MPU -> Microprocessor. MPUs typically have features that let it support a "full" OS; MMUs, speculative execution, advanced CPU pipelining features, etc. They also have a much higher RAM capacity. Often has more complicated power requirements when doing board design due to needing different voltage busses for different peripherals. Usually can't be run standalone, you have to bring some of your own peripheral hardware. For example, you usually need to bring your own RAM.
MCU -> Microcontroller. Low power, less RAM, limited MMU/memory protection features, typically run baremetal firmware or an RTOS. Usually so simple it only needs a single voltage rail. More or less self-contained. Has RAM and ROM on-die.
SoC -> System-on-a-chip. Actually a very vague term. But in broad strokes, an SoC is what it says: An entire system on a single chip. Could incorporate an MCU or an MPU, plus other peripherals, etc. You can almost think of it as a "single chip computer" as opposed to a "single board computer". It's almost more of a marketing term than an EE term. For example, the Apple Silicon stuff is a "SoC" because it has the MPU + GPU + RAM on a single die.
I tend to think of an SoC as "MCU with other peripherals not typically on an MCU", so BLE/WiFi radio or maybe gate drivers for motor control. But usually radios. As you pointed out "not typically on an MCU" is a moving target. Was a point where RAM and a decent ADC would be things you had to add externally.
Others have already mentioned that you shouldn't be sharing a master password, and that's definitely true. I'll try to answer the question more holistically:
RE: Sharing.
Nobody should be sharing a password manager account. If this is happening it usually means somebody doesn't want to pay for the seats to have individual accounts. You give each user their own account, and if you need more than one admin, you have more than one admin, but you shouldn't be sharing an admin account.
This would also apply if you're not talking about the pw manager's master password but something more like an AWS root account. That root account needs to exist, but its credentials should be a secret in the password manager vault that is shared with anyone who needs it (based on roles/access rules/principle of least privelege), and you should create additional administrative roles within the system you're securing instead of leveraging those root credentials (as much as possible) operationally.
RE: Bad actors
SSO is the answer here. You use a password manager with SSO integration, and you cancel the person's account the second they depart. At previous orgs they literally cancel the account while the person is still in the building and being walked down the hall to be informed that they're being asked to leave. It's definitely on the cruel side but if you're concerned or wanting to emphasize the security of the data first and foremost, that's what you do.
Both parts of the answer above involve $$$. Most services require paying for a higher tier if you want SSO integration (both on the side of the provider like Google Workspaces and the tool like 1Password), and both require paying for head count.
But this is the answer to "best practices". If there's a financial impediment that prevents you from doing these two things, then you can't use the "best practices". That's the unfortunate nature of the beast, and why there are so many online disagreements about the concept of an "SSO Tax".
EDIT: Lots of comments about sharing the root passwords in general. I made a few assumptions here that I thought were implied but outside of the direct scope of the question, so I'm going to add them here.
- MFA should be required, full-stop, and it should be provided by something connected to your SSO. Okta or Google Authenticator, or even better if you use hardware keys like a Yubikey. There's still risk in having shared access to the root account credentials but this helps mitigate it, as even if the person takes the password with them it'll be much much harder for them to use it.
- Password rotation. That's an obvious one. Just change the paswords every time there's a departure.
- Clarification on role-based access. With shared vaults on enterprise/team plans you can restrict who is able to actually see the items once dropped in to the password manager. You shouldn't expose the AWS Root Account to the whole org. You should expose it to whoever actually needs it, and you should use it as little as possible, that's what was meant by this statement:
> you should create additional administrative roles within the system you're securing instead of leveraging those root credentials (as much as possible) operationally.
As an example, here are AWS's guidelinesn for securing the root account:
Most of them get distilled down to "don't actually use the root account for anything unless absolutely necessary, and share it with as few people as possible", with nuggets such as:
1. Don't create access keys for the root user
and
2. Never share your root user password or access keys with anyone
The idea being that even though this account needs to exist, you should be providing access at the individual level with the necessary permissions instead of relying on the root credentials at all.
Even without SSO, a bitwarden team subscription let's you administratively revoke organization access at negligible business cost.
Note that revocation is insufficient to protect current passwords: The user may have made a copy. For that you need password rotation and second factors like a hardware token.
Regardless, shared credentials should be reserved for when there no other solution is technically possible. At the very least when shared credentials cannot be avoided, try to split it into multiple domains - read-only vs "production open heart surgery", devs vs prod admins, automation vs humans, etc. For automation, always make new tokens for each use - and never store them, as you can always make more. Consider only issuing credentials to people upon request, and revoking them after the fact. There are many mechanisms to reduce risk.
Re: root account password in a password manager vault. The problem with this from an enterprise-security perspective is that, once the password has been shared with somebody, it's difficult to prevent them from later using it in a way that's not authorized, or accidentally disclosing it to someone who shouldn't have it (e.g., by having their machine compromised). I suppose that a TOTP secret or FIDO/U2F dongle doesn't necessarily have this problem, though, so you could maybe rely on that rather than the password as the primary security factor.
