Maybe not to you, but I enjoy having the choice.

Here you go. Including a power supply and a case it's $53.85. Shipping via USPS Priority is another $6.75, so $60.60 total. And that's shipped from these blessed United States by a company that actually cares about the community. You're welcome.

I own both a Pi and a C1+ and you're right that it's hit and miss, but Kodi works perfectly fine. If you're trying to run software that nobody has ever compiled for the Pi, it's usually easier to compile it on the C1. Due to the Pi's unique hardware, it can be really difficult to get certain projects to run. The best example of this may be Android, which runs just fine on the C1, but on the Pi there are only experimental versions that don't have hardware acceleration and can't run most apps, let alone something like the Netflix app.

I'm really hoping that more people start using Odroid, because except for the tiny community it's actually really nice.

That is not within the current realm of possibility in terms of national politics in Iran. Even Iranian liberals are entirely in favor of Iran's ability to run a peaceful nuclear program.

Since Iran is simply not going to dismantle their nuclear program entirely, we are back to the GP's question:

And the alternative is?

I would love to hear a realistic response, which I believe is "military force". Please just be honest that this is what you really want.

1) Very few websites supported it

It's getting better, but this is still a problem. One option is to just set it up for LastPass and maybe Google. I agree that securing your online banking access would be a good idea, but very few bank websites support this.

3) Too expensive - $18 - $50 each.

If you just need a key for a desktop or laptop (no NFC), you can get a FIDO U2F key for $6. The downside is that LastPass doesn't support these yet (although they're working on it). Google already supports them.

does it also state whether they allow a backup key?

Yes, both LastPass and Google allow you to associate multiple Yubikeys with your account. So it's no problem to add your spouse's key to your account and vice versa, or to keep a backup key in the desk drawer and have that associated with multiple accounts.

How would you use it with an ipad or iphone?

Unfortunately, the iPhone 6 still isn't supported for use with the Neo, although they might add it in the future. I don't know about the iPad, but my guess is no. Any Android phone with NFC should support it already.

In terms of their estimates, the jump from $36 billion to $68 billion was unfortunate, but I see it as the difference between an unrealistic estimate and a more realistic one. The earlier estimate did not take the full cost of grade-separated tracks into account.

Another thing to keep in mind here is that this isn't simply an LAX-SFO train. It's a plan that will upgrade commuter and metro trains in both the bay area and SoCal and will connect both of these areas with cities in between and Sacramento. So you're getting a lot more than a single track out of that $68 billion.

I agree that there's a danger of money being siphoned off, but this project will proceed in phases and involves many different contractors, so that spreads the risk out some.

As for all of your ideas about streamlining airport access and waiting times, I agree with most of what you said. By the way, improved public transportation access to LAX is currently being planned, which is a good thing. But all this still isn't a replacement for the CHSR. The I-5 and CA-99 already have heavy traffic, not to mention the permanent gridlock around the I-405 and I-10 anywhere within 10 miles of LAX. Future population growth will only make these problems worse.

You make some good arguments, but then totally undermine your credibility by name-calling anyone who responds to your posts. I thought we were having a civilized discussion?

As to airports being shit, what is easier... buying land in a strip from LA to SF, hiring thousands of engineers, laying hundreds of miles of precision track, buying lots of bullet trains, running power and maintenance access to the track because bullet trains are electric, dealing with the political NIMYism crap, and then maintaining this uneconomical monstrosity in perpetuity... or fixing the airport so the TSA doesn't waste our time?

Funny you should suggest this comparison. A report suggested that building the roads and airport expansions to replace the CHSR would end up costing between $158 and $186 billion. CHSR is currently budgeted at $68 billion.

If you choose the bullet train it means you're clueless or it means you're a corrupt politicians sucking off the federal tit.

Which would never happen when it comes to road or air infrastructure, right?

And there's no reason why the innards of the airport have to be so fucked up. So, unfuck them. Any twat could do it.

Let me fix that for you: Any twat with tens of billions of dollars could do that.

1. You get a Federal security pass... I forget what they're called, but they cost about 50 bucks and require you to go to a federal building and get interviewed by some government people. And when they conclude that you're not a terrorist, they give you an ID that lets you bypass the TSA pretty much entirely. So if you hate the TSA, you get one of those.

2. Just like rush hour, you understand when the airport is really busy and when it is not. Try to time your movements around that. It isn't hard and it isn't especially inconvenient. It requires that your plane take off an hour early sometimes if you need to get out of a really busy airport before it locks up.

