Ford, if y’all are reading this, maybe just let us drive. Try and (Ford) Focus on building a half-way respectable transmission.
It’s Ford, I don’t think they can. 2000 Ford Escort shifted like someone who didn’t know how to drive a manual. Various models from 2018 to 2022ish of trucks / vans, weird as hell shifting choices, harsh shifts, and weird jitters on take off. 2016 Focus, pretty sure the transmission was slipping. It was right around 90k miles.
Electronic shifting felt gimmicky to me until I tried it. It’s actually pretty awesome, although if you don’t want to spend the money for it, there is also great mechanical shifting still available.
My road bike is electronic shifting and absolutely awesome. Every shift is absolutely perfect, and I set it up to handle compensating the large gear jump between front chain rings automatically so I don’t have to shift the rear to compensate myself. Also, since I’m still getting used to the new gear ratios compared to my gravel bike, it’s nice that my headunit can warn me when I’m doing something stupid with the gear selection.
I sometimes wish my gravel bike was also electronic, but it’s not like I enjoy it any less because it isn’t. It’s a “man, if I had a shitload of cash laying around” not a “I neeeeeeeed this” thing. I still put 3,500 miles on the bike, it’s still an awesome bike, I still have reasons to ride it.
I’m running a Garmin Edge too. I just wanted to use something other than garmin in a post for once.
Quadlock literally designed a new mount because this was enough of an issue.
It’s literally a cycle computer that also puts a finite lifespan on your fucking handlebars.
You can get the same effect cheaper by JB Welding an Elemnt Roam to your handlebars.
From experience with FitBit that kind of GPS usage absolutely eats phone battery. Also, phones are not the most accurate things with GPS. I would have weird meandering paths and cut corners everywhere since it piggybacked off the phone. And this was nearly ideal, dead flat, open area, I can’t imagine how wonky it would have gone with bridges and tunnels and such.
The Garmin on the other hand is so absurdly accurate that I can tell where in the lane I rode even under bridges and through short tunnels, and it will keep that accuracy going literally all day without any battery concerns. I really only need about 16 continuous hours of battery at the most for the riding I do right now, although my wife has been trying to talk me into trying bike packing where the couple days of battery the Garmin should be able to do might be useful.
Phone service, I kind of agree can be tethered from a phone (actually, thats exactly how my bike computer does it for live tracking and emergency alerts if I crash). I’m not that fussed about my phone’s weight, so I just stick the phone in a jersey pocket and kinda forget it’s there. The human body makes for a decent enough shock absorber that the vibrations that kill phone cameras on handle bars don’t really get to your phone in a pocket.
I mean, one of my bikes has expensive electronic parts that can’t be removed.
It’s also the bike that absofuckinglutely does not get left anywhere, like to the point that I don’t even have a lock for it.
These handlebars are still dumb though.
I believe this is what those handle bars are trying to replace I couldn’t be bothered to go wake the rest the sensors up or load a route so half the data fields are blank. It also can show a route map (and reroute while offline), alert for cycling specific hazards, show Strava segments (assuming you have that set up), and a bunch of other stuff that I honestly don’t know because Garmin crams so much stuff into their stuff that I’m not sure anyone actually uses it all at the same time. There’s really no reason that a phone can’t do what this thing does since most sensors have the option of connecting through Bluetooth instead of ANT+ now. But a phone won’t do it as well, or nearly as long. The 840 I pictured has something absurd like 25 hours of battery while running navigation on multiband GPS if I remember right.
I remember being taught this kind of shit, but like 3/4 of the class just didn’t give a shit.
It’s like my classmates who sometimes say they wish they were taught how to do taxes. We were, it was literally part of high school economics, it was a required class, we literally filled out the exact federal and state tax forms they now say they don’t know how to handle. It was a required exercise in a required class to fucking graduate.
I’m going to guess that either there are no standards to meet for those, or the standards also just happen to line up with the current cheapest material and construction options.
Or they are only covered by standards that are complete jokes. Like the fire standard I saw at my old job that a pack of printer paper would easily pass because it was just a time before burning a hole through, and the paper pack took longer just because of how thick it is (the time was like 5 minutes or something if I recall correctly).
Ugh, I’m getting a bunch right now that are like “we can help with SEO” and “let us fix your codebase” and “we can help with payroll.”
I’m a design engineer for plastic injection molded parts, exactly none of those are anywhere near what I handle, I wouldn’t even know who to direct them to if I had any interest in directing them anywhere, stop fucking emailing me.
Well, not that shocked.
Apparently my browser is unique but has strong protections against tracking?
I thought I’d be sticking with Subaru after how awesome my Impreza has been. Unfortunately the Soltera/BZ4X is a complete joke.
Instead I’m hoping that I can hold out long enough to actually get this thing.
I can’t check because I’m at work, but is that the Tom Scott video?
At least, I think I remember him doing a video on that thing, maybe it was just someone kind of like him.
Isnt train+bus just a streetcar?
God dammit.
I think this is about as likely as other conspiracy theories: not at all.
Yeah, I know, but hoping is more fun than not.
Perfection.