If you're not using an MFA mechanism attached to your SSO (Google Authenticator or Okta or something) then that's a completely separate issue. There shouldn't be that much risk in letting all of your SRE's have access to the root credentials; you can lock down who can see what in your vault based on roles for any PW manager worth anything.
You could also rotate the root password every time there's a departure from the teams that have visiblity if it's that big of a deal.
> Many people are only aware of the default lightweight tags
I don't know if that's true anymore, if only because the ongoing popularity of the Git Flow branching model; the `git-flow` tools use annotated tags by default for every command that creates a tag (e.g. releases).
How is it misleading when the whole point is that Redis can only be single threaded†? That's why Dragonfly (claims) to scale better. If anything, it's the Redis rebuttal that comes across as misleading; the posted announcement is very up front that Dragonfly's value proposition is that you get vertical scaling for free without having the additional ops overhead of a Redis cluster, which is very much not free in terms of maintenance and opportunity cost.
†: Redis 6 added threads, but AFAIK this is only for handling connection I/O. Actual database access is still single threaded. The only way I'm aware of to scale Redis is via clustering.
It's misleading because the comparison would be redis cluster vs dragonfly. There's no speed-up if the Redis user isn't fully saturating a single core. The real question is why is it only 25x faster on a 64-vCPU machine? Why isn't it 64x? Does this mean it's 60% slower when the request volume is below the needs of a single-threaded redis?
> Dragonfly's value proposition
Dragonfly has zero value proposition other than a ticking-time-bomb of pricing fuckery when they're forced to yield a return on that $21M investment.
This is exactly what the article says to do. I also paused at that section that listed all those crazy things, if you power through and get to the end you'll find this:
>If you’re a conscientious engineer, you are probably going to find the above suggestions somewhere between counterintuitive and horrifying. You should! They are horrifying! This is how deeply capital’s war on workers is scarring our profession.
>These people are actively trying to take your wealth away from you and keep it for themselves. You need to protect yourself.
>Oh, yeah, we should also have a union. Sure. Let’s get on that one of these days.
For being the point of the article (and it is), it's very well hidden. I like the article and feel like we need more of this out there, but they should be written a little better.
Anybody remember Triptiks from AAA? You'd go to a AAA office or call them on the phone, tell them where you were going, and in return you'd get a printed spiral top-bound pad with your trip broken down in to multiple legs, the roads/routes pre-highlighted, gas stops and prices estimated in, a list of sites for stopping off at, etc. All human curated and human annotated (the roads on your route were literally gone over by a person with a Highlighter). I'm sure it was all pulled from some sort of centralized/normalized/standardized data source but the human touch was definitely there.
They were awesome. When we were growing up most big family trips were in the car because gas and hotels were just so much more affordable than flying an entire family anywhere. I got to be the "navigator" on so many trips by helping family members read the Triptiks.
Apparently AAA still offers these, but they're generated digitally now via their app, and you can print them off if you want. But something about those human-built Triptiks were really really special.
In a lot of ways, electronic maps are still inferior to the Triptik.
Even the Rand McNally showed highway rest areas and picnic areas. The Triptik also showed gas stations. Electronic maps often lack this entirely, at least in easy form.
The Triptik shows what you need to know while on a long motor trip. The electronic map emphasizes details I don't need.
At a glance the paper map tells me whether a road is free limited-access, toll limited-access, multi-lane divided, two lanes but major, two lanes and minor, a country lane, or a dirt road. Electronic map only tells me this if I zoom in on a satellite view, and it might even route me over a two-lane road to save five minutes on a two-hour trip when there's a much safer freeway that most drivers would prefer.
Paper map has little dotted lines for scenic routes. Electronic map doesn't.
Mostly I'm surprised the electronic maps don't have these things after all these years. Maybe Apple will get them eventually. Google is busy stuffing ads into its maps.
I've been growing pretty dissatisfied with the state of electronic maps. Basic things that are usually either impossible or difficult while using Google Maps or Apple Maps for directions:
- What road am I on? What town am I in?
- and other flavors of "where the hell am I, anyway?"
- This is especially annoying when on the phone and the person is asking where you are, and the best you can answer is "Google says I'm X minutes away"
- What road is this coming up next?
- instead it puts the name halfway along the road, which is out of view...
- Some of the true nav systems (Garmin, etc) do this better.
There's no way to see a street name on Apple Maps without zooming in entirely. And sometimes even then, I'll see something like Route 99 instead the name by which everyone refers to the road: "Broadway".
If I have my directions preference set to walking, cycling, or public transit, there is no reason to EVER show me the route number of a street that has a name. I don't care about it, and it actively gets in the way of using the map since it displaces the name, you know, the thing that is actually on the signs that I am looking at with my eyes.
It would be one thing if it showed both the name and the number, but usually you have to pinch and pan so far from where you are before you luck into seeing the name that you've totally lost your orientation on the map.
