Buying a car, tell me what's wrong with me.
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@dcon said in Buying a car, tell me what's wrong with me.:
@Gąska said in Buying a car, tell me what's wrong with me.:
@dangeRuss driving in American cities be like
s/twisty/completely straight/g
That's more like the suburbs. Cities are usually on grids.
No, it's more like the cities. Suburbs are the ones with the twisty streets.
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@dkf I agree, but with a caveat.
When driving on the highway/interstate during rush hour, there are plenty of times where there is just a lot of congestion, and nobody "really" slows down. You're just "stuck" 2 car lengths behind the car in front, because if you slow down from 65mph (about 105 km/h), you will get cut off again.
(I hate this kind of driving, by the way. Very stressful, especially when there is a near miss or three)
Adaptive cruise control would be so awesome in those situations. Just because the fraction of a second of ambiguity can mean so much.
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@Captain said in Buying a car, tell me what's wrong with me.:
times where there is just a lot of congestion, and nobody "really" slows down. You're just "stuck" 2 car lengths behind the car in front, because if you slow down from 65mph (about 105 km/h), you will get cut off
Shift, don't brake. This gives you a moment to act while other drivers don't perceive your intent. And if the guy behind you is sleepy, you're helping them too!
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@dcon said in Buying a car, tell me what's wrong with me.:
@Gąska said in Buying a car, tell me what's wrong with me.:
@dangeRuss driving in American cities be like
s/twisty/completely straight/g
That's more like the suburbs. Cities are usually on grids.
A maze of straight streets all alike, was my point. Seriously. I've been living here for a few years and I still miss the turn to my home sometimes. And when I go somewhere that isn't my home, it's even worse. When I lived in Wroclaw (large city in Poland), I had no such problems even in city center. If I'm familiar with a place, I don't even have to look around, I can tell you exactly where I am just from the shape of the street I'm on. Every intersection is different, every turn is different, even the straights are all different because they never remain straight for very long.
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@Gąska said in Buying a car, tell me what's wrong with me.:
I can tell you exactly where I am just from the shape of the street I'm on
Well then so can Charlie.
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@Gąska said in Buying a car, tell me what's wrong with me.:
A maze of straight streets all alike, was my point.
Dang it. I was thinking of the other phrase! Too many meetings to deal with today...
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@dcon said in Buying a car, tell me what's wrong with me.:
@Gąska said in Buying a car, tell me what's wrong with me.:
A maze of straight streets all alike, was my point.
Dang it. I was thinking of the other phrase! Too many meetings to deal with today...
If you just autoexecute any ex commands recognized during download, it should work.
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@Parody said in Buying a car, tell me what's wrong with me.:
I kept a laminated map of the metro area in my car before I had a smartphone.
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@GuyWhoKilledBear said in Buying a car, tell me what's wrong with me.:
nobody listens to the radio
TIL I'm nobody. Well, I already knew it, but thanks anyway.
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@HardwareGeek there's a movie titled Mr. Nobody, it's about a 118-year-old man.
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@Polygeekery said in Buying a car, tell me what's wrong with me.:
I dig manual transmissions for fun cars.
Manual transmissions are very fun when you're on a quiet, interesting road in vaguely hilly country, as they let you get exquisite control of exactly what gear to be in and exactly when to make the most efficient use of the bends, swoops and crests. It's colossally satisfying to get that right.
Automatics win outright in heavy city traffic. (Anything works on highways when they're not jammed, as you're probably not changing gear much, but Adaptive CC is the best for that.)
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@Polygeekery said in Buying a car, tell me what's wrong with me.:
It has been so long since I have listened to broadcast radio in my vehicle
That's the only time I do listen to it. (And since I haven't driven my vehicle in months, I don't really do that, either.) I listen to internet streams of radio stations' broadcasts, but not the actual broadcasts (because FM radio doesn't have a range of 1000+ miles).
God I hate commercials.
That, at least, I agree with you ∞%. When I do listen to broadcast radio, it's almost always "listener supported" radio, and I generally ignore their pledge drives. (I already support two stations I listen to.)
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@dkf said in Buying a car, tell me what's wrong with me.:
Adaptive CC is the best for that.
Does that work with a manual? And how?
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@topspin said in Buying a car, tell me what's wrong with me.:
I use a radio / CD player.
I don't usually use the CD player, except road trips, where stations I want to listen to may not exist, and if they do, I don't know about them. I had a bunch of CDs playing almost non-stop when I was driving from CA to TX.
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@Captain said in Buying a car, tell me what's wrong with me.:
Adaptive cruise control would be so awesome in those situations.
It absolutely is. You just set your desired target speed (usually whatever the speed limit is) and the desired distance to the car in front (aggressive in that situation you mention) and you're basically done.
