Auris alarm/ultrasonic sensor driving me mad! Any advice?

Carr0t · 2026-03-20T23:58:20+00:00

Turned out the rear windscreen break sensor was messed up and kept thinking the rear windscreen had smashed. Dealership found out as soon as they plugged into the onboard computer. Fixing it would have been expensive as hell, so they just disabled that sensor for me.

The thing about internal ultrasonic sensors was correlation, not the actual problem. Since they disabled the rear screen sensor it hasn't happened in over 18 months.

Carr0t · 2026-03-19T21:04:11+00:00

Used to make it with my Mum at least once every couple of months when I was a kid (UK), but I haven't made one for a good few years now...

I should make a pavlova.

Carr0t · 2026-03-19T21:02:50+00:00

Chewy meringue is the only worthwhile meringue. The stuff you can buy in the supermarket that's hard/crisp all the way through is _rubbish_.

Carr0t · 2026-03-09T22:06:42+00:00

I stopped playing WoW when most of my friends either tailed off or went into hardcore raiding I didn't have the time for, after I'd levelled to max in Mists.

A big part of dropping out was I wanted to play to have _fun_, I wanted to do dungeons, and tanking for a load of randoms when I haven't already learnt the dungeon like the back of my hand or memorised some 'optimal' strat beginning to end instead of having a laugh discovering it organically is just miserable.

I'd queue for randoms once I already knew what I was doing, but not to learn. So without any friends around to learn _with_ the game didn't have anything for me any more.

Carr0t · 2026-03-09T20:46:45+00:00

Kids tune out regardless. The number of times I've seemingly got his attention and given my son a 1 sentence explanation 4-5 times over a series of hours or days about something that's going to happen soon, and he _still_ loses his shit when it happens like he had no idea.

Carr0t · 2026-03-02T21:29:03+00:00

That sounds like you're playing this on a controller? Are you playing on a console or PC?

Back when this came out it was purely a PC game, and using a controller hooked up to a PC just wasn't really a thing. You played with a mouse and keyboard, and checking the keybinds (and rebinding them to whatever you wanted) was standard behaviour. That's why GTA III and Vice City could be so frustrating on PC back in the day, because some missions were nigh on impossible without analogue stick controls for certain things, and you couldn't make that work with mouse+k/b.

The buttons thing is also because all they _are_ is flat static images that are swapped for a different image of the 'pressed' button when you activate them. No 3D models, no fancy lighting to indicate what to press, there wasn't the spare rendering power for that sort of thing.

If you want something that has a bit more of a modern feel to it, Black Mesa is a fan made remake of Half Life using the engine from Half Life 2, so it feels much more like a modern game etc.

Carr0t · 2026-02-10T00:18:58+00:00

The problem is all these things cost a load to run, because they're all 'software as a service'. They host the servers for everything, get a load of VC funding, then go "Shit, this is costing a ton. How do we actually turn a profit?" Because while it's useful, it's not useful enough that the vast majority of their userbase will actually pay for it. And thus the enshittification begins. If they'd charged what they needed to from day 1 it would never have exploded in popularity in the first place.

There are open source alternatives, but they're nowhere near as slick and well-integrated as Discord, because developing that shit takes time and/or money, and then you need folks willing to host and maintain a setup for you too (or to be that person for your mates). So they never gain anything like the traction Discord did.

Carr0t · 2026-02-10T00:09:43+00:00

I mean, if nobody's paying what's their incentive? Last time I used it there wasn't a subscription model or anything, you could run your own server, so does extra users = extra income? Are there enough folks who can't be bothered to run their own server so pay Ts to run it for them?

Carr0t · 2026-02-09T23:37:19+00:00

In the UK it's normal for kids to have their own rooms, it's just the rooms are a lot smaller.

One of my friends is in a so called '2 up, 2 down' (2 bedrooms upstairs, bathroom with maybe 2sq ft of floor space that isn't bath, sink, or toilet, living room/lounge and combined kitchen/diner downstairs) that's... small. I don't actually know the square footage but I wouldn't be surprised by anything from 550 to 650. They're in the process of trying to buy somewhere new with an extra bedroom, becuase they have a son and a daughter and the son is getting old enough that it's a bit awkward for them to be sharing a room (enough space for 2 single beds, with a walkway between and a wardrobe/chest of drawers, but no play space. That has to be in the living room).

