Americans are the most prosperous human beings that have ever lived anywhere at any time
Bull fucking shit. Go take a look at Norway, for starters. Or the United Arab Emirates. Or Kuwait. You know, all those rich, Arabic-speaking, Islamic countries that have so far refused to accept any Syrian refugees? Their GDPs are significantly higher.
somehow some family just trying to get away from a partially failed state where both the government and the rebels are murderous psychopaths somehow enjoy some great privilege.
Can you maybe combine that sentiment with this one:
Why does this always have to be an either-or proposition?
A sane leftist, one not stuck in a polarized and partisan mentality, realizes that further terrorist attacks would be very corrosive to American society (and that Muslims would certainly suffer the most!) and thus be willing to discuss and explore the possibility of helping people without taking in people from an exodus that has already led to one major attack in Paris.
For that matter, a sane leftist approach to climate change would be something that doesn't involve attacking the oil industry whenever it can for whatever reason. Delaying a pipeline is not going to stop global warming; why give the climate change conspiracy nuts more to babble about? Stop virtue signaling and just get on with building the technical solutions to global warming. You can even get a few moderate Republicans to bite if you couch it in "not merely reducing our reliance on Saudi Arabia, but actually undermining their economy, along with Iran's" terms.
Don't believe me and too lazy to head on over to Youtube? Well this rallying cry is also given as an attributed quote at the very top of the Black Lives Matter "Get Involved" webpage, ostensibly in her own handwriting. You can poke around to get a list of what they say they believe... "a huge list of vague leftist stuff." The women who started BLM have kept the specifics of platform deliberately vague, to the point of delivering one of the stupidiest, most content-free TED speeches I've ever heard. But I tend to think the Assata Shakur admiration is relevant.
And if you disagree, well, just imagine for a moment that there was a far-right white nationalist who had murdered people, escaped and taken refuge in a foreign fascist country and was on the FBI's Most Wanted Terrorists list with a $2M bounty on his head. Now imagine that the all of the alt-righters were regularly chanting his words at all their meetings and there was a written attributed quote of him, maybe even written in his own goddamn handwriting, at the top of Breitbart or whatever the most popular alt-right movement/website was.
Now imagine that 90%+ of the right wingers you talked to claimed that the alt-right had nothing to do with white nationalism.
The mainstream right at least has the good sense to officially denounce people who openly idolize KKK leaders. If Trump says something stupid, the mainstream right actually (at least sometimes) says so and denounces him! But the mainstream left has no qualms about rolling out the red carpet for the BLM founders and pretending that they are a single-issue organization, despite what their own website says.
The left's biggest weakness in the coming culture wars will be its unwillingness to introspect, thinking that getting angrier and louder is the answer. But centrists and independents do notice these things that the left refuses to notice about itself and for whatever reason, more and more of them are feeling safer on the right. Three of my female family members voted Trump. They all previously voted Obama. Twice.
Unthinking, delusional "Trump must be stopped at all costs!!!" solidarity might just end up bringing the whole thing crashing down and ensure that an entire generation is lost to right wing ideologues. Please, just... wake the fuck up.
I left concerns about "culture" vague there but it broadly encompasses political correctness, particularly as it relates to feminism, Islam, and the legitimacy of anti-racist rhetoric and measures.
Underlying many of these concerns is often a terrifying new tendency for the right to champion free speech and egalitarianism in the face of far-left forces that oppose these things. These is but one facet of the alt-right; I mean, obviously there is a large "lololololol triggered cucks" contention in addition to the original racist alt-right folks. But it is the most dangerous facet of the alt-right by far. The most dangerous aspect of any dangerous political movement is always that aspect which they are more or less correct on, because from there they can not only recruit swing voters who manage to talk themselves into ignoring the other points, but they can also force an enemy who isn't thinking clearly[1] to self destruct by doubling down and centralizing the very worst parts of their platform.
On this last point, see also the Hillary Campaign's Pied Piper memo, where they unsuccessfully tried to use this very phenomenon against the Republicans by drawing attention to the most extreme and least reasonable elements in the primary. One of the problems with this attack was they underestimated the zealotry and rage of the delusional hardcore Republican base, but the other major problem was they weren't on entirely sound, non-delusional footing themselves, particularly when it came to immigration.
1. And the left definitely, definitely isn't thinking clearly right now, although to be fair the Trump blitzkrieg is unprecedented to the point of severe disorientation.
I think the short answer is the non-racist alt-right people (which at this point form the majority, I think) care more about cultural and global concerns than budgetary concerns, and they thus fit in more easily with alt-right people, who were already busy sanitizing their rhetoric so that the early non-racist (or at least less-racist) adopters of the alt-right label might have been clueless.
(No more clueless than the people who don't know about the militant left-wing agenda of the official and original BLM organization, I would argue.)
The Tea Party seemed focused on fairly conventional Republican and libertarian economic talking points about taxes, regulation and the size of the government, albeit they advocated more extreme and stubborn actions. The libertarian overtones decreased a bit and other, non-economic social issues (but still standard Republican talking points) crept in as the years went by... but people often forget that the Tea Party protested the 2008 bank bailout, something that was supported by McCain, signed by Bush and widely loathed by many leftists. At the time, I had naive hopes that they might become a general purpose, centrist libertarian movement opposed to corporate and bank abuses that was abetted by the government; alas, this was not to be.
The issues of culture and globalism that the alt-right (original or non-racist) cares about can be either much more important or much less important than the traditional Republican talking points about the size and scope of government, whether or not to bomb $SANDY_COUNTRY, and religion. They passionately care about everything from trade deals and immigration policy to the creative decisions of comic book writers.
I think the overarching principle is they were sick of the script and standard set of approved Republican Issues to Argue About. Regardless of the alt-right's intellectual or moral integrity, the Republicans simply were not talking about our economic positions in the world except to say (along with most Democrats) that free trade is good. They simply were not seriously talking much about the issues surrounding multiculturalism, aside from some occasional irrelevant whines about the national anthem being sung in Spanish or something. And these weren't really the core issues of the Tea Party, either. In the end, the Tea Party cranked up the volume but it didn't change the tune.
But the alt-right cares about culture wars and world politics. That's its entire focus. They don't give a shit about banning gay marriage. Or rather, many of their more traditional members surely do, but they treat that stuff as a secondary concern. Religion in general is downplayed compared to the conventional right, even though much of the original alt-right supporters were highly religious. I don't think this was a con; it's a genuine shift of priorities, and there have been multiple high profile white nationalists / neonazis / whatever over the past few decades that have been openly atheist.
