Totally... the only reason why countries like Japan and Switzerland are so successful with their train systems is that they are flat countries with no challenging terrain at all.

Its interesting the parallels to how films and cinemas used to operate. Way back in the day, studios in Hollywood also owned and operated theaters, so you could only see Paramount, MGM, etc. movies at theaters owned by or affiliated with them. After the late 40s, this practice was outlawed as part of the Paramount Decrees due to its anti-competitive nature. It'll be interesting to see if something similar happens with the streaming industry at some point, although I wouldn't hold my breath since the DOJ recently terminated the Paramount Decrees for 'reasons'.

Thats great things are at average, but in order to come back from a deficit, snowfalls will need to be above average for a while. Otherwise you'll just sit in that deficit scenario and risk dropping even lower in years with poor snowfall.

If only someone would think to make a screen bigger than 3 inches... then you would probably be able to read full pages of documentation on a single screen! One of these days tech will catch up to our dreams!

I'm not talking about permafrost either. I'm talking about the boreal forests which are 'currently growing a lot of trees.' Ability to grow trees does not correspond in any way with the ability to grow crops. Due to the thin and poor quality soils, trees in those regions take a very long time to grow, and most are pretty short in height compared to those in regions with better soil. Sure, you might be able to eke out some crops here and there, but it will not likely result in anywhere near the yields you'd get in fields with better soil qualities.

Have you been to the far north? Farming isn't feasible there only because the growing seasons are short, but because the soils are generally poor. Because they've generally been frozen, the processes that have built good topsoil (long history of biomatter accumulation, decay, and processing by microorganisms) in historically good farming regions haven't occurred, so any soils present are pretty poor in nutrients. In much of the region, the soil depth on top of bedrock is also quite small, so water retention would be an issue for farming. Perhaps after hundreds of years of sustained warming will the soils in that region be suitable for any kind of large scale crop production, but for the near term, the prognosis for farming at higher latitudes is not great.

Except early on in the pandemic, there weren't good tests developed yet to determine who had COVID and who didn't. On top of that, people with COVID had a long period of contagiousness prior to onset of symptoms, so they could be unknowingly spreading the virus for several days before they had any suspicion they were sick. Hence why just locking down the sick wouldn't work in the case of COVID as it might for other diseases such as Ebola where symptoms are present prior to or concurrent with contagiousness.

I mean you could say the same thing about physics, engineering, and pretty much any STEM discipline, that they are just math. But just as physics is 'just' math applied to studying physical processes, computer science is math applied to improving the computational ability and efficiency of computers, which AI development certainly is.

Yeah, that would also be pretty relevant to make any kind of judgement about the state of the EV market.

Maybe? Although if you RTFS, sales are still up YoY. It says sales were up 48% in the first half of 2023 from a year earlier. And then in Q3 there was a slight drop, followed by a 10% drop in sales in Q4 2023. So for the year, still up 25% or more YoY? Seems like a FUD article if I've ever seen one...

This headline is pretty misleading though if you read the report (https://publicinterestnetwork.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/Plastic-Bag-Bans-Work-January-2024.pdf). The report found that plastic bag litter decreased with bans:

"Local bans on single-use plastic bags in California, which covered more than 40% of the state’s population in 2016, had a noticeable effect on litter across the state. Plastic bag litter gathered in statewide coastal cleanups declined by more than half from 2010 to 2016.

The plastic bag ban in Austin, Texas, had a remarkable impact, with 90% less plastic bag litter in the six months after it went into effect in 2013.67 Enforcement ceased in 2018 after the Texas Supreme Court struck down a similar ordinance in Laredo.

Plastic bag bans also keep plastics out of landfills. Seattle, where an ordinance went into effect in 2011, had 48% fewer plastic bags in residential waste in 2014 than in 2010."

It found almost a doubling of reusable bag use in areas with plastic bag bans.

The main finding is that in areas with loopholes in their single-use plastic bag ban laws (such as 10 cent 'reusable' plastic bags), the overall plastic waste increased by weight. So the recommendation isn't to do away with plastic bag bans, it is to make sure the bans are strong and don't include any loopholes that encourage single-use of other wasteful bag types.

When the iPhone first came out, it was definitely not reasonably affordable compared with other offerings at the time. It was twice the cost of the flagship Blackberry at the time, and over 5-6x the cost of what people typically spent on cell phones. So its pretty impressive that Apple was able to create a completely new market segment at prices previously considered unreasonable. I guess time will tell if the VisionPro can do the same thing with AR/VR as the iPhone did with smartphones.

You do realize that GPS positioning is from signals from satellites in orbit right? Why would GPS not work in South Texas? Or are you talking about digital maps on your phone not working due to lack of cell phone coverage?

I think you might be misunderstanding the hub and spoke model. Yes, what you're describing is due to laws dictating how foreign operators can fly between third-party countries, and in some cases is simply due to logistics (i.e., even if Air Oman could fry from CDG to BKK, they likely don't have the necessary support facilities in either location). But in general, CDG and BKK would generally both be considered hubs, regardless of which airline is operating the route.

However, hub and spoke is less about which airlines operate between a given route and more about what routes are available to fly directly. In the US, the hub and spoke model is used domestically by most mainline carriers, and essentially means that unless you are traveling from one hub to another, your trip from point A to point B would look like:

A -> hub -> B

In this case, regardless of which operator is chosen, it is physically impossible to fly directly between A and B because the hub and spoke model doesn't support those kind of flights.

However, prior to deregulation in the US, airlines operated on more of a point-to-point model as the Civil Aeronautics Board set routes and prices between domestic locations, ensuring service between, say Milwaukee, WI and Boise, ID.

Yes, for the operational side of forecasting, ML may be able to do the trick. However, from the scientific side, an ML model cannot answer the question that drives scientists: "Why"? Reaching a deeper understanding of the physical processes that define and drive our atmosphere will still require careful study by humans.