It won't work without active enforcement. Imagine if you get to your reserved space and my car is in it. This is already a problem in some apartment and condo complexes. This can be addressed for self-driving cars by simply programming the car to not park in a reserved space that is already reserved, but I don't see any way to easily stop human drivers from doing this.

Having a self-driving car that goes off to a remote parking lot when not in use will work in places were it is hard to find parking, but I don't see how this will be very popular if there are empty parking spaces nearby. These spaces would need to be reserved for meat-drivers because they don't have the option of sending their vehicles off to self-park.

If you say so...

>> It is the nimbys who bring these projects to a grinding halt.

> Nope. Maglevs and HSTs are stopped in America when they crash into economic reality.

Wrong. The problem is not the economics, it is the decades-long process of dealing with hundreds (or even thousands) of local governments, most of which are being pressured by nimbys to oppose anything that might affect their property values. If the problem was simply economic then high-speed trains and other large public transit projects would be failing in other parts of the world too, but for the most part they are not.

It's not right-wing extremists who are holding up maglev and other modern transportation technologies in the US. It is the nimbys who bring these projects to a grinding halt.

You mean like all the crepe paper and cardboard plates that tend to congregate at birthday parties along with balloons?

No one should be surprised that Amazon is being vindictive.

Of course, in this case the hours worked are not enough that the employees qualify for most benefits, so this argument falls apart.

How is this any less realistic than a transporter, or a universal translator? And, Space 1999 did hint that there was an in-universe explanation for why the Moon was behaving so un-Moon-like. The usual rule with sci-fi is that you are allowed to have one magic device to make the story work. In Space 1999 this was the Moon being moved from star to star. In Star Wars and Star Trek it is magic faster-than-light spaceship engines. In Frankenstein it was the ability to create life out of lightning and used human organs. Space 1999 had many flaws, particularly in the 2nd season, but if you accept the premise that the Moon is being shuffled around the galaxy as part of a higher purpose and the first season has some of the 1970s' better sci-fi tv stories
.

Disagree. If you accept the initial premise (which is no more silly than hyperspace, transporters, or going from warp 8 to warp 0 in 5 seconds with only a slight loss of balance amongst the bridge crew) then the first season had very good stories. Some of the episodes, Dragon's Domain and Earthbound for example, were well-written smart sci-fi stories. Season 2, on the other hand... the less said of that the better.

Ever tried it? There is a reason that Mr Babbage tried to build an analytic engine. Old artillery tables tended to be riddled with errors. Universities and research labs used to have hundreds of people devoting their lives to "computing" with pencil and paper. A book of statistical tables or logs used to take years to prepare. I don't know about you, but if I am trying to rebuild civilization I want to be able to do it before my children die of old age.

The problem is that this has been tried and it does not work. Increasing speed limits tends to lead to people driving even fast.

Yes and no. The survivors will initially have more to worry about than computing a sinc value of finding a F value, but if they want to rebuild to a technological civilization these tables will be amongst the most valuable artefacts on the planet. The ability to do complex calculations will cut decades off the recovery time for getting out technology back.

Don't forget to add the cost of the shuttle servicing missions to Hubble's total cost. And don't forget about the primary mirror being the wrong shape. Hubble is one of humanity's greatest accomplishments, but it has not been cheap.

A lot of scientific programming has migrated to Python (etc.), but not the software that requires speed. Python is an interpreted language while Fortran is compiled, so Python simply is not fast enough for some projects. Climate modeling, weather forecasts, most fluid dynamics code, and so on, need to be compiled to get enough speed. Usually this mean Fortran of C++. Python (etc.) is great for some forms of data analysis and smaller projects, but it has not replaced the heavy-lifting languages in the sciences, and is not likely to for a long time.