What, pray tell, determine's something's "inherent cost"? Does it include things like scarcity and other factors not remotely related to the manufacture and distribution of whatever it is, but which can have a significant impact on price?

EVs use no gasoline, and are heavier than their ICE equivalents. So yeah, I guess they're magical.

No one. The original suggestion was that typewriters led to poor spelling, not to illiteracy. Personally, I don't see a connection between typwriters and spelling skill, unless "typos" are considered to be spelling errors and not a reflection of poor typing skills or inadequate proofreading.

This brings new meaning to "blue screen of death."

From the linked story: Miami to Orlando in approximately three hours. From Google Maps: automobile drive time, Miami to Orlando: 3hr 44 min. Sorry; that's not "high speed" rail, that's just a train.

From the linked story> Trains will take passengers from Las Vegas to Rancho Cucamonga in just two hours and ten minutes. Also from the story: Brightline’s all-electric trains will travel 218 miles along the median of Interstate 15 at speeds of nearly 200 miles per hour. Hmm. 218 miles at 200 mph should get you there in an hour and 5 minutes. Still at 100 mph (2 hrs 10 min) that's more like high-speed rail. Of course, most people traveling from Southern California to Las Vegas will have to spend an additional hour to get from Los Angeles to Rancho Cucamonga, but this train will shave an hour off the total travel time (assuming one doesn't have to spend any time in the Rancho Cucamonga station, that is).

Then there's this: The estimated cost of the Brightline West line: $12 billion. Yeah, color me skeptical. The original estimate for California's High Speed Rail from Los Angeles to San Francisco was $10 billion. Latest estimate to completion is over $100 billion, and because it will mostly use existing track, speeds will be limited to well below what would be considered "high speed".

I had dreamed of reading TFA, but it's paywalled.

Funny. I just returned from a vacation in Ireland. Most of the pubs I visited had matches on their TVs, and never once did I hear anyone - commentators, tour guides, or pub denizens - refer to the game as anything but football. But hey - if Wikipedia says so, it must be so. At any rate, I said pretty much the rest of the world. I'd say you moved the goalposts, but football/soccer doesn't have those.

No, it's called football in Europe and pretty much everywhere else in the world except the USA, where it's called soccer to avoid confusing "football" fans, who are excitable and easily confused.

Oh, I know the meaning of the term; I just don't believe that most of the people who are opposed to social welfare programs feel that way just because they think they're going to be rich someday. A lot of poor people are too proud to accept what they consider "charity", and a lot of middle class people feel that those that find themselves under water due to poor decisions shouldn't be bailed out. Personally, I don't mind paying into a system that helps those who need it, because I've had my share of good fortune in life.

But that isn't the issue here. The 1% threshold is so low at $140k that a lot of people who say the rich don't pay their fair share are going to find themselves on the wrong side of that line.

From TFS: The income threshold for being among the global top one percent was adjusted by country using purchasing power parity -- for example in the United States the threshold would be $140,000. That's not "billionaire" income. Anyone in the US who's been working in the tech sector for more than a few years is likely to qualify.

Obviously, technology restricted to military use doesn't apply to commercial systems, and I didn't say they did. What I was trying to express is that these technologies exist, and to think that designers have given no thought to the very reasons that those technologies exist, is rather silly. Sorry if I didn't make that sufficiently clear for you.

That is a very poor assumption, and says you're unfamiliar with SAASM or m-code.

If it were only that simple. Do you know how weak GPS signals are? A ground-based transmitter with enough power can overwhelm that signal regardless of antenna type or mounting.

I supported flight test of an experimental aircraft at Edwards Airforce Base a few years back. Periodically we'd have to stand down for a day because China Lake (70 miles to the north of EAFB) was doing GPS jamming and spoofing tests.

I'm guessing that by "hard to program" you mean the interface for entering pre-flight position and waypoints was clumsy and error-prone. But a large error in the entered position would make it impossible for the system to gyrocompass accurately enough to align properly and light the "ok to takeoff" light.

KAL007 was in 1983, 13 years before GPS became fully operational. The inertial systems in use then weren't capable of being tightly damped by GPS. Modern system don't use hand-entered waypoints; they have mission computers equipped with databases containing all the routes they fly, and they get pre-flight position for GPS. And again, if that position isn't correct, the system won't align.

Highly unlikely. These inertial systems are typically able to navigate within less than half a mile per hour without GPS, and they're designed to stop using GPS updates if the GPS solution diverges too far from the free inertial solution. Acceptance testing verifies the free inertial performance of each IRS; if the manufacturer is dry-labbing that, they are in for a lot of heartache.