It should also be noted that the label "alt" itself was highly attractive to former disillusioned leftists who found themselves nodding their head more and more at the criticisms of the left but couldn't stand the traditional American right. Don't underestimate the power of a label. "Black Lives Matter" had brilliant branding too, because the vast majority of people who support it seem totally obvious to the larger progressive left platform that the founders explicitly promote under that banner (let alone the fact that they openly admire a 'Most Wanted terrorist' and chant her words as one of their primary rallying cries.)
"What, BLM is about more than just police bruality?" Why yes, yes it is. And the alt-right is about more than just disrespecting political correctness and not liking illegal immigration.
This isn't a conspiracy theory. A *attributed* quote from Assata Shakur is on their homepage and if you head over to Youtube, you can hear this very line being chanted in unison at dozens of different BLM protests. The women in question are widely considered to be the founders and coordinators of BLM and have given countless interviews and speeches on the subject, including one at TED (not even TEDx, but straight TED.)
But guess what? I don't assume that the majority of people who support Black Lives Matter are pro-terrorism. It's a tiny fraction. It's a tiny fraction that happens to be running the show, but a tiny fraction nonetheless.
And the same goes with the alt-right and actual racists and actual Nazis. Trash the founders all you want, but it's going to end very, very badly if the left continues to treat the entire movement and label as a monolith.
The guy is crazy, his party is extremely anti-democratic... Even if his party becomes the largest, which is not unlikely according to current polls, he will not be in government and since most of his proposals are not supported by other parties, he will rarely get a majority of parliament behind him on anything. He may have a large following, but the majority of people in The Netherlands don't like him at all.
I know I was just dismissive of the stylistic and policy connections between him and Trump, but surely the parallels in the overall situation deserve commenting on.
When the public demands something and only a 'crazy, anti-democratic' guy steps forward to address that demand... that guy can still *win*, even if the majority of the public do not like him. If this can be true in a Presidential system, this surely must be true in a Parliamentary system as well (unless they have ditched first past the post voting, maybe.)
The Dutch, like most of Europe, are probably well to the left of America on issues like immigration and dealing with jihadis, but (also like much of Europe) their Islam-related issues are bigger than ours and this tends to more than balance it out. For example, if Aayan Hirsi Ali was elected as senator and then forced out of her home by the courts, then forced out of office and out of the country primarily because some people didn't like the fact that she had insulted Islam (in much gentler terms than Trump, of course) and didn't want to have to provide her with security against jihadi assassins, I suspect there would be sustained riots over here.
The record stuck on repeat here is one of polarization; of everyone shunning sane ground. Some may call this "centrist" ground, but I prefer "sane". Centrist implies some kind of a blend or balance of right and left, when frequently the correct solution is orthogonal to both sides' solutions.
My overarching point is getting away from me here... anyway, I knew Wilders' popularity was on the rise (and I knew he was a bit of a one-note nutter, as opposed to Trump being a virtuoso nutter) but I'd no idea it was to the point where his party was strongest but (due to their parliamentary environment) he was still opposed by the majority. What an incredibly dangerous situation. The Tories showed that even if you can successfully contain a populist right party, the placating measures you take to contain them may well lead you down... undesired roads.
"Troll" with no AC-posted comment, really? That's amazing. I don't have any sympathy for the guy; I just don't have sympathy for the guy who attacked him, either.
If the speculation is true and Reddit deleted subs in an attempt to protect the identity of a criminal from becoming known, that at the very least is a subject worth debating.
But the collateral damage is going to be so big, that it's hardly going to be a win for them.
A curious choice of phrase for someone who is opposed to any form of ideological test for prospective American citizens, even to the point of testing whether they believe the first amendment should be (in any fashion) upheld.
There's a huge, wild, un-tilled field of 'centrist' saneness just waiting for a person, or group of people, brave enough to claim it. Relying on the American people to implement some sort of numerical sanity approximation by alternating between the left's virtue signaling self-flagellation and right's aggressive self-delusion is becoming quite dangerous (not to mention inefficient.)
but it is believed to be attempts to dox the protestor who punched a white nationalist during a TV interview at Donald Trump's inauguration.
Sure, online suspect hunts are not the most reliable or smartest or safest ideas in the world, but good fucking grief... trying to find someone who appears to have committed battery on camera is "doxing" now? And is an offense worthy of sub deletion?
Or did I miss something and the police caught him, but for some reason are not releasing his information in a publicly available arrest report?
Apple Watch is the ultimate device for a healthy life, and it's the gold standard for smartwatches.
Apple could release the iBrick bullion bar (comprised of 16% gold, 84% a proprietary tungstein-lead mixture) and it would be hailed as the next gold standard for gold.
This is the 'Donald Trump' the Dutch are worried about, for those who are interested. They actually aren't terribly alike other than their tendency to not mince words about Islam, but I somehow suspect the comparison is being constantly made nonetheless.
Where the hell do you live that this is an acceptable way to write a decimal expansion of "1/2" and yet you really, really care about LA to SF? I'm writing Trump a letter to have you assholes deported before this contagion spreads.
Same amount of force, less time.
There's force and there's force. I suspect that 600 MPH could possibly create some interesting frictional forces if things go a little wrong. And for the last time, a moving force differential along a tube is not the same as continuous uniform force, but whatever. I've run out of steam on this angle. You either acknowledge the likelihood of unknown unknowns in using a product in a way it's never been used before or you don't. I'm not a welding or metal fatigue expert.
You just arbitrarily assumed that Hyperloop Alpha assumed that they're constantly operating at full capacity. Why would you do that?
You/they just arbitrarily assumed they're operating at 0.25[full capacity]. Why would you do that?
How come you have the absurd notion that the cost of seats is one of the primary costs of transportation systems?
It's conceivable that the decision for subways and elevated trains and buses to have shitty plastic seats is a baseless one, and they'd do better to encourage riders by foisting opulence on them. A lot of status quo stuff is pointless bullshit, granted.
However, I do not think this is the most likely explanation for a plan that seems to wave a magic wand and says "see, best of both worlds!" I tend to think it's a symptom of a deeper pathology.
Do you go around telling people about the jet engine in your refrigerator?
If it was designed to work in a 600 MPH headwind and could levitate thousands of pounds, I might.
The "problematic forces" are not problematic. If you're not removing the air ahead of you, then you're building up a column of air to decelerate you. You're helping yourself out.
Congratulations on the general solution for turbulence. You really must share it with the rest of us, sometime.
If you're talking about internal noise, they have far more than enough budget for soundproofing.
And the F-22 had more than enough budget for pilot oxygen, and the Navy's littoral combat boat presumably had more than enough money to not be a pile of shit, and the Beagle 2 had more than enough money for an effective lander, etc.
Yes, things can look brilliant on paper. Black swan theory is a bitch and a half, but I think the one solution we can rule out from the get-go is to say in a fiat manner that black swans don't exist, or that novel circumstances aren't more conducive to unknown unknowns.
