Not surprised. I've had a few interactions with Subaru connected services dev team as an external contractor from another car company, everyone was everyone else's cousin, friend, homeboy from India. Nepotism was rampant, no one wanted to listen to advice, a strong culture of corporate antibodies had formed. I'm surprised they even got it to work at this level.
I love my Subaru as far as reliability, all wheel drive performance in snow and ice, and such.
But OMG it's consumer tech was dated when I bough it, and it's just full of inexplicable issues and caveats and such. Even just the limitations and the UX issues are so obvious that it sends a message that if they tried to fix them they would introduce just as many new issues. I'm at the point where despite the car being good, I'm not interested in a new one from Subaru.
I just want carplay or android auto whatever similar services a given mobile OS provides to do similar things. That's it, every time it's something else (even when offering car play) from a car maker it is so bad and so naively built that it makes me less confidant in that company.
I know, they want my data and all and that's the motivation, but man it's just such a downer with every system.... and here I am with a good car in most respects and I'm not planning on buying from them again.
I suspect it has to do with slow adoption of CarPlay/Android Auto in Japan - everyone still options aftermarket infotainment at dealerships and happier about it than with phone-based experiences. From a random Google search result[1]:
> More than three-fourths (79%) cite the built-in navigation system. However, this percentage has decreased from 81% in 2022 and 82% in 2021. Use of Android Auto/Apple CarPlay apps is increasingly the preferred system, with 7% of users citing this in 2023, compared with 5% in 2022 and 3% in 2021.
That's like 80% CP/AA adoption by 2060.
UI/UX and especially overall experience polish had always been a major challenge for Japanese engineering. Everything is committee designed in perpetual intra-company tug of war, and it shows as a "family sized mega pack" UI consists of bunch of snippet codes each with an attention grab dialog to prove its worth. That was clearly one of major causes that led to total collapse of domestic phone industry and iPhone dominance, but I suppose it hasn't affected car infotainment, or mass market cars in general.
>UI/UX and especially overall experience polish had always been a major challenge for Japanese engineering.
I can believe it. The whole issue of "Japanese video game companies don't understand the internet" to some extent still feels like it is an issue at times.
For a while it felt like we got late 1990s solutions in the mid 2010s... it's gotten better-ish in the land of video games, but man it's so bad at times still.
Hmm this is really different than my experience with a 2018 Crosstrek, so maybe things have changed? When I bought it, Subaru was among the earlier CarPlay/Android Auto adopters (we specifically ruled out a new model year Prius because it lacked it and we couldn't wait a year to replace our totaled car just for CarPlay/AA), and other than a very rare issue where the head unit screen doesn't turn on, it's been pretty rock solid with both phone OSes.
Environmental controls are all physical hardware, CarPlay/AA is integrated well, etc; I can't really complain about any UX in the car.
The only UX gripe I can think of is that Apple doesn't let you use natural touch inputs to pan/zoom a map (instead forcing you to tap to bring up on-screen d-pad, then keep tapping the tiny button targets while trying to keep an eye on the road), but that's entirely on Apple; Android Auto allows normal 2 finger pan/zoom, so it's not a Subaru problem.
I have a 2018 Crosstrek and a 2024 Outback. They both are really, really, good, and here are the two rough edges.
* Crosstrek doesn't do wireless CP/AA, and the USB only supplies 1.5a, so it sometimes isn't enough to charge the phone while listening to music and navigating. This is a common problem in 2018 vehicles. USB-C had not conquered the world yet.
* Outback has a big screen. The only complaint is that it is too aggressive, telling users no because the vehicle is moving. Passenger operating the touch screen is a thing, and nothing is worse than having to pull over so someone can change a setting. Also, it is a very bad experience to be going 70MPH, tap a button, and be told no - will be interesting to see if this causes accidents where people momentarily stop paying attention to the road because they are raging to the touch screen.
One thing that is really nice about Subaru is that the controls just evolve a little from model year to model year. When I got the Outback, there were only a few buttons that had moved to get used to. Aside from climate control, almost everything has buttons, and most of the time, they are on a stalk or steering wheel.
There is no cure for digital privacy in any modern car. And there is no consumer choice to enable or disable data sharing. We need some legislative intervention here.
I noticed that too with CarPlay. Trying to pan around in Waze is impossible but doing it in Android Auto is very easy. The one nice thing about CarPlay Waze is that it allows keyboard input, Android Auto (at least in my Subaru) only allows for speech to text when searching locations.
It's something about how they have it configured. I have a '17 Honda Civic and its built-in CarPlay lets me pan and scroll just fine. However, on my '23 Ascent, I have to tap arrows to pan the map, and vertical "scrolling" is actually just pagination. Same iPhone, different behavior. It must be some simple config toggle on Subaru's end that they left off for whatever reason.
i believe it is related to the capabilities of the touch screen itself. something like "if no multi-touch available, fall back to the pan/scroll interface" makes sense to me.