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@Polygeekery cruise control works with manual just like with automatic, you just have to shift gears yourself. On highway at high speeds (>50MPH) it's not much of an issue because you're always on top gear anyway.
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@Gąska said in Buying a car, tell me what's wrong with me.:
Supported by basically every car radio since 2000.
My 2001 doesn't.
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@HardwareGeek my brother's aftermarket 2015 one doesn't have it either but it's because it was very, very cheap.
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@dcon said in Buying a car, tell me what's wrong with me.:
Drivers
hereare assholes.It may be prevalent there, but it's far from unique.
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@Gąska said in Buying a car, tell me what's wrong with me.:
cruise control works with manual just like with automatic, you just have to shift gears yourself. On highway at high speeds (>50MPH) it's not much of an issue because you're always on top gear anyway.
It probably ticks out of CC if the speed drops too low. Some automatics with ACC can go right to a stop and back up again. That's dead useful when you're going through truly heavy congestion, when it's a vast relief to know that you're not going to run into the idiot in front.
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@dcon said in Buying a car, tell me what's wrong with me.:
I listen to KCBS (740) (in the car) to get a quick update on traffic
Why? How often do you need them to say, "It's horrible everywhere. You might as well stay home."?
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@Gąska said in Buying a car, tell me what's wrong with me.:
@HardwareGeek there's a movie titled Mr. Nobody, it's about a 118-year-old man.
118 is the new 108
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@remi said in Buying a car, tell me what's wrong with me.:
have we actually run out of channel space for radio? I've never heard of it being a serious problem, but maybe...
For broadcast, maybe not, but there are lots of other radio services (land, maritime and aeronautical mobile; fixed; satellite; aeronautical, maritime and space radionavigation; aeronautical, maritime and (increasingly) land radiolocation (RADAR); ISM; Amateur; etc.) that are always short of space and looking to take it away from another service, if they can.
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@HardwareGeek said in Buying a car, tell me what's wrong with me.:
When I do listen to broadcast radio, it's almost always "listener supported" radio,
I have KDFC playing in the kitchen right now. Being in the office, it's the perfect level of background music while working.
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@HardwareGeek said in Buying a car, tell me what's wrong with me.:
@topspin said in Buying a car, tell me what's wrong with me.:
I use a radio / CD player.
I don't usually use the CD player, except road trips, where stations I want to listen to may not exist, and if they do, I don't know about them. I had a bunch of CDs playing almost non-stop when I was driving from CA to TX.
I've also burned some CDs with mp3s so I didn't have to change them as often.
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By the way - what's the deal with all US radio stations having random 4 letters for the name? It makes them super unmemorable.
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@dkf said in Buying a car, tell me what's wrong with me.:
Manual transmissions are very fun when you're on a quiet, interesting road in vaguely hilly country, as they let you get exquisite control of exactly what gear to be in and exactly when to make the most efficient use of the bends, swoops and crests. It's colossally satisfying to get that right.
A modern direct-shift dual-clutch automatic gives you that control too.
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@HardwareGeek said in Buying a car, tell me what's wrong with me.:
@dcon said in Buying a car, tell me what's wrong with me.:
I listen to KCBS (740) (in the car) to get a quick update on traffic
Why? How often do you need them to say, "It's horrible everywhere. You might as well stay home."?
When I leave home at 9a, heading north - do I take 880 or 280? (actually, that decision has to be made before leaving home). Ok, heading south on US101 sunday night after the dog show, do I take 280 or 880? (Usually 880 - no toll. But on football game days, all bets are off!)
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@loopback0 said in Buying a car, tell me what's wrong with me.:
@dkf said in Buying a car, tell me what's wrong with me.:
Manual transmissions are very fun when you're on a quiet, interesting road in vaguely hilly country, as they let you get exquisite control of exactly what gear to be in and exactly when to make the most efficient use of the bends, swoops and crests. It's colossally satisfying to get that right.
A modern direct-shift dual-clutch automatic gives you that control too.
My auto has a direct shift thing. It is not just like a clutch. There's always a (brief) pause between my physical action and the car's response. There's no delay with a clutch.
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@Gąska said in Buying a car, tell me what's wrong with me.:
By the way - what's the deal with all US radio stations having random 4 letters for the name? It makes them super unmemorable.
Those are the callsigns, the keys in the Federal Communications Commission's database. Most stations incorporate their callsign into their branding because they're required to do "station identification" every hour, where they read their callsign and city of license.
The theory is that you could hear the callsign on the air (they're required to say it every hour or so) and then look the station up in the FCC database to get their contact information or file a complaint or whatever.
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@remi said in Buying a car, tell me what's wrong with me.:
The sound quality vs. signal quality curve is more or less a step for digital (and a declining curve for analog), which is good or bad depending on which side of the step you are.
