Posts by MachDiamond

Re: "best in the US"

"I flew into Washington DC many years back and wondered why there was no light rail /metro connection to the city. "

When was that? I went to DC in 2009 and took the light rail from the airport into town and out to College Park, MD to visit a friend. I had a friend pick me up for a trip to see the Goddard Space Flight Center where she worked and wondered why there wasn't an extension/stop there. Of all the places where there could be a good public transportation system, Washington, DC should be a very good candidate. I do see the point of the hotels not wanting to grant criminals a fast and easy way to get around. A large portion of the city of Washington, DC is a hellhole and needs a bulldozer school to hold lessons there for a month or so. The sorts that would use a rail system to broaden where they operate aren't paying the fares so there's that problem as well. The cops just make them exit the trains at the next stop when caught. They wait for the next train and continue on.

Re: "best in the US"

"Then there;s check-in times ans "security" at the airport(s) to take into account."

For me, it's a 2 hour drive to an airport with good connections. I need to arrive 2 hours in advance of the flight to park, get a shuttle to the terminal, get past security with my virginity intact and arrive at the gate for "random additional screening" before getting on the plane. I think it takes ~15 to get from the terminal complex to the runway worst case and wait there if there's a line up as is the case in the morning. On the other end, it's a mission to find where the luggage will be dispensed and then finding the carousel that it's changed to at the last minute due to technical issues. Off to the car hire counter and then wait for the shuttle to get to the car assigned with fingers crossed that it's there and correct. Now time to drive to the destination. It's all freakin' day! Unless you live near a useful airport and you are going someplace that's also close to a useful airport, flying might not be the best option. I didn't mention having to fly in the wrong direction to get the airline's hub to catch another plane that takes you to your destination airport. Direct flights these days can be rare. I've also run into the problem of traveling for work and having two bags to check yet the most convenient feeder flights use aircraft too small to allow two full size bags plus carry on. Did I mention that driving can be a really good option?

Re: "best in the US"

"it takes 2 or 3 days and the only passengers are tourists and those who refuse to travel by air (mainly Amish and similar). "

I'd see a lot of Mennonite on the trains.

500 mile journey? I'd prefer to take a train, but driving isn't that much slower than flying if you take into account all of the "not-in-the-air" carp one has to go through these days. I can get close to 500 miles on one tank of petrol if I'm careful and the wind is behind me (not THAT wind!). Mostly it's a matter of the number and frequency of "comfort" breaks and whether I want to eat in the car or not. It's about a 6 hour drive if mostly on interstate highways. 10 hours on small highways and if travel includes streets and lanes, you'd likely not find a passenger airport too close by. I really like the ability to take as much luggage/stuff as I want, not have it "searched" and change my schedule at will. I ended up scrubbing my eclipse journey based on poor weather forecasts (1,200 trip) and flying would have been a poor option anyway. It was two days of driving each way, but I built in some visits to cool places along the way rather than just trying to get a glimpse of same from 35,000' up. I also had options to spend more time on the trip if I wanted. Cancelling didn't cost me much although one campground didn't want to give me any money back even after giving notice 3 days in advance so I'm glad I used my credit card and disputes are dead simple to do online. Had I been flying, I would have been out all of the money as they DO have official policies and without a car to camp in, I would have had to book lodgings a year in advance so there would be no way to get refunds on that.

Re: "best in the US"

"How else can you explain walking 50m behind someone and *still* almost choking on their perfume/deordorant/aftershave?"

I had a girlfriend that poured it on. How do you tell a SO that you don't care for their smell and not spend nights alone? She'd smelled much better fresh out of the shower and I tried to emphasize that with compliments before she got into her morning routine.

Re: "best in the US"

"And so I carried on putting miles on the car, in which I could enjoy being on my own and listening to podcasts while I slowly crawled down the M4 with everyone else."