CarPlay supports pan gestures based on configuration provided to it by the car maker. This is entirely on Subaru for misconfiguring their CarPlay integration.
there was a tv ad for subaru vehicles a couple of years ago (not that long!), and during the ad, they showed the infotainment system, where the user pans the map on the navigation touchscreen, and the map moves at maybe 1fps! in an ad!
I kinda wish they standardized the car interface for tablets (like android auto, but more features), where you could just buy a tablet and insert it in (like din slots for radio, but tablet-sized), and the car would expose some non-critical interfaces to the tablet (AC,...), and you could just buy a replacement tablet if needed. Cars are made to last 10, 15, even more years, while the computers/entertainment devices move a lot faster, and that includes the connectivity (many cars on the streets today were made before 4g, and 3g is mostly dead).
unfortunately the entire global system is designed so that more has to be sold than last year. in the US as a publicly traded corporation you are legally liable to make more than the year before... we're lucky cars even last as long as they do now...
Subaru infotainment is also very controlling. Want to use the keypad while you’re taking a phone call on the go? No, it won’t let you if the car is moving. You’ll need to use your phone’s UI. Other CarPlay cars don’t do this.
My 2017 Mazda with CarPlay does something similar. It truncates any lists (songs, podcast episodes, contacts, etc) that CarPlay displays to 10 items. All it does is incentivize folks to use their phone. It's incredibly annoying because the Mazda command dial for interacting with CarPlay is otherwise excellent and I don't think that limiting the list size does anything to reduce distraction.
I really like the dials some cars come with like BMWs. Subaru doesn’t have any dials at all unfortunately - just a touchscreen with really bad quality. The interface also often has buttons with very small size that make it hard to operate.
My subaru has a fairly mediocre touchscreen and interface but almost all of the things I actually use are manual controls. I usually turn the touchscreen off first thing when I get in the car (two button presses). My phone connects automatically for music and I either control through the phone or via dials (like for volume) or buttons (like for climate)
I find this restriction weird as well. I would like to not have my privacy violated by voice assistants. I just want the phone interface to be accessible through the car display and to be able to control it through a dial ideally.
On my VW I disabled this limitation with a VCDS coder. What's funny is that the flag was labeled 'nhtsa_limitation_switches_for_X' nhtsa as in National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.
I purposesly bought the last Subaru without Carplay/Android Auto for this reason - I could upgrade my head unit but I like the slightly more oldschool one.
The touchscreen is slow to respond and has few options and the only way to really connect a phone is bluetooth or 3.5mm . It really just does music and calls. However long term I was a lot more confident in phones supporting backwards compatiblity for bluetooth vs Subaru keeping carplay/android auto up to date - and I plan to keep this thing for a very long time
I loved mine until the transmission blew out at 96,000 miles. Could be a one-off, but then a friend bought a used one with 108,000 miles, and the dealer proudly noted that it had a new transmission just installed. I think that vaunted reliability is gone.
That aside, the one thing I haven't liked is the electronics. Many times it gets out of sync with the phone and simply can't connect, the only fix is to shut the car off, open the door so the stereo shuts off, then restart the car. The FM radio also quit working at one point, which I didn't really care about, but the dealer applied a software update and it started working again. That's just the visible stuff though, so much of the car is software controlled now, I think you have to start taking any software issues as a warning about the overall car.
Subaru's in-vehicle entertainment technology has long been criticized, even before features like CarPlay became standard. Take my 2012 WRX, for example—its Bluetooth reception was the worst I've ever experienced in a Bluetooth-equipped vehicle. Audio feeds would randomly pop and drop out during podcasts, even when the phone was within a two-foot radius of the deck.
Over the years, I tried multiple iOS and Android phones, but nothing improved the situation. Ultimately, the only solution was a complete deck replacement. Now, I’m using a "Joying" Android head unit with a rip-off version of CarPlay, which has finally resolved these issues.
I have a car from another Japanese manufacturer (Mazda) - their connected services app is weird and clunky and was down twice this month. And I'm expected to pay $10/month for this thing after the first year! Cmon.
I worked in situations where things were outsourced and yeah the Indian experience was horrific. But that also was influenced by the nature of the relationship.... they didn't work "for us" in any real way.
I worked for a company where we (a Midwestern company) were acquired by a valley company and at HQ there was a clear divide between the Indian (US citizens, not H1B) folks and the local CA team. It wasn't bad, but you could see it socially and feel the vibe and such.
