This is a good thing. This is the way it is supposed to work. This is how things get better. A little late, but it good to see this happening.
No. I think it's time to throw X out. We'll make a new implementation, complete with everything I use (we'll plan to add stuff you want later), with all new code, because new code never has any security holes!
Bus riders navigate - they just navigate a different map. One where connections are made by bus routes, and not through city streets.
Did they try asking the non-bus riders how long a trip by bus would take between two points? I wouldn't be surprised if they made ignorant mistakes, like basing their assumptions off of physical distance instead of where the bus lines are.
How is this regenerative?
If it swaps out with the back wheel on a traditional bike, it looks like it relies on the traditional rim brakes to stop. Unless it relies on triggering a regenerative brake from a smartphone, which sounds utterly impractical.
You could probably create one of these electric drive wheels that swaps out with a coaster brake wheel (the one where you back-pedal to stop), but that seems like it wouldn't stop the bike as fast as a coaster brake.
What about humans who also lack responsibilities - the severely disabled (either temporary or permanently), or the very young?
Wouldn't they also lack rights then? It's not like a newborn has any responsibilities. Nor do coma patients.
How about a law that says movie stars can only make 100 times what the lowest wage guy on the movie set makes? Perhaps recording artists should only make some multiple of what some guy in the studio does? Maybe authors can only make some multiple of what the editors at their publishing houses make?
Does anyone really believe laws like that that would lead to net improvements in those areas, or for society in general?
Here's what I worry about: the future. Income is tied to education success in so many ways - better prenatal healthcare, better access to schools, more stable homes, etc.
A large gap between the rich and the poor means we're taking a random segment of the future generation and not allowing them to grow to their full potential.
That's troubling as a future.
As for recording artists or movie stars, royalties are different from wages. Still, I wonder - would we be better or worse off if those were just another job? Does society benefit from having multi-million dollar movie stars? Or if we fill those roles with still-talented but unknown actors, would the result be almost the same?
The tow ball size indicates the weight limit of the hitch.
Although there's so many options nowadays that the original purpose is probably invalidated.
Or, more solar and wind plugged into decentralised local grids. See: Germany and Denmark who are doing just that without the benefit of Texas Sun.
Lets check on Germany and run the numbers.
Germany peaked at 23.9 GW. At the peak, it was providing for 40% of Germany's electrical usage. Impressive.
But that's the peak. How about overall?
Wolfram Alpha gives 549.1 billion kwh/year for German's total electricity consumption. It also gives 19.1 billion kwh a year from solar, tide or waves and 46 billion kwh a year from wind.
Now we're mixing data from different years (so this is a rough estimate), but I'm seeing a total of 65.1 billion kwh/year from solar + wind, with a usage of 549.1 billion kwh/year. So about 12%. Compare this to to the 94.1 billion kwh/year from nuclear.
Now this neglects another problem - the variability of solar and wind. If solar and wind make up a small fraction of the grid, or it's possible to sell to neighboring countries, it's pretty easy to sell excess energy when it's windy/sunny, and use other power plants when it's not. I'm not sure what overcapacity the US would need if it primarily resorted to wind & solar power.
Not to mention the false dichotomy. We can build solar, we can build wind, we can build nuclear - but we can also build coal power plants, natural gas power plants, and oil power plants.
There's nothing preventing us from building both nuclear and renewable energy power plants in order to reduce the reliance on fossil fuel power plants. If you believe that anthropological global warming is a real problem, I'd suggest that reducing CO2 emissions through a combination of solar, wind & nuclear would be quicker than reducing CO2 emissions by just wind & solar, or by just nuclear.
The cheapness of the energy is IMO the largest part of the problem. We have way too many devices slowly sipping the power, while an average house still leaks way too much of the (heat) energy. We are overconsuming way too many goods (which cost energy to produce) and then go through even more energy wasting to compensate the overconsumption.
While I am frustrated at the inefficiencies found in a modern house or office, I see cheap energy being both part of the problem and part of the solution.
You've given an example of how it is part of the problem.
Here's how it's part of the solution: Some sustainable methods require far more energy than non-sustainable methods. One simple example would be sewage. What takes far more energy?: Simply dumping the sewage directly into a lake, or processing the sewage until the result is pure enough to drink?
If you're worried about how much energy is being used, I'd suggest the following to advocate for incentives to minimize energy usage. One obvious example would be electrical bills. There's frequently a reoccuring monthly flat fee, as well as the cost per kwh. Say $10 flat fee, plus $0.10 per kwh. A household that uses a miniscule 100 kwh/mo ends up paying $20 A household that uses a massive 1000 kwh/mo ends up paying $110. Even though the later household uses ten times more energy, it pays a bill less than six times as large. The closer and closer one gets to minimizing energy usage, the less of an incentive it becomes, since the flat fees become more and more of the bill.
Another idea would be to incentivize creating devices with low standby-power usage. This could be done through mandatory reporting on the device itself (e.g. estimate 22 hours of standby use of power each day and have the item display the yearly standby electrical cost) or through a tax based on how much energy a device uses instandby mode.
