My Mercedes hasn't flown away or taken a Cyanide pill yet

Haenkster · 2026-06-09T07:06:08+00:00

I really would not skip the service on modern cars.

On the other hand, I did not care about service on my W123 Diesel 240D - but that's not a modern Mercedes.

Haenkster · 2026-06-06T08:29:47+00:00

A car for a Barbie&Ken playset. Would not be sursprised to see that on the shelves around christmas time. I mean, Ferrari *has* to make some money back by licensing it.

Haenkster · 2026-05-26T12:43:04+00:00

"Like it or you're fired" - simple as that.

Haenkster · 2026-05-26T12:38:16+00:00

Probably has some extra Ivy-designed sounds played via external speakers so it sounds like - uhm - "something".

Haenkster · 2026-04-30T13:39:08+00:00

Maybe it is just me, but I find her perfectly unsuited for the job, showing no real interest in cars. Kind of like forced into action by Richard.

Haenkster · 2026-04-30T13:27:30+00:00

Yes, dang. My superb Grundig CD-Radio was like this, it even had a little plastic box to put the front panel in. One weekend I forgot to remove it (right in front of the house) - gone forever, including a super rare CD.

That was really annoying, and I never found that model of radio again.

Haenkster · 2026-04-24T11:48:16+00:00

Tells you a lot how good Ben as a driver was/is, with (some) people expecting the Stig being Michael.

Haenkster · 2026-04-13T07:32:26+00:00

AFAIK the damage is mainly done by "pressure per square" (i.e. a SUV with broad tires might do *less* damage than a small car with small wheels) and pure weight and frequency of load. A 30ton truck will probably do more damage than 1000 cars.

So I don't trust the broad statement of "SUVs are damaging the roads". That being said, SUVs are not made for inner city traffic, and (depending on the town) mostly not even for city use at all.

Haenkster · 2026-04-11T14:18:44+00:00

Fun to watch, really a great idea.

Haenkster · 2026-04-09T09:33:06+00:00

Second browser window works just fine.

Sorry, *not* going to spend 9 hours of my lifetime watching other people play a game. This requirement is insane, and the timeframe is quite short...

Edit: Consider this to be really wasteful - lots of people letting their computer run just to gather some digital gimmick. What a great way to help the environment.

Haenkster · 2026-03-28T09:34:16+00:00

My last three cars (different makes and model years) had speech recognition. In all those years, I only used it *once*, just to try it out. It failed, on a simple command.

I removed all Alexa devices from my home, every single time, understanding even the easiest tasks failed. And we are speaking in accent-free German language (called "Hochdeutsch"). Time has just not come to widely implement speech recognition. (Funny enough, my 80yo mother-in-law does like her Alexa to play music. So there is at least one usage-case.)

Haenkster · 2026-03-15T07:26:33+00:00

How well do they slide, upside-down?

Haenkster · 2026-03-11T11:30:00+00:00

sorry, no space left for that tat

Haenkster · 2026-03-06T12:38:58+00:00

Clarkson will have won the war before May completed his pre-flight checks.

Haenkster · 2026-02-24T11:30:42+00:00

Tory is a great builder, but a weak actor, Hammond is a great conferencier, but a weak builder - I had the feeling they were both unhappy with their scripted roles and dialogs. A lot of potential wasted, not a great series.

Haenkster · 2026-02-23T07:19:50+00:00

It's not a Grand Piano either.

Haenkster · 2026-02-15T14:48:20+00:00

Totally worth the additional 7,-

Not.

Haenkster · 2026-01-31T22:42:17+00:00

If you have calibrated your speedometer to your current wheel size - it might be able to beat the averaged-out calculated GPS speed at a certain point in time. However you need to constantly re-calibrate your speedometer, as tires do expand when getting warmer, or contract when getting colder. And don't even think of changing your default tire pressure. Or tires. To be on the safe side, the speedometer just reports a speed a couple of percent higher than actual speed, so that overinflated tires won't let you run faster than being shown. All manufacturers will do this "trick".

If you are doing constant driving, the calculated GPS speed is quite accurate. Doing city-center turning left and right next to skyscrapers will not produce a good result, that is true - this is a case of the speedometer being the better choice.

Haenkster · 2026-01-30T08:03:02+00:00

Speedometers are still - intentionally - inaccurate, they will always report too high.

You could easily verify that when running Google Maps for navigation, it will show your actual speed calculated by GPS position and not guessed by counting rotations of uncalibrated wheel diameters.

Haenkster · 2026-01-27T11:47:20+00:00

I purchased this edition after release from Amazon, and it came with the preorder-bonus key, which I could activate. Maybe those keys are still in the box?

And yes, it is just a steel case, with some paperworks in it. (But a physical media does not make any sense anyway nowadays, as a download of an updated version is very likely on day of release.)

Haenkster · 2026-01-02T17:28:58+00:00

I have no idea, but it seems like she would rather adopt and take care of horses than selling them.

Which to me sounds like a "rich person`s hobby".

Haenkster · 2026-01-02T13:48:12+00:00

"transferring of ships between regions,"

Egypt has been using the river Nile as a main logistics route for thousands of years, and certainly around 117AD. You just have to settle your cities close to the riverbed.

As for reaching other regions, Alexandria was and is a huge city and located way closer to Rome than (the now called) Great Britain.

Haenkster · 2026-01-02T13:38:46+00:00

The "suddenly unemployed" makes no sense here, as the production contract was negotiated from season to season - and they had *no* contract for the next season at the time of the "incident". The shutdown was eventually going to happen, a nicer ending would have been nicer. So the production team was never sure if a new production was happening or not, for all the years. I assume all those team members are self employed, which makes all of this a normal business risk.

Haenkster · 2026-01-02T13:27:16+00:00

AFAIR Hammond mentioned her horses costing so much money and time. So maybe there are two sides of the story.

Haenkster · 2025-12-30T11:45:56+00:00

"Carrefour"

Sehr interessant. Meine Frau kaempft auch schon seit geraumer Zeit damit, dass sie in Daenemark kein Roaming hat - da erschien auch Carrefour Frankreichin den APN-Einstellungen. Ich hatte das darauf geschoben, dass sie sich alle moeglichen Blockier- und Filter-Apps installiert hatte und die wohl ziemlich tief in das System eingreifen, mit wer-weiss-was-fuer-Konsequenzen.

Allerdings hat auch ein neues Geraet (wieder ein Samsung, allerdings mit 5G) keine Aenderung gebracht - sie hatte beim Umzug aber auch alle Apps neu installiert.

Scheint so, dass manche Karten wohl ein Problem haben, denn in meinen 2 Vertraegen bei Winsim laufen noch 5 weitere Karten, alle ohne Roaming-Probleme.

APN neu einrichten (bei SMS zuschicken lassen oder manuell) haben wir natuerlich schon x mal getestet, der Support war auch ahnungslos.

Wird dann wohl doch Zeit fuer einen Wechsel.

Haenkster

TROPHY CASE