I traveled there a few times and I was just friendly and ... man they were great. Very friendly, very professional, and highly capable.
Sometimes I think the business relationships also creates the informal "working culture" too.
We once hired an Indian programmer who absolutely didn't get along with his boss, who was also Indian. Turns out the boss was a Dalit and the programmer was a Brahmin. And this is how I learned about the Indian Caste system.
I am of Indian descent. Apparently from the penultimate caste. Anyway, I had someone from another team inform me of the inferior caste of one of our clients, and why I shouldn’t take shit from them.
That said, going back to New Delhi, at least in the circles I travelled in, it’s incredibly taboo to ask about caste. (Comparable to Americans using the n word.)
I've learned it is normally pretty easy to tell what caste someone is from.
But watching a Brahmin who really believes they are vastly better than Dalits act like as arrogant as the Goa'uld from Stargate SG1 was really something.
> I've learned it is normally pretty easy to tell what caste someone is from
With all due respect, you’ve fooled yourself into ignorance.
Many Indians haven’t had a relationship with caste for generations, particularly in the cities or upper and middle classes. (Intermarriage and wealth have rendered it indiscernible.)
There are also something like 25,000 castes and subcastes. It’s not a system designed for anyone to get right. That convolutedness is almost the point. Moreover, there are tens of millions of Indians who have never had a caste because they belong to a different religion or sect of Hinduism.
> There are also something like 25,000 castes and subcastes.
That makes it sound like castes are professions (which IIRC used to be somewhat inherited in the UK, hence names like Smith and Cooper), but where people then tried to assign ranks to those professions (like the family names Bishop and King)?
I am almost totally ignorant of how it really works, but I'm an omni-curious nerd, if you want to enlighten me :)
Yup. In the West one of the Byzantine emperors calcified the economy by making trades heritable (Justinian?). We don't know the historic source of the same in India, just that it happened earlier and was allowed to develop for much, much longer.
With respect, it is you who has fooled themselves into ignorance.
If you are open to having your views challenged (and proven wrong), please listen to The Seen And the Unseen podcast, specifically the episode with Chandra Bhan Prasad.
I've heard of this claim so often that I assume it to be true, though personally I've only had the fortune to work in better environments where my Indian colleagues aren't nepotistic. I suspect this might be related to the hiring bar: if a company only hires the top talent perhaps this would not be an issue.
Unfortunately I think it depends on the number and position of Indian folks.
Small numbers where you deal with people individually, I've not seen issues and it's nice to work with Indian devs.
In larger numbers or when in charge of hiring, there seems to be a prevalent issue of Indian cultural norms and favors kicking in and it can happen fast.
The linked article is about a fraud conducted by a few bad apples. I can see people colluding with others that are similar to them for criminal activities - gangs, drug smuggling, and probably other frauds too. I am not sure how you inferred caste based nepotism among *all* indians in tech from that article.
For one, I didn't say "all Indians" are bad apples, just that the nepotism and cast issues are rampant enough that it's a know issue at this point in the tech industry where Indians are sometimes overrepresented.
Secondly, do you expect people to post links to all cases of Indian nepotism/cast issues in the tech industry, when Google is at your fingertips with enough cases that it's not an isolated incident? That link was one an Indian friend shared right now when I sent him the Subaru link, when I asked him if the nepotism is real.
Fair enough that you did not say all Indians. But, your statement was broad enough to say nepotism is widespread among Indians in tech. And the article you linked was about fraud which doesn’t imply widespread nepotism in tech. I am not asking for articles for all instances but something that is more relevant to the point that you are making.
Sure, but if an group of Indian employees within Apple US are going out of their way to scam their employer for money, it's another black mark on the graph for that demographic being into unethical activities, since then you can't say anymore "well it's just one rouge bad apple, not representative for the whole group" when it's a coordinated effort of a whole group.
If they're wiling to go that far to scam their employer it's not a far fetch the fact they're also into nepotism when hiring.
You’re making the same mistake others here are. People hire from their networks just like they hire referrals. If you worked in India or China or wherever, you probably know some talented people of those ethnicities just as a result of your experience. Using your network to hire those talented people is normal and not discriminatory. Everyone does it. Somehow Indians are singularly attacked for it on hacker news and all kinds of assumptions (like nepotism) are made with zero evidence.
> Indians are some of the most racially nepotistic out there
I’ve heard this claim made often here but never observed it in real life. I think you and others who repeat this claim are confusing nepotism with just using one’s network to accelerate hiring. If someone happens to have a social or professional network mostly of one race, that doesn’t mean they’re automatically nepotistic when they draw from that network. Somehow this label rarely arises when white managers end up with mostly white teams. Why is that?
> Somehow this label rarely arises when white managers end up with mostly white teams. Why is that?
