Definitely not just US. I'm from Lithuania and these were the pencils we all used [0]. That was around 1992 and later, so could have been a relic from Soviets.
Only in later years green ones appeared and yellow with black stripes.
I spent a year in the baltics, got homeschooled while there. The pencils were a tealish green and tasted much worse than your garden variety Dixon, but wrote much better.
It was probably an H grade rather than HB. Pencils in the US stores often come out smudgy to me ever since then...
But one Thursday I don't pre-order, and I'm actively doing other stuff, maybe outside, phone slippery, need to check something and damn it... clicked on that suggestion, now have to wait to get to what I actually intended.
It took the place of the top row in the full library list. In this scenario you'd just be opening some random app instead of a chance it was the app you probably want to use.
I know this is not what you trying to point to in your comment, but I just watched that video and I'm really surprised at how bad the system is.
Yes it looks completely different, but delay between user action and response is horrific, sometimes over a second and sometimes doesn't even do anything. It's like those cheap Chinese after market systems, that runs poor hardware and just barely works. And all of this in a new 2017 car, imagine this after 5 or 10 years, will be totally useless... Hopefully Volvo will do a better job with usability of the system.
~20sec music play and then followed pause. Just not sure what to say about that. Even the guy narrating gets confused and almost clicks for the second time to start the music. Then followed menu selection, not as slow, but still noticeable slowness in response. Later one when he clicks other buttons action follow much more rapidly, which indicates to me a weak processor.
One has to remember that cars that were designed to be without power steering usually has 5 turns of the wheel from one side to the other, while cars with power steering only has 3, again usually. So a car that was designed to have power steering and looses it, is not really comparable to cars designed to be without one, and is a real pain to drive, especially in the city.
You might be confusing a few things - older steering columns were very rigid (and thus "strong"), but were also a fairly major concern in frontal or rear collisions: they would essentially impale the driver if hit at the right angle.
Modern steering columns have a telescoping construction that allows them to collapse in the event of an impact so that this isn't a big of a concern.
It doesn't matter whether it is a servo or a human that turns the shaft, the design loads are a function of the weight of the car and the front/rear weight distribution as well as of whether or not the front wheels are driven or idlers.
Couldn't disagree more, but I guess there will be that division between people. Cars are not the phones and at least until I'm driving my car myself, I will always prefer buttons or other tactile UI instead of touchscreen.
And voice control, well if you are non English speaker, good luck with that :)
There are plenty of cars with speedometer positioned in the middle (particularly from french automakers), some people don't mind that.
I personally never even look at the car with speedometer in the middle, just cannot stand the looks of it. Maybe by the time I will be able to afford Model 3 I'll grow not to mind their interior looks, but at this moment it's the most horrible looking interior I have seen. Seems more like something what hobbyist would do rather then automaker. Sad really.
They don't have it installed like Tesla though - it's higher in the field of view and usually in "infinite" focus. Not in a corner of a tacked on tablet.
> There are plenty of cars with speedometer positioned in the middle
They are usually set up to mitigate shift from far to near focus and how far you have to look from the road; they actually keep your eye closer to the road than traditional behind the wheel instruments.
I had a 2008 Toyota Yaris with the same center speedometer. It didn't take that long to get used to it, and I liked having an additional compartment in front of the steering wheel (for papers mostly).
I grew up in the village where we used to grow our own tomatoes and it's simply not true that bigger ones taste differently. An average tomato (6-10cm in diameter), usually tastes just the same as a much smaller one growing on the same plant. Actually I didn't notice any difference in taste based on size. For a cucumbers that was definitely the case, once it passed certain size, cucumber use to become much less tastier, but tomatoes all tasted the same, delicious. And as with current tomatoes in the store, in rare instances you can be lucky and find a batch of great tomatoes that taste quite good, and they are all of decent size.
So what I'm saying is that at least my practical experience never even gave me a hint that bigger tomatoes would taste worse than smaller ones. And I was very surprised the first time I heard this hypothesis.
You cannot ship that large tomato you grew in the village, it would be mush by the time it got anywhere. Modden tomatoes are the the equivalent of a cardboard box, and for the same reason.
Pinned tabs definitely should be excluded from throttling. Pinning tab for me usually means that I want to keep track of something, which usually is my email, chat client, etc. I don't want to be notified about new email on my phone before I get that notification on PC, which is already happening too often. That's just unnecessary hassle.
Though I'm not sure how popular this feature is and I would vote for other ways to turn throttling off, especially for those which prompt user about it.
Also I should note that because it's an open playlist sometimes some music gets in that I personally don't agree should be on there but I can see why maybe someone else would put it there. I don't aggressively police it the list but once in a while I'll remove something that obviously doesn't fit
Only in later years green ones appeared and yellow with black stripes.
[0] - https://thumbs.dreamstime.com/z/lead-pencil-isolated-white-b...