Single column failure doesn't inherently mean pipe failure
I'm not entirely sure what happens if you detonate an Oklahoma city type bomb directly underneath a 1" thick steel pipe, but I would suspect more than pylon damage resulting in pipe sag. Holding the overpressure is just part of the battle; it also has to handle the upwards acceleration.
Hyperloop capsules are small (unlike HSR trains, or airplanes, or subways). They're not a very effective target if your goal is to kill a lot of people.
You just did it again! Yes, I concede you would achieve a better body count than your average jihadi! Almost any 6 digit slashdotter could!
Since when? No, seriously, how many terrorist attacks have been focused on "sexy new thing"?
I don't have a good comparable here other than the security concerns surrounding WTC 1, which you might correctly argue has its own special concerns for historical reasons.
But the Alpha has its own special set of concerns, namely extremely high visibility in the median. That puts it in
I know you don't bother to read design documents before talking about topics, but could you at a bare minimum read the comments of the person you're replying to?
Let me rephrase: It sounded like you were saying the lengthwise expansion would indeed occur, but that this wouldn't cause undue stress because the pipe would be allowed to move freely on these supports, thereby allowing movements to easily propagate along the length of the pipe (if not the entire length... I'm not sure how things work out at curves, for instance.) Millimeters per second actually sounded like a lot to me.
This is turning a bit pedantic and tangential, though. "It's good that it's so fast!" handwavery is not something I can *conclusively* attack without a lot of serious research and calculating. My overarching point is there aren't good precedents, and the pipe will suffer stresses of a sort that an oil pipeline never has to, with rather different failure modes.
Really, you're responding by linking to a reddit thread full of a bunch of other people who never bothered to read the document, making complaints about things that are thoroughly addressed in said design document?
That was a Reddit thread that I started some weeks ago, and I was specifically directing your attention to the pro-hyperloop guy who responded to me and saw a fair number of upvotes over the course of the discussion. Could be right, could be wrong, but it seemed relevant. It was the Ask Engineers sub, incidentally.
What exactly about the A) launch timing, B) number of people per capsule, or C) speed do you think is a throughput problem? You seem well aware of B and C. So what's the problem, launch timing? You do realize that the capsules are loaded in parallel, don't you?
It's being given as one of the major advantages of the hyperloop, as if it will automatically be used at maximum theoretical capacity. I'm not sure I follow the logic there. Out of all of the tracks I've ever seen in my life, none of them ever remotely appeared to be operating at full capacity, with one train behind another in a near-solid line, with only enough room left between them as is naturally created by the stops plus a little extra as a braking buffer. Why is this the case? Well, tracked vehicles are not perfect solutions for commuters, nor is there an infinite supply of cargo to haul given any particular point A and point B (and they also have to compete with trucks and whathaveyou.)
And I was also trying to hint that a massively parallelized terminal setup designed for a very high frequency launch schedule does not sound especially cheap. Is this an investment they're going to make from the very beginning, confident that the demand will justify it?
Wait... are you still, this far into the conversation, still under the impression that Hyperloop Alpha is maglev? I seriously hope that's not what you mean.
There's a wider discussion of hyperloops out there. Some of them are maglev.
Seriously, some random guy pointing to some stylized ultrasimplified CG is your source?
At a glance, it appears to be official Hyperloop One material. I've heard several people refer to Hyperloop One now. How big of a deal is it vs. Musk's stuff?
I'm too lazy to look into the details it myself, so I'm not claiming this as a point in my favor but, once again, if you're a hyperloop fan maybe you'd care for your own edification. If people are pushing dumb hyperloop variants and Musk's the only world-changing correct one, that's a wider discussion I'd assume you'd have at least a passing interest in, if for no other reason than their existence is detrimental to the Alpha's success.
By the way, let me refine my Musk criticism a bit: it's entirely possible he could build a hyperloop and come out on top, even if the thing isn't anywhere near profitable on the whole. Some of the foreign governmen
You see, it's like I just said: long post ignore, medium or short post mod down. So far the only person to engage in reasonable debate with me on these topics around here is Rei. I'm not whining for my own sake; I'm just saddened that the echo chamber is so solidly built.
so the thermal expansion just serves to relieve tension rather than physically increasing length.... Temperature changes don't directly result in size changes, they result in internal stress changes.
Well, it seemed like you were pretending like the stresses were magically taken care of by these multiaxis gimbaled whatevers.
If we're back to acknowledging that the pipe will experience significant changes in force, again, we're talking about pipe designed to hold liquids or gasses, not multi-thousand pound capsules screaming along at 600 MPH. Have you never heard of any engineering project ever that experienced material degradation or failure?
Anecdote time: A few years ago, I seriously looked into the possibility of building a house out of steel shipping containers. It's a very interesting idea seeing as how they're so cheap and so durable, but guess what? It turns out that when you try to save money by using mass-produced commodity good X for radically different engineering project Y, you tend to run into hiccups. The hiccups aren't impossible to overcome, but they can require significant amounts of money to overcome.
Basic carbon steel doesn't weaken from welding (like, say, T6 aluminum does), it can actually get stronger
"Strength" in metallurgy is, I suspect, not a one-dimensional value, especially if we're talking about all kinds of different and novel stresses involved here. Off the top of my head, I saw a documentary once that claimed that it was specifically the decision to use welded beams weakened the Hyatt Regency walkway.
I wouldn't attack Thunderf00t had he not had this habit of repeatedly going off on rants about thing he has no understanding whatsoever about as if he's an expert.
I reserve judgment on Thunderf00t until I've seen more of his stuff. However, "A jack of all trades, master of none... is usually better than a master of one." Many experts routinely espouse over the top bullshit. 'Gweihir', for instance, is apparently some sort of old timer security guy around here and he doesn't have the first clue about sane next-gen cryptography or authentication design. More generally speaking, a default assumption that people who appear as though they're full of shit, are full of shit, is usually a good one. And Elon Musk is definitely prone to talking shit.
I understand the desire to write off criticism when it's clear that the person making it hasn't done extensive research but on the flipside, if there are obviously *so many* issues involved, and less than 10% of the proponents even want to have a reasonable conversation like you're having, the motivation to dig deeper is rather low. For a more extreme example, I don't spend a lot of time researching chemistry when I want to argue against homeopathy.
Anyway, the track is only tiny part of the equation here. We still have cost and maintenance of the jet engine, security costs, passenger comfort (affects how much they're willing to pay for tickets), compression safety issues, throughput (ultra-high throughput schemes exist, but have their own special set of concerns), etc. And these considerations need to be weighed simultaneously, and in an opportunity cost fashion. The obvious modes of transportation to beat here are:
A. Regular maglev, if talking about vactrain maglev variants[1] of the "hyperloop". I like maglev; I like it a lot in principle, but from all accounts it isn't cost-competitive, and thus maglev-hyperloop probably isn't going to be cost competitive. If we could make maglev cheap then that would of course be utterly amazing, particularly if we could have longer-range hyperloops with hypersonic velocities.
