Quick rant thread.

[Vass 830]

8 hours ago, gjm said:

Why is that we now seem to accept that genuinely expensive (when new) prestige-badged cars need to have huge amounts of money spent on them at (what I'd think of as) low mileages?

A recent article in the news talked about a 2-million km Toyota Corolla based somewhere north of Auckland. In the UK, I'd routinely see older cars advertised with 200000, 300000, 400000 miles and more. Yet I now see reports of engine life expectancy, without $BIG being spent, to be as little as 200,000km.

Has the accountant's pen really slashed through so much good engineering that cars are now inherently unreliable, and even regarded as disposable at 10 years old?

To take a bigger pircure view, this is the natural and sadly predictable progression of the optimal economic strategy in late stage capitalism. Everything is moving towards a subscription model instead of just selling products, whether overtly or inadvertently. Apple and such were notoriously blatant and shameless with implementing it at first, but now all industries seem to be moving in that direction, wherever they can. If you're not pushing planned obsolescence into the design of your products, it hurts your business in the long run.

All sorts of stupid sh*t that does not need to be a subscription service, now is. To stick to BMW-related examples, even something like the Carly app. I was looking into it for my E46 to have some powerful coding features without having to resort to specialist software on a laptop and such, but you can't just buy it and be done with it, instead it's a yearly subscription. Why? There's nothing you're going to develop any further when it comes to working with my 20 year old car, so how is a subscription fee justified on something that isn't going to be improved upon from its current form?

Can't remember the finer details of it anymore but I often recall the example of some Swedish military equipment company that produced some sort of armoured people mover. The product was good, the sales went really well, they took all the profits and reinvested them into R&D and improved the product even further. When they rolled out 2.0, they could not get any repeat customers because the original product was so good, so reliable that it didn't break and did not need replacing, so the company ended up going bankrupt.

Out economic system just does not reward building things to last anymore. I'd actually argue that it never has, it's just gotten to a point of very high market saturation in most consumer products that it's become blatantly obvious. You can't even blame the companies themselves, these are the incentives baked into the core of the economy. It literally incentivises the inefficient use of resources. Economic efficiency prioritised over technological efficiency when it should be the opposite. It's utterly perverse and quite frankly disgusting.

And then were ever-increasingly bombarded with the notion of 'sustainability' at every step, when quite frankly, any kind of notion of sustainability within the framework of an economy fully dependent on cyclical consumption is nothing more than a marketing slogan or an empty platitude.

Being sustainable means consuming less, and we can't have that in an economic system hopelessly addicted to infinite growth. How that is supposed to be compatible with life on a finite planet I'll never know.

The only way I see myself coping with it all mentally is to just care less and less. Sorry if that's a bit doom and gloom, I've kept myself up at night a few too many times mulling over this topic lately.

To get back to cars, this sh*t is the reason I'm rebuilding my E46 almost from the ground up, and I honestly don't see myself ever buying a car much newer than that. At least not an ICE vehicle anyway. 

[Blackie 510]

On 3/25/2022 at 11:13 AM, jon dee said:

My view is that in a decent society gang/mob incidents such as this should not occur.

You're dreaming fella. What do you think the MO of gangs is? Planting flowers and helping the disabled across the street? 

[Jacko 2154]

18 minutes ago, Vass said:

To take a bigger pircure view, this is the natural and sadly predictable progression of the optimal economic strategy in late stage capitalism......

+9000 

 

Grab yourself Bimmergeeks protools by the way, its like Carly, but good, and a one off purchase. 

Edited March 28, 2022 by Jacko

[Vass 830]

2 minutes ago, Jacko said:

+9000 

 

Grab yourself Bimmergeeks protools by the way, its like Carly, but good, and a one off purchase. 

Might be mistaken, but I believe it either had limited functionality or was completely incompatible with e46's.

[gjm 3258]

7 minutes ago, Jacko said:

Grab yourself Bimmergeeks protools by the way, its like Carly, but good, and a one off purchase. 

 

2 minutes ago, Vass said:

Might be mistaken, but I believe it either had limited functionality or was completely incompatible with e46's.

Doesn't support coding for "E46, E39, E38, E53, E85 and anything older". Does do all the diagnostic stuff, though.

[Jacko 2154]

6 minutes ago, Vass said:

Might be mistaken, but I believe it either had limited functionality or was completely incompatible with e46's.

