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Go 1.22, SQLite, and Next.js: The "Boring" Back End

https://mohammedeabdelaziz.github.io/articles/go-next-pt-2
1•mohammede•38s ago•0 comments

Laibach the Whistleblowers [video]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c6Mx2mxpaCY
1•KnuthIsGod•1m ago•0 comments

I replaced the front page with AI slop and honestly it's an improvement

https://slop-news.pages.dev/slop-news
1•keepamovin•6m ago•1 comments

Economists vs. Technologists on AI

https://ideasindevelopment.substack.com/p/economists-vs-technologists-on-ai
1•econlmics•8m ago•0 comments

Life at the Edge

https://asadk.com/p/edge
1•tosh•14m ago•0 comments

RISC-V Vector Primer

https://github.com/simplex-micro/riscv-vector-primer/blob/main/index.md
2•oxxoxoxooo•18m ago•1 comments

Show HN: Invoxo – Invoicing with automatic EU VAT for cross-border services

2•InvoxoEU•18m ago•0 comments

A Tale of Two Standards, POSIX and Win32 (2005)

https://www.samba.org/samba/news/articles/low_point/tale_two_stds_os2.html
2•goranmoomin•22m ago•0 comments

Ask HN: Is the Downfall of SaaS Started?

3•throwaw12•23m ago•0 comments

Flirt: The Native Backend

https://blog.buenzli.dev/flirt-native-backend/
2•senekor•25m ago•0 comments

OpenAI's Latest Platform Targets Enterprise Customers

https://aibusiness.com/agentic-ai/openai-s-latest-platform-targets-enterprise-customers
1•myk-e•27m ago•0 comments

Goldman Sachs taps Anthropic's Claude to automate accounting, compliance roles

https://www.cnbc.com/2026/02/06/anthropic-goldman-sachs-ai-model-accounting.html
2•myk-e•30m ago•4 comments

Ai.com bought by Crypto.com founder for $70M in biggest-ever website name deal

https://www.ft.com/content/83488628-8dfd-4060-a7b0-71b1bb012785
1•1vuio0pswjnm7•31m ago•1 comments

Big Tech's AI Push Is Costing More Than the Moon Landing

https://www.wsj.com/tech/ai/ai-spending-tech-companies-compared-02b90046
3•1vuio0pswjnm7•33m ago•0 comments

The AI boom is causing shortages everywhere else

https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2026/02/07/ai-spending-economy-shortages/
2•1vuio0pswjnm7•34m ago•0 comments

Suno, AI Music, and the Bad Future [video]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U8dcFhF0Dlk
1•askl•36m ago•2 comments

Ask HN: How are researchers using AlphaFold in 2026?

1•jocho12•39m ago•0 comments

Running the "Reflections on Trusting Trust" Compiler

https://spawn-queue.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3786614
1•devooops•44m ago•0 comments

Watermark API – $0.01/image, 10x cheaper than Cloudinary

https://api-production-caa8.up.railway.app/docs
1•lembergs•46m ago•1 comments

Now send your marketing campaigns directly from ChatGPT

https://www.mail-o-mail.com/
1•avallark•49m ago•1 comments

Queueing Theory v2: DORA metrics, queue-of-queues, chi-alpha-beta-sigma notation

https://github.com/joelparkerhenderson/queueing-theory
1•jph•1h ago•0 comments

Show HN: Hibana – choreography-first protocol safety for Rust

https://hibanaworks.dev/
5•o8vm•1h ago•1 comments

Haniri: A live autonomous world where AI agents survive or collapse

https://www.haniri.com
1•donangrey•1h ago•1 comments

GPT-5.3-Codex System Card [pdf]

https://cdn.openai.com/pdf/23eca107-a9b1-4d2c-b156-7deb4fbc697c/GPT-5-3-Codex-System-Card-02.pdf
1•tosh•1h ago•0 comments

Atlas: Manage your database schema as code

https://github.com/ariga/atlas
1•quectophoton•1h ago•0 comments

Geist Pixel

https://vercel.com/blog/introducing-geist-pixel
2•helloplanets•1h ago•0 comments

Show HN: MCP to get latest dependency package and tool versions

https://github.com/MShekow/package-version-check-mcp
1•mshekow•1h ago•0 comments

The better you get at something, the harder it becomes to do

https://seekingtrust.substack.com/p/improving-at-writing-made-me-almost
2•FinnLobsien•1h ago•0 comments

Show HN: WP Float – Archive WordPress blogs to free static hosting

https://wpfloat.netlify.app/
1•zizoulegrande•1h ago•0 comments

Show HN: I Hacked My Family's Meal Planning with an App

https://mealjar.app
1•melvinzammit•1h ago•0 comments
Open in hackernews

Things I've Heard Boomers Say That I Agree with 100%

https://wildingout.substack.com/p/12-things-ive-heard-boomers-say-that
53•ripe•3mo ago

Comments

iso1631•3mo ago
With a QR menu, if I can also order and pay from them, then they are far superior to having to try to flag someone down. If not its less useful, but it's useful for multiple languages.

In all cases it should be a website, not a "download our app"

There are no adverts on netflix, and I have a lot of subscriptions, but its still less (pro-rata) than I paid for satelite tv with adverts in the 00s.

swiftcoder•3mo ago
> There are no adverts on netflix

The base ($7.99) Netflix plan does indeed have ads.

thenthenthen•3mo ago
So you pay before you get your food? Some boomers might not accept that ;)
AtlasBarfed•3mo ago
Not a boomer but that's basically fast food or fast food plus.

