You can probably find an agent to purchase for you, forward the shipping, and handle any customs paperwork. For example https://mypurchasingagent.com/ looks like they probably offer the service you need. Not endorsing that company and know nothing about them. That's just the first match that looks promising in a 🦆search for "international purchasing agent consumer products"

This is called the "Last Generation" in Germany. People who block streets 😆

Maybe you'll need to learn how to replace the alternator belt and keep a couple with you in the car for that kind of emergency. My father in law had a car that sometimes just didn't start, with also lots of electric stuff. We then start to think as engineers when we faced the problem, trying to: • turn off • open the door (as you're exiting from the car) • close the door • open the door again (as you're entering in the car) • close the door • turn on and for our surprise, the car turned on and we were able to go back to home 😂

i feel the same about many industries. it used to be nice and useful when we were able to remove a disk from a PC to save the backup, for any reason.

Guess with the newer full electric cars (like Tesla, Polestar), working on those yourself is basically impossible. Wonedr what happens once they are out of warranty...

I actually embrace all that, assuming that there's appropriate QA. Sure, there are more electric+digital components. But also fully electric cars have fewer moving parts. But that's not even the main deal here. The main deal is quality of life improvement. I have an EV, and I love it. Definitely won't go back to an ICE one. Just like I won't go back from a modern version of Excel to editing spreadsheets with some TUI program.

I would modify this by saying that cars suck and are a terribly inefficient means of transportation, besides being dangerous. But I also have to live in the US, where driving is basically your only option in most locales.

> fully electric cars have fewer moving parts By this logic 0 moving parts is an upgrade 😂 Also 0 moving parts is carbon neutral and ecologic :thinking_face: And destroying your car is actually probably carbon negative because you destroy a machine that will produce CO2 :thinking_face:

> By this logic 0 moving parts is an upgrade Only if the dependency is linear. But it is not. The only useful moving parts are the ones that bring me value directly. An alternator is not a useful moving part, even though it enables other things to move.

Sounds like me trying to turn off my SUV interior lights, @UUAV7V7NZ. Except in my case opening and closing doors masked the problem! https://tilton.medium.com/debugging-suv-interior-lights-c302d7c70059

@U03QBKTVA0N, yeah, I live in a city. BUt had to borrow a car to go hiking, as public transport outside cities is horrendous. In Scotland getting around on public transport is basically impossible, unless you are happy to spend multiple hours to get someplace that a car will get you their in an hour. Unless you want to go from city to city, then trains can be OKish. BUt other than, forget it.

> Car is less than 3 years old and its had this exact same problem where it just shuts down and wont move twice in last year (due to snapping its alternator belt). > Sounds like you've got an absolutely shit mechanic! The first time the belt snaps, it's a fair enough assumption that you probably got a defective belt from the factory. When it happened again that soon, that should have been a huge red flag that something else is wrong, preventing any belt you put on there from staying under correct tension.

But maybe he forgot to say that he drove about 200k kilometers on that changed belt? 😄

there is enough persons passing through the roundabout at the point that being stuck is a problem probably it has persons enough to have any kind of efficient transport on that area. I hope I never have to buy a walking sofa.

200k miles on the 3rd alternator belt in a car only 3 years old? Certainly possible, but I doubt it. ~ Hmm, you said kilometers. Is that more or less? :thinking_face:😂

and yeah, munched 2

guessing fault is actually in tensioner or something

or dealer that repaired did a terrible job

25,000 miles its done

in a bit under 3 years

I suggest trying (hopefully?) to find someone certified to do warranty work that is not a dealer. Profit motivations in the world of car repair are already way out of whack without also having to deal with the "frienemy" relationship between dealerships and their associated manufacturers.

So there I was with my silver diesel Jetta, notorious for electrical problems. It was having alternator issues. I'm driving into NYC through the holland tunnel with, as you can imagine, a million cars behind me - two lanes per direction of traffic. And of course the car dies in the tunnel. I'm out in front of my car, on my back with a wrench banging on the alternator. I read somewhere that banging on it fixed it lol. I go back in the car, try to start it, nothing, go back out and bang on it. Hundreds are of cars are honking behind me. As people squeeze by they're yelling explitives. Get back in the car, try it, and it starts up. Get towards the end of the tunnel. Dies again 😅

> and for our surprise, the car turned on and we were able to go back to home 😂 > So basically you're saying, you turned it off and on again? 💪:skin-tone-2:

So I'm in NYC for a few days, so I bring the Jetta to a mechanic. Told him about the issue. Told him that the last mechanic looked at it and thought he fixed the issue. This guy has the car for a few days. Swears the issue is fixed. I'm leaving NYC a few days later. I'm going back through the Holland tunnel. I'm thinking "this better not die again." Get's all the way through until the very end and then it dies again. Yes, within a span of a few days, my car died three times in the holland tunnel.

I do my back and forth dance around the vehicle, banging on the alternator. Emergency vehicles start driving up the lanes towards me from the mouth of the tunnel. Just before they get to me, my engine starts and I drive off out of the tunnel.

I think it's time for some Louis Rossman vibes... 👀 https://youtube.com/watch?v=bBVqUuzUWEY

can you get in trouble or anything for breaking down in tunnels in the US ?

if you are blocking a lot of traffic.

I fortunately didn't have to find out. But I'd imagine it's a ticket or something.

