Buying a car, tell me what's wrong with me.
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@error said in Buying a car, tell me what's wrong with me.:
@dangeRuss said in Buying a car, tell me what's wrong with me.:
I don't know about you, but my not so old cars don't really pair with my phone without echo auto. How do you guys do it?
is echo auto? I use . My older car, I used an aux cable.In my current car I use bluetooth. The previous one was too old for bluetooth, but also didn't have an aux socket or tape deck, so I had to buy a radio transmitter to use with my phone. If I was just driving around where I lived I could find a nice radio-quiet frequency to use, but when I took road trips I'd sometimes get interfefence from the local stations
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@dcon said in Buying a car, tell me what's wrong with me.:
Let's just say I'm a bit jaded about automatic-pretending-to-be-manual transmissions.
Sure, but based on CVTs and other automatics.
Direct-shift dual-clutch automatics are basically two manual gearboxes in the same case controlled by electronics. They change gear very quickly, and the next gear can be pre-selected which makes changing even quicker.
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@Gąska said in Buying a car, tell me what's wrong with me.:
@boomzilla said in Buying a car, tell me what's wrong with me.:
@Parody said in Buying a car, tell me what's wrong with me.:
@Carnage 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.:
Got home from the dealer. A nice 3 hour drive, and I fell in love with this car. Adaptive CC is the best - most of the way I only touched the wheel and nothing else. The 11" screen is not as cool as I thought, since Android Auto is constrained to ~16:9 horizontal. And the best part - because of the impact my younger sister would have on insurance premium, I have a solid reason to never let her borrow it!
The only problem is
volume control. The ingenius software developers of Subaru decided that everybody wants to adjust radio volume and navigation volume independently. So if you turn up radio, navigation becomes inaudible until you change it too, and if you turn dow radio, navigation becomes ear rape. Only a person who's never driven a car could come up with that. It seems to be a common problem in all Subarus since at least 2019.Yeah, also phone has a separate volume control too. Or at least it had in my subs.
I always just turn off navigation audio, so it never bothered me but if you want it I can understand how annoying that could be.I never use navigation so it wouldn't bother me either.
Most of my navigation usage is for traffic avoidance purposes.
When I was going to pick up my new car, there was a traffic jam on the highway. Suddenly, Google Maps told me to leave at the nearest exist, U-turn at the nearest intersection, and get back on the highway. It saved me like 5 minutes. I was impressed.
One time I was on the highway, and everything looked fine but Waze suddenly told me to get off at the next exit. I thought "Nah Waze, you're crazy, and besides I'd rather avoid driving downtown". Just a bit after the exit, boom, standstill bumper-to-bumper traffic
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@hungrier 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.:
@boomzilla said in Buying a car, tell me what's wrong with me.:
@Parody said in Buying a car, tell me what's wrong with me.:
@Carnage 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.:
Got home from the dealer. A nice 3 hour drive, and I fell in love with this car. Adaptive CC is the best - most of the way I only touched the wheel and nothing else. The 11" screen is not as cool as I thought, since Android Auto is constrained to ~16:9 horizontal. And the best part - because of the impact my younger sister would have on insurance premium, I have a solid reason to never let her borrow it!
The only problem is
volume control. The ingenius software developers of Subaru decided that everybody wants to adjust radio volume and navigation volume independently. So if you turn up radio, navigation becomes inaudible until you change it too, and if you turn dow radio, navigation becomes ear rape. Only a person who's never driven a car could come up with that. It seems to be a common problem in all Subarus since at least 2019.Yeah, also phone has a separate volume control too. Or at least it had in my subs.
I always just turn off navigation audio, so it never bothered me but if you want it I can understand how annoying that could be.I never use navigation so it wouldn't bother me either.
Most of my navigation usage is for traffic avoidance purposes.
When I was going to pick up my new car, there was a traffic jam on the highway. Suddenly, Google Maps told me to leave at the nearest exist, U-turn at the nearest intersection, and get back on the highway. It saved me like 5 minutes. I was impressed.
One time I was on the highway, and everything looked fine but Waze suddenly told me to get off at the next exit. I thought "Nah Waze, you're crazy, and besides I'd rather avoid driving downtown". Just a bit after the exit, boom, standstill bumper-to-bumper traffic
At my cousin's wedding some years back, when Internet was common but smart phones were not, we were following a printed map from the wedding to the reception. Except. It seemed farther than we expected. And really backwoodsy. Well, this must be the way because 3 cars headed this way and we can't all be wrong... Right? Wait, this next road doesn't even exist.
