My town has a thriving downtown - also has services like Car2Go. That's how I know they can at times be scarce or distant. We also have a city bike rental program that works pretty well.

Since there are no links with real info I have to assume the Helsinki plan is like ZipCar/Car2Go, where you just can collect a car somewhere and use it for some period of time to go wherever - but instead of just the one kind of car, it would include bikes and larger trucks too. I just figure if you do go for that and lean on such a program instead of leasing or owning a car, the vehicles (like all rental cars) may not be treated well.

Being in Helsinki though, it's not as likely as if you tried such a thing in NYC. Even where I live the rental bikes take quite a beating and some of them show it (not hard to find at least one flat tire in a rack of bikes).

To me the plan sounds like you end up with every car you use giving you the reliability of a rental, with the "oops no cars are available now" factor of services like ZipCar...

But perhaps in a more isolated culture where people do not abuse things they do not own, the cars will be treated well and availability will work out well.

"The guy dropped it on the ground by accident, we didn't break it."

Thus, the cloud advice. By the time they got to the phone, audio and video is on the way up.

Provide free farming automation equipment to all farmers within 200 miles of any border.

It seems like that would cut down so heavily on demand for labor, that not many people would find it worth trying to cross.

That is a good point, I had seen that video in the past and it was really the root of my idea... thanks for finding the link.

Increase the speed limits? Then there will be idiots driving even faster.

No, studies have shown that people drive at a speed that feels reasonable, regardless of limit.

Raising a speed limit often means just making legal what everyone is already doing.

There will always be crazy people going faster but they were already ignoring the speed limit entirely to begin with.

Many drivers already drive too fast for the road condition, traffic situation and the limitations of both their car and their driving abilities.

What studies show that?

Instead raising the speed limit in various states has lowered accident rates.

oh wait, are you HONEST? got it, then!

I thought about that also but if if each row had a second car behind them it would be easy enough to keep up the rolling blockade even if one or two cars got pulled over.

Also in some places the "can't drive slow in the left lane" applies only to roads with a speed limit of 65 or higher, which is higher than many in-city highway limits.

If I were a terrorist group and wanted to cripple any city in America, I would get a group of 20 people together and simply go back and forth on all the major roads, driving the speed-limit abreast with one another in all lanes.

After a few days of that the city would do whatever you demanded.

That is, if you all survived the road rage.

as a long time Farker*, what will constitute sexism will be the sniff test.

It's basically "if you aren't in the clique and know the moderators, your post will be scrutinized for context. If you're in the clique, you'll get a pass unless you are actively harassing someone in a thread."

So the enforcement will be like all enforcement; subjective and prone to favoritism, But, to be fair, this is their club so they can make the rules.

*-I'm getting a kick out of all these replies!

If you ask an Icelandic person to pronounce it I'll bet you find a few surprises.

I guess if they have money to burn and real estate to waste

Domes are cheaper to build and use less material than a traditional building since you need no load bearing walls (although the design they had was not a full dome).

You are simply handwaving away the significant energy savings this design brings to the table.

I've lived in a dome before, the round walls do not waste THAT much space. And you need room to move around equipment anyway.

The article explicitly states when the temperatures REACHED (as in already happened) 100+, the water cooling units designed for that very purpose cycled on 10 minutes out of every thirty to keep incoming air within tolerance to cool the servers.

I never got the idea of sticking square boxes in a round hole. They're wasting a lot of good real estate by leaving all that extra space between the servers.

What you call "wasted space" I call "ventilation".

Also not factored in is how much space traditional HVAC equipment takes up in a normal data center.

Just the fact that this kind of building doesn't have the same power drain as HAVC facilities means you could have one in more places than a "normal" data center.

I live in a place without any humidity to speak of, I still wouldn't want to carry multiple bags of groceries four blocks in 85+ degree heat with the sun out.

But yes, by far the worst aspect of the exact situation is humidity.

I wouldn't think anyone would state categorically that 85 degrees was not hot without at least a caveat about humidity though... I still think he just has no idea what that is like.