tmerc

If every GD conversation you have about rail in the US ends badly, it's either an actual problem, you, or both.

"It's clearly impossible! We're too big! IT CAN'T BE DONE!"

Where I live now to where my mom lives would take 24 to 30 hours by train and cost 400 to 500 usd. At 30mpg and $5/gal, the cost of driving is $200 and takes 12h. So I can take a train for double the time and cost or I can drive. Now consider round trip and passenger. It's 40 miles either side to get to a train. Neither side has a walkable city so being without a car sucks. Summer in one is hot as hell, winter in the other is frozen hell. Tell me again how trains are a viable option?

It's about 50/50 based on some quick research of Toyota, Honda, Kia/Hyundai, gm/chevy, Ford, Nissan. The first 3 are almost entirely allocation and don't allow custom orders. The last 3 support custom orders on their "regular traffic" models but not as much for their halo cars .

Op is in a salt state (road salt, snowy winters). Dedicated snow tires are much better than all seasons to the degree I will take a 2wd Civic (with lsd) on snow tires over 4wd 4Runner on all seasons.

Also rotating tires every 10-20k miles is good because most cars run higher camber in the rear (inner shoulder wear) than front and the fronts wear the outside shoulder more because of turning. Swapping them extends tire life by spreading the wear.

Because the hardware and os updates matter more than how it looks and you only get the good stuff in a fragile "glass sandwich". So if you want it to survive a fall, you spend $25 and leave it in a case until it's cooked 3 years later but still the original screen and hasn't needed anything fixed.

From what I hear, wraps need to be replaced periodically or they become permanent. Too many days in the sun makes them hard to remove without damaging the paint. It's also time consuming and expensive to install and remove.

I think it's less about the value. Special cars do well in loud colors. World rally Blue on Subaru, Tahitian Green and Barbados yellow on Honda, sunburst yellow on Miatas, all demand a higher price for the color. Loud colors reduce the pool of buyers. A yellow Rav 4 isn't desirable outside of a few people but they're not going to pay more for it. A yellow crx is a rare car and someone is looking for it willing to spend more for that cursed paint code than the same spec in white.

Toyota runs dealers on allocation. Subaru allow you to order a car to spec. They make the "twins", gr86 and brz. You cannot order the Toyota. You have to try to find what you want being built or on a lot already and contact the targeted dealer to buy it. You can order the Subaru and wait 6 months for it to be built to spec.

A big part of the wrap is cleaning the paint first. At least it was when I got mine clear wrapped (ppf). You want it clean so the contaminates don't mess up the paint under the wrap. I left it with them for 3 days because there's also process time to dry or sit. Maybe it's different with a textured polycarbonate panel though

I participate in a niche sport that uses specialized software for data. Go pro is one of few cameras supported by that software for automatically syncing video to your data so you can judge what happened in context with data. Not to say you're wrong about most of that, just that there are still valid reasons to get a go pro for some people. We also hate on go pro for their failures, overheating, and just straight up not working, but they're the best option we have.

My ps2 has Ethernet, so does my Xbox 360. They're two different phases of online access. The ps2 I wouldn't worry about putting on the Internet. The 360 is a bit different because it has firmware updates. That said, afaik Microsoft has not tried to remotely disable the 360, which is about 20 years old. Xbox live even worked a couple years ago when I really wanted to play rez. I think they disabled xbl finally but they didn't brick my console or make it not work less. So it's a choice.

My sports car has automatic braking with a manual trans. It has hit the brakes for me when I was in control and accelerating after slowing down for a turning car. Like, I'm human, I saw the obstacle, took action to handle it, then continued with my life. I'm back on throttle knowing the turning car is gonna be out of my way, there's an extra lane if not, and this thing doesn't cut throttle, it hits the front brakes in a rwd sports car. What if I was mid corner when it decided to unload the rear of the car with brakes? It's extra infuriating because of I try to brake while on throttle, it cuts power, but it doesn't do that for itself.

I asked the Subaru dealer to not set up an account for me. They did anyway with an email that wasn't mine. So they gave someone else control of my car over the Internet after I asked them not to even bother. I only found out because Subaru sent me mail that had the email address on it.

On the 23 4Runner, telemetry is enabled by default. You get warning stickers but other than that, it's just on. No app, no other indicator. Had the dealer removed that one sticker, there would be no obvious indicator

Storage space is limited. There's a black box for accidents that keeps a rolling window of data. That's not the dcm. Outside of that, how much telemetry can you store? What's the retention when there's no cellular connection? And importantly, where is it stored? My guess is that the dcm, having a battery back up and a cellular connection, is also the telemetry store. No evidence other than it's the cheapest and most reliable way to do it.

At least for Subaru, the dcm also connects to all antenna so removing it disconnects gps antenna. For other cars, I'd still expect removing the dcm to be good enough for 95% of people given the current expectation from car companies that no one would want to remove the dcm.