I'm surprised there isn't the complaint about over tipping. And the fact there is now inflation in tipping percentages.

clickety_clack•3mo ago
There’s something about the inclusion of tech in the ordering of food that takes away from the experience. It turns it into something where the focus is on fast calories per dollar. It might make sense at your regular lunch spot, but not at a place you take a date or meet your friends.
zarq•3mo ago
> should be a website

Yes, and please make the website one that actually works on mobile.

In some restaurants, I've seen the QR code go to a full-page PDF version of the menu. Like, thanks, but I can't read that on a mobile device.

jmclnx•3mo ago
With a QR menu the restaurant will sell all information they can get from your phone to ad vendors. The only place I have have seen QR menus are at national restaurant chains.

If a restaurant does not have a printed menu, I leave and go elsewhere. Luckily were I live, QR Menus are very rare.

fallinghawks•3mo ago
> In all cases it should be a website, not a "download our app"

Increasingly often, it is "download our app". And they will try to force it by sabotaging their website. I did a pickup order from Walmart once. You're supposed to take a numbered parking place and check in, but if you try it from the website on a mobile, it'll redirect you to download the app. There's no getting around it. I don't recall if I tried desktop mode on the website, but the website is a pretty cluttered widescreen mess anyway. (Fortunately at the parking area there's a phone number for checking in posted.)

I run into similar sabotage issues with Facebook (yes I am just a year or so shy of being a boomer). You can no longer use messaging on mobile, it tells you to download the app. Desktop mode does work, though (for now; I'm sure someone will try to take it away). All this stuff used to work on phones.

iso1631•2mo ago
Facebook stopped messaging on mobile years ago, and I stopped using facebook for almost all purposes shortly after because of it. We're fortunate enough that we don't currently have any major social groups which require facebook messenger and easily managed on desktop.
AtlasBarfed•3mo ago
Cable used to not have ads.

Amazon prime has ads.

Just wait

iso1631•2mo ago
Yes, and I no longer subscribe to amazon prime because they added adverts to their standard plan. Indeed when I went to rejoin a year later there wasn't an ad-less plan.

As such I don't subscribe.

al_borland•3mo ago
With the payment I’d be more wary.

I worry about bad actors placing their own QR codes over the official ones to redirect people to sites to steal the money, payment day, or both.

jebarker•3mo ago
> Go fellate yourself with a cactus.

I don’t think this makes sense.

infecto•3mo ago
The writing is insufferable.
daneel_w•3mo ago
It was a cool statement 25 years ago when the author was young. This "blurb" of an article gives me the impression that in some ways she thinks she still is.
the__alchemist•3mo ago
The family Cactaceae comes in 127 genera with some 1,750 known species.
inglor_cz•3mo ago
The author might have confused "fellate" and "sodomize".
jsbisviewtiful•2mo ago
> I don’t think this makes sense.

Neither does most of the article. Being upset about 2FA considering how incredibly easy it is? Pretty dumb write up. Lotsy of cheugy humor that's not really funny, as well.

neonnoodle•3mo ago
I STILL don’t get this obsession with “participation trophies.” I’ve never seen one, I’ve never met anyone who says they’ve awarded one to someone, and I’ve never met anyone who received one.

I’ve seen very minor “door prizes” that say, thanks for attending this event, etc. But this “participation trophy” canard has coasted for 30+ years now.

primitivesuave•3mo ago
"Participation trophy" has become a modern aphorism in many situations where people are rewarded for simply showing up.
UncleMeat•3mo ago
Here in this thread there are people who are insisting that the harm is specific to the physical object of a trophy, not some general thing given to everybody who shows up.

It can't be both.

AnimalMuppet•3mo ago
There's more than one person here, with more than one opinion. Expecting consistency is neither reasonable nor useful.
UncleMeat•3mo ago
Maybe you can speak to those people.
Apreche•3mo ago
It’s a sports thing.

If you go to some youth sports league, it is common that every kid will get a medal or trophy regardless of which team in the league won or lost.

But it also exists for adults. Go to the NYC marathon? Everyone gets a medal. I’ve participated in a lot of organized bicycle rides. The rides aren’t even competitive like the marathon is. They are not races. But at the finish line everyone gets a medal regardless of what distance they rode, or how quickly.

The harsh truth about the participation trophies is that boomers complain about them the most, but they are the ones responsible for them! I’m a millennial. I remember being in a youth basketball league in middle school. Our team did not win. At the final day, every kid on every team got a tiny trophy. I was very confused by this at the time. I expected only the best team to get anything. But who was running that league and decided to hand out those trophies?! Our boomer parents!

mwillis•3mo ago
A medal for finishing a marathon is not the same thing as a participation trophy.
_DeadFred_•3mo ago
Yeah, it literally is.

A participation trophy is for finishing a sports season, or finishing an event (maybe a martial arts event, maybe a marathon). Finishing is something that can be especially challenging to finish/comit to week after week as a kid when your team isn't even winning, or you know you have zero chance of coming in first.

AtlasBarfed•3mo ago
Marathons and long bikes at least require you to perform a major amount of training and focus.

Not everyone that starts at the line gets a medal because there are people that don't finish and they don't get their medal.

Once you start moralizing about only winners should get medals or trophies, then you have to start looking at arbitrary distinctions like men's and women's different divisions, age divisions, weight divisions, pro versus amateur, college versus high school.

