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Car allergic to vanilla ice cream (2000)

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Re: Car allergic to vanilla ice cream (2000)

#281

Post by dotancohen »

danaris wrote: post #182
dotancohen wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Are there any good connotations of that word? A few other GM vehicles have this issue, Chevy in particular. A well known example is the market failure of calling a car Nova (No-Va) in South America.

Except that's not actually true: https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/chevrolet-nova-name-spanis...

You know, I've heard that rebuttal, but I've been told this anecdote of the car's notoriety by family members from Columbia and more recently from a friend from Argentina. So perhaps "no va" and "Nova" are pronounced differently, and perhaps the car did sell well, but the Spanish-speaking peoples most certainly did find the term "no va" in the car's name.

You should know what they say about the Mitsubishi Pajero, too!

Re: Car allergic to vanilla ice cream (2000)

#282

Post by supergeek »

LanceH wrote: post #57
kybernetikos wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could be an incline is making the fluid level low at the sensor point at that location. Does it have an unusual incline in any axis?

Absolutely flat. There is a mild bend there, but nothing compared to corners and the traffic circle. For that matter, we can get out and drive all afternoon and it said nothing until that spot.

A lot of those sensors average the reading over quite some time to avoid false positives. It's possible that the last few miles of road have just enough average slope or contain just enough curves that the sensor averages "low" right at that spot with the speed of traffic.

Re: Car allergic to vanilla ice cream (2000)

#283

Post by sjackso »

w-m wrote: post #247
WirelessGigabit wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And this bug made Apple move to a different sensor for the screen angle. And Apple being Apple they now had the excuse to serialize the sensor: https://www.ifixit.com/News/33952/apple-put-a-hinge-sensor-i...

While screens of earlier MacBooks could be turned off with a single magnet, my 2020 Intel MBP requires both the left and the right sensor (around the tab and the enter key) to trigger at the same time to consider it closed. It would be nearly impossible to trigger that accidentally. For starters, you'd need to wear two watches..

Maybe this has been fixed in recent models, but ten years ago it was easy to experience baffling laptop sleep states if you happened to set a working macbook down on top of another, similarly-sized macbook with its lid closed.

Re: Car allergic to vanilla ice cream (2000)

#284

Post by bregma »

hinkley wrote: post #9
PaulHoule wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

GM cars are notorious for (sometimes) developing strange problems that would have you think they are possessed with the devil. (Despite post-1990 GM cars being near peers to Japanese cars for reliability overall)

I learned a lot of things from my father. Unfortunately a lot of them were what not to do. Don’t buy cheap tools that you’ll have to replace three times in the lifespan of one that costs 50% more. And don’t buy GM. Mechanically they may be reliable, but 90’s GM forgot how to make paint stick to metal and had to pay to repaint a massive number of vehicles that simply pealed if parked outside for too long. How? And the…

After owning my 1988 Chevrolet Beretta for about a year, the paint came off in one big sheet one morning when I was brushing a light dusting of snow off with my wool toque.

The first call to GM revealed that it was the acid rain (acid rain in the 1980s was what global warming is today -- the cause of all evil). Exposing my car to rain voided the warranty.

The second call to GM revealed that ultraviolet light destroyed the bond between the paint and the primer. Exposing my car to sunlight voided the warranty.

I spent hours researching this issue through the trade mags and published court filings. Plenty of legal findings about implied warranties of fitness for purpose. Evidently GM had an unpublished policy that it would pay the cost of a repaint to dealers for this situation, and the dealer was expected to provide the work for free.

Of course, the greasy grin of the dealer as he quoted full price while knowing he would collect the same from GM was enough to make me drive the car with no paint for the next 10 years so everyone could see, and recommend nobody purchase any GM product ever again.

I'll say this though: that primer sure prevented rust.

Re: Car allergic to vanilla ice cream (2000)

#285

Post by istjohn »

jstarfish wrote: post #160
PaulHoule wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's funny how GM came out with the "Cavalier" to compete with Honda's "Civic". Or that matter, there was a Chevy Cobalt (e.g. a "Kobold" is a demon that causes mine accidents) or an AMC Gremlin.

There's always the business-school legend about the failure of the Nova with the Spanish market.

> The statement refers to a popular anecdote in international business and marketing about a supposed blunder made by American automaker Chevrolet with the car model, "Nova."

> According to the story, when Chevrolet tried to market the Nova in Spanish-speaking countries, the car reportedly did not sell well because in Spanish, "no va" translates to "doesn't go". This led people to joke that a car named "doesn't go" wouldn’t be a popular choice.

> However, it's important to note that this is largely a myth. In reality, the Chevrolet Nova was relatively successful in Spanish-speaking markets. "Nova" as a word is understood to mean "new star" in Spanish, and it's unlikely Spanish speakers would naturally break up the term into "no" and "va", just like English speakers wouldn't naturally break up "notable" into "no" and "table".

> But the story remains popular as a cautionary tale of the consequences of not considering linguistic and cultural differences when naming products for international markets.

Re: Car allergic to vanilla ice cream (2000)

#286

Post by Ekaros »

rsynnott wrote: post #129

> Vanilla, being the most popular flavor, was in a separate case at the front of the store for quick pickup. This feels very contrived; who organises a supermarket like that? "Where's the ice-cream?" "Which flavour? We keep them separately, to make an anecdote work." (Like, the moral of the story still works, but the specifics feel very dubious...)

Could be also that it was certain large shipment they wanted to get rid off. My local hypermarket does have freezer sometimes with icecream next to check out lanes with lot off other stock they want to get rid off.

Re: Car allergic to vanilla ice cream (2000)

#287

Post by fullspectrumdev »

donalhunt wrote: post #251
98codes wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had a similar problem, but in the opposite direction. My cable internet speeds at home were fairly good (for the US, anyway), but sometimes would absolutely bottom out. Not dead, just glacially slow. After troubleshooting everything under the sun, I came to realize that the problems would happen not when it was raining per se, but when it was heavily foggy or misting. Normal to heavy rain was fine. Called the cable…

Common issue in Ireland for DSL customers. Damaged copper cabling would leak water when it rained causing dropouts and lower speeds. Telecom engineers would call out on days when the copper had dried out and be unable to find any fault. Turns out correlating such reports with weather reports is hard. :/

I’d suspected that, but kept it to myself because it sounded a bit mad

Re: Car allergic to vanilla ice cream (2000)

#288

Post by virogenesis »

LanceH wrote: post #36

My wife's car right now is low on windshield wiper fluid. It warns us at a particular spot while we are driving. Not a particular distance from home, a specific geolocation. First thoughts were that it was the amount of time as she went to something and came back. But it does the on screen and audible warning at that location every time, no matter what was driven before that, whether it was 5 minutes, 5 miles, an hou…

Experiencing this same issue acutually these days on a 2019 VW Passat, it triggers when you accelerate or break or you are doing a turn for a longer period. It's just the fluid being moved around in the container. I think today I cleaned my windshield for a bit just to make the car keep the low signal light always on.

Re: Car allergic to vanilla ice cream (2000)

#290

Post by chrisbolt »

kulahan wrote: post #268
jjbinx007 wrote: post #49

We had a similar problem at work in the late 90s. A member of staff reported that their mouse would stop working between certain hours of the day. It had apparently been okay in the morning, stopped working over lunchtime then started again later. On some days it would work perfectly all day long, but on others it would stop working between those hours. The biggest clue was it would always work perfectly on overcast…

I love these kinds of problems. There's an old story about a bug where some people couldn't send an email further than 500 miles. Huh? https://web.mit.edu/jemorris/humor/500-miles

Yesterday's discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37576633
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