much more. It takes more than a bare proposal--you need to be able to show (with data) that your proposal is better than the current best theory.
In hindsight, the so-called crackpots were not all that invested in any particular alternative. They were invested in a general, vague contrariness: If the mainstream agreed with it, they were against it, for all definitions of "it". If, for instance, Chloroquine actually was found to be effective and Dr. Fauci got on stage and recommended it, the crackpots would have instantly abandoned it and pivoted over to a different proposal. They were more interested in simply being contrary to "the other side".
Proposing an alternative is not enough. Re-read what I wrote:
"... if you want to challenge the scientific status quo you need an actual argument, i.e. you need propose a better alternative to the current-best explanation, one that either accounts for data that the current-best explanation does not, or one that has fewer free parameters ..."
Ivermectin met none of those criteria and was therefore never worthy of serious consideration. It got some serious consideration nonetheless in the form of actual controlled studies, which it failed spectacularly and predictably.
Well, they weren't really proposing solutions, Ivermectin and Hydroxychloroquine were really just suggestions, candidates. I.e. ideas for what might work. Now in both both cases there were no reasons why anyone would think they could work, but as far as I know, in both cases there were multiple trials. And those trials didn't show effectiveness (hence these were not solutions) and despite this, the crackpots did continue to push both for a while and then they silently dropped Hydroxychloroquine but the ivermectin delusion is still strong. (At least where I live, before most discussion was washed away by the war in Ukraine a few months ago, it was still being brought up.)
Now the thing about believing and science is that it's being told to people who don't do science (so most of us!) but have strong opinion and minimal knowledge about a specific topic. If you ask them, most of them will say they don't believe science or scientists. But what it means is not what you suggest, i.e. a lack of blind faith, but an active rejection of what science has to say about this topic without having the alternative explanations/solutions you're talking about. And I mean scientifically proven ones, of course.
So suggesting that laymen should believe (i.e. trust) science is actually a pretty adequate and reasonable advice. Since you basically have to sane options:
- believe/trust science (the knowledge gathered by those who work on a specific topic)
- work on that specific topic yourself (scientifically)
Why would a person untrained in science declare that Chloroquine is a cure to covid? That is a definition of crackpot: you are not offering an explanation or a minimally reasonable argument, you're just contradicting current scientific knowledge for the sake of it.
Thank god the (to use your word) ‘crackpots’ didn’t get away with such behaviours, back when polio was being eradicated. We once had a society that pulled together in tough times. Victory gardens, inoculations, charity. Kicking ass by uniting in our efforts.
The crackpot spectrum was unusually broad during the pandemic, far from the realm of vaccine deniers and flat earthers.
One professor of virology from a world renowned institution was soft banned on twitter behind some sort of click-though warning for pointing to public data about what we knew at the time that closing schools would lead to. Apparently because it fed into some bizarre American debate which was going on at the time.
Another is a professor of immunology that was heavily criticized for explaining why and how thoroughly a vaccine must be tested before mass vaccinations can occur, even if every day it can be deployed will save lives and labelled a "vaccine skeptic". Which is more than one kind of weird. Of course, the vaccine was tested exactly as described, and came out even better than most had expected.
But that makes it more than clear that many people who demands us to "follow science" more often than not could not be bothered to actually find out what science has to say. It is the new "think of the children". Science exists on its own merits, and we should be careful when the mob demands otherwise.
The society does not operate in the same way in the time of an acute crisis as during peacetime.
During a war, telling the truth to the wrong audience or in the wrong way may end up aiding the enemy, even if the speaker did not intend it. People generally agree that such people can be silenced, even if that violates their freedom of speech.
In a pandemic, the adversary is the nature, but the situation is similar. Speaking the truth the wrong way may kill people, because the audience may make incorrect conclusions from it. The society may decide that preserving those lives is more important than preserving someone's freedom of speech. After all, the situation may be dire enough that you must sacrifice one fundamental freedom anyway to preserve another.
Your rhetoric, and the practices you're advocating for, rightfully hurt the public's trust in scientific and public health institutions. As a layperson, I don't trust someone who lies to me, no matter that they say it's "for your own good!!". Their interests aren't aligned with mine.
"It's an emergency, so surrender your rights and give us more power over you!" Huh. Looks like Covid was a great opportunity for hedge funds and the expansion of government control. Never let a good crisis go to waste.
It wasn't rhetoric, and I wasn't advocating for anything. I was just explaining what actually happened in many places in early to mid-2020. There was a genuine emergency, societies switched to "war mode", and governments used similar (and sometimes even the same) emergency powers as during an actual war. And people generally supported it.
