That has never really been true whenever they get power. Just like states rights, the deficit spending and federal overreach stops mattering. It's just a matter of which part of the government Republicans want to grow and have the funding (ICE for example).
Republicans pretend to act principled when they're not the party in power. Amazing how that works.
What's wilder is the fact that my generation was told that rock music, rap music, video games, etc would be lead to the decline of our society. But it turns out that Fox News was far more destructive than all of those things combined.
In the US, organized religion and Fox News are the two most destructive forces in our society.
I don't understand how Jaguar/Land Rover is still even a thing. This is unrelated to the hack, but they consistently make the most unreliable vehicles you can buy.
When I had my import repair shop, I made a fortune repairing Jags and LRs. My business partner named his lake house 'Discovery' because of all the money we made off of those things.
I believe this used to be a thing absolutely, but something seem to change ~2012 where they seemingly went from some of the least reliable luxury cars on the market to some of the most - but the hangover from 50 years of unreliability will plague them for years to come I'm sure. The tests and standards they need to pass to get out of the design and manufacturing departments are pretty staggering now (compared to the tire kick tests they used to), and general reports from mechanics in forums I frequent and people I meet at car meets is that a modernish JLR will keep on ticking provided they're serviced every year.
Honestly, I've been eyeing up a 2015 Jaguar F-Type for a while now. It was a £85k car depending on trimming that you can pick up for £20k now with a V6 supercharged VS. An old-school style coupe, without all the modern ADAS beeping and handholding, that will just plod away if you look after it seems very appealing.
I wish you luck. I wouldn't buy the 2015 unless they've documented the timing service and give you a warranty. And don't park it outside. I'm not exaggerating when I say (I believe I've even shared this in a previous comments years ago) that every single Jaguar I've ever serviced has had wiring damage due to rodents.
I believe it's something to do with the coating they use on their wiring and harnesses. But I never had a Jaguar in my shop that didn't suffer from some type of wiring damage as a result of rodents chewing on the wiring.
I believe it's something to do with the coating they use on their wiring and harnesses
Soy-based wiring insulation. And it’s not just Jag/LR, Honda had enough of a problem that they wrap their insulation in a tape with capsaicin (active ingredient in peppers) to keep the mice away.
Isn't this common? I have had rodents eat wires in my car 3 times in the last 5 year. (It's not a Jag or LR). My friends have complained about this happening with their vehicles too. Or has there been any new development of some kind of "rodent-resistant" wiring?
Honda makes an anti-rodent tape that's designed for wrapping wiring. It's loaded with capsaicin so any critter that bites down will quickly decide to stop. It's possible other manufacturers are exploring similar ideas.
It may be common, but in my ~20 years of pushing wrenches, I've only ever seen that issues on Jaguars and Land Rovers. Unless we're talking about long abandoned cars that have sat outside for years.
I had a 2015 f type. The day before it was to be transferred to the new owner, the engine smoked out on the highway. I don’t recall why, might have been an oil leak.
Upper middle class Americans are weirdly obsessed about LR, especially the new Defender. Jaguar I'm not sure how it survives (if it even really does nowadays).
I'm definitely biased because I own Land Cruisers, but it's wild watching people throw many away on an inferior product like the Defender. I think I'd rather have a Wrangler than a Defender and that says a whole lot.
Our family has owned a '97 Defender 110 (originally bought for my parents' surveying business) for about 16 years now and I still don't understand how some people used to buy these for status. Not having owned a Land Cruiser (but am a happy owner of a Prius) or a Wrangler, I'd probably choose the Toyota over the Land Rover and leave the Jeep in the last place, though I do like the early generations.
I remember when I was a teen and saw "She's All That". The protagonist in the film drove a Defender. I fell in love with them and wanted one badly. Then I moved to the Caribbean a few months later and met people with them. It was nothing but horror stories. So I did what any sensible person would do and bought a Jeep Scrambler. That was dumb.
Based on all of my anecdotes from being in the repair industry for years, the only vehicles I will ever own are Honda/Acura and Toyota/Lexus.
I've known a few people who were obsessed with Land Rovers - often severely dilapidated ex-forces ones. The horror stories almost seemed to be the point - a bonding experience almost...
Car obsession appears to be highly regional. In the Pacific Northwest, it is amusing how many Subaru vehicles you will find. To the point that it is always odd to go back to Atlanta and see how few are there. It would be interesting to see this mapped out.