To fit the definition of deuterostome, the first hole evolves into the anus of all decedents.
Citation needed. The definition of deuterostome as I understand it is that the first hole that the embryo develops eventually turns into the anus. The definition of deuterostome makes no claim about whether the anus-hole or mouth-hole evolved first. Evolutionary development is not synonymous with embryological development.
The fact that all organisms that have embryos which follow this sequence of development share a common ancestor does not necessarily mean that this hole was the one that first appeared, evolutionarily speaking.
The only way I can make sense of your claim is if you're claiming that this creature is an immature deuterostome embryo. But if this is a fully gestated creature with only one orifice, and if it is indeed an ancestor of deuterostomes, you cannot say for certain that orifice must correspond with the first orifice that deuterostomes develop embryologically.
That was only one post of at least a half dozen of mine, not to mention everyone else. The pattern is that long, detailed posts about Musk or the hyperloop are ignored, other than one or two people who quickly stop responding after they realize their arguments are nonsense. Medium and short posts like that one are simply modded down to 0 or -1. Happens every single time. I don't care about my karma; it's just a sad, sad sight watching the metamorphosis of Jobs 2.0. I'm depressed over the future of geekdom.
I just looked at your list, and the problem was that it was very subjective. for instance, wanting to go to Mars may seem like insane to you, but looks awesome to me.
But he's not going to do it. He's just talking shit. I "want to go to Mars", too. So far as I've seen, Musk isn't bringing anything interesting to the table there. SpaceX is, as I've argued elsewhere in this thread, a business success, not a place where awesome technological innovation happens. I just had an argument with a fanboy who was foaming at the mouth that I'd dare suggest such a thing, and he came back with "well, he soft landed using rocket power! That's technological innovation that will eventually lead to cheaper rocket launches, because reusability!"
I then had to explain to him that reusability isn't a cure-all for expense (see: Space Shuttle) and that automated soft rocket landings had been done at least as early as the 70s.
It's also worth noting that NASA's next big project, a megarocket using large Space Shuttle-like boosters, will not feature any reusable parts at all. Space travel is stupid expensive and it's going to remain stupid expensive even if Musk manages to save a few more nickels and dimes... and that leads me to ANOTHER point which is that his true cost savings aren't clear until we have more data points. If SpaceX turns out to have a persistent accident rate that's greater rate than NASA's because of their cost-saving measures, you have to look at more than just the raw, unadjusted per-launch or per-kilo cost.
nor are they clear flaws to begin with, with the possible exception of the last one
Flaws re: sanity? That was the context there, and specifically him being *so sane* that he would counterbalance Trump. You think that a "very sane" / reasonable / serious person openly suggests his competitors are sniping his goddamn rockets? What about digging a tunnel from the airport to his company because he hates the commute?
In terms of shit talking, the man is not dissimilar to Trump. I'm not saying their intellects are similar and they talk about different stuff, but they're both businessmen (and are primarily businessmen) who talk a hell of a lot of bullshit. Compare the stuff about rocket sabotage to Trump babbling about Cruz's father assassinating JFK. Not quite the same in scale, but it definitely tends to argue against the assertion that Musk is well equipped to balance any of Trump's insanity.
I think, your tone and the subjective nature of your arguments in consideration, you were more seen as a troll than being serious in your comments.
If true, that's only a sign of how far the brain rot has spread. The person dubbed "troll" should be the person talking about a Mars colony in our lifetimes without a very lengthy discussion on biotech or terraforming or plausible mining economic incentives, but instead apparently relying on his audience to say "hey, yeah! And he builds rockets, doesn't he?!" I understand the pining for retro-futurism but, Jesus Christ, this is really cringy.
The person dubbed troll should be the person who takes an awesome old idea (that I was familiar with a decade ago) the vacuum tube train, reduces max speeds from 4000+ MPH to barely faster than a jet[1], replaces the durable and silent electric propulsion with a noisy and fragile jet engine, crows that it'll be cheaper because we can just stick it a few feet away from the inte
ThunderF00t is, always has been, and always will be a moron. You do a disservice to your argument by bringing him up.
My skepticism of hyperloop predates Thunderf00t's videos, but he obviously mentioned a valid point and I asked you if you knew of a dramatically different figure than something on the order of a hundred meters. It certainly sounded plausible enough to me, given that would be less than 0.1% of the total length of the pipe.
To put it another way: actual engineers have solved these problems long ago. Which is why you listen to actual engineers rather than listening to a chemist playing armchair engineer like Thunderf00t.
The term "ad hominem" is tossed around *far* too frequently, so let me be clear here: you're well within your rights to insult Thunderf00t. That isn't a logical fallacy. Pretending that those insults substitute for a refutation of his calculations *is* a logical fallacy, though. If the figure is given in the paper and you don't feel like looking it up, so be it, but this is just white noise.
Which is accounted for in the Hyperloop Alpha design document, via the increase allowing the pipe to slide along its length because - as was mentioned in the last post - it's not rigidly attached to the pylons, but rather held up by a multiaxis damper. The expansion would be visible as a millimeters-per-second crawl of the pipe. The document describes how to deal with thermal expansion in this manner, including the need for the end stations to accommodate the length changes.
Which is something I *directly* alluded to when I mentioned the terminals. And as I said, that's doable in principle I suppose, but certainly a bit strange. Strangeness in large engineering projects often leads to unforseen issues and costs.
That said, that's hardly the only thing they can do.
The hyperloop is possible. It is entirely possible. Anyone who thinks it's impossible to travel at those speeds and in that manner, safely (putting aside the issue of terrorist attack), is a moron. The question has always been about cost effectiveness.
It was always perfectly possible (and in fact was discussed for a long time) to dig a tunnel under the English channel, too. Guess what? It wasn't cost-effective. For whatever reason, the majority of large-scale engineering projects are over-optimistic, even if the construction is entirely conventional and well-understood.
You seem to be implying that just because the embryo of deuterostomes develops the anus first, that somehow means that orifice must have evolved first. That is an incorrect assumption.
Just because the anus forms first in the embryo does not necessarily mean that the embryo of a proto-deuterostome used that same hole "first" before evolving the second one. Embryo development itself changes with evolution; there's no reason to suspect that each evolutionary step could only add features onto the very end of gestation.
An AC has helpfully linked Wikipedia's sourced article on recapitulation theory, which says:
The theory of recapitulation, also called the biogenetic law or embryological parallelismâ"often expressed using Ernst Haeckel's phrase "ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny"â"is a largely discredited biological hypothesis that the development of the embryo of an animal, from fertilization to gestation or hatching (ontogeny), goes through stages resembling or representing successive stages in the evolution of the animal's remote ancestors (phylogeny). Since embryos also evolve in different ways, the theory of recapitulation is seen as a historical side-note, rather than as dogma in the field of developmental biology.