This varies between AM and FM, too. For AM, you are literally listening to the signal strength; that's how the audio signal is modulated onto the the RF carrier. If you are within range of two AM stations on the same frequency, you will hear both in proportion to their relative signal strengths.
For FM, the demodulation is fairly independent of the received signal strength above some level and is still possible (but degrades quickly) below that level. If within range of two transmitters, the stronger one will tend to "capture" the receiver, and there's not much interference from the weaker one (unless they're about the same strength, in which case you likely get unintelligible garbage).
Digital, of course, takes this one step further, and decoding the received signal at any given moment is basically either perfect or completely impossible.
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@GuyWhoKilledBear said in Buying a car, tell me what's wrong with me.:
I think there's a few classical music stations that do take advantage.
As a classical music listener, I think that's entirely possible. I've often heard classical stations announce something like "K___-FM and HD1", but I've never heard them mention HD2, or 3 or whatever. I've never had an HD radio, though, so I can't say for certain.
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@Polygeekery said in Buying a car, tell me what's wrong with me.:
@Gąska said in Buying a car, tell me what's wrong with me.:
I use car radio all the time, and I switch between radio stations a lot to find music I can listen to.
That right there is why so many people don't listen to broadcast radio anymore. If you listen on your phone or other device then chances are you have curated lists of music that you want to listen to and don't have to go channel surfing when they play the same shitty song 4 times an hour and drive you away with 1/4 of the broadcast time being commercials.
That's where classical music stations have an advantage, IMO. Although there are some things they play too often, there's a huge variety, far more than any curated list I could come up with, including things I've never heard of. Also, good classical stations have announcers who are very knowledgeable about the music and will tell you interesting things about the music, composers, and/or performers.
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@HardwareGeek it also helps that classical music itself doesn't have a lot of variety, so if you like one song, you most likely like all the others.
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@Gąska said in Buying a car, tell me what's wrong with me.:
By the way - what's the deal with all US radio stations having random 4 letters for the name? It makes them super unmemorable.
Don't worry, some have 3.
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@Gąska said in Buying a car, tell me what's wrong with me.:
@HardwareGeek it also helps that classical music itself doesn't have a lot of variety, so if you like one song, you most likely like all the others.
It had variety then, then taste-winnowing occurred, for centuries, mostly done by people with no taste. Probably even driven by instrument pricing / availability even more. Beethoven was okay.
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@HardwareGeek said in Buying a car, tell me what's wrong with me.:
Also, good classical stations have announcers who are very knowledgeable about the music and will tell you interesting things about the music, composers, and/or performers.
Good regular station DJs will do that too. Unfortunately there are very few stations whose DJs do that anymore.
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@GuyWhoKilledBear said in Buying a car, tell me what's wrong with me.:
@HardwareGeek said in Buying a car, tell me what's wrong with me.:
Also, good classical stations have announcers who are very knowledgeable about the music and will tell you interesting things about the music, composers, and/or performers.
Good regular station DJs will do that too. Unfortunately there are very few stations whose DJs do that anymore.
The current tactic is for that to be called a music review show. That way you can cut the outlay and amortize via syndication. The regular DJ is then only needed to make stupid noises.
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@dcon said in Buying a car, tell me what's wrong with me.:
@HardwareGeek said in Buying a car, tell me what's wrong with me.:
When I do listen to broadcast radio, it's almost always "listener supported" radio,
I have KDFC playing in the kitchen right now. Being in the office, it's the perfect level of background music while working.
That's one of the stations I give money to, though I hardly ever listen to them any more. Since I have to stream it anyway, and most of the programming is simulcast, I usually listen to KUSC. The money goes through KUSC anyway (my bank statement says KUSC), and they have one thing (last time I checked) that KDFC doesn't, Jim Sveda. He does the 19:00(?)-midnight shift. I mentioned good announcers in a post a few minutes ago; that man knows more about music than the ten next-best radio announcers combined.
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@HardwareGeek said in Buying a car, tell me what's wrong with me.:
that man knows more about music than the ten next-best radio announcers combined.
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@dcon said in Buying a car, tell me what's wrong with me.:
@loopback0 said in Buying a car, tell me what's wrong with me.:
@dkf said in Buying a car, tell me what's wrong with me.:
Manual transmissions are very fun when you're on a quiet, interesting road in vaguely hilly country, as they let you get exquisite control of exactly what gear to be in and exactly when to make the most efficient use of the bends, swoops and crests. It's colossally satisfying to get that right.
A modern direct-shift dual-clutch automatic gives you that control too.
My auto has a direct shift thing. It is not just like a clutch. There's always a (brief) pause between my physical action and the car's response. There's no delay with a clutch.
Is it actually a direct-shift gearbox, or just an automatic that has a mode which lets you select gears manually?
Mine has no delay and the car changes gear faster than a human could.