This annoys me too. I've submitted map feedback (holding and tapping 'Report a problem' on the map) before but who knows if that could make much of a difference. I assumed the route numbers are more of an American thing (although your comment seems to imply perhaps not)? We have them here but nobody I know here in Australia uses them or knows them, apart from major motorways. Maybe the other routes are used by truckers? Normal drivers though I would think only care about the street names.
It frustrates me to no end how hard it can be to see the names of streets in Maps, it's one of the most important things!
> I assumed the route numbers are more of an American thing (although your comment seems to imply perhaps not)?
In my area (Connecticut), it depends. Some streets are known by their route numbers, vs some streets have route numbers and most people aren't aware of them at all. It's more common to refer by route number if it's a busy main road that changes name from town to town that it passes through.
Then there's upstate New York, with plenty of streets that are only route numbers, despite being otherwise residential normal roads.
> assumed the route numbers are more of an American thing
Not for streets that go through a town or city and have maximum speeds of 30 mph (48 Kmh). And those are the streets that Maps displays route numbers. I don’t know of truckers using those streets.
Made even worse by traveling in a country with a language you can't read. sometimes it shows the native language, zoom in it might show an English transliteration. if you're showing it to a taxi driver it'll definitely not show the native language.
One thing that drives me nuts on Google Maps is "Search Nearby" doesn't leave your original point of interest (that you're searching around) on the map when showing results. Pretty sure it didn't used to be like this.
I'm pretty convinced that Google just doesn't understand information economics. In case you haven't noticed, Apple maps are getting better and better and I prefer their turn-by-turn directions over that of Google.
The interesting thing is that Apple now offers "explore" vs "driving" maps, I hope they also add "walking" or "Cycling" maps. And because they aren't driven by advertising sales, the maps can be more useful without compromising sales revenue.
If Apple decided to invest in a crawler/indexer with a search front end to give Siri the data sources for better response, and to allow for "pure" informational search (rather than search-ad/revenue prioritized search), once it got good enough for that it would put Google into a very tight spot. (Well tighter than the one it currently finds itself in).
Apple's solution isn't a serious contender because it's hardware locked to high end devices that the majority of people don't use / can't afford (the demographics of this community not withstanding).
While it's nice that their users can have an alternate first-party experience, that experience is not a publically available map. For example if you go to maps.apple.com you are told "Open this on your Apple Hardware".
(i.e. If 100% of Apple users used Apple Maps, Apple's best case scenario is still #2 in mapping)
Apple isn't a serious contender because their devices aren't sponsored by tracking/ads? You can also get an iOS device (partly) included with a post-paid mobile plan, can't you?
> Apple isn't a serious contender because their devices aren't sponsored by tracking/ads?
Apple isn't a serious contender because they don't sell anything in the low-end segment. Ferrari make great cars but you can't expect everyone to drive a Ferrari.
> You can also get an iOS device (partly) included with a post-paid mobile plan, can't you?
That acts as a payment plan, but you're still paying the full cost (usually plus interest) one way or another.
A $399 iPhone SE that has gotten seven years of OS updates and is still getting security updates today is as cost effective as several bargain bin devices that have to be quickly replaced.
$400 isn't low-end. The Samsung phone I got from T-Mobile for a one-time payment of $40 after taxes (for trading in a flip phone) is a low end phone. I've been using it for over a year, and I expect to continue using it for at least another year, probably two. At that point, I might just switch to a flip phone, since I spend my money on nice large tablets instead of oversized phones. Hopefully there'll be a decently priced flip phone that'll last more than 2 years.
I'm using a Motorola phone that I bought outright new for 200 bucks. Still works 3 years later, but has recently started showing its age, especially in the battery department.
I'll be looking for a new phone soon. 350 and under is what I'm aiming for. 400 is extreme stretch and the 400 dollar phone would have to blow me away to get me to consider it.
This is a no strings attached offer. I'm not required to continue using T-Mobile. There are no installments or contract. I can take my T-Mobile phone and immediately stop using T-Mobile without paying a fee for it. The phone might be locked to T-Mobile though.
Maybe. If you have the $399 upfront or the credit rating to get it on a phone contract. If you have anything to spend on buying a phone at all as opposed to having to use whatever hand-me-down device found its way to you.
> as opposed to having to use whatever hand-me-down device found its way to you
Given that Apple just issued another security update for the decade old iPhone 5s, your ability to hand down an iPhone is greatly extended, especially compared to the support policy you get with a bottom of the barrel Android device.
>Given that Apple just issued another security update for the decade old iPhone 5s, your ability to hand down an iPhone is greatly extended, especially compared to the support policy you get with a bottom of the barrel Android device.
I think this is a fair point in favour of Apple, but I would be surprised if many people who are weighing up hand-me-downs vs cheapest models are concerned with security updates
Build quality, years of OS updates and security patch longevity are absolutely reasons why iPhones hold their value much longer than a bottom of the barrel Android device does.
> based on handsets with an initial buyback price of $700 or higher, Android phones lose value twice as fast as iOS models over the first two years of ownership.