For Land Rovers, specifically, I definitely recall seeing more when I lived in the south. Though, nowadays I think I notice Kia more. That is almost certainly just noticing more, though?
What region are new Land Rovers popular in? In the southeast I mostly see young guys with an ancient units with 200k+ miles that they bought cheap and refuse the let them die. I rarely see new units on the road.
They’re all over Redmond, WA. Not nearly as common as Teslas (the “Redmond Camry”), but I guarantee I’ll see a late-model LR every time I drive somewhere. There’s probably at least one near my house every day at school drop-off/pickup time.
I honestly don't know, so was surprised to see them listed as a popular choice anywhere and meant my comment just to ack that it is ridiculously regional.
the new Defender got to be the worst Land Rover ever built. It has terrible off-road capability even compared to the other (non Defender models like the Range). JLR alienated their entire existing Defender drivers where hardly any of them would buy this new model.
Granted, they also alienated their user base when the traditional TDI was replaced with the TD5 and then more alienation when they introduced the TD4.
But the latest thing (L663) has nothing in common with any of the previous models. (probably due to pedestrian safety laws becoming more strict)
> the new Defender got to be the worst Land Rover ever built
No it isn't. I own a 2022 D90 P300 with 18" wheels, coils, front jump seat, everything. It's been great for ~40,000 miles. I'm constantly on dirt and rocky roads here. It's never let me down.
They're used by tons of people for offroading and modified heavily as well, with companies like Sarek, Lucky8, etc.
The only people who hate on new Defenders are the ones that love the ~25 year old versions with 200,000 miles, tons of rust, a diesel engine that can barely make it to highway speeds, and spends more time in the garage every weekend than "exploring." But hey, they're cooler than us because they work on their cars and have a manual transmission.
Same. My in-laws are Toyota Land Cruiser people, heavily involved with the local clubs. FIL even runs their driver training programs. Was very anti us getting a Defender and said we'd regret it. When we did the training the main problem we had was getting it stuck, because part of the training was learning how to use a winch or straps to get yourself out when you're bogged. We were able to drive out of anything. Now his only criticism is it's not as much fun to drive because it takes less skill (which is exactly what I wanted. I want to get places, not necessarily challenge myself to get there though). It's also a much better finish than the Toyotas. It's not much more expensive than their latest fully optioned Land Cruiser, but everything about the inside of LC feels like it's not been updated since the late 90s. And plenty about it that actually feels cheap (and before anyone weighs in, not in a way that is designed to wear and tear. Just cheap and lazy).
The few annoyances we've had LR have resolved for us at zero cost, even when we were out of warranty.
Yup, the new Defender is amazing. I use mine as a daily driver and love it. You can drive 4,000 miles across country in comfort/luxury and then still have advanced off-roading capabilities in mud, sand, rocks, etc. It's the best of both worlds. All with a warranty.
What's funnier is most of the "new" Defender owners I meet love the old ones (including me, I miss driving manual.) It's the old owners that still seem to have an attitude (calling them "Pretenders", etc.)
The problem I see, is that while the electronic assists and auto gearbox are great in general and win over the older generation everytime in comparisons, having a mild electrical problem or a malfunction in any electronic module would render it basically unusable.
My father told me many stories about the old Land Rovers they had in the military service in Spain. One time, he successfully climbed a hill with two captains after snapping the back axle (the one coming from the transfer case), by locking the differential. These new machines rely too much on electronics without backup, I believe.
Also, and this is fully my opinion, I would never take an automatix off-road.
My wife had a Toyota at one point which developed an interesting fault - all of the internal electrics would cut out at random times.
Turns out the cause was a leaking sunroof!
Water got in through the sunroof and the genius design had some kind of electric junction box (or fuses or something) at the lowest point of the passengers footwell. So water got in, flowed to where all the electrics were and things stopped working.
Fortunately it doesn't rain that often here in Scotland so it wasn't a big problem ;-)
That happened to a friends Benz when he bought it second hand. Water had leaked in the drivers window, maybe it was left open, and shorted the switch cluster on the drivers door. That took out the entire CAN network and the car had no lights save for brake lights, no HVAC and no entertainment system. Fixed it himself for like two hundred bucks for a new switch cluster.
I had a similar problem with the VW Passat I had at the time - the drain hole from the battery compartment got blocked and when it rained it overflowed into the interior of the car - I was wondering for ages why there was this sloshing noise each time I went round a corner - the back of the car had about 1cm of water in it!