Well I'll bite. I think David Frum said it most accurately. "When liberals insist that only fascists will defend borders, then voters will hire fascists to do the job liberals wonÃ(TM)t do"
Sam Harris said something similar in 2003ish I believe:
"The same failure of liberalism is evident in Western Europe, where the dogma of multiculturalism has left a secular Europe very slow to address the looming problem of religious extremism among its immigrants. The people who speak most sensibly about the threat that Islam poses to Europe are actually fascists.
To say that this does not bode well for liberalism is an understatement: It does not bode well for the future of civilization."
I mention this that not to imply any sort of plagiarism, but rather the opposite. This is a multifaceted phenomenon that has been around for a long time, at least since 9/11, a problem that many people are discovering and re-discovering, but still very few liberals or leftists seem to understand or accept that this is what is going on. They think that the solution to rightwing extremism is leftwing extremism[1], instead of taking advantage of the golden opportunity to simply portray themselves as The Sane Position/Party[tm].
A related phenomenon is the backfiring of what I call "Operation: Conflation". It's widely observed that words like 'misogyny' and 'racism' are losing their punch due to their overuse, due to their being shoehorned into more and more inappropriate situations. And that's quite true, but it's only half of the story.
What is less commonly observed on is that the attempt to marginalize people and ideas by branding them racist or misogynistic or fascist is beginning to flow in the opposite direction as intended. Instead of making it less acceptable to support Trump, they're making racism (actual racism) more socially acceptable. "If being worried about Mexican immigration is racist, well shit... I guess I'm racist then." And the next time an actual racist opens his or her mouth, they listen a bit longer than they normally would. And they don't feel as ashamed to even nod their heads now and then. Wash, rinse, repeat for fascism and misogyny.
The Overton Window is not being moved by the extremists alone; at this point in history, the heavy lifting isn't being done by the KKK or even the self-identified alt-right. It's being done by self-described liberals and leftists and progressives overplaying their hands and insisting that we talk about extremist right views all day long, and by tossing a cornucopia of reasonable sounding ideas (and even a few actually-reasonable ideas) into that giant bin marked "evil extreme-right bullshit", they're making it a lot easier for people talk themselves into simply diving into that bin head first.
And they're still doing it. With glee. Hands rubbing together, expecting Trump to crumble to dust at any moment under the weight of their sweeping "any form of immigration restriction is bad and racist" positions. I was going to say "go look at the Guardian if you don't believe me", but you don't need to go that far. Bruce Perens, a man of some small notability around here, is of the opinion that we should not / cannot ask not just prospective refugees, but even prospective American citizens what they think of the constitution. That people who openly despise freedom of speech and religion (not quibble over the details of interpretation, but outright reject them) should be invited in and be granted citizenship, because to do otherwise smacks of... well, something unsavory. And Mr. Perens isn't alone. I've had a dozen other similar conversations.
I certainly don't agree with all or even most of Trump's recent activities, but when otherwise reasonable-sounding leftists start insisting that the only way to serve the ideals of liberty is to allow people who openly hate those fr
Well I'll bite. I think David Frum said it most accurately.
"When liberals insist that only fascists will defend borders, then voters will hire fascists to do the job liberals wonÃ(TM)t do"
Harris said something similar in 2003ish I believe:
"The same failure of liberalism is evident in Western Europe, where the dogma of multiculturalism has left a secular Europe very slow to address the looming problem of religious extremism among its immigrants. The people who speak most sensibly about the threat that Islam poses to Europe are actually fascists.
To say that this does not bode well for liberalism is an understatement: It does not bode well for the future of civilization."
I mention this that not to imply any sort of plagiarism, but rather the opposite. This is a multifaceted phenomenon that has been around for a long time, at least since 9/11, a problem that many people are discovering and re-discovering, but still very few liberals or leftists seem to understand or accept that this is what is going on. They think that the solution to rightwing extremism is leftwing extremism[1], instead of taking advantage of the golden opportunity to simply portray themselves as The Sane Position/Party[tm].
A related phenomenon is the backfiring of what I call "Operation: Conflation". It's widely observed that words like 'misogyny' and 'racism' are losing their punch due to their overuse, due to their being shoehorned into more and more inappropriate situations. And that's quite true, but it's only half of the story.
What is less commonly observed on is that the attempt to marginalize people and ideas by branding them racist or misogynistic or fascist is beginning to flow in the opposite direction as intended. Instead of making it less acceptable to support Trump, they're making racism (actual racism) more socially acceptable. "If being worried about Mexican immigration is racist, well shit... I guess I'm racist then." And the next time an actual racist opens his or her mouth, they listen a bit longer than they normally would. And they don't feel as ashamed to even nod their heads now and then. Wash, rinse, repeat for fascism and misogyny.
The Overton Window is not being moved by the extremists alone; at this point in history, the heavy lifting isn't being done by the KKK or even the self-identified alt-right. It's being done by self-described liberals and leftists and progressives overplaying their hands and insisting that we talk about extremist right views all day long, and by tossing a cornucopia of reasonable sounding ideas (and even a few actually-reasonable ideas) into that giant bin marked "evil extreme-right bullshit", they're making it a lot easier for people talk themselves into simply diving into that bin head first.
And they're still doing it. With glee. Hands rubbing together, expecting Trump to crumble to dust at a
Well I'll bite. I think David Frum said it most accurately.
"When liberals insist that only fascists will defend borders, then voters will hire fascists to do the job liberals wonÃ(TM)t do"
Harris said something similar in 2003ish I believe:
"The same failure of liberalism is evident in Western Europe, where the dogma of multiculturalism has left a secular Europe very slow to address the looming problem of religious extremism among its immigrants. The people who speak most sensibly about the threat that Islam poses to Europe are actually fascists.
To say that this does not bode well for liberalism is an understatement: It does not bode well for the future of civilization."
I mention this that not to imply any sort of plagiarism, but rather the opposite. This is a multifaceted phenomenon that has been around for a long time, at least since 9/11, a problem that many people are discovering and re-discovering, but still very few l
Slashdot Mirror
Americans are the most prosperous human beings that have ever lived anywhere at any time
Bull fucking shit. Go take a look at Norway, for starters. Or the United Arab Emirates. Or Kuwait. You know, all those rich, Arabic-speaking, Islamic countries that have so far refused to accept any Syrian refugees? Their GDPs are significantly higher.
somehow some family just trying to get away from a partially failed state where both the government and the rebels are murderous psychopaths somehow enjoy some great privilege.
Can you maybe combine that sentiment with this one:
Why does this always have to be an either-or proposition?