Eventually... "Hey, did you use MapQuest?" "Yeah, WTF!"
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@remi said in Buying a car, tell me what's wrong with me.:
@Polygeekery said in Buying a car, tell me what's wrong with me.:
@remi said in Buying a car, tell me what's wrong with me.:
fun fact: apparently the AM broadcast is done by a single antenna, which uses a special type of bulb that is not manufactured anymore and for which the BBC has at best one spare in stock. Which means the day this last bulb will go pop, the AM broadcast will stop forever, whether anyone wants it or not.
Do they not have any intention to refit it with more modern transmitters?
Not that I've heard about. When I heard this story (a few years ago, and I don't remember where... probably somewhere on the BBC since they're the only ones who care about that!), they basically said that they were waiting for it to die naturally as a good (?) way to end the AM broadcast.
Probably this The Guardian article (2011):
Radio 4's long wave goodbye
Last pair of valve transmitters signal end of 198kHz, home of BBC's Test Match Special and Today in Parliament
Excerpts:
- one metre hight
- The valves, at Droitwich in Worcestershire, are so rare that engineers say there are fewer than 10 in the world, and the BBC has been forced to buy up the entire global supply. Each lasts anywhere between one and 10 years, and when one of the last two blows the service will go quiet.
- Building a new long-wave transmitter for Radio 4 would cost "many millions of pounds", according to BBC insiders. Part of the problem is that pumping the signal so that it can cover England, Wales and lowland Scotland requires 500 kilowatts of power, far more - according to the BBC - than other long wave transmitters, which makes the kit both unique and expensive.
Tying that in with the rest of this thread, there is simply not enough interest in an AM station for them to keep it (or at least that's what they were saying).
AFAICT, it's used by a few isolated places in the UK that can't get FM, but nowadays even those are likely to have some sort of cell network (so possible internet access). Ships have probably stopped using it since long (despite the radio still carrying the "shipping forecast" weather bulletin). That leaves expats and the like in e.g. France, but as humorously pointed out above, those don't pay a license so the BBC has little incentive to care about them (and also they can get the radio through internet as well).
Probably not too much people impacted, but still they are areas not covered by other means, like this blog post from 2019
In rural Wales you still need an AM radio, until the last tube fails in service at Droitwich
We used to match the medium to the message and the terrain, but now we seem to assume mobile data is everywhere. AM radio is dying, because everybody is online. Except when they aren’t. Bwlch…
This last post has also a link to
Watch BBC - Droitwich - BFI Player
The building and launch of a new long-wave radio transmitter - just as the TV age is about to be born.
random quotes from that link
- if you can get past the stiff narration by BBC announcer Stuart Hibbert - which makes today's 'BBC English' seem like broad Cockney ...
- a 300,000 gallon reservoir was needed to cool the six 175 horsepower (130 kW) valves
- Most astonishing - and alarming - is the sequence showing the erection of the mast, 200 feet taller than any previous. This massive structure is put in place not by a crane, but by four 'top men' who, after a half-hour climb each day, work suspended on a single, small, wooden platform at the mercy of the winds.
- This government film is a public record, preserved and presented by the BFI National Archive on behalf of The National Archives, home to more than 1,000 years of British history.
Partypooper: "Location not authorised
BFI Player films cannot be played outside of the UK"
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@Polygeekery said in Buying a car, tell me what's wrong with me.:
FM radio frequency bands encompass a range of 88mhz-108mhz
I get that “bigger is better,” but don’t you think that might be overdoing it just a little??
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@loopback0 said in Buying a car, tell me what's wrong with me.:
The equipment in question covers just the long wave version of a single radio station (Radio 4), which is also broadcast on FM and DAB. That's all that stops when it goes pop, although the BBC announced years ago they weren't investing in long wave and there's only like 3 other stations left.
As far as I can tell BBC Radio 4 is the only BBC radio that's currently broadcast on AM? So when that goes, even if it's just one station, this is effectively the end of AM for the BBC.
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@HardwareGeek said in Buying a car, tell me what's wrong with me.:
@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
Which is why I specified "for radio" although of course that's very vague (but in the context in this thread, it was obvious what it was referring to). I know there are a lot of other things that use radio waves and for those switching to narrower bands might be helpful. But, since even if all consumer's radio broadcast switched to digital it's unlikely that the overall frequency band dedicated to this use would ever be reduced, that's all irrelevant when talking about HD radio or the like.
