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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: July 6th, 2023

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  • Yup, still a thing! Especially if a lot of surrounding villages are doing things, like christmas markets. Or even within a village with lots of small stops, like a bar-hopping type deal. The buses just loop, sometimes in both directions, through all the stops. They are separate from the normal transit buses, you gotta buy their specific ticket (or it’s free) and they are usually travel bus types rather than city transit buses. The inner-village ones are just passenger vans, though.



  • Underground parking garages are very common over here. Most of the times these city squares are exactly that, a huge multi-level underground parking garage because these squares are always event spaces, and they are usually city-center so even when there isnt events, people have somewhere to park when just visiting the city. Yes, there will even be long lines of traffic waiting/hoping for a spot during event periods.

    With that said, they do fill up, usually fast. So most events suggest finding public transportation. This just means people park further away and then take the bus/rail/etc the rest of the way. These Markets arent just for the locals, people travel from all over to come to them. So public transportation for long-distant travel, while totally possible, isnt always as practical (sometimes nor affordable or possible) for everyone. Plus, long distance trains do sell out. We just spent most of the season traveling all over Central Europe going to various markets.




  • French car culture isnt much different than European car culture in general, for the sake of the topic here. Small displacement engines (1.6, or 2.0 liter usually) and small footprint because of space. Scooters and pedal bikes are super common around places like Paris, tho…parking, gas, weaving through the congestion, etc. However, some of the wagon variants of cars and these luxury cars you mention sometimes have a much larger footprint than small and mid-sized SUVs. Unless overhead clearance is an issue, like in parking garages, i don’t quite understand the reason for singling out SUVs here.

    This, of course, is all stated with European sized SUVs in mind that share the same small displacement engines as other cars. Not the giant American sized ones that have much larger engines where emissions issues now come into play. However, all those luxury cars usually have even bigger engines and sometimes the loud exhaust as well…sooo…🤷


  • Ya, it’d be doable for sure with the craze of all the overland van-dweller builds the last few years. Ive seen plenty that meet all your requirements. But, whether it would be cost-effective or not for a work van would be the major issue, especially considering most trucks can do all that without being a special order for probably less than half the price.

    Unfortunately not a lot of demand for such a thing, like you said.

    Years ago i was in a spot where i needed the same as you for basically all the same reasons. The old van kept getting stuck everywhere, and then it actually got rolled from hitting a patch of black ice one winter, so it was totaled. These high-top vans had just started coming to market which was great, but I couldn’t convince the boss to spend the extra money for at least an AWD version, nevermind the higher ground clearance or low-torque options. I still got that thing stuck so many times…having a high-top I could stand up in was nice though.



  • Those touch mechanics are things you don’t need on any other platform as opposed to literally the only option via mobile. Games as shallow as Fruit Ninja, seriously? You ever pay a Nintendo Wii? Or any of the Xbox Kinect type motion tracking games (i dont remember the Playstation variant)? That’s a hell of a lot more immersive than twitching your finger on your phone. Lets not even get into the world of VR gaming that’s been around for years now.

    Multi finger gestures- like an entire PC keyboard…while moving your mouse? Can you use 10 fingers on your phone at the same time? Or multi button/direction combos on a controller? Plus the fact you can program multi-function macros on a PC.

    Pinch zoom- mouse wheel: faster, more control, & way more range.

    Swipe- like move your mouse? Or a controller joystick? Or the arrow keys? RTS or any top-down games have been using “swipe” variants to move around maps basically as long as the game genre has existed. Most mice come standard these days with thumb buttons that are pre-programmed as literally Forward and Backwards buttons (think page turn, or swipe left/right). Even the mechanic of hotkeys that most games have.

    Add in the ability to right-click, or hold any button and click and you open literally endless opportunities for any sort of “finger” or “swipe” type control. A PC mouse is literally your hand with a LOT more fingers.

    But lets go deeper…there ARE touch interfaces for other platforms. Not used much for gaming, but how do you think digital artists draw and paint?

    Basically, these touch gestures you’re so hung up on are literally all you have- and it ain’t much. Anything else i could add has been said multiple times from all the other comments….


  • So i used to dabble in doing jobs for Amazon’s Mturk work system to try and make some extra money. I’m not gonna go into the details of what that is or how it works here, but we would get a lot of little jobs that could be “write out closed captions for these short videos”, OR “select any squares of this image that meet the request”, like on this post. We’d be allowed to not select any squares if that was the case. They always looked like screen shots from google earth or something. A lot of times, like here, the solution was not in the provided image. I always felt like us Mturk human workers were providing the solutions to these “anti bot” measures.



  • Despite just realizing this is a 2y old post that’s been necroed…like another commenter here, ive never liked how unpredictable mouse accel is, but my experiences are from long ago and originated from joysticks (controller and desktop “flight” types). Now i exclusively use mice with a variable DPS button at my thumb or what some call a “sniper” button. This way i have full control over WHEN, how long and how fast/slow. Ex: Logitech G502, Corsair M65