It would then be a good idea to leave the Land Rover at home and find some high mpg econobox to make the commute in and damn the aesthetics. Decades ago my dad did that. He needed a truck for the ranch, but his day job as a pharmacist was 60 miles each way. He ran the numbers and found that a cheap economy car saved enough in petrol, insurance and tires to pay for itself. A lesson he taught me about how to look at costs and solve problems. I think he still had that car when passed away and didn't get the chance to completely wear it out, but he did factor in some longer term thinking with an engine rebuild/swap when the odometer rolled over. As long as the rest of the car was in good nick, replacing the engine/transmission would have been a good option. Most of the miles were on the highway rather than city driving and there wasn't a lot of traffic where he lived.

Re: "best in the US"

"Outside of the Boston-Washington DC corridor, the population density for effective passenger rail just isn't there in the US."

I see it as a cart/horse problem. People don't look to rail for travel as there is very little. It also tends to 'feature' Chicago as a hub and there's a city that's not as popular as it once was. Scheduling is also a problem. For routes that do have stations in out of the way places, the only train might be planned to be there at 2am, but be hours late much of the time. I wanted to go to the Fully Charged Show in Austin, TX one year from California. To take the train, I'd have to arrive a day or two early and to be there for the whole event, I would have had to leave a day or two past. The added cost of hotel and meals made driving far less expensive. That particular train only visited California 2 (or 3) days each week and stopped service in Arizona or New Mexico the other days.

If Amtrak were given a useful budget, less than what the military can't account for annually, perhaps they could bring rail service into the 21st Century. That would mean more dedicated passenger tracks to minimize delays, cell coverage and trains that could go much faster (not HSR). Flying is an entire day almost regardless of the distance. If a train left in the AM and arrived the next morning, the effective time is nearly the same. A sleeper service is supposed to be offered between Los Angeles and San Francisco. The train will be traveling rather slow but it leaves in the evening and arrives the next morning so those that can sleep on a train like me aren't losing a work day to being strip searched and questioned about why we need to bring sunscreen with us. (I had a bottle that if full would have been too much, but there was only a bit left in the bottom. One TSA inspection didn't find an issue, yet on the return it was domestic terrorism to have a bottle that large on a plane regardless of how little was in it).

Re: Curious what the floppy replacement will be?

"I've never seen a floppy disk zapped by static for instance."

I used to have a ban of magnets in the office so data wouldn't go poof in the floppy era. My thumb drives don't have a problem with them.

Re: As usual, it's cover for taking advantage of old people

"One thing I learned from dealing with them is that paying extra for materials that are warranted for 20 or 30 years is pointless. As a home owner you need to be budgeting for 10 year replacement. "

I'm rather in a good place since I own my home outright. For a few years I didn't have insurance at all and now just have a high-deductible policy that's mainly limiting my risk due to fire or total demolition. I bought really cheap so I could pay off in a short period of time. A traditional 30 year mortgage means having to abide by the loan company's edicts for the whole of that time. I happen to need to put a new roof on, but it doesn't affect my insurance coverage one way or the other as far as I've been told. I own the lots around me so it's a fair distance to the closest neighbor. For my house to catch fire due to a neighbor's house going on fire and tossing embers onto my roof would be a stretch. I'm hoping to do a new roof later this fall and I'll be opting for a steel roof.

Re: A physical visit is a lot more reliable

"there is still a good chance that a solidly built British-style home would provide shelter for occupants."

Not all construction in Britain is equal. What I have noticed on Escape to the Country is that the homes that are centuries old are solidly built and worth updating and extending over time. They are still around because of how well they were built. Some very grand homes that are shown on Revival are actually not built all that well. The maintenance and repairs also might not have been kept up which led to things like the lime mortar getting washed out and exposing the underlying structure to wet/dry cycles and rotting away.

Re: A physical visit is a lot more reliable

"What I wonder is why you don't build more substantial houses? It's not as if your houses cost you a tenth of ours, so there appears to be little to no good reason for this."

There hasn't been a tradition of building those sorts of home in the US on much of a scale. That means that the trades needed just aren't there. For mass-produced homes being run up by a developer, every penny saved and every corner cut is more money in their pockets. The city I live in has had a bit of a building boom and when I look at how these houses are being put together, I'm sure they meet code without too much cash being handed to the inspectors, but not by much. They don't even pre-wire the homes for internet/cable. There's no more landline phone service, but adding cable/Sat TV means those companies will just staple cables to the outside of the house and drill holes through the walls to do the installs as quickly and cheaply as possible. The reason is money. Too many people suffer from the Walmart Effect and are clueless when it comes to quality. It's the price per square foot that rules rather than something that will only need some roof work after a tornado/hurricane.