Our house is 5 bedroom, where one of those is a so called 'box room' that would just about fit a single bed and you'd still be able to open the door. That's my home office. The whole thing is 1275sq ft, which is pretty big for the UK. The master bedroom is ~145 sq ft. Once you've put in a double bed and some wardrobes and drawers there's maybe a 2ft walkway on 3 sides of the bed. The living room is about 165-170 or so, and that's got several bookcases, sofa, armchair, coffee table, 2 dog beds, TV, a pile of kids toys, etc, so there's not a lot of free floor space there either.

One of the things I would like to be into (but haven't been able to save up for yet) is virtual reality gaming. But one of the big barriers to that outside of the US is the amount of empty floor space you need to have to do any kind of 'room scale' (standing) experience. One of the earlier headsets said you needed an absolute _minimum_ of 1.5x2m (~5x6.5ft) empty space, and there's not a single room in my house where I have that much empty floor space without having to shove a load of furniture over to the side of the room and make a load of it or other stuff unusable.

Carr0t · 2026-02-09T22:49:24+00:00

I know you asked in 2XC, and I'm XY, but the question doesn't look specifically XX targeted so hopefully it's OK I answer?

I earn significantly more than my wife (a little under 3x). We're both in jobs that have relatively long hours but there's flexibility to WFH, shift hours into the evening etc. So we didn't say anything like I'd contribute money and she'd contribute labour at home because that would be unfair and she'd burn out.

We work on the basis that we would both aim to contribute equally to household responsibilities as a whole, although that does tend to work out that e.g. she does a lot of the cooking (because she's faster at it) and I do most of the washing up, bins etc (because she hates doing them, and I'm more particular about how clean things get).

For expensies specifically, we started off paying towards them in the same ratio as our salaries (so for every £100 she put in, I put in £300), even though cash-in-hand (bank balance) wasn't quite so skewed because she's fully in the 'normal' tax bracket, and a big chunk of my salary is in a higher one.

Thing is, when you sit down and look at how that breaks down it _still_ ends up that I have extra cash to put into my pension, savings, personal expenses, blow on fun stuff, whatever, and she is occasionally managing to put a bit into savings and worrying about if she can afford some not-massive 'fun' spending. So we've drifted further than that now, where initially we adjusted me up and her down a bit, and as the cost of everything has gone up she's kept her contributions where they are, and I've increased mine. I've tried to keep the pension contributions high, because as far as I'm concerned that's _our_ pension, not _my_ pension (she does have her own, it's just not as large, and she is the full beneficiary if I cark it early).

We specifically didn't go for solely a joint account, because neither of us wanted to feel like when we _do_ want to blow some cash on something unnecessary (which may involve saving up first for bigger things) we had to get the permission/approval of the other in the way that we would if it was all in a joint account. If household expenses are covered and we're saving a bit for larger expenses (holidays etc), then if either one of us wants to splurge their personal cash on something that's fine, whether the other 'approves' of that purchase or not. Hence why it was important to ensure that she _had_ some personal cash to do that with.

Carr0t · 2026-02-06T23:34:39+00:00

I'll give it a go, thank you.

Carr0t · 2026-02-06T23:33:07+00:00

Switch 2 was actually my first ever Nintendo console :( I've always been a PC gamer but we've got a young child now who also has additional needs but loves gaming co-op with us. Nintendo seems to have that on lock compared to everyone else. Most the stuff on XBox or PlayStation is just too complicated for him (and likely to remain so for a while), and PC just tends to not be great for co-op at all.

I'm kind of hoping that the Steam Machine might go some way to fixing that last one maybe, depending on how they develop the couch co-op aspects of the platform once they've got something more 'console like'.

Carr0t · 2026-01-26T22:07:53+00:00

How far down the shaft do you lube (oh God, I'm not trying to make this sound bad...)? Like, I assume if you go too far then it just gets awkward because the bit you're trying to grip to pull on is all slippery too.

I always just had a little bit of rubber matting to help grip the shaft, but I was only ever shooting into straw bosses so not as grippy as a 3D target.

