Sunnyvale. It's not uncommon here at all.

The thing is, suppose your cost of living is indeed half that of SV. Lets assume for you, the cost of living is 40k a year - you are able to save or enjoy 30k a year. Lets assume it's 80k a year in SV. That guy earning 140k a year is still saving 60k a year, and will retire to the mid west much better off.

Also, the other thing that this isn't taking into account is the rate at which you get given shares in companies. Someone working for one of the big SV tech companies, and earning $140k a year is likely to be being given more than $100k in stock a year if they're even half competent. Sure, it vests over time, but after a few years, that's literally just $100k coming in from vesting every single year.

Just for reference - SV is expensive, but not that expensive. I pay less than $3k a month for a nice 3 bed house there. It's only the idiots who want to live in the city that end up paying $4k a month for a 1 bed apartment.

Uhhh yeh, and you don't think a couple earning $250,000 can afford a tax lawyer too? Yeh right. Get off your high horse.

Yes, but also no. In general, even in areas with a high cost of living, you end up better off. No matter where you live, you typically end up spending somewhere around 30-40% of your income on housing, 20-30% on living, and 30-40% as disposable income of one form or another (savings, having fun, etc). 30-40% of a silicon valley wage is still substantially more than 30-40% of a mid-west wage, that means you gain substantially more savings by working there, and when you retire, and move to somewhere like the mid west, you are substantially better off.

Actually, in terms of rev range, F1 engines and street engines aren't too dissimilar. F1 engines can rev to 15000rpm, but they're designed not to, because the fuel flow is not allowed to increase above 10500rpm. Because of that, they're designed to run at between 8000 and 12000rpm most of the time. Modern road car small turbos tend to rev up to 8000rpm. They're a little separate, but not as much as the 15000rpm rev limit on an F1 engine makes it seem.

The thing that differs on the F1 engine is actually the compression ratio they're expected to endure, and the size and speed of the turbo charger. The turbos carry so much energy that they have to have ballistic shields installed around them in case one fails. That of course is why the engine then ends up so quiet - all the exhaust energy goes into spinning a massive turbo up to 150,000rpm.

There's only so much energy in the exhaust though, and that level has been steadily diminishing, especially with the advent of modern small turbo engines.

Just look at modern F1 cars. They're getting nearly 900 horse power out of a 1.6l turbo (plus hybrid system), and the engines are so quiet you hear tire scrub over them, even with racing slick tires.

Not really, no. Automatics generally shift less optimally than a human, and in doing so, waste fuel. The only advantage they have is that they will put up with changing gear more often, and as such, are able to have 8-10 speed gearboxes fitted rather than the traditional 4-6 speed in a manual. That allows them to keep things closer to the optimal rev range. The result - an automatic will generally get almost exactly the same milage as a manual.

Yes the insurer absolutely will think you committed fraud. Then their very first step will be to ask the police for an accident report. The police will then report that the skid marks indicate that the car must have been travelling at at least 50mph, not the 20mph indicated by the dongle.

Believe me, when that is put in front of a judge, your "putting you at risk" charge is going to be thrown out, and their fraud charge is going to hit you square between the eyes.

Where by "reasonable timeframe" you mean "once every 2 and a half millennia", plus, getting into a retrograde orbit around the sun increases the fuel bill, and the issue with point 1) even more.

1) It's very difficult to get there - Voyager 1 and 2 are the only probes ever to get that far from the sun and still be functional, and they took decades to get there
2) If you hang around in the orbit of the planet, then you'll have the same orbital period as it. Effectively, you'd stay stationary relative to the planet, and as a result never spot it unless you got lucky and landed exactly where the planet was.

They were not backups. If they're plugged in, they're merely redundancy.

And also, why redundancy is not backup. If your backup is plugged in and/or mounted, it's not a backup any more.

Which is why the rest of my comment covers figuring out the total system efficiency.

sorry, this was a typo, the word "cold" should be substituted for "golf", and I should turn off autocorrect. 34% is roughly the best efficiency you'll get from the golf's engine, once warmed up, at its optimal rev range. In reality, the average case will be substantially lower than this. The current best engines out there in terms of efficiency only manage about 38% thermal efficiency, and even then, again, only at their optimal rev range.

Actually, no, I'm not over estimating mechanical transmission losses. There are several studies into this. Mechanically propelled cars really are only roughly 15% efficient at the wheel. That said, you're right, I did miss out transmission efficiency. The electric grid is about 94% efficient in the US. Meanwhile, carrying a gallon of diesel to petrol stations in a tanker, burns on average 0.2 gallons of diesel, so roughly 84% efficient. That makes the total system efficiency of diesel 12.5%, and for electricity 45%. That actually makes the story worse for diesel, not better.

1) Now who's got "obvious bias"? "If you ignore half the equation, then this looks better"
2) It doesn't even look better - as outlined above, it actually looks worse for fuel if you include transmission efficiency.

Nope, not cherry picking, just sucking at slapping autocorrect. Replace "cold" with "golf" and you'll get the right sentence.