Re: A physical visit is a lot more reliable

"Chasing money has also lead to the practice of paying your creditors as late as possible, while demanding immediate payment from your debtors. Once again it is the small companies and private individuals who get stung by this practice."

Practiced too freely can also bite the big companies. Lockheed Martin has a test cell that used a product my company made. They played that whole check stalling game with me on some replacement parts and the next time they called, I told them it would be COD or payment in advance. They claimed that they couldn't do either and I told them, "no parts for you, then". As it was a very unique product, I expect they had to completely redesign their test cell to perform the tests a different way since they never called again. Didn't bother me. That product never sold enough to be worth doing and also not worth redesigning to simply and be less expensive to make. I wasn't interested in putting somebody on building the replacement parts and getting paid for them 6 months later.

"Cambridge Analytica scandal"

And that was mainly data that FB normally sells being used without going through proper sales channels and paying the fees.

Re: Predatory pricing

"The author's mention of Verizon charging $5 for SMS messaging is business-as-usual for telcos where service charges have little in common with service costs."

The cost of providing voice services was highly regulated, but not the addons. As a way to improve their bottom line and, therefore, stock price, those addons were billed at all the market would accept.

Re: Land of the Free

"IMO, the FTC needs to add to their list forcing Apple and Amazon to spin off their content production arms."

If they aren't going to go after Live Nation/Ticketmaster for predatory practices to take over the live music industry, how can they go after Apple and Amazon? Apple and Amazon don't hold a monopoly although in specific niches such as audiobooks, the FTC should take a very close look. There used to be in the US limits on how many media outlets (radio, TV, newspapers) a company could control which was eroding over time and completely collapsed under FCC director Agit Pai(d). Cory Doctorow has pointed out that almost no anti-trust litigation/regulation has been done in the US for decades and the companies know it so are back to their old tricks. I'm wary of government singling out or making exceptions for particular companies when it would be more appropriate to work on laws that apply universally or enforce the laws that are already in place.

Re: USA Free Market

"Billionaires should certainly pay more in taxes than they currently do, but if we forced every U.S. billionaire to liquidate their assets and left them all penniless and begging in the streets, it would still only cover about one sixth of the national debt, or half of one year's government spending. Way too many people think taxing billionaires more would solve all of our problems, when it is spending that is the real issue."

There's a big difference between somebody having a billion dollars and somebody with a billion dollars of income. It can also depend on how you do the adding up. Elon Musk keeps getting characterized as the richest man in the world, yet he many actually be underwater given how far Tesla stock prices have dropped. Somebody that does have a billion in assets may not be all that liquid. The largest share of that wealth will be invested in numerous businesses, stock, funds and land. Their actual wealth is going to fluctuate hourly.

The thing that should scare people is government coming for assets and taxing owned things even further. Somebody owning land will be paying taxes on that land and any income it might generate. Why would it be reasonable for government to layer on another tax because that person happens to own much more land than many others? Where does the bar get set and once defined, chances are high it will keep getting lowered until it captures more and more people. It then gets into situations where a family might own a cattle ranch or a sheep farm and the assets might be a fair bit of money, but the income is a borderline loss and all it does is provide salaries. One more tax would mean the family needing to sell land, equipment and livestock to pay the taxes and anybody buying only a portion wouldn't be able to make a go of it since they wouldn't have enough scale. What happens then? Doesn't the government seize the property? What do they do with it as they have created a world where it isn't worth buying and selling it for $1 drives down the value of the surrounding property. The US government has demonstrated that it can't make a go of running a brothel.

Re: USA Free Market

"The thing to remember is that money isn't really real."

It is a means of keeping score. A country that is racking up trillions in debt at a faster and faster pace isn't playing the game very well. There are consequences.

Re: Capabilities.

" Yep, if there was no intention to reuse it, it would be able to put 1,000 metric tons into orbit.