A sane leftist, one not stuck in a polarized and partisan mentality, realizes that further terrorist attacks would be very corrosive to American society (and that Muslims would certainly suffer the most!) and thus be willing to discuss and explore the possibility of helping people without taking in people from an exodus that has already led to one major attack in Paris.
For that matter, a sane leftist approach to climate change would be something that doesn't involve attacking the oil industry whenever it can for whatever reason. Delaying a pipeline is not going to stop global warming; why give the climate change conspiracy nuts more to babble about? Stop virtue signaling and just get on with building the technical solutions to global warming. You can even get a few moderate Republicans to bite if you couch it in "not merely reducing our reliance on Saudi Arabia, but actually undermining their economy, along with Iran's" terms.
Do you know what the rallying cry of official BLM protests usually is? They chant it at their meetings, too. It's all over Youtube.
They are the words of a woman on the FBI's Most Wanted Terrorists list, with a $2M bounty on her head, a woman with such militant far-left views that Cuba offered her protection.
Don't believe me and too lazy to head on over to Youtube? Well this rallying cry is also given as an attributed quote at the very top of the Black Lives Matter "Get Involved" webpage, ostensibly in her own handwriting. You can poke around to get a list of what they say they believe... "a huge list of vague leftist stuff." The women who started BLM have kept the specifics of platform deliberately vague, to the point of delivering one of the stupidiest, most content-free TED speeches I've ever heard. But I tend to think the Assata Shakur admiration is relevant.
And if you disagree, well, just imagine for a moment that there was a far-right white nationalist who had murdered people, escaped and taken refuge in a foreign fascist country and was on the FBI's Most Wanted Terrorists list with a $2M bounty on his head. Now imagine that the all of the alt-righters were regularly chanting his words at all their meetings and there was a written attributed quote of him, maybe even written in his own goddamn handwriting, at the top of Breitbart or whatever the most popular alt-right movement/website was.
Now imagine that 90%+ of the right wingers you talked to claimed that the alt-right had nothing to do with white nationalism.
The mainstream right at least has the good sense to officially denounce people who openly idolize KKK leaders. If Trump says something stupid, the mainstream right actually (at least sometimes) says so and denounces him! But the mainstream left has no qualms about rolling out the red carpet for the BLM founders and pretending that they are a single-issue organization, despite what their own website says.
The left's biggest weakness in the coming culture wars will be its unwillingness to introspect, thinking that getting angrier and louder is the answer. But centrists and independents do notice these things that the left refuses to notice about itself and for whatever reason, more and more of them are feeling safer on the right. Three of my female family members voted Trump. They all previously voted Obama. Twice.
Unthinking, delusional "Trump must be stopped at all costs!!!" solidarity might just end up bringing the whole thing crashing down and ensure that an entire generation is lost to right wing ideologues. Please, just... wake the fuck up.
I mean, obviously there is a large "lololololol triggered cucks" contention
*contingent
I left concerns about "culture" vague there but it broadly encompasses political correctness, particularly as it relates to feminism, Islam, and the legitimacy of anti-racist rhetoric and measures.
Underlying many of these concerns is often a terrifying new tendency for the right to champion free speech and egalitarianism in the face of far-left forces that oppose these things. These is but one facet of the alt-right; I mean, obviously there is a large "lololololol triggered cucks" contention in addition to the original racist alt-right folks. But it is the most dangerous facet of the alt-right by far. The most dangerous aspect of any dangerous political movement is always that aspect which they are more or less correct on, because from there they can not only recruit swing voters who manage to talk themselves into ignoring the other points, but they can also force an enemy who isn't thinking clearly[1] to self destruct by doubling down and centralizing the very worst parts of their platform.
On this last point, see also the Hillary Campaign's Pied Piper memo, where they unsuccessfully tried to use this very phenomenon against the Republicans by drawing attention to the most extreme and least reasonable elements in the primary. One of the problems with this attack was they underestimated the zealotry and rage of the delusional hardcore Republican base, but the other major problem was they weren't on entirely sound, non-delusional footing themselves, particularly when it came to immigration.
1. And the left definitely, definitely isn't thinking clearly right now, although to be fair the Trump blitzkrieg is unprecedented to the point of severe disorientation.
I think the short answer is the non-racist alt-right people (which at this point form the majority, I think) care more about cultural and global concerns than budgetary concerns, and they thus fit in more easily with alt-right people, who were already busy sanitizing their rhetoric so that the early non-racist (or at least less-racist) adopters of the alt-right label might have been clueless.
(No more clueless than the people who don't know about the militant left-wing agenda of the official and original BLM organization, I would argue.)
The Tea Party seemed focused on fairly conventional Republican and libertarian economic talking points about taxes, regulation and the size of the government, albeit they advocated more extreme and stubborn actions. The libertarian overtones decreased a bit and other, non-economic social issues (but still standard Republican talking points) crept in as the years went by... but people often forget that the Tea Party protested the 2008 bank bailout, something that was supported by McCain, signed by Bush and widely loathed by many leftists. At the time, I had naive hopes that they might become a general purpose, centrist libertarian movement opposed to corporate and bank abuses that was abetted by the government; alas, this was not to be.
The issues of culture and globalism that the alt-right (original or non-racist) cares about can be either much more important or much less important than the traditional Republican talking points about the size and scope of government, whether or not to bomb $SANDY_COUNTRY, and religion. They passionately care about everything from trade deals and immigration policy to the creative decisions of comic book writers.
I think the overarching principle is they were sick of the script and standard set of approved Republican Issues to Argue About. Regardless of the alt-right's intellectual or moral integrity, the Republicans simply were not talking about our economic positions in the world except to say (along with most Democrats) that free trade is good. They simply were not seriously talking much about the issues surrounding multiculturalism, aside from some occasional irrelevant whines about the national anthem being sung in Spanish or something. And these weren't really the core issues of the Tea Party, either. In the end, the Tea Party cranked up the volume but it didn't change the tune.
But the alt-right cares about culture wars and world politics. That's its entire focus. They don't give a shit about banning gay marriage. Or rather, many of their more traditional members surely do, but they treat that stuff as a secondary concern. Religion in general is downplayed compared to the conventional right, even though much of the original alt-right supporters were highly religious. I don't think this was a con; it's a genuine shift of priorities, and there have been multiple high profile white nationalists / neonazis / whatever over the past few decades that have been openly atheist.
It should also be noted that the label "alt" itself was highly attractive to former disillusioned leftists who found themselves nodding their head more and more at the criticisms of the left but couldn't stand the traditional American right. Don't underestimate the power of a label. "Black Lives Matter" had brilliant branding too, because the vast majority of people who support it seem totally obvious to the larger progressive left platform that the founders explicitly promote under that banner (let alone the fact that they openly admire a 'Most Wanted terrorist' and chant her words as one of their primary rallying cries.)