I remember being mildly amused how the early lockdowns in the US were often instituted by mid-level administrators such as county health officials. Similar measures would have required a constitutional amendment in Finland. It was like the aftermath of 9/11: when a crisis hits home, Americans don't care so much about freedom anymore.
Same in Norway, no lockdown because the constitution forbids it. There was a half hearted attempt to drum up support for an amendment but it didn't get any real support.
It's very sad that some people were keen to lump the denialists, antimaskers, or the Chloroquine people, with valid concerns about lockdowns or school closures.
> One professor of virology from a world renowned institution was soft banned on twitter
Reference?
> a professor of immunology that was heavily criticized for explaining why and how thoroughly a vaccine must be tested before mass vaccinations can occur
Reference?
> that makes it more than clear
The only thing this makes clear is that you have no compunctions about advancing an unsubstantiated argument as a response to someone who just explained to you that you can't do that if you want to be taken seriously. You may well be right, but that is beside the point. There is no way for someone reading your claims to verify them. You expect people to just take you at your word and accept your unsubstantiated claims and innuendo as fact simply because you have made the claims. And that is exactly the problem with all of the people who grouse about "settled science".
I do agree with you that it would be nice to have references here.
> There is no way for someone reading your claims to verify them. You expect people to just take you at your word and accept your unsubstantiated claims and innuendo as fact simply because you have made the claims.
Don't we all? The amount of people, myself included, that have 0% knowledge of the intimate details of Covid and virology, and how it spreads, and anything remotely close to scientific knowledge of this, have to be less than 1% of the world. This statistic is completely pulled out of my rectum, but intuition tells me that in a world of 70 billion people, you would be very hard pressed to find 70 million people who have studied this virus in depth and actually understand the details.
Sometimes, you have to accept that people will hold beliefs about stuff without knowing the implementation details, and that's OK. How many of us can hold a modern CPU's architecture in our mind at once? I would wager, nobody in the world has that capability. But we can build abstractions that help us reason at a higher level. How much scientific rigor is necessary for general conversation? How much is necessary for a debate? How much is necessary for a belief? These are tough questions and it doesn't do anybody any good to say:
> And that is exactly the problem with all of the people who grouse about "settled science".
The problem is we have to build abstractions about our infinitely complex universe at some point. How much abstraction is deemed too much abstraction to make an informed opinion?
> Sometimes, you have to accept that people will hold beliefs about stuff without knowing the implementation details, and that's OK.
That depends on what those beliefs are. Not all unfounded beliefs are false, and not all false beliefs are harmful. But some are. False beliefs about vaccines, climate change, and the 2020 U.S. presidential election (to cite but a few noteworthy examples) are particularly harmful. IMHO it is unwise to respond by throwing up your hands and saying, "What are you gonna do? Sometimes you just have to accept things like this."
> False beliefs about vaccines, climate change, and the 2020 U.S. presidential election (to cite but a few noteworthy examples)
Any statistics to back this claim? These are all heavily politicized topics. The truth is not being sought on either side of the spectrum. Both sides are seeking the narrative that will promote their political agenda.
> IMHO it is unwise to respond by throwing up your hands and saying, "What are you gonna do? Sometimes you just have to accept things like this."
I'm not. I'm saying it's stupid to go berate somebody on HN for not knowing exactly how the science behind Covid works, while at the same time, you possessing equally limited knowledge about the science.
You can find "experts" on both sides of the spectrums saying different things. IMHO it's unwise to accuse anybody who disagrees with you of being ignorant. When, the reality of the situation is, both sides are arguing based off of equally limited knowledge of the actual scientific details on hand. Both sides find the experts that agree with their presuppositions. I find it difficult to trust any political actor, because they are not seeking truth, they are looking to advance their own career.
I'm not berating anyone for not knowing exactly how science works. What I berate people for is casting doubt on the science while at the same time being profoundly ignorant of how science works, and in many cases acting as if this ignorance were actually a virtue, as if being ignorant made one somehow more authoritative than someone who actually makes their living doing scientific research.
> Any statistics to back this claim?
What claim? What I said was:
> False beliefs about vaccines, climate change, and the 2020 U.S. presidential election (to cite but a few noteworthy examples) are particularly harmful.
That's not a factual claim, that is a statement about what I personally consider harmful.
> You can find "experts" on both sides of the spectrums saying different things.
Yes, if you put "experts" in scare quotes. But if you are talking about experts rather than "experts" then there is an overwhelming consensus with regards to vaccines, climate change, and the election.
Are these analytics coming from Reddit themselves? Call me paranoid, but I wouldn't be at all surprised to learn that they were massaging numbers to make it seem like fewer users were hitting old reddit.