Low trade-in value is a reason a lot of those devices end up as hand-me-downs; there's no liquid market so they're notionally worthless, but they still work so people are likely to pass them on rather than trade them in. (Indeed one could argue that Apple pays inflated trade-in values to get their old models out of circulation and sustain their premium positioning)
One could argue that Android vendors intentionally refuse to support low end Android devices after the sale to force users to buy another device every year.
One could, but the competitiveness of low-end Android makes that pretty implausible; people buying a cheap no-name Android who replace it with another cheap no-name Android are unlikely to get that from the same company.
It's implausible that it would be for market control purposes, because no one player controls that market and competition is intense (unlike Apple's situation). If no-one's offering support in the low end it's because doing so is uneconomic in itself, not to create an effect in another part of the ecosystem.
About your second response (which is quite right), let me add that in my neck of the woods (and in many others), there's no way to get an iOS device with any postpaid plan, or any other cell phone plan, for that matter.
One could argue that "most" people[1] have iPhones (at least in the US). And yes it is only 22% world wide. But putting aside the currently available "seats" for a moment, at the point where is it clearly the better product then two things start happening
1) People start buying Apple hardware because it has a better map experience.
2) Apple can produce the iMap device, likely in cooperation with their maps partner TomTom, that people can use to get the Apple Maps experience without changing their phone provider.
I live USA, Stanford engineer, have an Android phone and will likely never have an iPhone. My other gender breeding partner has to have an apple, so I use hers at times and am appalled at how difficult things are. But if she can't facetime friends, then she will lose face. I get free phones, and see pays large fees for hers. Sorry, I pass. I work in finance BTW.
I think that is great. FWIW I worked at Google and still have the original Dream phone in a box somewhere. And while I used iPads since the Android tablet experience never really congealed for me, used an Android phone until the iPhone 13 SE I currently own.
I am also a firm believer that everyone should "vote with their wallet" for the products they want, so no judgement, on my part, on folks who buy one product or the other.
In my experience I find that for every product I buy, the various choices all come with pluses and minuses. I go through that list and apply my own importance rating on each one and come up with my final choice.
My original comment was that Apple Maps are getting better, they were at one time a complete joke. I use maps on my phone all the time, it is probably the largest use of mine after "looking things up on the web" or "communicating" via text or voice. As a result of this improvement in maps, it made this particular choice (for me) a better choice on the iPhone than on an android phone.
I can tell that some people heard my comment above "if you don't own an iPhone you are stupid" or something like that. It certainly wasn't my intent. Never easy to know how something you say will be heard.
My other experience is that products that get "better" overall, supplant, then replace what existed before them. Whether it is TVs, cars, computers, or phones. I still have a Garmin Navigator in my car's glove box but I don't think I have used it in nearly a decade. And yet there was a time when devices of that form were 90+% of the market for "in vehicle navigation."
While 55% is technically "most", there are hundreds of millions of people in that minority block. Definitely not a number to just dismiss from a function as important as mapping. As a member of that minority, I'm very grateful for non-hardware-locked mapping apps.
I 100% agree. What I was trying to communicate was that maps is a "feature" of a bigger platform "phone" and can be a discriminator for consumers on purchase. For example a consumer who uses their phone mostly for its maps and driving directions may choose a phone based on their best "maps" experience.
The reference article was discussing a resurgence in "paper" maps, which have three advantages over "electronic" maps that I am aware of; they work when you are "offline", they have specific details of interest, and they "look good."
My observation was that Apple appears to be investing in a better "map" experience on their phones. This resurgence might influence that investment.
Dismissing that observation based on market share is probably unwise. Why? Because market share is a function of serving customer requirements better than the competition. Market share is a reflection of meeting requirements, and in the absence of external forces will result in the brands with doing the best job of meeting requirements ahead of their competitors.
If marketshare is a reflection of meeting customer requirements, then the fact that Google Maps is indisputably #1 and what 10X larger than Apple Maps means that consumers have decided which solution meets their needs the best, right?
For the record, the best data available suggests that only ~50% of iOS users choose the pre-installed built-in Maps versus explicitly downloading the Google Maps app.
One wonders what that number would look like without anti-competitive monopolistic bundling, too. From that perspective, it seems that the "majority of iOS users" would choose Google over Apple Maps, but Apple's anti-competitive behavior has kept it at around 50/50 on their own platform.
Yes and no. "Yes" at this moment in time, Google Maps is the choice of most people. "No" in that market share at one point is not a predictor of market share at a future point. If it were, we would all be using Blackberry phones right?
I would agree 100% that for the last 10 years, Google Maps has been "the best choice" for an online map. I think it would be ill advised if they relied on their historical advantage and simply "assumed" it would always be "the best choice." Their competitors are evolving their maps offerings and if Google doesn't pay attention they will find themselves suddenly playing catch up.
My observation is that Google is very distracted at the moment but I don't know how that affects the maps team (were any of them laid off?). Apple seems to be investing here and the improvements in their product reflect that investment.