"What, BLM is about more than just police bruality?" Why yes, yes it is. And the alt-right is about more than just disrespecting political correctness and not liking illegal immigration.
And one of the primary inspirations for the Black Lives Matter movement is a cop killer and 'domestic terrorist' on the FBI's Most Wanted List, with a $2M reward on her head, according to the original founders and promoters of the hashtag and larger movement.
This isn't a conspiracy theory. A *attributed* quote from Assata Shakur is on their homepage and if you head over to Youtube, you can hear this very line being chanted in unison at dozens of different BLM protests. The women in question are widely considered to be the founders and coordinators of BLM and have given countless interviews and speeches on the subject, including one at TED (not even TEDx, but straight TED.)
But guess what? I don't assume that the majority of people who support Black Lives Matter are pro-terrorism. It's a tiny fraction. It's a tiny fraction that happens to be running the show, but a tiny fraction nonetheless.
And the same goes with the alt-right and actual racists and actual Nazis. Trash the founders all you want, but it's going to end very, very badly if the left continues to treat the entire movement and label as a monolith.
The guy is crazy, his party is extremely anti-democratic ... Even if his party becomes the largest, which is not unlikely according to current polls, he will not be in government and since most of his proposals are not supported by other parties, he will rarely get a majority of parliament behind him on anything. He may have a large following, but the majority of people in The Netherlands don't like him at all.
I know I was just dismissive of the stylistic and policy connections between him and Trump, but surely the parallels in the overall situation deserve commenting on.
When the public demands something and only a 'crazy, anti-democratic' guy steps forward to address that demand... that guy can still *win*, even if the majority of the public do not like him. If this can be true in a Presidential system, this surely must be true in a Parliamentary system as well (unless they have ditched first past the post voting, maybe.)
The Dutch, like most of Europe, are probably well to the left of America on issues like immigration and dealing with jihadis, but (also like much of Europe) their Islam-related issues are bigger than ours and this tends to more than balance it out. For example, if Aayan Hirsi Ali was elected as senator and then forced out of her home by the courts, then forced out of office and out of the country primarily because some people didn't like the fact that she had insulted Islam (in much gentler terms than Trump, of course) and didn't want to have to provide her with security against jihadi assassins, I suspect there would be sustained riots over here.
The record stuck on repeat here is one of polarization; of everyone shunning sane ground. Some may call this "centrist" ground, but I prefer "sane". Centrist implies some kind of a blend or balance of right and left, when frequently the correct solution is orthogonal to both sides' solutions.
My overarching point is getting away from me here... anyway, I knew Wilders' popularity was on the rise (and I knew he was a bit of a one-note nutter, as opposed to Trump being a virtuoso nutter) but I'd no idea it was to the point where his party was strongest but (due to their parliamentary environment) he was still opposed by the majority. What an incredibly dangerous situation. The Tories showed that even if you can successfully contain a populist right party, the placating measures you take to contain them may well lead you down... undesired roads.
"Troll" with no AC-posted comment, really? That's amazing. I don't have any sympathy for the guy; I just don't have sympathy for the guy who attacked him, either.
If the speculation is true and Reddit deleted subs in an attempt to protect the identity of a criminal from becoming known, that at the very least is a subject worth debating.
But the collateral damage is going to be so big, that it's hardly going to be a win for them.
A curious choice of phrase for someone who is opposed to any form of ideological test for prospective American citizens, even to the point of testing whether they believe the first amendment should be (in any fashion) upheld.
There's a huge, wild, un-tilled field of 'centrist' saneness just waiting for a person, or group of people, brave enough to claim it. Relying on the American people to implement some sort of numerical sanity approximation by alternating between the left's virtue signaling self-flagellation and right's aggressive self-delusion is becoming quite dangerous (not to mention inefficient.)
but it is believed to be attempts to dox the protestor who punched a white nationalist during a TV interview at Donald Trump's inauguration.
Sure, online suspect hunts are not the most reliable or smartest or safest ideas in the world, but good fucking grief... trying to find someone who appears to have committed battery on camera is "doxing" now? And is an offense worthy of sub deletion?
Or did I miss something and the police caught him, but for some reason are not releasing his information in a publicly available arrest report?
Apple Watch is the ultimate device for a healthy life, and it's the gold standard for smartwatches.
Apple could release the iBrick bullion bar (comprised of 16% gold, 84% a proprietary tungstein-lead mixture) and it would be hailed as the next gold standard for gold.
Well, I suppose their hair could be distance cousins as well. That, and the Islam thing.
This is the 'Donald Trump' the Dutch are worried about, for those who are interested. They actually aren't terribly alike other than their tendency to not mince words about Islam, but I somehow suspect the comparison is being constantly made nonetheless.
I forgot to mention: Why do you dismiss Hyperloop One? Have you read all of *their* literature?
The maximum G forces in the car are 0,5g.
Where the hell do you live that this is an acceptable way to write a decimal expansion of "1/2" and yet you really, really care about LA to SF? I'm writing Trump a letter to have you assholes deported before this contagion spreads.
Same amount of force, less time.
There's force and there's force. I suspect that 600 MPH could possibly create some interesting frictional forces if things go a little wrong. And for the last time, a moving force differential along a tube is not the same as continuous uniform force, but whatever. I've run out of steam on this angle. You either acknowledge the likelihood of unknown unknowns in using a product in a way it's never been used before or you don't. I'm not a welding or metal fatigue expert.
You just arbitrarily assumed that Hyperloop Alpha assumed that they're constantly operating at full capacity. Why would you do that?
You/they just arbitrarily assumed they're operating at 0.25[full capacity]. Why would you do that?
How come you have the absurd notion that the cost of seats is one of the primary costs of transportation systems?
It's conceivable that the decision for subways and elevated trains and buses to have shitty plastic seats is a baseless one, and they'd do better to encourage riders by foisting opulence on them. A lot of status quo stuff is pointless bullshit, granted.
However, I do not think this is the most likely explanation for a plan that seems to wave a magic wand and says "see, best of both worlds!" I tend to think it's a symptom of a deeper pathology.
Do you go around telling people about the jet engine in your refrigerator?
If it was designed to work in a 600 MPH headwind and could levitate thousands of pounds, I might.
The "problematic forces" are not problematic. If you're not removing the air ahead of you, then you're building up a column of air to decelerate you. You're helping yourself out.
Congratulations on the general solution for turbulence. You really must share it with the rest of us, sometime.
If you're talking about internal noise, they have far more than enough budget for soundproofing.
And the F-22 had more than enough budget for pilot oxygen, and the Navy's littoral combat boat presumably had more than enough money to not be a pile of shit, and the Beagle 2 had more than enough money for an effective lander, etc.