The estimated expendable payload to LEO is 250-300t"

If you look at the propellant gauges with no payload, how the heck is it going to be able to take 250t to LEO. It can't even make orbital velocity stripped bare.

Re: Capabilities.

"Seemed like it almost got it's Starlink+ dispenser working which they'll need to complete Starlink."

It took them over 4 minutes to get the door to open, a bit. It then looked like when they commanded it to close, it fell out of the tracks to keep it aligned. There was no dispenser installed on this flight, only a door so that's a non-starter. No in-space engine relight. The Booster exploded 1/2 km up. The Starship couldn't align itself for proper reentry and melted/disintegrated going at nearly its top speed when signal was lost. From the propellant gauge readouts, it's hard to see how there's enough capability for the system to carry a payload, much less 100t to LEO.

Re: Photo ID in UK

"I have an anti elephant rock in my garden... it works 100%... I just looked out the window and there's no elephants out there at all.

Would you like one?"

They'd be welcome in the yard, but not the fridge. I haven't seen any footprints in the butter, so I think I'm ok so far.

Re: Solution seems obvious...

"Thats one way to handle it, i send the whole trash from any political party back with the aforementioned method which makes them pay double for their unwanted pestering."

I don't think that for the price paid, the post office will send certain classes of mail back or forward them either. First Class, definitely, but not spammy postcards under a bulk mailing permit.

Re: Plastic Dossier

"Meanwhile, Biden signs written decree declaring-"

The 12t gorilla in the room when it come to how gaga Sleepy Joe is comes from the White House edict that the Easter eggs have no overt religious ornamentation on them. WTF!? Somebody has lost track of what Easter is all about.

They could instead have a celebration of Soul Cake Tuesday Duck.

Re: The burden of proof

"if any party disputes an election result, it it then decided by the courts."

I have to disagree with that since it would put the outcome in the hands of a judge who may be a political appointee.

If there is a dispute, there needs to be a solid basis for the accusation and a recount of ballots performed under strict supervision. This means the ballots have to be in a form that can be counted accurately and can't be changed while being cast of afterwards. A judge could make the determination of whether a recount is advisable or not. There can be some bias in that but safeguards can be implemented so a recount or even re-vote is required when the difference falls within a recognized margin of error.

" it's simple, in practice, it gets complicated. Especially if there's an erosion in trust. ISTR in the UK, there were ballot drop boxes in public locations like libraries."

There's plenty of video in the US of CCTV showing people with arms full of ballots being shoved into drop boxes where that is not legal. They can be put in the post for free so there's no need for somebody to collect up ballots so others aren't inconvenienced.

Theres also a problem of judges doing things like ruling ballots have to be counted if they are unsigned, un-dated or signatures don't match. BTW, I'm against signing a ballot or the envelope it's in as the ballot is supposed to be secret and I find that a very good concept. When I vote in person, the ballot I get is the next one on the perforated pad. While it has a serial number, no note of it is made. I suppose they could figure something out, but they aren't making any notes on the register when they had it to me. All they do is place a line through my name.

Re: Photo ID in UK

"US property taxes have always confused me with incorporated vs unincorporated plats and different rules"

An incorporated city is one that has its own city government and is officially a "corporation" as recognized by the State. Unincorporated is governed by the county and is often the case in areas with low population densities even if an address has a city name. Property taxes are assessed by each state and can include additions at lower government levels to support things like hospitals. An area with low population density and no schools might see a discount, but I'm not sure since I've never lived in such an area. My property tax bill is very cryptic and takes a good half hour to look up all of the acronyms since nothing is hyperlinked. There are all sorts of things such as voter approved special funds to build a new school or public building. I think mine has a charge for trash services that is separate from the quarterly bill I get. It's not that much and there's F-all I can do about it so it's not worth the time to nail it down exactly. The parcel tax is something I can do something about and it's a fair chunk of my property tax. When it was first put in place, the promise was that taxes from pot growing was supposed to offset it once those businesses were up and running. Well, there's often a pong in the air of ripe cow pats when the wind is coming from these grow operations (a violation of the permits) and the city wants to extend the tax. They also want to add to the police department's fleet of "full-size" SUV's that they purchase from a dealer two states away and have outfitted by a vendor beyond that. Bonkers

Re: "those that can't take time off still have a chance to vote"

"In the U.S. they have a bunch of petty little fiefdoms that actually control the elections. Who in their right mind would let state governments control federal elections."