I've found that when I'm planning things I tend to use Google Maps, but when I get in the car I tend to use Apple maps. I swear there are little differences like Google instructions will be "In X feet... turn right" where Apple is "turn right at the stop sign" which is easier to follow.
Yeah that’s nice but Apple Maps have also routed me down narrow rural roads, occasionally across private property, and proclaimed that I was at my destination when I was looking out the window at a vacant lot. In my experience, Google’s tech is better.
My take is it turns out this way because Google’s map data is better but Apple’s user experience is better. Google Maps seems to have completely stagnated on both data and user experience whereas Apple seems to be getting better on both fronts all the time. It’s Google’s market to lose.
Recently I've found that Google has started to put more effort into this area -- I've started getting directions like "Turn right at the next corner after the Chase bank."
When it comes to cycling maps, I’d recommend checking out cycle.travel[1], its routing (at least over here in EU land) has been awesome. I’ve done a couple of week long trips planned on it.
>Mostly I'm surprised the electronic maps don't have these things after all these years. Maybe Apple will get them eventually. Google is busy stuffing ads into its maps.
Yeah, google is always going to be trash for anything that doesn’t align well with advertising. Better to show a Starbucks than a rest area, etc.
so it's the gas station's fault for not buying Google Ads then, right? Google can't possibly be blamed. The don't do evil. It's just the people using their services that do evil things. /s
My user experience on several recent trips is that Google Maps showed me the exit number for the exit I would use next very prominently on top of the display (where it shows the direction of the next turn). Maybe that isn't rolled out consistently for all trips.
Context is when you are not using GPS. (Personally I despise being talked at by a computer for an hour, especially one that's bad at directing a driver.)
With paper maps, you can just look at them -- a single page, no pinch zooming or scrolling! -- to see what exit is appropriate for your destination. Not possible with Google Maps -- you either have to zoom in until the exit ramp fills the screen, or make up a fake address near where you're going to get directions which you then have to read through to find the relevant exit. It's a needless frustration when I'm in a hurry and just what to know what exit serves town X.
I feel you on the talking part. Especially maddening to me is where it talks over an in-progress conversation to tell us things we already know.
I now generally turn the audio part off except for alerts. I like that better, not only is it more soothing, but it forces me to engage my brain a little more.
Those two types of maps are targeting different groups -- paper maps targeting the somewhat advanced users who know the basic navigation and have little need to consult the legend. The electronic maps target much wider audience and can be dumbed down since people can interact with the map. Sure, the electronic maps probably can stuff more info to be shown at a glance, but my impression is that they chose not to.
I am reliably amazed by how many people are completely unable to read a map these days. I hate turn-by-turn directions and never use them, with the result that I am naturally paying enough attention that I can always find my way back to anywhere I've been. People I travel with, who let themselves be led around from one corner to the next with their nose buried in a screen, can't understand how I do it.
Since it became unnecessary for most people? Phones can break, so it's always good to know the paper skills... but it's definitely not an everyday thing anymore.
Besides, even before phones, it was somewhat advanced, they were never easy, as shown by how often people got lost, and still get lost with perfectly functional GPS just by making one bad turn because their memory failed since last time they checked the screen.
I'd even argue that darning socks might be more relevant to everyday life than map reading, even though map reading is more important in emergencies and people should probably know both.
If you can darn socks you can probably fix holes in your pants, and if you have a car charger, getting lost happens a lot less than clothes repair, at least in the city.
You could predict it from Streetview data though! A small bit of computer vision would go a long way here. Actually this seems like a fun project for someone inside or (if the API is not too throttled) outside Google.
Former land surveyor here. Big fan of paper maps, even though I still use Gaia, FarOut, etc. My faves are the USGS topographical map sets. There's just something you can't replace about the experience of navigating using topo maps and a compass.
Travel is such an personal thing - it's people in an environment at least somewhat foreign to them. Trusting someone to plan it is a pretty intimate thing, and companies don't do intimate things very well anymore. Too many people, too few companies.
I'd pay good money for more personal experiences from companies, especially when it comes to something like this, but it's not easy. The wife and I were looking for a honeymoon package, but neither "beach" nor "romantic European getaway" were on our list. Roughly 90% of travel companies were out of ideas after that. It's literally their JOB to plan trips and they can't deviate from a template. It's pain incarnate.
If it's something like what we had at my country, it's not a travel plan.
It's a book, fully indexed, with searchable and fully reviewed information about the place you are going and the path in between. You use it to make your own plan, or to improvise.
Specifically about improvisation, it has become almost impossible nowadays because there is no reliable information about anything.
monetization really screwed this up. having a connected computer in your pocket with the ability to search everything and make shelter and travel reservations and perform other important actions instantly should really be perfect for this.
but somehow I always end up having to sign up for a bunch of services in a hurry and take crappy pictures of my id only to find out that the hotel doesn't know anything about my reservation when I arrive anyways.
sometimes I even have to upgrade my phone while sitting on a curb to get the app to arrange for the payment etc .etc.
or that lovely looking and affordable Airbnb is next to an open sewer
I am boring, but one of the reason I keep wanting to take a cruise is because I do not want to plan anything. Show up at this place, at this time and then there will be a bunch of exotic* stuff to see/do/eat.