Really the extension of logic is that only the champion of a given sport or event at the very highest level should get a trophy.

I think what rubs a lot of people about youth sports participation trophies, is that you're basically rewarding just showing up, well devaluing actual focus training preparation or genetic advantage of the better players.

robwg•3mo ago
I take it you don't work in the corporate world.

I see folks get "participation trophies" all the time, they come in different forms.

esseph•3mo ago
That's only if you're at a place that wants to make it look like they care. Most of the places I've familiar with really don't even put forth that level of effort.
MattPalmer1086•3mo ago
I've worked in the corporate world for decades across multiple different sectors and I've never seen anything like one. I'm in the UK though - maybe it's different where you are.
mingus88•3mo ago
I find it hard to believe that the UK corporate world is so different that they don’t have mandatory trainings with fancy certificates presented to you at the end.
MattPalmer1086•3mo ago
Oh that, yeah I've seen pointless certificates given out for doing crappy mandatory training courses.

Although, the only place I've seen them is in a company whose HQ is in the US. So maybe that is more of a US thing too.

To be honest, I never saw them as a participation reward. Everyone hates doing the damn things in the first place, nobody cares about getting the certificate.

colechristensen•3mo ago
A similar thread that you should have seen is grade inflation.

Most people get A's and don't learn that much, teachers are punished for giving bad grades, a lot of people graduate without much added knowledge or skill.

I would prefer no grades, but telling so many people they're doing top notch work when they aren't is a problem.

hebrox•3mo ago
I always have to think about "Eighty percent of success is showing up" when I read about participation trophies. I think it's a good idea to stimulate participation. "Winning" is something you only do if you participate a lot.
maxerickson•3mo ago
A lot of organized running events give everyone a medal as they cross the finish line.

Part of my brain thinks it is a racket. The organizer buys them for $X and sells them to the event for a multiple. If that isn't the case, it still makes sense for whoever makes them to promote the idea, because they get to sell more of them that way.

paulddraper•3mo ago
I got a medal for completing a Spartan race this year.
inglor_cz•3mo ago
I think this is a genuine accomplishment.
paulddraper•3mo ago
Thank you, I think so too.
monsieurgaufre•3mo ago
It also somewhat gives the runner the impression they are getting their money’s worth. Registration fees are getting really high.

But yeah, it mostly gives proof / bragging rights that you finished it.

myvoiceismypass•3mo ago
I have a whole closet full of this heavy junk - its not like I am going to hang them up and display proudly in my home. "Hey check this sweet medal from the 50K I finished last in 12 years ago!"

At least race participation shirts have some utility.

mingus88•3mo ago
This is fine. Getting yourself into shape to even be able to finish a 5k or better is an accomplishment in itself. There is no comparison to the trophies that every little leaguer gets for having parents drop them off at practice.

There are a handful of people who enter these events trying to win. They get money. For the rest of us, finishing represents a victory over the couch, that pint of ice cream, or general malaise towards bettering ourselves.

So I’ll take that finishing medal and be proud of it.

Besides, the same boomer generation who complains about participation trophies is the same generation who invented them.

matthewmacleod•3mo ago
I also just don't have the mental energy to get mad at that. You ran a marathon? Amazing! Great achievement! Well done! Have a participation trophy!

Doing stuff is great. Doing stuff and sucking at it is great. Who cares?

singpolyma3•3mo ago
Interesting. As a child in the 90s I got one of these for everything I participated in.
esseph•3mo ago
This seems very much a location based thing.

It sure as hell didn't happen in most places in Kentucky or Georgia.

_DeadFred_•3mo ago
Right. Wrestling meets totally didn't give out t-shirts that celebrated 'I participated'. Georgia/Kentucky are too tough for that.
esseph•3mo ago
We didn't have wrestling. Wasn't a thing.
mingus88•3mo ago
Worth pointing out that a child of the 90s would have boomer parents. The very same generation that complains about the trophies invented the practice.
singpolyma3•3mo ago
I definitely don't have boomer parents, haha. Boomer grandparents.
al_borland•3mo ago
I got one at a tae kwon do tournament when I was in middle school. It was my first time entering something like that, I lost immediately and was not feeling great about it. I just wanted to leave. My dad made me go back to pick up a trophy from this giant table full of participation trophies. I didn’t want it. I don’t know what happened to it. I didn’t understand why anyone would want a memento of an embarrassing loss. Participation trophies are stupid, or for people who are too dumb to realized they lost and it’s a pity trophy. Picking up that trophy was worse than the actual loss, I remember being more upset about that dumb trophy than anything else.

This was back in the 90s.

In something like a foot race, I get it. Most people running a marathon aren’t trying to win, they are just trying to finish, or hit their personal targets. They can still have a “win” without coming in first. But in a sport where there is a clear winner and loser, I felt insulted getting a trophy just for showing up. At 11 or 12 I already felt too old to be treated like that.

mrugge•3mo ago
I think this marathon attitude of not trying to win but to hit personal targets could be applied in other areas of life and in other sports even with clear "winners". None of this is about the destination. We all arrive at the same one.
_DeadFred_•3mo ago
I like having a physical representation of something I did that pushed myself. In the case of a marathon it's normally a t-shirt. No one makes fun of that. But that t-shirt is 100% a 'participation trophy' but worse, it's literally announcing to the world when worn 'I participated'.