But I think another step is education. There's low energy usage houses. I'd *like* a low energy house myself, something like a Passivhaus, but most USians aren't even aware of the idea.
Politician: We're commissioning a study on biodiversity. But this study strictly focuses on intelligent design, so don't include anything about evolution. After all, we should explore alternative explanations for a prevailing theory.
Biologist: We refuse to participate in your misleading, artificially limited study.
Idiot Slashdot Commenters: The biologists are an evolutionist cult! They're... they're building a cathedral! Science isn't just confirming what you know! Real scientists would do the investigation to learn more about intelligent design!
What if it went instead like this?
Politician: We're commissioning a study on biodiversity. But this study strictly focuses on intelligent design, so don't include anything about evolution. After all, we should explore alternative explanations for a prevailing theory.
Biologist: We've done the research, and have concluded that intelligent design is a poor explanation for biodiversity due to...
Idiot Slashdot Commenters: Why did we waste money studying this?
But as you admit, cyclical climate change is a real phenomenon. If we understand it better, we can also understand how much we're forcing AGW due to our emissions.
So the real conversation goes something like this:
Politician: Investigate the cyclical reasons behind climate change.
Scientist: We find that, on average, cyclical reasons can only explain 5% of the observed climate change. Here's a detailed breakdown of the data...
I've biked that area, and let me tell you something:
On Lyndale, the alternative route would be Bryant, a bike boulevard. It has marked bike lanes and is optimized for bicycle traffic, as well as being connected to both the Greenway and the Wedgetip bridge.
It's also a driver's "sneak route", and I've experienced automobile drivers being aggressive on it.
I've also ridden Lyndale. Why? Because I was going to a store on Lyndale. A lot of cyclists in that area are biking for utility, and most bike routes don't go directly to a store.
Bring on the equiality I say - time to register those bikes
I'm fine with this if there was a national system in order to register and recover stolen bicycles.
have manditory fitness checks for they safety and test/license to riders for the road?
I'm fine with this if we give automobile drivers tests as well to judge their reaction time and ability to drive. None of this "pass the eye test and renew" sloppiness. Since automobile accidents are a major cause of death, it just seems sensible to have stricter licensing.
Then there is the issue of road taxes, etc - time they started paying their share?
Since local roads tend to be paid out of property taxes, they already do pay more than their fair share. But I'd be totally up with having odometers on bikes to measure their usage, and calculate the damage they do to roads if we also make automobiles pay their fare share based on mileage and weight of the vehicle. Oh, and for parking spots (why should they get a free ride). And another fee for winter plowing (after all, cars mostly benefit from winter plowing). Oh, and for frequent pedestrian bridges and other routes for when their roads destroy walkability.
Damn those two way streets, cyclists are special and shouldnt have to do THOSE things, right?
I'm not being sarcastic. If automobiles finally start to pay their fair share, I'm for bikes paying their share as well. Because I know that the cost of driving will go up far more than the cost of biking, and that will push more people to biking, which increases safety.
Right now the average automobile in the US is getting heavily subsidized. It's to the point where Oregon (IIRC) has calculated that bicyclists are a net gain while automobile drivers are a loss. So let's talk about two-way streets, and how subsidized automobile drivers feel entitled to the roads.
Anecdotally, I can believe this.
The only time I've been hit by a car (very minor, thank God, with no injuries), is during the day, heading north (no sun in anyone's eyes) during clear weather.
I was stopped at a stop sign and the vehicle behind me rear-ended me. I'm assuming the driver was distracted and had trained herself to look for car-sized vehicles on the road.
If I look at fatalities in my area, I do recall one where the cyclist was riding against traffic. However, that's the exception rather than the rule. The other fatalities tend to be the automobile driver's fault - running a stop sign while speeding, failing to see the cyclist on the road, passing on the shoulder to get past a left-turning car, hit-and-run, failure to check the bike lane before executing a turn, etc.
I suspect that if cyclists regularly had safety cameras recording their rides, we'd find a few of the accidents where the driver claimed the cyclist just appeared out of nowhere and there's no living cyclist to disagree are actually cases of distracted automobile drivers. I also strongly suspect the phrase "the sun was in my eyes" is automobile drive code for "I was checking my cell phone".
YMMV.
Agreed with "Traffic", it's a great read.
If you're into cycling statistics, also look at "The Art of Cycling" by Robert Hurst. He has some statistics in that book. However it is first and foremost a book on bicycling techniques (mostly common sense, IMO, but otherwise good).
But it's kind of hard to figure out how safe/unsafe cycling is though.
Take where I live for example. You have five groups of cyclists on the roads and sidewalks.
Very different groups, and with, what I suspect, are very different accident profiles.
I hate to break it to you, but plenty of bald men date without any particular difficulty.
What about bald women? It's rare, but it's possible to get male pattern baldness in women.
I suspect they find dating quite difficult.
I've noticed several design suggestions in your code.