Easy: If you're in a country that's ~90% white, why would it be a surprise that 90% of the labor ends up being white? Are you seriously trying to play dumb and question obvious stuff like demographics under the nepotism/racism playing card? Similarly, why would it be surprising that a team in India is ~100% Indians?
But if in a country with a majority white demographic, Indian managers hire their wives, extended family members and Indian connection to work in their teams, therefore excluding a lot of the local, mostly white candidates, from the resume pile out of the get-go, you can't not raise eyebrows and assume potential discriminatory hiring practices, which are illegal in most western nations.
You’re making up the assumptions of nepotism. Everyone hires from their network or their employees’ networks. What do you think referral programs are, which are basically at every company? If you’ve worked with someone before and had a positive experience, they’re a much better bet than other candidates. Even if candidates are mostly white locally, the person doing the hiring may have past experiences where their network looks more like wherever they worked previously. That doesn’t mean they’re doing anything discriminatory or nepotistic now - they may just be hiring qualified people from their network, like everyone does.
By the way, I haven’t personally seen or heard of any examples of Indians (or other races) hiring wives and family members. This is often alleged and yet I’ve never come across a real life example. I am not saying it doesn’t happen at all, but that if it does, it is probably very rare and no different than how often it can happen with any other group. What I often see is people claiming that Indians hiring Indians (regardless of familial relations) is nepotistic, and I think that’s an assumption without basis.
First of all the term nepotism doesn’t get used there because white managers with mostly white teams simply get called racist, and “in violation of our DEI policy.”
For white people, just having your whole network be mostly white is itself said to be a red flag to a lot of people, regardless of how it came to be that way. So the same should apply to Indian people too. Their network ought to be more diverse if that’s the only place they are going to hire from.
(Or else we can drop the quotas, and hire on merit only - I’m absolutely fine with that!)
Personally my network has plenty of both. I’ve worked with some incredible Indian, American, and Indian-American people and they’ve each earned my respect.
Keep an eye on reachability and performance. I’ve seen DO consistently perform terribly and/or drop connections for months (that is, didn’t look like some brief routing glitch somewhere) for some US and Canadian routes (not, like, Sri Lanka or something) on excellent Internet connections. The fix was moving to AWS, problem gone. It felt like a shitty-peering-agreements issue.
From the client side. You can’t know what it should be like without knowing the client.
I’m sure there are lots of DO clients seeing the same things we did, but not realizing it.
We did see it (multiple DCs—we didn’t just not try to fix this before going to AWS) in multiple cases with tens of clients so if there’s good news it’s that if you can monitor like 100 clients distributed over a wide area and all of them behave as expected you may not be experiencing what we did. What we saw was closer to 5% with absurd slowness or frequently-dropped connections than to 0.01%.
And if you are just operating a website and sticking Cloudflare or whatever in front of DO anyway, this doesn’t matter. I expect that’s why it’s not a more widely-reported issue.
Please change the title text unless you add some discussion of the cost differences to the page you linked. However useful your tool is, nothing on this page mentions AWS or costs.
I suspected life could be thought as a self replicating and self improving algorithm like physical process.
Very encouraging to see the information theory and biology are being used in this context.
You’re being downvoted, but as a father I wholeheartedly agree with you.
My daughter is the most precious being in my life, but I can’t shake the feeling that I brought her to this world on purely selfish reasons and now she’ll be faced to suffer in this ever convoluted planet and I won’t be there to help her for most of her life.
I might be wrong, but please consider this before you bring a life to this world.
If you honestly feel that way, consider therapy. I don’t mean that in a mean way. I needed therapy too, and it helped a lot. That just doesn’t seem like a healthy outlook on life, and it will affect your and your daughter’s life more than you can know. If you have any questions, my email is in my bio.
I get enraged when articles like this get upvotes. The evidence given doesn't at all negate the reasoning behind using async, which as you said, is about not having to be blocked by IO, not freaking throughput test for an unrealistic scenario. Just goes to show the complete lack of understanding of the topic. I wouldn't dare write something up if I didn't 100% grasp it, but the bar is way lower for some others it seems.
I don't know the async Python specifics, but from what I understand, you don't necessarily need async to handle large number of IO requests, you can simply use non-blocking IO and check back on it synchronously either in some loop or at specific places in your program.
The use of async either as callbacks, or user threads, or coroutines, is a convenience layer for structuring your code. As I understand, that layer does add some overhead, because it captures an environment, and has to later restore it.
AWS secrets manager or SSM or KMS for any kind of secrets, keys etc. Works well because our entire stack is on AWS. Otherwise hashicorps Vault would do I guess but that’s yet another service on life support.
“ChatGPT make me sound confident”