So many anti-participation trophy tough guys wear these participation trophies all the time. Vietnam hat? Participation trophy. Fun run shirt? Participation trophy. Iron man shirt? Participation trophy. Police/military challenge coin? Participation trophy. Facebook picture post of an event you did? Believe it or not, participation trophy.

But then it's given to a kid? Beyond the pale! Ridiculous! Why give them a memory/momento that they played baseball, that they showed up to sparing event, or did a form demo in front of judges. All things very intimidating to kids. I remember showing up to pee-wee football after doing badly in the game. As a kid it was intimidating to show up after doing poorly. That stuff can be as mentally pushing themselves as a marathon for an adult. Such a weird/small/toxic mindset to criticize rewarding that behavior, or thinking the kids that showed up all season for a losing team didn't accomplish anything.

al_borland•3mo ago
What I got was a literal trophy, not a t-shirt or something else. A t-shirt or other momento for an event is fine, but a trophy implies a win.

There was a vendor at the tournament selling throwing stars and stuff. I got one of those. That was my momento from the event (which I still have a know exactly where it is decades later). It was something I wanted that I wouldn’t have got had I not pushed myself to show up. Running across that is a fond memory, while running across that participation trophy brings up pretty terrible memories.

I’m not against rewarding pushing yourself for showing up, but as a kid, the trophy was the wrong reward for me, it felt insulting. An event t-shirt would have felt much better.

UncleMeat•3mo ago
I got participating trophies from soccer or karate when I was a child. I also got larger trophies when I won events. Even as a freaking eight year old I understood that this was the same as a t-shirt. It was a fun memento from a sports season or a sparring tournament. I do not believe I know a single person who feels negatively about such things.

Surely after years of screaming about participation trophies there should be some evidence that this harmed kids if it were a real thing, right?

al_borland•3mo ago
The first trophy I ever got was when my first ever soccer team took first place for the season, so maybe that distorted my view. The only other trophy I ever got was that tae kwon do participation trophy, so I wasn’t collecting these things at every event like t-shirts. A trophy felt like it meant something, which is why the participation trophy felt so humiliating.

I could argue that harmed me. I never entered another tournament after that. The walk to pick up that trophy is a core memory, and one that I didn’t want to relive at any future events. Had I gone, lost, but got a cool shirt, I probably would have been down to get more cool shirts. Had I gone to more, maybe I could have improved and won a trophy that actually meant something.

UncleMeat•3mo ago
And I enjoyed my trophies that I got merely for participating even alongside the ones I got for winning. They became memories that I could relive. "Oh, that was the season where my good friend Kevin was on the team."

When people screech about participation trophies being modern degeneracy I want to see actual data demonstrating some real harm. Because from where I sit I see a nice thing being done for children and joy coming from that.

Eddy_Viscosity2•3mo ago
Getting a thing showing that you participated isn't such a weird concept. It's just a physical momento, like a t-shirt from a concert or a lanyard badge from a convention. Getting a medal for doing a race is fine. It's a thing I can hang on my wall that I can look at and remember I did that 10k that time. A trophy is a bit weird and overkill, but a simple momento is just that.
burnt-resistor•3mo ago
They were a thing in the 90's and 00's for some K-12 events as fallout from the children's excessive self-esteem building movement. They usually took the form of cheap little ribbons rather than trophies. I always thought they were insulting and reminders of losing so I threw them away.
eesmith•3mo ago
They were not specifically a 90's and 00's thing!

We had them in the 1980s in elementary school, and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Participation_trophy says the practice is over a century old, and the "backlash against participation trophies intensified in the 1990s."

There's no need to take my work for it. The Arlington Heights Daily Herald Suburban Chicago (1975-11-28) article at https://archive.org/details/arlington-heights-daily-herald-s... describes how every soccer team member at a high school got a participation trophy.

Speaking of ribbons, the same Wikipedia page points out "the US military has awarded ribbons to anyone who participates in surface combat".

McConnell in "Rapid Development" points out how Microsoft in the 1990s used nonmonetary awards to boost morale. https://archive.org/details/rapiddevelopment00mcco/page/270/...

"I spent a year at Microsoft working on Windows 3.1. During that time, I received three team T-shirts, a team rugby shirt, a team beach towel, and a team mouse pad. I also took part in a team train ride and a nice dinner on the local "Dinner Train" and another dinner at a nice restaurant. If I had been an employee, I would also have received a few more shirts, a Microsoft watch, a plaque for participating in the project, and a big Lucite "Ship-It" award for shipping the project. The total value of this stuff is probably only two or three hundred dollars, but as Tom Peters and Robert Waterman say, companies with excellent motivation don't miss any opportunity to shower their employees with nonmonetary rewards."

Those are all participation awards, yes?

_aaandrew•3mo ago
The participation trophies of the 80s and 90s were for the parents, not the children. (See sibling comment with 'tae kwon do tournament.') Perhaps it made parenting easier, "Be proud you tried, this shiny bauble is all the proof you need!" Or, IMO more likely, the parents liked the affirmation it awarded them for their effort and/or they made for easier status signaling when displayed in a pile for house guests to admire.

I know as a kid I never gave two poops about 'em. They felt condescending.

y0eswddl•2mo ago
Not to mention the fact that the generation complaining about them is the same generation that gave them out in the first place!
1970-01-01•3mo ago
LED headlights are fantastic. They work everyday. They never get burnt out. In the spirit of boomers, if they're blinding you, go complain about the lack of inspections in your state. I love LED lights.
quickthrowman•3mo ago
Agreed, I love my (stock and factory aimed) LED headlights. Haven’t had an issue in 5 years where I would’ve replaced multiple lamps in an older style headlight, which was the case with the Subaru I owned before.