*Exotic very much being in the eye of the beholder, but something different from my daily costal urban experience.
I understand why that niche doesn't exist - most people looking for a personal experience tend to plan it themselves. Though it would be nice to say "I want to go here, here and here" and have someone book all of the hotels and transport.
You can totally do that at the luxury divisions of firms like Scott Dun and Protravel if you have the money. They'll even get you a chauffeur and dinner reservations at that high end restaurant if that's what you want. If you need anything mid-trip just call the 24/7 concierge and they'll figure out how to get it to you.
Travel agents still exist. If they don't know how to plan the vacation of your dreams, they know somebody who does. I used one to plan a trip to Florida, which was obviously a normal-ass tourist thing but they got in touch with another agent who knew the ins and outs of where to stay at the Space Coast and the pros and cons of onsite stay vs offsite for Disney.
There are specialty outfits specific to an area/country and/or type of activity that I've used which are pretty good. But most mainstream travel agents have been book a cruise/flight/tour for pretty much forever.
My dad had one for years who was better than that but I've only sometimes used specialty agencies, e.g. for English walking trips.
Just curious here—what sort of things were on your list that you couldn’t find? If there were better templates, what kind of trips would you expect to be able to plan?
I'm referring to unknown unknowns here. I'm going to a completely foreign area, and I want to pay someone money instead of doing hours of research myself. It's just a huge pain in the ass made way harder by the fact that I don't know anything about the place, and the places I visited were all very rigid. Maybe the type of experience I'm looking for is not something I can afford, and that's why I haven't come across it?
It makes life easier at the expense of some indescribable sense of "quality" or connotations of "wealth", the feeling that the product makes a statement about the skill of the maker and the user, that there's real skill involved not just a technological cheat code in real life.
Which seems to be very culture specific, it's important to some but not others.
I don't have much doubt that people get lost less with phones now. It's reliable and available on demand at any moment. Basic utilitarian trips might even use less gas because if dynamic traffic data.
The main thing we lost is the sense that things are real and solid, rather than unearned power ups in a global scale video game, but by technical engineering measures, it seems like almost every single product outside of the arts has improved, year after year.
Old analog stuff is cool, but if I only had room in my bag for one, I'm probably going to take the latest new version, every time.
Rather than a subjective cultural "quality", I think there's an issue where folks are dependent upon technology and that handicaps their ability to learn or perform advanced skills.
In the US, younger students are performing worse in mathematics than previous cohorts; calculators aren't a singular cause but their ubiquity does encourage a mentality both from children and adults that basic arithmetic and even algebra or geometry aren't important, which then becomes worse performance by older students who lack the fundamentals.
I'd be interested to see a study on how often folks are "lost" and how that was defined: if someone's phone lost power or crashed mid-journey, then the person would qualify as lost because they don't know where they are or how to get out of where they are, but even with the phone _telling_ them where to go, do they really know where they are or how to get out of where they are? Or are they just a simple child being given and following directions from a parent, without any concept of what those directions mean?
It's the same problem math has always had for my whole life. The fundamentals are important to reach the high level stuff but no longer directly useful, and people aren't always sure whether they want to go into a field that needs it, until they are past the age where people used to learn the basics.
Algebra is not useful to an average person directly, and the path to actually getting a job that needs math is long enough that nobody in school is going to think through their future like that, we don't really have a culture of kids thinking a decade ahead. I sure didn't.
Plus, the main thing educators seem to talk about is this mysterious "New way of thinking" you get from math. But nobody just trusts their teachers on that, since it's not something that can be explained easily.
It probably doesn't help that they still like to pretend you're going to actually directly do long division IRL. Even if there's a reason to learn it, I don't see why we need to tell people they'll actually use it directly, when it seems pretty clear most people don't.
But that seems like a matter for educators to solve rather than tech or tech culture.
Is there a different optimal curriculum that takes into account the existence of calculators and the fact we learn math for different reasons now? Or is the best way to teach it unchanged?
Philosophically I suppose phone-dependent people are perpetually lost, but I think a practical definition would be "Unable to navigate to their destination with available equipment".
Someone who's phone dies isn't really experiencing what most know as lost unless they have no power bank or car charger, only then are they going to really be experiencing some panic.
This is an interesting thought. What other examples are you thinking of besides the maps? And does this extend to innovations that create a whole new space, or is it just when innovation does an existing thing differently?
I think this was the premise of the Innovator's Dilemma, which showed examples where disruptive competition comes from below, and catches big companies off guard, toppling them, all the while prior they were successfully optimizing their business, until poof.
There's still an AAA office that I drive past all the time. Never been in there, though. I should go and ask for a Triptik sometime.
When I told people I went to Alaska, the inevitable answer was, "Oh, did you go on a cruise?" No, I didn't go on a forking cruise. Those are for lazy people.