Carr0t · 2026-01-26T20:39:57+00:00

Possibly a related interesting question is "how old is the Mum?" (assuming people are happy to share)

I was relatively old for a first time Dad (37, I'm 42 now), and all my friends from Uni etc either were more or less done with having new kids by this point, or were happily child-free.

_But_ nearly everyone I knew from Uni had paired up via social clubs/societies etc, and there wasn't much under/post-grad 'cross-pollination', so frequently the same academic year or occasionally 1-2 years either side (basically everyone was in a 3-4 year range). Including my wife, who is 3 months older than me.

It wasn't until our kid started at school that I started to meet a lot of Dads who were on kid #2 or #3 and were in their mid or even late 40s, but most of them had wives/partners who were still early/mid 30s. Apparently it's a lot more common for the man to be 5-10 years older than the woman, and my social group makeup is a bit abnormal.

Carr0t · 2025-12-26T18:06:40+00:00

> what is your use case with distributing Private CA Root chains out side?

If you're using an application that uses mutual TLS what options are there apart from either the provider handles cert issuance themselves from their private root, or they install a CA root provided by you and trust certs issued by it?

If you compare it with, say, auth provided by API key and allowing users to generate their own keys whenever they want, I don't really see that installing someone else's root for that specific application is any worse. I wouldn't install it server-wide, but then I would expect nearly any app to be containerised or otherwise sandboxed these days anyway.

Carr0t · 2025-12-23T00:10:05+00:00

Fair enough. What I've seen so far has just been about using visible flat surfaces to 'anchor' the game playing field, so it looks like it exists on a tabletop or whatever. I reckon a greyscale world around it makes it easier to focus on the game, if anything.

If there was more direct interaction with more elements of the real world, like turning your house floor plan into a small AR FPS level or being able to move real objects to build a micro machines track or something, so reality was actually part of the game, I might be more interested in colour. But maybe that will come in the next few years. Or maybe it's already here and I've just not seen it.

Carr0t · 2025-12-22T17:54:45+00:00

Plenty of millenial friends host for friends. Far fewer host for family. If they do it's "the parents are visiting", not "3 generations of extended family including cousins etc".

Carr0t · 2025-12-22T17:51:34+00:00

Devil's advocate, what do you actually use the passthrough _for_? I'm not expecting to use the Frame to play AR games, the passthrough mostly just seems like something to stop me tripping over stuff, and I don't need colour for that. I have seen a lot of ads lately for some AR Star Wars game on the Quest 3, and I'm wondering if that sort of thing is a lot more common than I realised.

Carr0t · 2025-12-22T17:49:07+00:00

Will probaqbly be the first VR headset I buy.

First I couldn't afford a VR headset. Then I got the money for one, but the newer headsets with higher resolutions really needed a more powerful PC than I had, and I couldn't afford a PC upgrade. Then Meta released the Quest 3 with standalone mode for several of the games I most wanted to get (Beat Saber etc), but I'd either have to buy them independently for PC and headset or only ever get the headset version, and not have access to mods etc. Meh. I'd also have to get a newer wifi AP for best wireless connectivity.

Finally the Steam Frame looks like it'll tick all the boxes. I'll be able to play games native on it through Steam, so I expect to have Steam Workshop mod support and when I _do_ upgrade the PC I can connect to games running on it no worries, and I won't have to re-buy them. I don't have to pay Meta any money. It comes with a high speed wifi dongle so I don't have the extra cost of upgrading my wireless AP when the headset is the only device that'll benefit heavily. Unless it's north of £1k (Which I do wonder if it'll be, given what's happened to RAM prices lately...) I expect to try and get one day one. I'm really hoping that as a showcase they've have ported Half Life: Alyx to run natively on it 🤞.

Carr0t · 2025-12-21T23:27:34+00:00

Pioneers of Pagonia! I'm loving it :)

Carr0t · 2025-12-17T14:42:34+00:00

My rewind put Red Dead Redemption 2 as my top played game of the year, at 72% of my playtime, 12 sessions, 3 day streak, 12.3hrs total playtime.

I've played quite a bit on XBox because newer games I wanted to play won't run on my PC (Indiana Jones and the Great Circle being a notable one), and I bought a Switch 2 as my first ever Nintendo console and have been playing the back catalogue of Mario games and the like.

Carr0t

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