LED headlight retrofit kits are probably what should be illegal, that’s where you get the poorly aimed and overly bright headlights.

maxerickson•3mo ago
Were you replacing them because they got dim or because they burned out?

I haven't replaced my lights for an extended period and am wondering if that's why they are dim, but if they burned out that fast they were probably getting some kind of contamination on the bulbs (which concentrates the heat).

teslabox•3mo ago
Halogen bulbs do dim out as they age. The most common problem with modern headlights is the plastic covers get oxidized (cloudy) due to sun exposure. The cloudyness blocks some of the light from the bulbs, and scatters the rest.

https://www.theautodoc.net/blog/why-do-headlights-become-clo...

The other problem is that some bulbs are just not very good - the filaments aren't properly positioned, or they don't have a good spectral output.

3M has a kit for polishing the haze off headlights with a drill, and for restoring the UV protection layer [0]. Dan Stern [1] told me it's really better to just get a new OEM headlight.

[0] https://www.amazon.com/3M-39008-Headlight-Restoration-System...

[1] https://www.danielsternlighting.com/

quickthrowman•2mo ago
I suspect I had a wiring issue that was causing the lamps to burn out prematurely, either that or the lens housing wasn’t watertight and moisture/condensation was destroying the lamps.
cmclaughlin•3mo ago
I don't think the problem is with LED lights in particular, it's really the "color temperature" of lights and brightness or "lumens" are two high. Old incandescent lights could have also been too bright (think police car lights shining into your eyes).

But I generally agree - ever since I got PRK eye surgery ultra white car lights are hard for me to handle. My wife has always been sensitive to light (she has lighter eyes), so that goes to show that there's certainly a range of tolerance for this and it's really a safety issue.

Inspections are a good idea, but I'd like to see some control over what can be sold to prevent the installation in the first place.

teslabox•3mo ago
My theory is the manufacturers' marketing departments went to the engineers and said "we can't sell cars with safe headlights anymore, please make the next model's headlights seem brighter than they actually are."

Blue-white headlights are actually much less functional for human vision than yellow/amber headlights, so the engineers had to use the regulatory loophole to exponentially increase the output of their marketing-imposed blue-white lights.

larusso•3mo ago
I think he posts from a US standpoint where regulations for the aftermarket is problematic and adaptive headlights are allowed but with such high standards that no automaker has them yet. Also LUMEN is a very stupid way to market car headlights as it just depicts the light intensity. Candela is usually used for this specific application since it’s a measurement of light intensity in a specific direction.
dmannorreys•3mo ago
They are fantastic, but not for the other drivers. I live in Sweden where it's very, very dark for a large chunk of the year. I'm also not a boomer. But when it's very dark, the difference in blinding is staggering between meeting an old yellow light headlight vs a modern LED headlight. It's not about lack of inspection (although that is also an issue as it seems many headlights are not properly calibrated), but difference in the warmth of light itself. LED headlights is great for you at the cost of everybody you meet on the road.
teslabox•3mo ago
Human eyes are hypersensitive to blue-white light, but the old lighting science found that orange-yellow light is best for humans in a low-light environment.
dahart•3mo ago
LED headlights are blinding. One thing I’ve noticed is that many people, especially people with non-LED headlights, are resorting to running with brights on at all times. Pretty sure it’s not legal, but I have to admit that many LED headlights on low are actually worse than old style brights. It sucks driving at night, and seeing LEDs directly is physically painful.

Inspections don’t help; any slight variations in road angle puts someone in direct sight of correctly adjusted headlights. Unadjusted headlights aren’t the problem, and probably never will be, unlike the old headlights. Most LED headlights are relatively new and perfectly adjusted (and are designed to stay adjusted forever.)

I don’t know the whole story, but I heard that Europe has widely adopted dynamic masking on LED headlights and that in the US, lobbying of some sort is preventing adoption. I would LOVE if we had such a thing… or some fancy night goggles that could mask all bright points without masking anything dark (or maybe even boost the darks)… I would be willing to pay a lot of money for that.

Edit: a search just informed me that the headlight laws changed in 2022, and dynamic masking is coming here. https://www.mcnicholaslaw.com/adaptive-driving-beams-on-the-...

dmannorreys•3mo ago
Curious, "dynamic masking on LED headlights", are you referring to the LED matrix systems where individual pixels will be turned off as to not blind those in front of you, but the remaining pixels are still on?

If so, they are widely adopted here in the EU but only for full beams not the regular headlights.

dahart•3mo ago
Yes, that’s what I’m thinking of. Search says it’s sometimes called Adaptive Driving Beam or Dynamic Light Assist.

Ah too bad if it doesn’t apply to low beams… LED low beams are still extremely problematic.

The search results are telling me that dynamic masking in the US will only apply to low beams and not high beams. Maybe that’s a good thing? I’m just hoping the situation will get better somehow.

dmannorreys•3mo ago
> Maybe that’s a good thing?

Definitely, I'd love for that here in the EU as well. With it being pitch black half of the year here in Sweden I'm constantly blinded by LED low beams to the point that high traffic country roads are becoming very difficult.

However, LED matrix / dynamic high beams is also a godsend. On a country road, you can keep your high beams on and they will disable the pixels that would blind the other drivers, but still light up the side of the road where deers and moose appear.