It's Constitutional and otherwise there'd be a Federal Department of Elections that dictated everything. If you don't like how polling places are allocated now, just imagine what would happen if it were controlled by a politically appointed groups a couple of thousand miles away.

Re: Yes, she should know

Moist, you have good points. Hillary is not a likable person. Enough people saw value in her being President or were well set against Mr Trump that she had a very good showing. Ronald Reagan, Arnold Swarzenegger and Jesse Ventura had far more personal appeal and that carried them through even if their political skills were lacking. Good old Sleepy Joe came off as a tolerable uncle, but his failings are getting worse all of the time and his Vice President can't present herself very well so she's not going to be a good candidate for the Oval Office after this next election. In the US, even the alternate parties are so far out of the main channel, they're not even on the river. I've looked at the party platforms and the candidate's statements and whackadoodle was the first word that came to mind. One would think that in a battle between Hillary and Donald or Joe and Donald that it should be easy enough for, say, the Libertarian party to put forward a strong contender in comparison. The Libertarian party is on the conservative side and I'm not quite sure of what other party could be classed as a bit left of center (as opposed to way way way left). Something has to shake up the system in the US or people that could do a good job leading the country are never going to put their hat in the ring.

Re: Solution seems obvious...

"All are blocked swiftly, of course."

If I received a standard letter in the post from a politician, I might actually read it. Glossy jumbo post cards go immediately into the trash, they don't even get inside the house. Any call/text/email is immediately deleted and blocked. I didn't give them permission to contact me in anyway although sending a proper letter, being so old fashioned, could get through. It tells me they believe that what they have to say is so important that they are willing to spend some money.

Re: Let's be done with it...

"Let's be done with it...

...and just replace many of the assholes we have with AI."

Yep, assholes can be automated. Many AI's that have been released into the wild have degenerated into insult machines and resort to making stuff up in response to enquiries.

it may shift investment from Italy to other European countries if the situation is not resolved

"yeah but you're forgetting the fact that the Starlink ground station connects to a contractually agreed list of local ISPs who provide the internety stuff to the Starlink customers in that country."

Starlink has to connect its ground station to a backbone provider not a raft of local ISP's. All Starlink provides is a wireless connection to the internet, but they aren't a backbone provider themselves and that ground station is a single point of failure if they don't also build in any redundancy.

Re: what? where?

"Only if a dozen important countries (market-wise, obviously) start the same procedure at roughly the same time would any multi-billion dollar company trot out a statement where it will apply consequences globally, but that is only to diminish the number of lawsuits it'll have to pay for to get the same result."

It only means the data will be collected, collated and sold from small island nations where a special tax has been paid to make sure such business practices are kept perfectly legal.

Re: Still misleading

"they have better things to do than lol about our pron habits"

Come on, you are talking about government. They want to know everything about your viewing preferences. At least they want to know if you are also in politics and they need some dirt to throw at you in the next round of elections. Just the basics in a file is handy if you ever do get into politics. With storage so cheap, they can confront you with a fat folder of facts if they ever need to. I am reminded of Neo being interrogated by Smith. The folder on the table was rather thin compared to what can be developed on somebody today for a measly $14.95 or less with a subscription.

Re: So after they've used the data profitably

"And it is becoming more outdated every day and thus much less valuable, they will delete it."

The data going stale at all or how fast can vary quite a lot. Some basic information is going to be good forever and previous addresses are also permanent. A current address will go stale, but buying data from various sources (dark web from hacked DB's) can ping/reset the validity of a current address. Marital status can change, but any progeny won't. Sexual preference(s), religion, politics and all sorts of stuff that might change is often more steady and still valid forever as a snapshot in time. I like reading stories that have detective stuff in them and the sort of look you can get into somebody based on some innocuous data is fairly amazing. Big Data is much like totalitarian regimes in the amount of data they like to keep on everybody. It can be worth good money if a company is willing to pay for the "Insights" package along with the full suite of details on somebody they are looking to hire or investigating for fraud.