Ahh bugger, I just looked it up and E46 coding is on the road map for it though (apparently some things work - join beta program on google play store). It gets regular updates and devs still very active

Edited March 28, 2022 by Jacko

[jon dee 500]

33 minutes ago, Blackie said:

You're dreaming fella. What do you think the MO of gangs is? Planting flowers and helping the disabled across the street? 

I'm sorry... it appears you haven't grasped the point I was making. But points for trying anyway

Cheers...

[Olaf 3317]

11 hours ago, gjm said:

Had one of them on SH2 around Napier this morning. Complete with one even narrower space saver type rear wheel.

80km/h, max. And right hand lane through every roundabout. 🤬🤬🤬

at least they were observing speed restriction for the space-saver.  9/10 don't (as observed on Wellington and Auckland motorways.  FFS they have a bloody great sticker on them too!

Nope, your space-saver weilding Prius driver doesn't get to the finals, just a typical Hawkes Bay right lane driver.  Give them a blast of boost and swiftly whisk past on the inside.

[gjm 3258]

11 minutes ago, Olaf said:

at least they were observing speed restriction for the space-saver.  9/10 don't (as observed on Wellington and Auckland motorways.  FFS they have a bloody great sticker on them too!

Nope, your space-saver weilding Prius driver doesn't get to the finals, just a typical Hawkes Bay right lane driver.  Give them a blast of boost and swiftly whisk past on the inside.

It was good to see some sort of adherence to safety, although the typical ham-fisted "lret's see how far a car can lean before it falls over" roundabout manoeuvre suggested less of an unwillingness to break rules, than an inability to do so.

Boosting past was not an option. There was the usual slower vehicle in the inside lane which was just fast enough to keep mad Prius drivers at bay. So that'd be a max speed of 81km/h, over a ~20km stretch of cheese-wire constrained, 100km/h speed limit single carriageway, punctuated by roundabouts with 200m-long two-lane stretches either side.

 

[jon dee 500]

11 hours ago, Blackie said:

Good old 'weak on gangs toothless police' at it again. 😆

https://i.stuff.co.nz/national/crime/300551983/lamborghini-ferrari-and-1m-cash-seized-after-600kg-auckland-meth-bust

I'm going to assume that the cars and bank account weren't armed and did not put up much of a fight ??  

Cheers...

 

[Driftit 2078]

11 hours ago, Jacko said:

Ahh bugger, I just looked it up and E46 coding is on the road map for it though (apparently some things work - join beta program on google play store). It gets regular updates and devs still very active

Even if it only partially supports the E46 it will still be better than Carly.

Had great fun with it. 

[jon dee 500]

12 hours ago, Karter16 said:

I've managed to stay out of this so far, but dipping in here to point out that this is factually incorrect. All police vehicles have firearms in the lockbox in the boot. Officers can access these if needed.

Close but no prize. Armed police go about their daily duties with a holstered gun on their utility belt. That way they are able to defend themselves when ambushed by armed thugs. 

Cheers...

[Cement 871]

I feel this is the perfect time to temper the road rage with some soothing commentary from Ogmios and his school of zen motoring

 

[Braydon 40]

There's just something about his School of Zen motoring, isn't there. ☮️

[Twistee 453]

I got hooked into watching Ogmios - this just cracked me up

And keeping it on topic for this thread - blah blah don't dance on street, or if you are going to be these guys! I got trapped in googling WTF it was all about, these guys pray hard and play hard!!

Edited March 29, 2022 by Twistee

[Twistee 453]

Dropped my daughter at school and then just about got side swiped by some builder in a black double cab rolling on 21's. He had clearly just gotten his morning coffee, was running late to his current job to screw every dime out of some poor sod, no indicating, just started to pull out then lumped on his brakes..... I went around the idiot, looked back at him as he pulled out behind me coffee in hand while trying to find his seat belt ..... still not indicating. What a winner. If you are the type of tradie that is late is everything in life, maybe just maybe get your ass out of bed earlier. Well done for strongly reinforcing the stereotypical double cab ute dripping with chrome mentality. FFS.

[dirtydoogle 383]

You don't know his situation, he may have had diarrhea, and needed to find the nearest latrine quickly, before getting to site to use standover tactics on his apprentice to reinforce toxic masculinity 

 

Jus' sayin

[E30 325i Rag-Top 2956]

What kind of driver manages to have a nose to tail accident on a motorway in light traffic, on a clear, dry, sunny day..? 