What I've started doing is booking a short (2-4 days) trip inside the country or state, and being independent before & after that. You still get some guidance and socializing and seeing things you wouldn't otherwise, but your whole vacation isn't locked in. I recommend this.
When I was a child, my parents took the tribe around the country for 2 months. We towed our trailer behind an International Traveall. To prepare, my mom worked with AAA to design the route we were going to take starting from our home in California, up to Seattle, across to Yellowstone and Glacier, across the midwest to Philadelphia, down the east coast to Florida then back home through the south, Texas, New Mexico, Utah, and Nevada. The trip require a dozen of these books. I remember spending hours pouring through these prior to our leaving, just fascinated with all the roads, and cities, and attractions. We kept them for years afterwards and I continued looking at them for several years. Not sure what happened to them, however. Great times.
Oh, yes! My Dad used to have these made for our summer road trips. I used to love pouring over the maps before the trip to get hyped up. Then, in the car, following along as we drove. I forgot about that till your comment reminded me. Thanks for the nostalgia!
Yes. I remember going into the AAA office with my dad before family vacations to pick them up. They gave you a whole pre-trip briefing too on current construction, tips and any issues you might encounter. While apps like Waze do a great job of getting you from A-Z they completely lack the contextual information about where you’re going, things to see along the way and other details. One really had to pay a lot more attention to what was happening too vs just waiting for some voice in a box telling you to turn off the highway. Rest stops and roadside attractions where part of the adventure too vs todays boring cookie cutter outfits with the same chains.
I probably sound old and nostalgic but there were some things that were just “better” when life was a bit slower and not completely driven by tech—-and I’m someone that works in tech!
Those trips really felt like an adventure whereas now it’s just push some buttons and drive.
In theory, I can set my car navigation system to "Paris" now and drive there for a coffee (in about 9 hours or 788 km). I can even half-way change my mind and drive to Prague instead, without any preparation. The car will make sure that a lot of silly mistakes will be avoided, at the expense of perhaps some new silly mistakes (but fewer than without navigation system, for most casual drivers).
Of course, that modern ability lacks the anticipation, excitement and celebration of the annual family trip experience that you talk about, and yes, a personalized physical map that not just aids your navigation to your holiday/vacation destination but later becomes a memory artifact/artefact when said road trip is fondly remembered and re-imagined.
We invent electronic replacements for things and processes without giving much thought to the positive aspects of the experience that we may wish to retain (or better: re-create) before replacing them. Naturally, the first iterations of the substitute will be lacking. Later refinements will be evaluated relative to previous versions of the electronic replacement, not the original experience, which is soon forgotten. That's why many electronic/automatic replacements are lacking: examples include manual maps versus car navigation systems, human layout creation versus DTP publishing, traditional printing versus print on demand, traditional slide photography and development versus digital photography. The new is not just a replacement of the old, it is different. But the new often renders the old uneconomical and makes it disappear, like it or not, even when they tell us that the new thing is "complementary" to the old.
For better or worse, free market economy does not have a place for something _and_ its substitute, only the cheaper one of the two.
I would pay for a nicely printed and bound, personalized street map of a planned family holiday/vacation if the price was appropriate, and they did not ask me for the date and time of departure... ;-)
It's easier than ever to go off on an adventure if you want to. Any turn you like, you can take, you don't have to worry about getting lost. Anywhere you think looks like a nice detour, you can add it in and see immediately how much time it's going to add.
Most people don't bother, but I don't think that's the technology's fault. The technology absolutely supports it.
True but it also depends on who is in the car with you. I have to turn aside randomly if I have taken a route too many times, whether by car, foot, or bicycle. Trains and buses I am more happy to just do the routine.
As a kid on many a roadtrip in the 80s, I have a special fondness for triptiks. It gave me something to focus on and it gave my parents some peace as I quietly studied maps. I have a vivid memory of going to AAA before a roadtrip where someone would walk us through the route they chose.
However, it's all nostalgia. There is nothing about them that I would've preferred over a phone or tablet with working internet, had they been a thing back then.
There's nothing about anything that anyone prefers over a phone with working internet...
It's almost like a local maximum, if you plot (total happiness-total boredom) against (total screen hours).
Almost no individual activity is more appealing than scrolling (As we can infer from most people's behavior these days), but people will tell you that they want a life that isn't just scrolling and mobile games, and people are happier when they do more than screens.
I just tried the online site: my complaint is that they only show AAA-rated places to eat. On the other hand, the "5 diamond" places look really nice... it might be interesting to try some of them. I forgot all about AAA-rated restaurants.
The Milepost used to be essential for those who traveled in Alaska and Northwestern Canada. It's still quite useful, given that there are plenty of places there that don't have cellular service or any other kind of internet access.
I remember going to AAA offices where they would pull out a map and use highlighter on the spot and mark up the map in front of you. Nothing was prepared in advance.
Google Maps is constantly making weasel changes to try to get people to sign in and inserting ads for businesses. OpenStreetMaps is great offline, no sign-in required, but it's still too janky.
