That's because it's nearly impossible to predict specific future technologies with any accuracy. A century ago, no one could have even dreamed of the job I currently have. A decade ago, "mobile app developers" didn't even exist, at least not in any real quantity.

Regarding the demise of Moore's Law. I'd like to share with you a quote from a year 2000 paper entitled "The End of Moore's Law?"

Most new chips are at 22-28 nanometers now, 14nm chips are gearing up, and 10nm is in the pipeline. It's always amusing to read those types of papers with the benefit of hindsight. Even now you can find 2014 papers saying that 28nm is the last node in Moore's Law.

Most people suck at predicting the future.

Imagine what kind of a civil war it'll be over there when they're hit by a never-ending drought, then.

Are you talking about what I was talking about? I was talking about an electric motor, not a fuel-driven one.

What sort of claim is that? Since when do oxygen masks need 20kPa to function? And secondly, if there's "problematic loading on the capsules" from too much pressure on the pressure-compromised capsule, then your pressure is also way too high inside. Which means that you've repressurized the tube way too much. So the solution is: Don't do that!

Branching at full speed is probably not possible with the Hyperloop as designed; the skis are curved to match the diameter of the tube, with a ~1mm clearance with the tube surface, so there is no passive tube design that could accommodate a "switch". In order to continue from Section A to either Section B or Section C, you'd have to make an intermediate length of tube several hundred meters long that could be physically moved at one end from B to C, with sub-millimeter precision

Wait, meaning that while it's technically possible, but it'd be really tricky to accomplish? Gee, I wish I had written something like "Branching would be really tricky, but there's no physical barriers" at the top of my post ;)

The reason is threefold: drag continues to increase at higher speeds regardless of the speed of sound

Drag is reduced in the first place by using hydrogen even at a given pressure. And you can use 1/4th the pressure and still maintain lift because you're moving four times as fast. And given how few reboosts are needed from LA to SF in the base case, a few more per unit distance hardly seems limiting.

If you consider that the steel Hyperloop pipe draped across 30m-spaced pylons will approximate a vertical sine wave, then at 700mph the allowable sag is only about 5cm

Irrelevant because earthquakes impose far more deflection that you have to be able to counter (and that the proposal calls for countering) than a craft moving past.

Mechanical braking from 1500mph in the event of an emergency is also a non-starter

What, you're picturing drum brakes or something? You're moving at high speeds in a giant steel tube. Magnetic braking couldn't possibly be easier.

a 700mph capsule will incur about 2g's of aerobraking deceleration

Where are you getting this from? Even if the tube was instantly full pressure (which it wouldn't be), a streamlined shape will not experience 2Gs at 700mph, any more than a passenger jet losing full engine power does. And anyway, 10g horizontal is not fatal even if that was the case. The average untrained individual, properly restrained, can tolerate 10g for a minute without even loss of cognitive function.

Not only that, but if your craft is travelling four times as fast, you're sweeping through four times as much gas per unit time to compress under the skis.

Hydrogen has all sorts of advantages. And the very low pressures prevent most of the negatives. The only one that I don't know about and would require testing would be what sort of reaction would one see as a craft moves past, with any residual oxygen. If I had to guess, I'd guess that you will get some combustion, but the craft moves past so fast and the mixture will decompress so fast, I would think the rate would be quite limited.

First off, if servicing that requires full de/repressurization is some sort of frequent event, then the whole concept is doomed for reasons entirely unrelated to anything in this discussion. Secondly, 1/5 ton of hydrogen at industrial rates is about $200. Whoop-di-doodle-doo. And the advantage is being able to travel at mach freaking 4, not about the reduction of drag at a given speed (which is, FYI, true also).

As someone else already mentioned, it uses low pressure air because the "trains" are ground-effect aircraft, not maglev. They need air.

Secondly, the pumping budget to overcome leaks is so small, both in terms of capital and ongoing costs, that you could increase them by an order of magnitude and not have any sort of practical effect on the budget. Whatever factor you increase over the baseline increases the factor you can replace air by. You don't need 100%.

You think keeping hundreds of miles of tubing is really going to be cheap? Go look at a highway budget sometime.

Because Hyperloop is a highway? The closest analogy is a pipeline. Except that the environmental hurdles for building an oil pipeline raise the cost dramatically. Yet Musk's budget in Hyperloop Alpha is well higher than that of an equivalent diameter per mile.

Then consider ... Then consider ... Then consider ... Then consider...

And when you're done with that, then consider that every last thing you mention here was analyzed in detail in the Hyperloop Alpha proposal, which you apparently never read.

I don't think it does but for the definition to work it will have to have some sort of sensible criteria to separate them from asteroids

It does - gravity high enough to deform it into a sphere.

And if Jupiter was large enough to be a brown dwarf? Yes, of course.

Prediction: They'll remake these games for the current gen consoles, and when they do, they'll make several mistakes.

1) They'll release new instruments that aren't compatible with the old.
2) All the DLC songs people paid for won't be transferable to the new game.
3) The game will essentially be exactly the same, just with shinier graphics and a few new features no one cares about.

Results: All the old fans are angry, and sales will be lukewarm compared to previous generation sales. Executives will blame the declining market on the poor reception rather than their own greed.

How about educating them on the real history and telling them about your personal disagreement with the new planetary designations?

Personally, as I remember reading about how Pluto was non-spherical and had an overlapping orbit, and thought that it was rather odd for a planet. When I learned about other similar objects that were *not* considered planets, it also seemed fairly odd to me. I never gave it *much* thought of course, and just figured Pluto was to remain a "planet" purely for historical reasons.

When Pluto was reclassified, I was surprised, not because I disagreed with the reclassification, but because I thought the historical precedent and simple "nostalgia factor" would be too difficult to overcome. That it wasn't is actually encouraging to me, in terms of that scientific body, because it demonstrated a willingness to challenge their own assumptions and biases, and to move beyond them when evidenced suggested that they should do so.

I'm in a many-years-long battle with my PS3, which may be the best example of my irrational stubbornness that I can think of. Every time I play a Blu-ray disk, it asks me if I want to give it internet access. Every. Damn. Time. Why even make a setting called "BD Internet Connection: Allow/Confirm"? Seriously, I can't just set it to "no"?

For years now, each time that question comes up, I select "no" and think to myself "Screw you, Sony!" There's no way to rationally explain it, but hell will freeze over before I select "yes".

Now I just have another reason to keep selecting "no". Faith in my cause renewed, the battle continues...

Ceres is also a dwarf planet. An increasingly interesting one at that. Really I find it pretty amazing that space exploration has practically ignored such a large, nearby body with tons of launch windows up to this point.