And to sell to the station owner when their proprietary hardware breaks. Oh what am i saying, they're all service contacts these days. So more expensive service conrtacts and the ability to shut them down for non-payment

Reminder to try and press any of the buttons on the side of the screen to mute if possible. 2nd right or bottom right works on all the pumps around me but I dread the day we get touch only

If it keeps getting broken they might reconsider.

It seems to be a very popular mindset in software development that efficiency isn't as important because of how fast hardware has gotten.

This sucks because I don't get better hardware just to make up for worse software (not that it even does; a lot of browser-based apps are painfully slow), and some of these devs end up working on weaker platforms that don't make up for their shitty programming. They might not ever touch the platform it is actually supposed to run on and instead work on a dev machine that is powerful enough to make it look good. It's possible that neither them nor anyone hiring/managing them realizes that they aren't the kind of programmer they want.

Though it's also possible that the programmers are fine and have told their managers that the CPUs just aren't powerful enough for what they want them to do but some assholes are only looking at the bottom line and have low standards for these kind of things in their own life (my TV is slow, so it's no big deal that our car interface is slow).

Worst thing is it's probably less than a $50 difference in cost to switch to something that could handle it fine, assuming it's not programmed in JavaScript and HTML or slow because it's backend is on the cloud or some shit like that, which also wouldn't surprise me.

We used to have a rule in computer system design that if an event would take more than 4 seconds we had to show a "waiting" icon like the hourglass.

Now though, people are sensitive to half a second between tap/click and something happening. Incidentally there's no reason for a fuel pump control to be slow, even running on a potato. The engineer who designed it wasn't given time to make it efficient

Try wearing very thin neoprene under your bigger gloves. It's been a game changer for me. I have a horrible habit of taking my gloves off from years of snowboarding and those have been awesome.

Because it's way faster to pay at the pump and not have to go inside. I've only been inside a gas station like 4-5 times in the last decade.

Yeah! Instead of having a knob my idiot stove has “touch areas” - good luck cooking if you’re blind.

At my old place, if I wanted to set the bottom left plate to the hottest setting, I’d put my hand on the leftmost knob and turn counter-clockwise until it snapped once.

On this thing I usually have to start with turning off the child lock. We never turn it on, but every time we wipe off the stove there’s a like 95% chance the child lock activates due to the lingering moisture.

After turning the child lock off you have to hold the power “zone.” Then you have to select which burner by holding its zone - if you don’t you’ll start changing the timer when you hold down the - button to cycle from 0 to keep warm, to 9, and then press + to turn it from 9 to boost.

I'm legit not joking. Mind you this example is when the piece of shit behaves. I’ve an absentmindedly placed lids on the off “button” before and had the piece of junk refuse to turn back on for half an hour.

What does the touch controls add to my experience other than frustration? A knob doesn’t activate from water splashes. A knob doesn’t turn from residual moisture from a slightly damp cloth. A knob is tactile and pleasing to hold, and can be used by anyone of appropriate age, even if they’re blind.

Four knobs could pull the weight that these NINE touch “buttons” fucking struggle with.

it’s frequently 10 Fahrenheit or lower in the winter

Fair enough, we don't hit such temperatures regularly in Warsaw (Poland).

a literal freezing steering wheel

Is it that bad? Wow. Didn't know that. I though the cage would provide at least some thermal insulation.

hold on to it for 10 mins until the heat kicks on

If my colleagues lived in a climate as cold as yours, they'd have mounted parking heaters (e.g. Webasto) by now. Electrics struggle in cold, but they can preheat themselves before the ride, using just the electricity.

I’m assuming you live in a warm place

Warsaw is at the same latitude as Edmonton in Canada, so shouldn't be really that warmer.

or don’t drive a car

Winter 2022/23 was when we still were in our previous office. It was ½ hour long commute with my Xiaomi M365 electric scooter. This winter 2023/24 we moved to an office further away, so I was forced to change my daily vehicle to a motorcycle, maxiscooter SYM MaxSym 600i ABS. At least you have the goddamn cage.

Wish I had public transportation.

I miss having good alternative commute via metro and tram to our old office. Took almost the same time as e-scooter. But our new office? Public transit takes 2x as long as a motorcycle commute, according to Google Maps Timeline, so might as well not exist. So now we're in similar situation. Wish you luck...