Maybe one day we can have both

RASBR89•3mo ago
In the EU beams cast light off to the side of the road and not into incoming traffic.

When we go from uk to Europe for example we have to fit deflector stickers to the headlights to alter the beam so we don’t dazzle drivers on the other side of the road.

In the us I don’t think you have this. Driving at night in the USA is horribl, like a thousands subs beaming directly into your eyes.

It isn’t THAT bad here here. It’s getting worse with bright lights and tall cars sure but it’s not on the same level of the USA due to the beam shape

teeray•3mo ago
> They work everyday. They never get burnt out.

Until they do (because everything has a failure rate) and cost thousands for an entire new projector assembly. Compare to the cost of a halogen bulb every couple 10k miles.

1970-01-01•3mo ago
The MTBF for OEM LEDs is in the decades timescale. Projector assembly isn't called LED bulb for a reason. It's time to nuke this misconception from orbit. If your 17 year LED headlight has failed, you need the part that represents just the LED bulb, and not the entire headlight assembly. See price difference between part 1 and part 9 below:

https://vw.oempartsonline.com/v-2024-volkswagen-gti--autobah...

teeray•3mo ago
“MTBF in decades” is marketing fiction. The diode itself might last forever in a lab, but the driver electronics, thermal paste, seals, and optics sure don’t. Real-world LED headlights die from heat cycling, moisture ingress, and driver board failure long before the diode hits its theoretical limit. Most assemblies don’t even have a serviceable “bulb” to replace. Pretending you can just pop in a $40 LED chip instead of the $900 housing is wishful thinking.
happytoexplain•3mo ago
Who cares whether somebody says "I hate LED headlights" or "I hate the lack of regulation and/or enforcement around LED headlight brightness/angle characteristics in my state"? It's a pointless distinction colloquially. We all understand the problem. Nobody is confused. And it is a huge problem. Sometimes I have to pull over because the oncoming car has completely drowned out all other sights. It's reckless and dangerous, and that's all that matters until it's fixed. Then we can talk about the useful feature of LED headlights.
yencabulator•2mo ago
Becaused LED lighting is good technology and better than old school bulbs in almost all scenarios. Say "too bright headlights" when you mean that.
bryanlarsen•3mo ago
I agree that the problem with headlights is misalignment, not brightness, but there are some vehicles that come misaligned from the factory. cough F150 cough.

The F150 lights are so high that they're blinding even when properly pointed down. We need proper regulations for maximum height too. And while you're at it, regulations for maximum hood height so that they stop killing so many pedestrians.

teslabox•3mo ago
I saw a car with terrible headlights, so I started a recording to see if there was flicker (which sometimes indicates that they're aftermarket). The light turned green, the car pulled forward & leveled out, and the headlights became less blinding. It was just a regular Hyundai SUV:

https://www.reddit.com/r/fuckyourheadlights/comments/1mshs0v...

thenthenthen•3mo ago
Other than that the author wont survive one minute in China (I doubts they are interested to visit anyway), a lot of the reasons/rationales seem pretty weak. I also hate QR codes as menus, but not because printing a menu is easy, it is the human interaction that suffers. I can spend days without communicating with humans here… which is quite distopic. Although enjoyable every now and then (after a 80 hour work week for example…)
HPsquared•3mo ago
Why even go to a restaurant in person anyway, when food delivery exists? The reason is to be social. QR menus neglect this.
idiotsecant•3mo ago
The purpose is presumably to be social with your group of people you're out with. There is almost zero social interaction in a typical waiter or waitress interaction, just false smiles and memorized verbal patty-cake. It has more in common with a TCP ACK than it does a genuine social interaction. If you think your waiter is socializing with you, you are mistaken.
HPsquared•3mo ago
It's meant to be a hospitality experience.
idiotsecant•2mo ago
Paying a restaurant for them to pretend they're giving you hospitality is like ... Well I think we both know what exactly it's like.

What you get at a restaurant is not hospitality.

eviks•3mo ago
> just false smiles and memorized verbal patty-cake.

You know that you're the second part of that social interaction and can veer off the memorized track?

idiotsecant•2mo ago
Yes, and the barista who smiles at you does it because she likes you.

When you hold wait staff at your table because you want some bonding time with them you're basically forcing them to perform for you. This isn't a consensual social interaction and you aren't strangers on the street on equal footing. Just be polite and make your order and let them go on to the other million things they're doing.