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@dcon said in Buying a car, tell me what's wrong with me.:
880 or 280?
Huh. I almost never went far enough north that that would be a sensible question. SF Peninsula, 280. East Bay, 880 (or more often 680). Even going into SF itself, it would be such a round-about path to take 880 and go over the bridge that it wouldn't even occur to me to consider it.
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@loopback0 said in Buying a car, tell me what's wrong with me.:
Is it actually a direct-shift gearbox, or just an automatic that has a mode which lets you select gears manually?
Whatever a 2015 Subaru Outback CVT has...
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@HardwareGeek said in Buying a car, tell me what's wrong with me.:
@dcon said in Buying a car, tell me what's wrong with me.:
880 or 280?
Huh. I almost never went far enough north that that would be a sensible question. SF Peninsula, 280. East Bay, 880 (or more often 680). Even going into SF itself, it would be such a round-about path to take 880 and go over the bridge that it wouldn't even occur to me to consider it.
Many of our dog shows are in Santa Rosa. At least they were pre-pandemic. The fairgrounds hasn't reopened for shows yet.
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@dcon said in Buying a car, tell me what's wrong with me.:
@loopback0 said in Buying a car, tell me what's wrong with me.:
Is it actually a direct-shift gearbox, or just an automatic that has a mode which lets you select gears manually?
Whatever a 2015 Subaru Outback CVT has...
2015 Subaru Outback CVT has a computer that pretends the car has gears.
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@dcon said in Buying a car, tell me what's wrong with me.:
@loopback0 said in Buying a car, tell me what's wrong with me.:
Is it actually a direct-shift gearbox, or just an automatic that has a mode which lets you select gears manually?
Whatever a 2015 Subaru Outback CVT has...
A CVT, which is a different type of gearbox. It doesn't even have actual gears.
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Re: CVT.
You know how young kids sometimes pretend to be cars and run around and make the engine sound like vvvvvvvVVVVVVVVVVV-------vvvvvvvvvVVVVVVVVVVV-------vvvvvvvvvvvvvVVVVVVVVVVVVV?
You know how even younger kids, when they pretend to be cars, they're just like VVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVV all the time?
That's what CVT feels like.
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@loopback0 said in Buying a car, tell me what's wrong with me.:
@dcon said in Buying a car, tell me what's wrong with me.:
@loopback0 said in Buying a car, tell me what's wrong with me.:
Is it actually a direct-shift gearbox, or just an automatic that has a mode which lets you select gears manually?
Whatever a 2015 Subaru Outback CVT has...
A CVT, which is a different type of gearbox. It doesn't even have actual gears.
The 2006 I had (non CVT) also had a significant delay. And setting it in a specific gear on a downhill didn't mean shit. I had it auto-shift even then on me. When using the gear to control speed, that was a very rude shock. Let's just say I'm a bit jaded about automatic-pretending-to-be-manual transmissions.
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@remi said in Buying a car, tell me what's wrong with me.:
What is even the value of HD radio?
I bought a portable HD radio receiver back when I was working in the interior of a building and couldn't get AM. At the time all of the local sports and sports talk stuff was on the AM stations, but were also rebroadcast on the HD subchannels in much higher quality.
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@GuyWhoKilledBear said in Buying a car, tell me what's wrong with me.:
Those are the callsigns, the keys in the Federal Communications Commission's database. Most stations incorporate their callsign into their branding because they're required to do "station identification" every hour, where they read their callsign and city of license.
To add to this, it is at least sometimes possible for the station to choose the letters to fit their branding (e.g., KUSC is owned and operated by USC, the University of
Spoiled ChildrenSouthern California; a now-defunct station I listened to growing up — pretty much driven out of business by the competition from then-new KUSC — was started by a guy named Fuller who owned a car dealership (selling two brands of cars that were long-defunct, even when I was a kid) that kept its call sign, KFAC, even after the car dealership went out of business).The first letter refers to the country that licenses the transmitter. The US can issue call letters beginning with W, K, N, and A. The US uses W and K for radio and TV broadcast stations, with 4 letters total, and starting with W for stations east of the Mississippi River and K for stations west of it. (Some old stations may be grandfathered with call signs with only 3 letters and/or not following the geographic prefix radio, such as KNX in Los Angeles or WACO in Waco, TX.) Other radio services use different rules for their call signs. Amateur Radio begin with 1 or 2 letters (the first of which maybe any of the 4 the US can issue), 1 digit, and 1-3 letters; the specific combination depends on the class of license. Other services may have a string of quasi-random letters and digits (always starting with one of the country's letters); one FM station I used to listen to IDed its studio-transmitter link occasionally (a couple of times a day, compared to the hourly ID required for the main broadcast transmitter), IIRC KR5528.
More than you ever wanted to know about radio call signs.