Had to get the dealer to remove all the seats and carpets and dry thing out.
-> Reading this as a European with one small electric car, the idea that two V8 vehicles could be considered the perfect vehicle choice is quite out there!
The Toyota/Lexus 4.7L and 5.7L engines are pretty much the two most reliable V8s ever put into production vehicles. The Chevrolet 6.0 is probably the only other V8 that would possibly come close to the reliability afforded by the Toyota/Lexus V8s.
Toyota and Lexus engines still require considerable regular and proactive service and repairs to last the hundreds of thousands of miles the steel is capable of.
This means, seals, gaskets, shocks, etc will all still wear out over time like every vehicle.
If you don't listen to the manufacturer's recommendation and change your fluids far more often, especially the "lifetime" fluids, almost any vehicle will last much longer.
That is the American way. For some reason they often need huge truck for single person to commute to the work.
I had for a few years mini cooper 5d - amazing vehicle. Fun to drive, quite reliable. Of course, that mini will not be comfortable for "plus" size people. Maybe that is the main reason why trucks are so popular in the US.
When I stayed in California (Santa Barbara), I saw trucks everywhere, mainly carrying a few tools. To me, a European van like the typical Peugeot is much more useful, since it’s closed and a lot more fuel efficient.
Of note, there was a V10 straight-piped RAM in a jam due to construction. It sounded great, but it was obnoxiously loud, almost hurting.
My father has a Lexus and the interior design and dash system are the worst I've ever seen, full stop. The weird touchpad that barely works. The sheer amount of buttons and options that 99% of people don't use 99% of the time. The way it handles maps while listening to music. The impossibility of going back and forth between sections while driving. I'm sure they're fine cars, but my god what an atrocity of user experience on the inside.
Lexus and Toyota don't update their interiors often enough because they don't have to and there are people willing to pay a premium Toyota tax for whatever they have.
At the same time, the recent and latest Toyotas and Lexus' look sharp. Usually they are pretty conservative.
In the UK they don't have CCS plugs though, only chademo so they're as good as useless (or at least didn't when I was looking to buy semi-recently). What a retarded technical decision - makes you wonder what other stupid decisions they've made that you can't see. As such it is very very rare to see a lexus EV in the UK
>the Porsche 911 is one of the most reliable vehicles on the road
There's a joke in my country: A guy stops at a red light next to a Ferrari and asks the Ferrari driver: "Are those cars any good? Because and I don't see too many people buying them."
Ha ha, I had a Disco. It's the only vehicle I bought an extended warranty on. It's the only extended warranty I ever heard of that was worth buying. For starters: the fuel pump quit a couple blocks away from the dealership.
I live ~90 minutes from Atlanta. Used 'luxury' autos would start showing up on used car lots around Atlanta as soon as their manufacturer's warranty expired.
I had scores of customers who would test drives these vehicles (Usually a LR, a Mini, a V8 Audi, or a V8 BMW) and bring them all the way to me for prepurchase inspections. I would tell them every single time "do not buy this vehicle." Then they would buy it and my employees and I would wager on how long it took the vehicle to be towed in for repairs.
And the type of people who buy used luxury vehicles from lots in Atlanta are also the type of people that cannot afford any repairs. So I ended up with many abandoned LRs, Audis, Minis, and BMWs all over my lot. Then I had to jump through all of the hoops to get the titles and have them sold and towed away.
They’re extremely temperamental vehicles because they’re not fit for purpose.
The original Range Rover is an upmarket agricultural vehicle, and used the same platform from 1970 until the 2000s. When you actually use them as intended, for off road farm work you realise they’re better off road than they are on road.
I used to drive for five years (2015-2020) a 2009 naturally aspirated petrol Jaguar XF and it had zero issues except a single vacuum hose leak during my 100 000 kilometers (from 120 000 to 220 000) or so. The original rear upper wishbone arms were replaced and no more than expected normal wear & tear brake part replacements were needed. I still sometimes think that I'd like to have one again because in my opinion it was a quite nice and comfortable ride and turned out to be very good value as a used vehicle!
Maybe I had some kind of exception or are there dramatic differences between models and engines?
We had a 2003 Jag S-Type, and it was as reliable as anything else we’ve had. Only had it for three years, bought used in 2006, and didn’t do anything to it. This was back in the days of Ford ownership, though, and it was really a Lincoln Something chassis with a Jag body and badges. Granted, that was a long time ago, but I imagine the underlying chassis has a lot to do with the reliability.