infecto•3mo ago
I still am a fan of QR code menus but the west never executed on it well enough. In China I just order from the menu on my phone. No waiting for front of house. If I do have questions it’s easy to buzz front of house and they will come over. It’s simply China is ahead some areas of tech, cashless, QR codes everywhere, everything is an app.
barbazoo•3mo ago
“Ahead” in terms of replacing human to human communication. I’m not sure that’s the right direction.
thenthenthen•3mo ago
This is my point. It’s pretty scary. Ahead i would say…is true, it is already beyond blade runner dystopia
infecto•3mo ago
I am sure my experiences are different than yours but I never considered ordering food peak human to human contact. Again only my own experience but at least in China there is always humans around to answer questions. It’s definitely not for everyone but I much prefer it for my day to day. I would rather go to a lucking coffee where you cannot even order in the store.
barbazoo•3mo ago
Didn’t say “peak”. Most of our interactions are mundane but what happens when we take them away little by little.
infecto•3mo ago
Right I did. I guess for those of use that don’t have other human contact those few moments with the front of house are meaningful but for me that’s not the case. But again unless I am going to a nice restaurant I don’t recall having much of any real human contact with the front of house.
lores•2mo ago
It's not important on its own, it just slowly erodes the feeling we live in a society, the reminding that everyone plays a role, even a little one. It lets one get out of their social bubble ever so little, and appreciate that the world is full of people with a life just as rich as their own, which is easily forgotten. I can cook well, I go to the restaurant to be in society; impersonal chains and now impersonal service reduce the experience to functional feeding and are of no interest to me.
eloisant•3mo ago
I don't think needing a specific app to pay with your phone by scanning a QR code is being ahead, compared to contactless payments or even credit cards.
infecto•3mo ago
I guess I did not articulate it well but China leap frogged contactless payments and credit cards. Everything is paid with your phone. I consider that ahead.
rcbdev•3mo ago
What does China have to do with anything in the post? Neither you nor the author would survive a trip to North Korea either, I don't see this as a valuable comment here - it's a complete non sequitur.
barbazoo•3mo ago
I think they are simply referring to the ubiquity of QR codes there.
vitus•3mo ago
China is much more smartphone-centric than the US. QR codes are universal, WeChat and AliPay are the most common form of payments (online or in person).
HPsquared•3mo ago
Pretty much everything in China runs on QR codes. Payments too.
thenthenthen•3mo ago
Every point. Everything is an app, everything needs your phone number, everyone drives with their high beams on + every 10 second you get photographed by plate readers, everything tries to subscribe you, every app is full of ad splash screens + point systems, all fonts are mini/dense info overload. Oh yeah multiply this times 100x your expectation.

Edit: lets add my own boomer complain: everything is a video <3

Eddy_Viscosity2•3mo ago
I hate QR code menus because the UX of a phone screen sucks compared to a large printed out menu. In cheap place with big laminated menus with pictures and I can scan the whole thing easily, to the high end restaurants with fine paper printed in fancy fonts secured by ribbon to hardbacked board. The experience of holding and reading these physical things is part of the enjoyment of going out to eat.
le-mark•3mo ago
Someone called me a boomer a few months ago and I was deeply offended. I’m gen x. The person was gen z. I was like dude do you not know what a boomer is? They had no idea that baby boomers were the generation born after world war 2. To them “boomer” was a slur applied to anyone older than them. I agree that actual boomers tend toward some unfortunate beliefs and characteristics, but “boomer” has become an ageist slur.

As a 50+ year old in tech maybe I’m overly sensitive to this?

samrus•3mo ago
Theyre just frustrated by the ageism flung against them for being birn in a shittier environment by people who had the silent and greatest generations leave them an amazing economy
al_borland•3mo ago
A person will experience many different economic periods throughout their life.

The younger generation also has a lot of advantages today that the baby boomers didn’t have, they built them. Like the devices and protocols we’re communicating with, which have also made investing in the economy more accessible than at any other point in human history. And then Gen X made social media for them, when was reduced the barrier to entry for starting a business to next to nothing.

The world is as good or as bad as you want to see it.

fortran77•3mo ago
I’m an actual boomer. I don’t get offended when I hear it. I just know the person who called me a boomer is an idiot.
singpolyma3•3mo ago
This is what boomer means now yes. Language changes over time
nmcfarl•3mo ago
My sixth grader has classmates who call 20-year-olds boomers, at least when the 20-year-olds are doing things they don’t like.

It really just means someone I don’t like who’s older than me.

eloisant•3mo ago
Yeah, unfortunately that's what the word "boomer" has become. Also everyone talks about boomers, millenials, gen z, apparently people forgot there was a generation between boomers and millenials.

Anyway: it doesn't really matter because this "generations" split is bullshit. The cut-off dates are arbitrary, and there are all kind of people in all generations.

the__alchemist•3mo ago
That caught me with the article! I'm younger than the author, and assumed millenials were people younger than me. (That's how it was used at the time), and that people who are 34-45 right now don't have a named gen.
yencabulator•2mo ago
34-45 now = born 1980-1991 = millennial

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Millennials

eesmith•3mo ago
For what it's worth, I don't think the author quite has it right other.

The philippic leads with a clip of Sophia Petrillo, from the TV show Golden Girls. According to the show, she was born in 1905 or 1905. The actor who portrayed her, Estelle Getty, was born in 1923. Either date makes her a member of the so-called Greatest Generation, after which is the Silent Generation, and only then reaching the Baby Boomers.

trashface•3mo ago
Yes for younger people boomer is generic for "old person"
projectazorian•3mo ago
"Boomer" is an insult that directly references a protected characteristic, as such it's not only insensitive to use in the workplace, it's illegal. You'd be well within your rights to report this to HR, though I wouldn't recommend that in most cases. At the very least it's worth bringing this up to your manager if it happens repeatedly, phrase it as wanting to protect the company.

Maybe note in writing somewhere that this happened in case you get laid off and need some negotiating leverage to get a better severance. Email to yourself can work well, then it's discoverable.

eesmith•3mo ago
It isn't illegal, in the sense that no one will be arrested for saying it.

As I recall, it's a bit more subtle. If the workplace continues to allow discrimination based on a protected characteristic then it will be considered a hostile workplace, which is illegal.

Age is only a protected characteristic for people 40 years old or older, which is every member of Gen X.

This presumes that le-mark's account took place in a workplace. On Twitter, about 6 years ago, a millennial wrote “Ok Boomer” to William Shatner, who replied “Sweetheart, that’s a compliment for me”, as Shatner, born in 1931, would have been in the Silent Generation.