> I read somewhere that banging on it fixed it lol. > It does often work in the short term. You're knocking buildup off the brushes. So if it does work, you know that alternator is walking dead.

I drive thru that tunnel, @U050PJ2EU. I am mad at you on principle. 🚗 🚗 🚗 🚗 🚗 🚗 🚗 🚗 🚗 🚗 🚗 🚗 🚗 🚗 🚗 🚗 🚗

I know I'm so sorry 😂

I've never heard of anyone getting ticketed for emergencies. I expect there are probably laws on the books that could be enforced if you refuse to fix your car and the same cop keeps finding you blocking traffic every day because of it.

Does an alternator need oxygen or something? I never understood why the tunnel somehow made it more prone to happening

Like, it wasn't constantly breaking down outside the tunnel (though did a few times)

now that cars have computers in them, our cars can be as difficult to understand as our computers, how fun

Well the tunnel would have denser air, so a tiny smidge of increased friction in the motor. Then the air in that particular tunnel is probably also warmer from all the cars, reducing heat dissipation; and densely packed with exhaust particles, further increasing friction and adding new buildup to the brushes that can't be shaken loose right away because of the dense air and slow driving speed. Combustion does require oxygen. So it's likely your engine was performing at slightly reduced efficiency too. That would make the alternator run slower and/or more erratically, potentially exacerbating the problem. Think about using a grinder against a piece of metal: if you push really hard, the wheel will start to slow down. Then if you keep pushing harder still, it will just give up and stop spinning altogether. The same is happening with your alternator. It has to push the brushes through the junk built up inside its casing, the same as a grinder would against whatever you are grinding. Speculating quite a lot: I would guess your alternator was continually running near at the edge of its limits, due to build up over time. Then the smoggy air added just enough extra build up to have it hovering on the very threshold of failure. Finally, the sudden fresh air when exiting the tunnel caused a surge in engine power, leading to a downstream burst in power to the alternator, carrying it over the finish line to failure.

People always leave error handling off as an afterthought...

Yeah. Cars now suffer from all the same frustrating business decisions as any other enterprise software.

I haven't owned a car since 1996 and these experiences suggests it was a wise decision. The whole back axle detached from the last car I owned, at the entrance to a supermarket car park. The previous car I owned never started properly in the mornings and stalled at every junction. Eventually found a hairline fracture on the distributor cap. Two weeks after I replaced the cap, a Volvo going 45mph pushed another car into my path and my car suddenly became a lot shorter... not surprisingly the car was a total write off. The Volvo landed on its side a way down the road, but the 5 people inside were all still alive (quite a bit shaken though). Sorry to hear about everyone's car problems.

my current side project was born out of me trying and completely failing to get my used car fixed completely.

Please do not take up flying, @U05254DQM. 🙀

as a text-editor anarchist I'm curious about it because what's one more editor you know?

I am curious about pulsar. I enjoyed protorepl and proton plugins with atom editor. I tried Pulsar (Linux) and it ran okay, although the Clojure support only seemed to be for Leiningen projects. I'd be happy to test pulsar occasionally, especially the Clojure experience

Just created the #C054YJBPBJ6 channel 🙂

Link to annoying bug : https://github.com/watchexec/watchexec/issues/377

Perhaps a bb script + https://github.com/babashka/pod-babashka-fswatcher ?

FWIW I usually don't run tests on file system changes but just trigger them manually, I feel like I'm more in control ;)

I'm the opposite. I love the sound of tests succeeding in the background as I'm changing the file (yes I'm playing a sound)

https://github.com/eradman/entr is a good option

I use LambdaIsland/kaocha in watch mode which works very well even when I give it dodgy tests to run It used https://github.com/nextjournal/beholder for the file watcher

There was also something that metabase published recently: https://github.com/metabase/hawk

Are you looking to run only Clojure tests or are you looking for a more general tool for any such task? For Clojure tests only I don't have a particular favorite. I'm using entr as a general tool. Read about it on https://jvns.ca/blog/2020/06/28/entr/. I'm wrapping the entr tool like this (I'm sure one could simplify it though):

$ cat ~/bin/eec

#!/bin/bash

trap 'trap - SIGTERM && kill -- -$$;' SIGINT SIGTERM EXIT

tmpfile=$(mktemp /tmp/entr-script.XXXXXX)

echo "#!/bin/bash" >> $tmpfile
echo "$@" >> $tmpfile
echo "echo 'Done'" >> $tmpfile
chmod +x $tmpfile

while true
do
{ git ls-files; git ls-files . --exclude-standard --others; } | entr -cd $tmpfile
done

I'm looking for a general purpose tool, also for python, js etc

if you want general, entr is pretty usable. I think you're missing out by not using a Clojure specific one when working in Clojure though as it can save you from needing to start up the test process which can really save you a ton of time. A tool like https://github.com/jakemcc/test-refresh (targeted at clojure.test, works with lein or deps.edn projects) and https://github.com/clojure-expectations/lein-autoexpect (targeted at non-clojure.test compatible expectations and leiningen only) can really speed up the feedback cycles

All good replies - thanks! Tradeoffs everywhere • bb's fs watcher is a good pointer; but I don't feel like writing my own file watcher tool • entr is great but doesn't seem to deal well with new files (which requires specifying glob patterns to avoid triggering on swap files etc) • https://github.com/cespare/reflex looks great but hasn't seen a commit in 2 years So I ended up working around the buggyness in watchexec