3. If you travel a lot with any airline, they put you on their frequent flyer program. And pretty much all of them get you preferential treatment from that airline. That means not waiting in lines, access to special luxury waiting rooms with full service bars and no screaming children, and of course when it comes time to board you tend to get on the plane before or immediately after they get the handicapped people on the plane.

These solutions either have their own caveats or they wouldn't work for millions of casual travelers.

And here is the thing I really really like about airplanes - They go EVERYWHERE. Your train is point to point. Utterly inflexible. My plane... Goes ANYwhere.

Sure they do. But then you need adequate road infrastructure to connect to the airport. The airport itself takes a huge tract of land and then you either need to decide to have it located far away from a city (to save on land costs), which requires more road infrastructure and is inconvenient, or spend vast sums to buy up expensive land closer to the center of a city. The rail line distributes these land purchases more evenly across rural and urban areas.

For fast passenger transport over long distances, nothing competes with airplanes. Nothing comes even remotely close.

Yes, but over medium-range distances trains make a lot of sense. Nobody is talking about building an HSR line from LA to NY.

Many other commenters have given good reasons why they prefer travelling by train. For me, if given a choice between a plane or a train that takes one hour longer, I would choose the train every time. The seats are huge (compared to flying economy), the restrooms are larger, the aisles are wider, bringing luggage is both easier and cheaper, I don't get groped in security, there aren't any long lines. Trains, including the CHSR, get passengers right into city centers.

Well, in many or most cases it isn't for lack of trying. In the Senate they still have to contend with Democratic filibusters and even if they can overcome that, they still need to deal with presidential vetoes. They still (unfortunately, from my perspective) have a chance of pulling that off to derail the Iran negotiations.

If they don't stop net neutrality, that will be why.

I like what Glenn Gould had to say about this. Late in his life, Bach reviewed a "Silbermann" piano, which may not have shared much in common with a modern grand piano, but was still an evolutionary step in that direction. In the end, the instrument met Bach's complete approval. Gould makes a number of other really good points.

20 comments in and no mention of hell freezing over? We've come a long way folks, we've come a long way.

I agree that the IRS should be able to do much more with the budget it has. It is far from efficient. On the other hand, we should probably be more careful with cutting spending on the IRS than most other government agencies. This is because cutting in the wrong areas will cost much more than you save. Cutting enforcement by $1 may cost $6 if Treasury Secretary Jack Lew is to be believed. I would also guess that a budget item for modernization efforts may be a similarly foolish place to look for cuts.

I lived around the corner from a major IRS processing facility in Fresno, California for many years. I can assure you that the neighborhood and the entire metropolitan area around it look nothing like these 5 counties (I've been to Fairfax County and Arlington County).

Speaking of utopian, I seriously think this is misguided. Most starve-the-beast libertarian types are not really interested in your civil discussion. The only people who would "wake up" are those who already know that the IRS needs to be funded.

What works is what makes great political soundbites and I'm sorry to say that most Americans would love the sound of "we're shutting down the IRS". The political right in the US is already completely convinced that the problem is with spending and the left usually just dithers about trying to find a compromise. Most people don't know much about the budget. Heck, most people can't even tell you what party controls the House or Senate. An informed, civilized discussion like you're proposing simply isn't possible.

I'm so tired of hearing the supermajority myth yet again. Here's the timeline:

July 8, 2009: Al Franken was sworn in as the 60th senator to caucus with the Democrats.
August 25, 2009: Ted Kennedy passes away, removing the supermajority (59 / 99 votes is less than 3 / 5)
September 25, 2009: Paul Kirk is appointed to temporarily fill Ted Kennedy's seat, returning the supermajority to the Democrats
February 4, 2010: Scott Brown is sworn in to Ted Kennedy's former seat, thus removing the supermajority for the Democrats for good

That adds up to about 6 months of a theoretical supermajority, and that includes part of a summer break and a long winter break when the Senate was not in session. A large number of Democratic Senators were also "Blue Dog" Democrats, meaning that they voted with Republicans quite a lot. But despite all of this and the Republican's use of every procedural delay and obstruction tactic in the book, this brief supermajority still managed to pass the most important health care legislation in the last 50 years.

How did this get rated +4, insightful? Transistors are not fundamentally thermoelectric devices.

Thermal issues are very important in modern semiconductors, but the switching action of a transistor is not achieved by heating them to change their conductivity. Transistors function by altering bandgaps at the junctions between different semiconductors (or differently doped regions of silicon).