I remember people saying the exact same thing about computers in general.

Exactly. It's like taking a look at ENIAC and thinking 'welp, this technology will never be commercially successful, and I can't really think of a use for it.'

On the other hand, PDAs went from 'useless toy' to 'corporate status symbol' to 'literally redefining how society works' in less than twenty five years.

People live their lives through their phone. There's a qualitative difference.

Like why your car requires a seatbelt and airbags, but your snowmobile doesn't.

China is NOT a free nation. When Xi says to do something, all of the businesses and many of the citizens do EXACTLY what he says ( amazing what a bullet to the head of citizens will do for an authoritarian ).
This is why western companies are being destroyed by CHina and when the west fights back, then China simply denies them sales in their nation, while at the same time, dumping on foreign markets to destroy their sales there.

And yet, idiots will continue to say the same thing as the paid chinese astroturfers/trolls say. Sad.

Seriously, this should have a focus on plastics that are NOT easily or even today, recyclable. Things like HPDE is fine. Why? Recyclable. And then we have ABS which is not recyclable, but is ideal for such long-lived things as sewage lines.

This really comes down to use and how recyclable something is.
Even now, I am disgusted that in Seattle, they are saying to NOT recycle aluminum foil that has grease/food on it. Well, that can only mean that the approach for recycling is a horribly cheap one, which likely means that it is going offshore, likely to China. Instead, we should require that ALL trash, recyclables remain within our nation and that we must deal with it correctly.

The same people paying for the gas/diesel transportation, storage, and distribution stations?

Do you think pioneers just find giant underground fuel tanks and wild-grown gas pumps naturally sprouting along highways?

It's true. The last time I upgraded ram in a laptop was a Toshiba Satellite Pro back in like 1999.

Otherwise, we just, you know, spec the initial laptop purchase properly.

It's true. I bought a Series X to play Starfield (stupid me) and now, for me, it's a way to replay 360 games with no load times.

Fuck, the XBOX 360 and PS3 were experimenting with segments.

then CHina would have done it. BOTH of these nations are pushing nuclear weapons into space (though it is far more likely that BOTH have them up there already). How about AmiMoJo? Does your nation have nukes up there?

yeah. No.
While all Allie members picked up scientists from Germany and Japan, American missiles had little in common with 'NAZI' missiles. Why? Because theirs were designed more like cruise missiles.
And in the end, there is a HUGE difference between grabbing unemployed scientists, vs stealing their tech OR having tech that is 100% from the military like CHina is. But you know that. After all, I suspect that China IS your home nation.

Good to see that China is contributing to global knowledge. Sadly, it comes from its military, but still good.

Yeah, I never had a problem with IRQ/DMA fuckery having a pretty loaded up (for the time) machine; Awe32 with Waveblaster daughterboard, ATI Rage 64 card, etc etc.

The main challenges back then were dealing with your low memory; figuring out the exact right order to load mscdex, memory manager, mouse driver and every thing else to squeeze out every bit of conventional memory, and using loadhigh to squeeze what you could into UMA, because that 1 kb difference could mean Wing Commander 2 didn't play the speech packs.

We have others that are considered high-speed rail, so this is NOT America's first.
But, like many others of Biden's wasted $, this is another project that should not be approved and hopefully, Trump (or next president since it will not be biden) will pull the $ from this. Why? Because this is by far the single best route to put in the world's first hyperloop. It is not just ppl that move from LA to LV. There is a ton of cargo that gets sent. Hyperloop needs to be done with cargo FIRST, and ran for 2-4 years before accepting it for manned travel. And having Cargo travel at 300-500 MPH between these, at costs cheaper than trucks, would be a big deal.

For SX to set up a base on the moon and mars, they will need 2 different types of landers: Cargo and Manned.
With manned, it is easy enough for ppl and supplies to be transferred from space-only to the lander. The question becomes, what about the cargo version?
So far, SX has shown a door on the side, but I believe that there is NO WAY that is going to work. The reason is that the cargo will be pulled out and then have to be stacked directly below the door. In addition, assuming that lunar and martian cargo systems never return to earth surface, then we need a way to move cargo from the starship leaving earth to the lander, or possibly something in-between.
With that in mind, about the only system that I can imagine would be to use the nose opening, docking nose to nose, and then having containers, moved from 1 system to the other. Finally, when landed, the nose is opened up again, and a crane on the inside is used to pull the container out and place it on the side. What is interesting is that the crane could be attached to the rocket via a track that runs on the inside so that it can rotate around the lander and drop off containers directly to the ground as opposed to being forced to stack them.

Now, as to starship:
1) trivial for it to reach orbit. It was not because they are not working on orbiting, but on all of the stuff in-between such as take-off, separation, fuel pump testing, re-entry and landing on a single spot.
2) It is highly likely that SX will launch a couple of starlinks sats on this next launch. If not, it will almost certainly be the one after that. IOW, they will start using it for Cargo. 3) Re-fueling in orbit is not a big deal. They tested this in the last launch, internally. In addition, liquid transfers have been done for a long time (water, lox, fuel for ISS and other modules). They will need to build a tanker and a fuel-depot, but tanker will likely happen this year.
4) manned rating for launches will take a number of launches. Of course, that is exactly what SX intends to do with starlink cargos. Even if landings are not working yet, they will continue to use this to put up their starlinks that can not go on F9 ( though possible on FH ). The interesting item is how to test the life support. I suspect that they will be putting up 1 or more of these as space station module. Each 1 has more volume than the entire ISS (and far more than China's space station). Just by putting up the first one as a regular starship, they can sort things out for the ECLSS as well as layout, etc. Ideally, they would build several of these with later ones have multiple docking ports. That would enable these to quickly replace the ISS, while others continue to add their units to these for testing of their modules/ECLSS.

And yes, of this could be done before 2026.
Of course, that leaves the lunar lander. I would have to guess that once SX is able to land booster and starship on earth, they will have no issues landing on either the moon/mars. The only real issue will be (re-)entry into mars. The atmosphere is thin, but it is still there.