Clearly cant drive so take licence off them.

A Prius was involved...

[lord_jagganath 421]

^ sleep deprivation is a serious malady. 

probably was the Tesla that was weaving in and out of traffic above the speed limit that precipitated that incident. 

[Blackie 510]

On 3/23/2022 at 2:17 PM, jon dee said:

If it is so successful, how come the news media is reporting more and more instances of anti-social and illegal group activities with little or no reporting of the prosecution and conviction of the law breakers ??

https://i.stuff.co.nz/national/crime/128208852/street-racer-invasion--nine-cars-impounded-and-200-fines-issued

I promise I'll leave the thread alone after this. I think I've made my point with plenty of evidence. I guess this is a rant thread and rants don't have to be logical or an accurate reflection of reality. 😆

[Twistee 453]

1 hour ago, Blackie said:

https://i.stuff.co.nz/national/crime/128208852/street-racer-invasion--nine-cars-impounded-and-200-fines-issued

I promise I'll leave the thread alone after this. I think I've made my point with plenty of evidence. I guess this is a rant thread and rants don't have to be logical or an accurate reflection of reality. 😆

And all it took was the nation crying over some spilt milk

 

[jon dee 500]

On 3/30/2022 at 11:14 AM, Blackie said:

https://i.stuff.co.nz/national/crime/128208852/street-racer-invasion--nine-cars-impounded-and-200-fines-issued

I promise I'll leave the thread alone after this. I think I've made my point with plenty of evidence. I guess this is a rant thread and rants don't have to be logical or an accurate reflection of reality. 😆

"Each individual has his or her own perception of reality. " 

My reality is the increase in violent crime within NZ society as a whole, and the inability of the police to control that increase.

Your reality is focused on one relatively minor specific aspect of anti-social behavior; one which the police are having some success in curbing. However, that success cannot be extrapolated across the whole spectrum of offences committed by organised criminal groups. Gangs are proliferating and gradually ramping up the seriousness of their offending as they seek to secure exclusive rights to sell drugs in their "patch". 

A major drug seizure now and then makes good press, but I have to ask myself how long have these guys been in the drugs business if they have fancy cars and fat bank accounts ?? How many lives have they ruined before being caught ?? And just as Nature abhors a vacuum, new players will step in to fill the gap left by the drug importers. 

So yeah, I may have strayed a bit off the "boy racers" topic, but there are more important issues out there that need to be aired. And where better to do that than a forum frequented by well educated, socially aware car enthusiasts 

Cheers...

Edited March 31, 2022 by jon dee

[Karter16 404]

On 3/29/2022 at 9:14 AM, jon dee said:

Close but no prize. Armed police go about their daily duties with a holstered gun on their utility belt. That way they are able to defend themselves when ambushed by armed thugs. 

Cheers...

Not sure how that would have changed the outcomes of the examples you have posted?

[gjm 3258]

Disappointment.

Read about the new Tesla Model 2, some vague rumours of Li-S batteries (500wh per kg) and saw this pic.

Winner! 🥳 🥳 🥳
 

Then I saw that they'll be made exclusively in China, and are likely to look like a watered down, more ordinary version of this:

Not actually terrible, but very disappointing.

[Twistee 453]

About an hour ago heard the unmistakable sound of a diesel ute doing a burn out at the top of the street. Shot out and jumped in the 4x4, headed up the drive, had to wait for the stupid slow ass gates to open, by which time they had lunched the rubber and thrown the tread all over the road and I could hear the sound of a steel rim being driven at high speed off into the distance. Got the the aftermath just too late to see which direction they had shot off to, but I went for a quick drive and could clearly see where they had done the same thing at at least two other intersections. And before anyone asks why didn't I call the cops, because the last time I did nothing happened and I don't expect that to change anytime soon. Yesterday a poor local family had their dog run over by someone doing skids, the local Police response to everything is call us while it's happening next time, the local cops are 15 minutes away at this time of night. Pukekohe, Patumahoe, Tuakau and Waiuku have more black rubber lines than road marking. According to the stats from LTSA / AT rural south Auckland has some of the highest accident rates and fatalities, they keep on dropping the speed limits, installing safety cameras and there are more mobile "safety" cameras out here than patrol cars. 

I think I need to buy some milk, pour it all over the road by the burn out scene and see if that attracts the cops like last week.............