OSM is far superior to Google or Apple if you're not driving or riding public transit. They have much better pedestrian/cycle accessibility data. Google will send you on preposterous detours on a bike, whereas OSM gives you exactly what you need to know to take the shortest viable route.
Google does not need to go through the courts to obtain not only the driving plan but also where the maps user actually travels.
Google does not need to file a complaint that survives a motion to dismiss, reach the discovery phase of litigation and then subpoena AAA in order to obtain a driving plan for one specific driver. It continuously collects driving plans passively and indiscriminantly.
In litigation, testimony might be sealed. The data Google collects via Google Maps has no such protections available.
Let's be "realistic". Most people getting maps highlighted at AAA offices were not parties in lawsuits, the AAA employees that provided maps to them were not deposed by lawyers, and their driving plans were not used to prop up on online ad services racket. Yet every person that uses Google Maps is being surveilled for commercial purposes.
Flooding the web with more programmatic advertising.
Yep, TripTiks we’re awesome. With map apps I feel as though I’m constantly battling them as I always expect the top of the map/phone to represent north.
Maybe it was because I grew up in a rural area but I much prefer NSEW directions and looking at a physical map.
I loved TripTiks! And yes, I too was the family navigator as a kid, whether with a TripTik or an ordinary road map.
My other claim to fame was that I was the only one in the family - maybe in the entire neighborhood - who could fold a paper map so everything fell into place and it looked like new.
All the adults would just force the map to fold along whichever creases they felt like folding. I let the map "fold itself" with the map deciding where it wanted to be folded, and me just executing the map's wishes.
Specifically, first I would find the one crease that ran all the way across the map in the same direction - it was a "valley" or a "tent" all the way across, depending on which side you were looking at.
Then I'd find the next crease that was the same across the now-folded map. And the next one, and so on.
Adults didn't know this trick. They would fold along the creases, but they didn't take the time to let the map teach them which crease to fold first.
This is kind of like something I learned recently when I rescued a stray kitten from the street: You don't find a cat, the cat finds you.
Back to TripTiks, I bought one on eBay a few months ago, and it turned out to be an awesome road trip a southern California family took in the late 1960s.
First is the "front matter", with pages on:
Using your TripTik
Strip Map Legend
About Accommodations
In Case Of Accident
Western Radio Stations
The SPEED that's set is your best bet
Trip Planning
Expenses
Entering Canada and Returning to the United States
A Summary of Safety Responsibility Laws in Canada
Now we start the trip from Temple City, near Pasadena. Many of the pages were 2-3 page foldouts. I will use the original state abbreviations instead of our modern two-letter ones.
Temple City to I-10 East
I-10 to I-15 through San Bernardino
San Bernardino to Las Vegas
Local map of Las Vegas
Las Vegas to Beaver, Utah
Beaver to Salt Lake City
Local map of Salt Lake City
Salt Lake City to Logan, turning onto US 89 East
Logan to Alpine, Wyo.
Alpine to Yellowstone National Park
Local map of Yellowstone
Yellowstone to Gillette, Wyo.
Gillette to Deadwood, S. Dak.
An optional loop all around the Black Hills Region
A TripTik Supplement for US 85/14/94 where they didn't have the map
Belfield, N. Dak. to Bismarck, N. Dak.
Bismarck to Fargo and on to US 81
Fargo to Winnipeg, Man.
Winnipeg to Kenora, Ont.
Kenora to Port Arthur on the Thunder Bay
Port Arthur to Nipigon, Ont.
Nipigon to Sault Ste. Marie, Ont.
Sault Ste. Marie to North Bay, Ont.
Another missing-map supplement for North Bay to Ottawa, Ont.
And finally a local map of Ottawa, their destination
Every one of these TripTik pages has a description of the towns and cities along the way, with hotel, motel, restaurant, and service station listings.
Thanks for mentioning TripTiks. It was fun for me to go through this road trip in my mind and on paper just now.
That is not even remotely close to what this article is about. Tweetbot is the name of an extremely popular iOS Twitter Client. This article has nothing to do with bots, at all.
Alexa also had a 4-year head start on the HomePod. I don't know if that's the most apt comparison. Additionally, while it is an absurd price tag, the rumors are also that this is being aimed at Apple's famed "Creative Pro" segment and not gamers/casual VR users.
MCU -> Microcontroller. Low power, less RAM, limited MMU/memory protection features, typically run baremetal firmware or an RTOS. Usually so simple it only needs a single voltage rail. More or less self-contained. Has RAM and ROM on-die.
SoC -> System-on-a-chip. Actually a very vague term. But in broad strokes, an SoC is what it says: An entire system on a single chip. Could incorporate an MCU or an MPU, plus other peripherals, etc. You can almost think of it as a "single chip computer" as opposed to a "single board computer". It's almost more of a marketing term than an EE term. For example, the Apple Silicon stuff is a "SoC" because it has the MPU + GPU + RAM on a single die.