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@HardwareGeek said in Buying a car, tell me what's wrong with me.:
W for stations east of the Mississippi River
It's good to see they came up with a sensible naming scheme
:sarkmark:
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@HardwareGeek said in Buying a car, tell me what's wrong with me.:
@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.
With the current rate of change, aeronautical radio will start to use new frequencies shortly after the death of the universe.
It's still on AM and it looks like it will be forever.The main reason is probably cost.
Switching to something newer would mean that all radio transceiver must be replaced at the same time.
As all equipment used in aircraft, the new radios will have to be certified by every known aerospace authority in the world (FAA, EASA, etc.). And have the paperwork to prove it, which usually makes it 50 - 1000 times as expensive.
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@Gąska said in Buying a car, tell me what's wrong with me.:
2015 Subaru Outback CVT has a computer that pretends the car has gears.
Just wondering, does Subaru use the CVT from Toyota?
I had 2 Toyotas with CVT in the past, and after getting used to it, I thought it worked pretty well (at least in flat terrain, as there are still no mountains in the Netherlands).
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@remi 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.:
The equipment in question covers just the long wave version of a single radio station (Radio 4), which is also broadcast on FM and DAB. That's all that stops when it goes pop, although the BBC announced years ago they weren't investing in long wave and there's only like 3 other stations left.
As far as I can tell BBC Radio 4 is the only BBC radio that's currently broadcast on AM? So when that goes, even if it's just one station, this is effectively the end of AM for the BBC.
The end of long wave for the BBC, not AM entirely.
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@loopback0 which is... what I said?
Oh, I get it, you probably thought that my first post about that was saying that it would be the end of all AM broadcast (in the UK at least). I meant all BBC's AM broadcast, which I thought (clearly wrongly) was obvious as I was talking about the BBC.
Filed under: communication failures while talking about communications, it's like rain on your wedding day...
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@Gąska said in Buying a car, tell me what's wrong with me.:
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.
Now I know that your name is actually Phyllis Stein.
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@remi said in Buying a car, tell me what's wrong with me.:
I meant all BBC's AM broadcast
I know, and it's not. It'd be the end of BBC long wave transmission not the end of all BBC AM transmission. They have medium wave stations.
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@loopback0 that'll teach me to not be
ic enough with my wording, I guess.
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@cabrito said in Buying a car, tell me what's wrong with me.:
Except when they aren’t. Bwlch…
Remainder in Welsh.
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@kazitor said in Buying a car, tell me what's wrong with me.:
@Polygeekery said in Buying a car, tell me what's wrong with me.:
FM radio frequency bands encompass a range of 88mhz-108mhz
I get that “bigger is better,” but don’t you think that might be overdoing it just a little??
Maybe a 1/X issue? That looks more like a VVVEULF antenna.
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@kazitor said in Buying a car, tell me what's wrong with me.:
@Polygeekery said in Buying a car, tell me what's wrong with me.:
FM radio frequency bands encompass a range of 88mhz-108mhz
I get that “bigger is better,” but don’t you think that might be overdoing it just a little??
But would that fit on an average Texas ranch?
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@dkf said in Buying a car, tell me what's wrong with me.:
@kazitor said in Buying a car, tell me what's wrong with me.:
@Polygeekery said in Buying a car, tell me what's wrong with me.:
FM radio frequency bands encompass a range of 88mhz-108mhz
I get that “bigger is better,” but don’t you think that might be overdoing it just a little??
But would that fit on an average Texas ranch?
Yes. Coiled. Next?
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Ouch.
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@Gribnit said in Buying a car, tell me what's wrong with me.:
@boomzilla said in Buying a car, tell me what's wrong with me.:
Ouch.
So, focusing on the V-10s?
They are better on the carbon footprint.
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Buy Whatever the Hell This Rear-Engined Three-Wheeler Is for $9,500
This aircraft-inspired three-wheeler rocks a rear-mounted Chevy Cavalier engine.
Maybe next time?
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@boomzilla said in Buying a car, tell me what's wrong with me.:
Buy Whatever the Hell This Rear-Engined Three-Wheeler Is for $9,500
This aircraft-inspired three-wheeler rocks a rear-mounted Chevy Cavalier engine.
Maybe next time?
Aircraft inspired. That phrase is not gonna walk right for awhile.
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@boomzilla That's no more a beetle - that's a bug.
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@BernieTheBernie said in Buying a car, tell me what's wrong with me.:
@boomzilla That's no more a beetle - that's a bug.
Might be a feature
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