Fossil looks promising : http://www.fossil-scm.org/home...

Yes, but the noise is likely to be horrible?

You can buy an holographic Kylo Ren (or other Star Wars stuff) today if you have the money to spare : https://youtu.be/TsyzTUa-3VE

Yes, but all of these are less problematic compared to the case of high-speed rail.

Could also be overground, a few meters in the air...

Hyperloop doesn't compete so much with road (or even airplanes, who can fly over seas and mountains), but with train.

High-speed railways aren't cheap either. I'm really wondering about the respective costs and advantages here... One thing I see going for (some) Hyperloops is that they probably can be placed high above ground for cheaper than conventional trains - saving on the footprint and especially the need to build tunnels/overpasses needed to accommodate high-speed rail.

Why? We've been building gas pipelines for more than a century...

Wow, I never thought about it that way !
That was the most important shortcoming I perceived, and I've never realized that we pretty much already had the technology !
(Hopefully the higher stresses due to moving wagons will be low compared to the additional 59-79 bars of pressure the gas pipelines are used to.)
P.S.: A *perfect* vacuum would _still_ have a differential pressure of about 1 bar...

Elon Musk Says He's Not God

Have we gone full Onion?

Bitcoin Releases Version 0.3
Posted by kdawson on Sunday July 11, 2010 @09:09PM from the nobody-to-prosecute dept.
Teppy writes
"How's this for a disruptive technology? Bitcoin is a peer-to-peer, network-based digital currency with no central bank, and no transaction fees. Using a proof-of-work concept, nodes burn CPU cycles searching for bundles of coins, broadcasting their findings to the network. Analysis of energy usage indicates that the market value of Bitcoins is already above the value of the energy needed to generate them, indicating healthy demand. The community is hopeful the currency will remain outside the reach of any government."
Here are the FAQ, a paper describing Bitcoin in more technical detail (PDF), and the Wikipedia article. Note: a commercial service called BitCoin Ltd., in pre-alpha at bitcoin.com, bears no relation to the open source digital currency.

WikiLeaks, Money, and Ron Paul
Posted by Soulskill on Sunday December 12, 2010 @01:16PM from the headlines-that-will-make-some-people-mad dept.
Another day, another dozen WikiLeaks stories, several of which revolve around money. PayPal has given in to pressure to release WikiLeaks funds, though they still won't do further transactions. Mobile payment firm Xipwire is attempting to take PayPal's place. "We do think people should be able to make their own decisions as to who they donate to." PCWorld wonders if the WikiLeaks' money woes could lead to great adoption of Bitcoin, the peer-to-peer currency system we've discussed in the past. Meanwhile, Representative Ron Paul spoke in defense of WikiLeaks on the House floor Thursday, asking a number of questions, including, "Could it be that the real reason for the near universal attacks on WikiLeaks is more about secretly maintaining a seriously flawed foreign policy of empire than it is about national security?" The current uproar over WikiLeaks has prompted Paul Vixie to call for an end to the DDoS attacks and Vladimir Putin to break out a metaphor involving cows and hockey pucks.

Online-Only Currency BitCoin Reaches Dollar Parity
Posted by timothy on Thursday February 10, 2011 @06:59PM from the computationally-intensive dept.
IamTheRealMike writes
"The BitCoin peer to peer currency briefly reached exchange parity with the US dollar today after a spike in demand for the coins pushed prices slightly above 1 USD:1 BTC. BitCoin was launched in early 2009, so in only two years this open source currency has gone from having no value at all to one with not only an open market of competing exchanges, but the ability to buy real goods and services like web hosting, gadgets, organic beauty products and even alpaca socks."

Only 3-4%!? (Is that similar in other countries?)
I'm *so* happy now that I picked a Masters degree where I can either choose to work directly after getting it or still do a PhD anyway (which would be more for fun than $$$ at this point...)

You should think about the big(ger) picture. Copyright is supposed to be temporary. What is going to happen when that DRM'ed software ends up in the public domain? Are we supposed to rely on people (illegally now!) breaking DRM schemes to preserve our culture?
http://www.technologizer.com/2...
(And what is the online store's plan to preserve the different software versions?)

Also, each new DRM scheme and monopolistic store brings us closer to the end of general-purpose computing :
http://boingboing.net/2012/01/...

Personal Computing is dead.
Welcome to the era of Platform Computing.
Enjoy our App Store, and don't worry, we'll take care of everything for you!

I'm willing to bet that there will be a Metro version of Visual Studio within 5 years. Then Microsoft, with their own teams using Metro exclusively, will be able to ditch Windows for good.