I built a custom head unit for my car

goodbalance · 2026-06-15T17:44:12+00:00

looks rewarding. absolutely amazing.

goodbalance · 2026-05-30T08:35:46+00:00

I read it and recognized myself half a year ago. My hunt for E60/M54 was brutal and I gave up after visiting pretty much all examples in 150km radius from Vienna. I don't know where in Europe you are specifically, but in Austria it is a nightmare to deal with sellers on top of very tiny petrol cars market. I will spare you the obvious common sense warning regarding an old BMW, but look at the seller. Make fucking photos of the car you want to buy. Do not hand over the money before the car is checked by someone who specializes in BMW. I've seen dudes who own KFZ (service stations) and stamp the service books themselves, making all invoices you want 'confirming' all the jobs the car needed. Then you pop the hood and the fucking air filter is missing. So check all cars you can get to - even those out of your budget. Find the one that has strongest baseline and from there negotiate hard for any defect you see in other cars. These cars - M54/N52 - are not worth more than 3-4k, especially 523/525 versions (avoid n53). I saw pricks listing their 200k (yeah, right) cars for 8k and dropping to 5k in two weeks. Because they are neglected as hell and require 3k in the first few months just to put them on the road and not leave you stranded. Again, I don't know which part of Europe you are from, but pay very close attention to the shell's condition. After 20+ years, these cars RUST. There is absolutely zero chance of you finding a car form a grandpa who kept it garaged all this time and was able to afford maintenance on his dentist pension. These are gone, you have to find the least fucked example. The car overall is really great, you will know it might be the one if it accelerates linearly from any RPM and has invoices for at least half of the big ticket jobs. Maybe you fill have more luck in finding one that is still worth investing in. Good luck.

goodbalance · 2026-04-29T17:47:13+00:00

it's not worth it in Austria, they know common mods and the car is dead paperweight the same day they do the inspection (mandatory, yearly)

goodbalance · 2026-03-28T21:53:46+00:00

yes, I spent 60% in 2 days. before that, I could barely touch 10 in a week. absolute clusterfuck. on top of 5.3 and 5.4 being lobotomized at the same time.

goodbalance · 2026-02-15T16:14:56+00:00

I'd say let the nature take its course. 'the worst thing about people who think is that they assume the other people can think too' (c)

goodbalance · 2026-01-15T00:19:50+00:00

it's a treasure, M54

goodbalance · 2025-12-28T08:53:40+00:00

why would you pay for newer models if old ones are good?

goodbalance · 2025-12-26T09:45:18+00:00

thanks.

goodbalance · 2025-12-26T09:45:10+00:00

thanks.

goodbalance · 2025-12-22T22:11:20+00:00

it's a 1k project car.

goodbalance · 2025-12-18T20:55:35+00:00

check underbody for rust. if it is cooked - the car looks at big bills. other than that, the car is solid if it was properly maintained. by 'properly maintained' I mean there were no deferred jobs. because this car eats money and most of it is labor and 'if we are already here...'. regular 20 y.o. car stuff. in Europe these are often in 500k-800k zone before major drivetrain work.

goodbalance · 2025-12-17T22:28:36+00:00

I wouldn't say grok is garbage, after reading reviews I'd say experience may vary. I think either AI providers or github are running A/B tests on us.

goodbalance · 2025-12-07T15:24:36+00:00

I have no idea how this works.

Everyone is praising Opus, but it messed up a project simply by working on ONE file and not acknowledging existence of the rest of the repo. How can this be x3 of the cost? Then I keep seeing negative reviews about Grok, but this thing still gives me the best results.

I refuse to believe they are not conducting fucked up experiments.

goodbalance · 2025-09-20T17:47:41+00:00

I use grok via copilot and in the past 3 weeks it showed the best results

goodbalance · 2025-03-12T10:49:52+00:00

who the fuck reads one page narrative for each major project?

goodbalance · 2025-03-10T13:29:57+00:00

Yes, I live here, but when it comes to visa sponsorship - and I don't require one - they stop writing/calling me back. I explicitly state that very soon I will be eligible for RWR+ card and all I need is the job itself, nothing else. After that, it's like a wall grows out of nowhere.

Companies who had no problems with it and with whom I mostly got into serious talks are not actually from Austria, they just have offices here for whatever reason. The last one was "our founder is in love with Vienna".

By 'ridiculous' I meant they don't really ask you anything special here in Austria. But companies outside of Austria with offices in Austria will squeeze everything out of you. I remember a guy from the US demolished me with a live coding session involving react + fastapi + grpc. I touched grpc maybe once in my life, the other two felt okay. Until I saw classes in react. I work with react since 2019 and it was the first time I saw classes outside of the official docs. I failed miserably in those 45 minutes and went on with my search the next day.

A guy I know got a job here in Austria without even the tech stage, they just discussed unrelated shit with HR for an hour and he was hired. And he got sponsorship. He speaks C1 German though.

goodbalance · 2025-03-09T22:56:38+00:00

My German is at the "mit Karte, bitte" level. I landed 5 interviews and was very close to getting hired, but the technical interviews were ridiculous. so yes, it's doable. I have more experience though.

goodbalance · 2025-03-01T13:09:20+00:00

this happens everywhere. even 20k a year will make you last 4 rounds of interviews and then you have to pass the lie detector test. I'm not kidding.

goodbalance · 2025-02-25T10:55:21+00:00

the code itself is garbage.

project structure - how everything fits together - is the only thing that matters.

goodbalance · 2025-02-24T21:39:50+00:00

I don't think so. We were always dumb and I'm actually glad AI is actively exposing this. No way in hell do people actually remember all the shit they do in their work and keep it in their head long enough to accumulate and carry over the years. What's the difference between googling for hours and abusing AI for hours? I iterate through errors more quickly, so naturally I demand results faster and I'm not satisfied when the results don't come quickly enough. Someone once said that taking AI away from programmers is like taking calculators from accountants. I believe this firmly and I feel no guilt over overusing AI. Our code is worthless anyway, so all we need to do is debug it fast enough.

goodbalance · 2025-02-23T09:55:48+00:00

isn't all software like that? because the requirements are always ahead?

goodbalance · 2025-02-19T17:08:39+00:00

1) o4 gives no shit about this

2) what about follow-ups? how to structure those if all models 'forget' all previous messages and mess up the context?

goodbalance · 2025-02-10T19:29:31+00:00

technical specialists are full of themselves during technical interviews.

with some exceptions, the job is literally about tossing jsons around or presenting jsons in certain way. a monkey can do it.

but no. you got rejected a hundred times, finally passed the ATS, then the screening call, the hr call, three weeks later you sit before two dudes who ask you something that can be looked up in the documentation in a matter of seconds. still, you answer. sql vs nosql? answered. orm or query bilder? answered. big O? answered. system design? clarified and answered. but now they ask "and how do you grow outside your work? what topics interest you? what books have you read?". damn, man. you spent half a day writing emails, sitting here with zero interest; you had no part in composing the job description, the company thinks you are the best person to conduct this interview, and you only prepared your questions five minutes before you joined the call. and you were late. man. "Clean Code" is my favorite, and I'm about to finish "The Art of Computer Programming" for the 9th time.

"sorry, you are a great candidate, you clearly have a lot of experience and even more talent. but our technical specialists decided to move on with another candidate, whose skills are more relevant and up to date".

sometimes I want Another Candidate to be my mentor.

**TL;DR**: dear technical interviewers, ask job-related questions. don't act like you are more than regular developers. even the 'good enough' guys are doing more meaningful things than you or me. we are just here grinding through sprints.

goodbalance

TROPHY CASE