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Comment Re:tax dollars at work (Score 2) 202

yes but, the fares won't cover the cost, we end up paying for it.

Sure, but roads are the same in that regard — we pay for them, too. But they are a lot less efficient and they lead to a lot more pollution, and arguably just as importantly they just get clogged up with more cars in short order and then we've essentially spent that money to hasten our own destruction and make more people sit in traffic longer.

Comment What a fuckup of a project from the get-go (Score 1) 202

They claim 200+ MPH. There might be maybe one stretch where they'll achieve that speed. I was discussing this last night in my geologist group. Anyone that's done driving up and down the 15 knows that there are so many turns barely sharp enough and spaced far enough apart that you aren't ever going to maintain much over 80MPH consistently, especially if you're following the Interstate 100%. If you think you're going through the Cajon Pass at 200 MPH you're fucking suicidal.

I even mapped the route after the Cajon Pass for the geology group last night. As you can see, most spots you could theoretically get to about half that speed before you'd need to slow down for one curve or another. You're certainly slowing down big at Barstow for the 15/40 split, and big around Mountain Pass/Primm. Oh let's not forget some parts of the 15 are close enough together that you're gonna have to move them to make way for the train, especially since you're gonna have to cut away mountain in many spots as that's the only thing separating the two directions of traffic (at different heights, even.) At best, the average might get close enough to 100MPH. Cars can't even safely do much more than that on the 15. There are plenty of crosses littering the sides of the roadway (not as many as the road to Ft Irwin) from high speed accidents.

Oh, did anyone bother to do the environmental impact studies of needing to move some sections of the Interstate? There's one spot where you might need to encroach into protected rattlesnake habitat. I don't think that was thought about.

Comment For the original PC? (Score 2) 38

That's a pretty decent amount of game to be able to run in 64kB.

I did have a memory expansion on the ISA bus of my IBM 5150. The additional 384kB brought it up to 448kB, which was enough to run most but not all DOS software that would run on an XT (which could be expanded to 640kB onboard.)

I probably should have piggybacked the system memory, I could have gotten it up to 512kB which really would have run almost everything. But instead I got a 286-6 with 1MB and ran Xenix on it.

Comment Re: Where is the killer app? (Score 1) 118

Not unless you want your Glasses physically tethered to a powerful computer with a substantial cable, rather than something you can freely roam around with for at least a few hours.

There's no reason it needs any more than a USB-C cable to carry power and compressed video. When I think "substantial" cable I think something like a VGA cable, where even the narrowest ones are quite a bit bigger than that (and also absolute smeg quality.) By the same token, there's no reason it needs to be driven by a computer any larger than a typical power bank, which will fit comfortably in pocket or purse. Your average decent phone has enough processing power to drive such a device, unless you have high expectations for graphics. What it doesn't have is enough battery power to last very long, but if you're eliminating the screen and making it thicker you can solve that problem easily enough.

All of the real problems relate to the hardware on your head. Making it smaller and lighter and at least equally importantly solving the focal depth problem are the real issues.

Comment Re:Bare minimum in EU (Score 1) 202

Most visitors are going to the strip, which has the monorail, or the football stadium.

The monorail was placed off the strip for the benefit of the MGM Grand and Ballyâ(TM)s. It was designed to be worthless to everyone else, bypassing other properties. Then it was extended to go to the Flamingo and near Harrahâ(TM)s and Imperial Palace. From everywhere else it's a substantial distance away. By the time you've gotten to it, you could have walked most of the way to your destination, unless you're going from one end to the other. If they had put it over the strip, it would have really been something.

Comment Re:tax dollars at work (Score 1) 202

It's tax dollars at work to support not needing to build a wider highway, not just now but also in the future. Traffic on the route from LA to LV can literally double the time it takes to get there, while in the very best case it takes about 3 hours.

This is the same argument for the stalled California HSR project. It is a good and reasonable argument. We equate the ability to travel with freedom. Making travel more possible while also reducing transportation-related pollution is a good use of tax money. Unfortunately, we should have built a new rail corridor decades ago when it would have been more legally feasible, and a lot cheaper. It wouldn't have been HSR at the time, but it would have avoided a whole lot of senseless freeway expansion that only ever provided momentary relief.

Comment Re: It's called work (Score 1) 220

Depends on whom you are asking, the correct answer to `who founded the nation of Israel?' is either `Lord, our God' or `the Jews'.

Well, no. The correct answer is never God. Even if God were real and were involved, he always works through someone else.

Palestine is a Latin name (not an Arabic name?! but why?!) invented by the Romans for their PROVINCIA IUDAEA to erase every memory of the Jewish state that they brutally subdued.

That entire region was populated for literally thousands of years before there even were Jews as we know them.

Take any printed book or a Jewish manuscript dating many hundreds of years ago, you will find that the area is called `The Land of Israel' and not by any other name.

"many hundreds of years ago" is not a date, nor is it the first history of the region.

Comment Re:But wait a minute... (Score 1) 202

Thunderf00t is a jackass, and I haven't seen the specific claims made in his video, but The Boring Company is actually a joke.

The tunnel is completely normal, nothing special about it at all. No magic low cost boring machine or special construction techniques. The Chinese dig them much, much faster for their metro systems.

The idea of using cars instead of trains is also dumb. Worse capacity, a lot more staff because Full Self Driving doesn't work even in a carefully controlled environment with one single file lane of traffic. As a novelty ride it's pretty mediocre.

Comment Re:Why not just go the whole hog... (Score 1) 106

Plausible deniability? You could claim you use it for the tasks they list, not a home defence system.

What's the legality of owning a flamethrower, and of using it on a suspected intruder? They seem to be readily available in the US, but would there be any issue with burning someone instead of shooting them?

Comment Re:As a rail fan (Score 1) 202

That's true, current UK political leadership is some of the worst we have ever seen.

But still, infrastructure projects should be able to succeed due to skilled civil servants running them. I think a major issue there is that we do so few big infrastructure projects that the civil service lacks of the skills and experience.

Comment Re:It's all by design (Score 1) 61

Maybe you missed it but I was talking about TikTok, which despite ByteDance's protests I'm sure you will agree is just a branch of the CCP.

Your claim that "foreign bashing" is the cause doesn't make sense. If it was, why have sales falling 19% after years of growth? You said it's being going on for years, i.e. the time when sales were growing.

And by the way, Chinese phones are popular in Europe. Huawei, Xiaomi, Honor... Which should tell you something about this "foreign bashing" you are projecting. How many European phones does the US buy?

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