Anecdata I have a 2017 F-Type R. It's a daily driver and does not get babied. Has been essentially bulletproof, a couple of minor repairs, but nothing different than any other vehicle I have ever owned.
My mechanic friends say the same. The Range Rover is the best looking suv imo and looks over shop time for those that can afford it. That said, no mechanical issues with my 2020 sport.
My coworker is a big classic Disco fan, has two, and he is constantly fucking with leaks, rust, and electricals. He does all his own work but man, seems like a never ending hobby.
Because people buy them as a status symbol. Middle aged mum dropping her kids off at school definitely needs a range rover, otherwise what will the other mummies think?
The back story for Tata buying the group off Ford is interesting.
Tata had approached Ford in 1998 proposing some kind of partnership for their first passenger hatchback.
Apparently Ford officials were arrogant and dismissive so it became a personal matter for Ratan Tata, and when Ford was in trouble, he bought the brand off them.
Similarly, Italian design house Pininfarina is owned by Mahindra (another Indian auto co that only sells SUVs).
As an Indian auto enthusiast, I’m both happy, but wish more came out of it. (Insert meme of guy poking something with a stick and saying “Go on, do something”)
I think the Lamborghini that makes tractors has always been a separate legal entity from the one that makes cars (now part of the VW Group) - both founded by the same chap though.
Yep. I used to be a building/remodeling contractor. If I accidentally showed up to the wrong address and demolished the wrong deck, I'd be responsible for making the property owner whole again.
If a cop serves a warrant and the wrong address and ends ups murdering a child, that cop will receive sympathy and paid time off.
Yeah, people have (attempted to) sue PDs and cities for even woefully negligent wrong address raids (different street to warrant and documentation), and the courts have happily told them "sucks to be you, they have no requirement to pay for any damage".
I feel like that's true for most 'stuff', but there are a few exceptions where I will refuse to hire an individual based on things they've done with their personal lives.
My point was really that "socialism" (in common use, especially on the libertarian right) is not really tethered to any historical definition. It's a political term to attach to things you don't like.
You have to very dense or bordering on disingenuous to not see the subsidized healthcare, subsidized childcare and spouses, subsidized moving costs, etc etc etc as "socialism" in the colloquial sense..... You can't get even 10% those benefits in the private sector without the same chuds screeching about communism.
Keyword you seem to have missed is "colloquial". Yes I know they don't. But 99% of the time those are the type of programs being railed against by free market evangelist....
But in reality....The USA mic is the closest thing to actual meaning of socialism the USA has ever tried.
Colloquial usage of the word is simply incorrect. I don't see how the US is the closest when nowhere in its history have workers significantly controlled the means of their own production. It simply hasn't happened around the world and I doubt it ever will.
Because HN can't be seen to discuss the military take-over of the seat of government of one of the most powerful countries on earth. It would be unseemly. The coup will not only not be televised, it won't even be discussed.
The discourse on HN has always been held to a much higher standard than Reddit, and the unfortunate truth is that if we want to maintain HN as a center of intelligent conversation, we have to often flag the topics that lead us away from it. I'm not saying every political thread should be flagged, but I think most of them should be.
The pretense is that the discourse on HN has always been held to a much higher standard than Reddit, primarily by comparing the worst of Reddit with the best of HN, which is specious. If you compare the average comment of HN to the average comment of any programming subreddit, the only real difference is that humor tends to be verboten on HN. But that comes at a cost of increased performative cynicism and rancor.
You've been here since 2012 and are an active contributor. You really believe that the quality of discourse is the same as Reddit on average? Maybe you don't spend enough time on Reddit. It is literally a cesspool of humanity. Hacker News has little in common with it.
Hacker News has more in common with Reddit than you'd think. Plenty of people who post here also post there. A lot of the content that gets posts here gets posted on Reddit first. You won't believe it but there's an intersection between HN and 4chan as well. I've never seen people gas up 4chan anywhere as much as I've seen them do here.
Yes any technical subreddit averages out to the average HN thread. In some specialized subreddits like /r/AskHistorians the quality far exceeds HN because you're required to know what you're talking about to even state an opinion.
> On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity.
> Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, or celebrities, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. Videos of pratfalls or disasters, or cute animal pictures. If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic.
That story spent all of 9 minutes on the front page. Turning off flags is separate to restoring to the front page, and we don't think it's a good look to have a [flagged] tag on any bereavement post, no matter who the deceased is.