That millennial did nothing illegal.

the__alchemist•3mo ago
I agree with all (almost all maybe?) of these. Aren't they pretty un-controversial in general for consumers, but represent the business/consumer adversarial disconnect? Or maybe I'm wrong and people love QR menus etc.

I couldn't have stated the 2FA thing better... Same with scare tactics (and forcing your hand) about software updates in the name of security. You can't just invoke security as an auto-win card! "Think of the Children."

AtlasBarfed•3mo ago
What's hilarious about boomers? Is that if you could summarize their narcissism in one fatal flaw for the entire generation. It is that they did not "think of the children" at all
eviks•3mo ago
> Also, standardize the points of rewards programs so we have an idea if we need 104 or 97,000 points to redeem them for the pocket lint prize.

This already exists, called money, and obviously won't be used because it's easier to realize how low the number is, but also harder to cancel/inflate away.

Broader than that - is there any big generational divide about subscriptions (or, for that matter, many other points on the list)?

egypturnash•3mo ago
I used to be able to buy a piece of software for $30, and I owned it until that computer became an antique. All your turning Photoshop into a monthly subscription did — was make me download the free version, GIMP.

Dude. Photoshop was like $700 back in 2008. You weren’t buying that anyway, you were pirating it or using an old unregistered copy of Paint Shop Pro.

I’m not gonna argue that every single app being either a subscription or an in-app purchase funnel now doesn’t suck, but you were not buying that for $30 unless it was from Bob’s Totally Legit House Of Burnt CDs.

ompogUe•3mo ago
"Don't trust anyone over 30"
odiroot•3mo ago
LED headlights are not really a problem. The problem is how tall the modern cars are and how high are the headlights mounted.
al_borland•3mo ago
It’s also an issue with people buying LED bulbs and putting them in cars not designed for them. That is what leads to the blinding lights.
plqbfbv•3mo ago
It's not just that. LED headlights are much more focused beams than the old bulb lamps.

As a guy with moderate myopia, even low beams can be extremely annoying up to the point of physically hurting my eyes if there are no street lights to reduce the contrast.

I like that I can see better and further, but at the same time if I put my car's low beams just slightly higher so they project more than ~30m away, I get flashed from cars passing in the opposite direction, no high beams required.

Matrix/Adaptive headlights should be mandatory with LED headlights to be honest.

xnx•2mo ago
Also being poorly adjusted so they point too high or driving with the brights on.
ch_123•3mo ago
> Printing menus isn’t hard, or even costly.

I'm not a fan of QR code menus either, but printed menus are not necessarily cheap. The owner of one of my favourite restaurants told me that he couldn't raise prices on his menu to match inflation because the cost of re-printing all the menus with increased prices would eat up the difference. IIRC, the restaurant later shifted to a cheaper and simpler menu design.

inglor_cz•3mo ago
Maybe tablets would be a good compromise?
ndsipa_pomu•3mo ago
I'd guess tablets would be expensive as they'd be lost, stolen and broken by customers.
sjs382•3mo ago
Depends.

If you're a restaurateur, do you have the .ai files your agency created, an Adobe Illustrator license, and know-how to get in there and change the prices? And then know where/how to deliver the result to get it printed? If so, you probably still have something better to do...

You probably pay an agency an hourly rate plus markup to get them updated, prepped and sent off to be reprinted.

Next time: negotiate fixed prices/timelines for small updates, own the files, and own the relationship with the printers.

Atheros•3mo ago
So.. the owner made a mistake getting expensive menus printed and then corrected his mistake?

Even if he didn't have to adjust prices due to inflation, surely restaurants adjust the items on their menus frequently. I have been to a restaurant that printed new menus daily because it changed daily. It's like 10 sheets of paper or cardstock. It's not that expensive.

SAI_Peregrinus•3mo ago
> There’s a button for the hand brake now, it’s called the ‘electronic parking brake’. Nopeity nope nope. It’s called the oh-shit brake for a reason. I want to yank on that summabitch like my life depended on it, because — it might.

At best doing that will do absolutely nothing useful, as anyone who's accidentally driven off with it set will know. At worst it'll spin you, since the hand brakes only lock the rear wheels. This is used deliberately to perform a "handbrake turn", but if you're yanking it like your life depends on it you're turning a front impact with big crumple zones into a side impact.

Esophagus4•3mo ago
I will say that my grandfather once limped a car to safety (slowly) using the handbrake after the brakes failed on a hot day. That was in the 70s.

I suspect modern brakes are much less likely to outright fail like that, and so I don’t know if we still need the emergency aspect of the emergency brake as much.

burnt-resistor•3mo ago
Tiny print is terribly inaccessible for a lot of people. Just make the print fucking normal and legible.
lojban•3mo ago
Interestingly, the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS) doesn't seem to think headlight glare is a problem [0], as unconformable as it may seem. I suspect there may be a selection bias at play here though. They also conclude brighter = safer. Part of me wonders if the glare also forces drivers to go slower, counterintuitively leading to safer driving.

Anyway, either way, it sucks. Some of the headlight glare is so bad now that I'll see afterimage streaks from headlights even during daylight hours!

[0] https://www.iihs.org/news/detail/headlight-complaints-abound...

mvdtnz•3mo ago
> Did you Know Writing is My Full-Time Income?

I have a very hard time believing this quality of writing earns you an income.