Maybe C++ needs to be replaced, but mocking it just before its 10 years of total domination does not seem exactly prescient. I wonder what we are supposed to admire here ?

I first met Unix with version 7 in 1986. Until 1994, I worked in a company which produced an optical disk (WORM) driver and filesystem. I ported this stuff to all Unix variations of the period (HP/UX AIX SOLARIS various system Vs and more exotic ones). Arguably, the one true Unix at the end of the period was SystemV release 4 (because of its ancestry). In 1994 we started another company, and the choice was made, for price reasons, to switch to Intel PCs running either Linux or FreeBSD (we used both). I remember very well that the FreeBSD kernel was much closer to what I knew (mostly because of the heavy infusion of SUN stuff in System V release 4 I think), than Linux was. Linux was a very strange beast. So no, can't agree with you.

Maybe the high tower thng is to allow accelerating without needing reaction mass ? I don't think it would work with realistically sized towers, but it might with your 200 miles one :)

You can have the best of both world by having two prices: lower than today up to a reasonable allowance (maybe 100 gallons/person per day), then raise the price steeply. Poor people actually pay less, people with big lawns etc. pay more or stop wasting.

How can this propaganda crap be labeled insightful ????

...(battery storage) ... Instead, you chose to just pretend it doesn't exist?

Well it happens to be a fact that it does not exist at the moment (in the quantities required), while nuclear does...

This is really preposterous.

Ah ! That's except at Chernobyl because the radiation kills the microorganisms. We need more Chernobyls.

Would you mind citing a source for your figures ? Because the more usually accepted ones are around 1% infected, and 10% of these becoming severe.

Current mortality rate estimate by World Health Organisation: 3%

Current Hubei numbers for resolved cases: 45k recovered, 3k dead. Source: Johns Hopkins CSEE: https://gisanddata.maps.arcgis...

Driving with google maps open. Began talking with my wife about rentals in Italy, where we were going the following week. Did not say "ok google" or anything approaching. Maps begins helpfully popping up bed & breakfast locations around us.

I did not "try" abx testing, I did it, with multiple people, music lovers, some young enough to have perfect ears. Nobody can tell the difference. Also tiny web page? How is this relevant? Just fyi the speakers cost more than my (cheap) car.

I have performed true ABX (hardware switching both inputs of outputs) comparison of a cheap class D (70 $ SMSL) with a reasonably good class A/B amp and nobody can tell the difference.
https://www.lesbonscomptes.com...

Also, not everything is about economic efficiency.

Normal people are happier when people around them are happier. Only sociopaths like "lesser people" to suffer.

There is quite probably a place between full solidarity and full individual responsibility which maximises "global happiness" (quotes because I'd be hard-pressed to define what this is :)). This optimal point is a matter of compromise, some place between communism and wild west capitalism... There are indeed studies which indicate that the most happy societies are those with a "reasonable" degree of inequality.

I live in France, where I was lucky enough to pay a lot of taxes (because I earned a good living). I see the problems with redistribution, but I also, and mostly, see the good sides.

I have to wonder what in my message made you think that I would have done the same thing if the machine had not been in my garage? Or are you just being hostile for the fun of it ?