Yes, things can look brilliant on paper. Black swan theory is a bitch and a half, but I think the one solution we can rule out from the get-go is to say in a fiat manner that black swans don't exist, or that novel circumstances aren't more conducive to unknown unknowns.
Single column failure doesn't inherently mean pipe failure
I'm not entirely sure what happens if you detonate an Oklahoma city type bomb directly underneath a 1" thick steel pipe, but I would suspect more than pylon damage resulting in pipe sag. Holding the overpressure is just part of the battle; it also has to handle the upwards acceleration.
Hyperloop capsules are small (unlike HSR trains, or airplanes, or subways). They're not a very effective target if your goal is to kill a lot of people.
You just did it again! Yes, I concede you would achieve a better body count than your average jihadi! Almost any 6 digit slashdotter could!
Since when? No, seriously, how many terrorist attacks have been focused on "sexy new thing"?
I don't have a good comparable here other than the security concerns surrounding WTC 1, which you might correctly argue has its own special concerns for historical reasons.
But the Alpha has its own special set of concerns, namely extremely high visibility in the median. That puts it in
I know you don't bother to read design documents before talking about topics, but could you at a bare minimum read the comments of the person you're replying to?
Let me rephrase: It sounded like you were saying the lengthwise expansion would indeed occur, but that this wouldn't cause undue stress because the pipe would be allowed to move freely on these supports, thereby allowing movements to easily propagate along the length of the pipe (if not the entire length... I'm not sure how things work out at curves, for instance.) Millimeters per second actually sounded like a lot to me.
This is turning a bit pedantic and tangential, though. "It's good that it's so fast!" handwavery is not something I can *conclusively* attack without a lot of serious research and calculating. My overarching point is there aren't good precedents, and the pipe will suffer stresses of a sort that an oil pipeline never has to, with rather different failure modes.
Really, you're responding by linking to a reddit thread full of a bunch of other people who never bothered to read the document, making complaints about things that are thoroughly addressed in said design document?
That was a Reddit thread that I started some weeks ago, and I was specifically directing your attention to the pro-hyperloop guy who responded to me and saw a fair number of upvotes over the course of the discussion. Could be right, could be wrong, but it seemed relevant. It was the Ask Engineers sub, incidentally.
What exactly about the A) launch timing, B) number of people per capsule, or C) speed do you think is a throughput problem? You seem well aware of B and C. So what's the problem, launch timing? You do realize that the capsules are loaded in parallel, don't you?
It's being given as one of the major advantages of the hyperloop, as if it will automatically be used at maximum theoretical capacity. I'm not sure I follow the logic there. Out of all of the tracks I've ever seen in my life, none of them ever remotely appeared to be operating at full capacity, with one train behind another in a near-solid line, with only enough room left between them as is naturally created by the stops plus a little extra as a braking buffer. Why is this the case? Well, tracked vehicles are not perfect solutions for commuters, nor is there an infinite supply of cargo to haul given any particular point A and point B (and they also have to compete with trucks and whathaveyou.)
And I was also trying to hint that a massively parallelized terminal setup designed for a very high frequency launch schedule does not sound especially cheap. Is this an investment they're going to make from the very beginning, confident that the demand will justify it?
Wait... are you still, this far into the conversation, still under the impression that Hyperloop Alpha is maglev? I seriously hope that's not what you mean.
There's a wider discussion of hyperloops out there. Some of them are maglev.
Seriously, some random guy pointing to some stylized ultrasimplified CG is your source?
At a glance, it appears to be official Hyperloop One material. I've heard several people refer to Hyperloop One now. How big of a deal is it vs. Musk's stuff?
I'm too lazy to look into the details it myself, so I'm not claiming this as a point in my favor but, once again, if you're a hyperloop fan maybe you'd care for your own edification. If people are pushing dumb hyperloop variants and Musk's the only world-changing correct one, that's a wider discussion I'd assume you'd have at least a passing interest in, if for no other reason than their existence is detrimental to the Alpha's success.
By the way, let me refine my Musk criticism a bit: it's entirely possible he could build a hyperloop and come out on top, even if the thing isn't anywhere near profitable on the whole. Some of the foreign governmen
You see, it's like I just said: long post ignore, medium or short post mod down. So far the only person to engage in reasonable debate with me on these topics around here is Rei. I'm not whining for my own sake; I'm just saddened that the echo chamber is so solidly built.
so the thermal expansion just serves to relieve tension rather than physically increasing length. ... Temperature changes don't directly result in size changes, they result in internal stress changes.
Well, it seemed like you were pretending like the stresses were magically taken care of by these multiaxis gimbaled whatevers.
If we're back to acknowledging that the pipe will experience significant changes in force, again, we're talking about pipe designed to hold liquids or gasses, not multi-thousand pound capsules screaming along at 600 MPH. Have you never heard of any engineering project ever that experienced material degradation or failure?
Anecdote time: A few years ago, I seriously looked into the possibility of building a house out of steel shipping containers. It's a very interesting idea seeing as how they're so cheap and so durable, but guess what? It turns out that when you try to save money by using mass-produced commodity good X for radically different engineering project Y, you tend to run into hiccups. The hiccups aren't impossible to overcome, but they can require significant amounts of money to overcome.
Basic carbon steel doesn't weaken from welding (like, say, T6 aluminum does), it can actually get stronger
"Strength" in metallurgy is, I suspect, not a one-dimensional value, especially if we're talking about all kinds of different and novel stresses involved here. Off the top of my head, I saw a documentary once that claimed that it was specifically the decision to use welded beams weakened the Hyatt Regency walkway.
I wouldn't attack Thunderf00t had he not had this habit of repeatedly going off on rants about thing he has no understanding whatsoever about as if he's an expert.
I reserve judgment on Thunderf00t until I've seen more of his stuff. However, "A jack of all trades, master of none... is usually better than a master of one." Many experts routinely espouse over the top bullshit. 'Gweihir', for instance, is apparently some sort of old timer security guy around here and he doesn't have the first clue about sane next-gen cryptography or authentication design. More generally speaking, a default assumption that people who appear as though they're full of shit, are full of shit, is usually a good one. And Elon Musk is definitely prone to talking shit.
I understand the desire to write off criticism when it's clear that the person making it hasn't done extensive research but on the flipside, if there are obviously *so many* issues involved, and less than 10% of the proponents even want to have a reasonable conversation like you're having, the motivation to dig deeper is rather low. For a more extreme example, I don't spend a lot of time researching chemistry when I want to argue against homeopathy.
Anyway, the track is only tiny part of the equation here. We still have cost and maintenance of the jet engine, security costs, passenger comfort (affects how much they're willing to pay for tickets), compression safety issues, throughput (ultra-high throughput schemes exist, but have their own special set of concerns), etc. And these considerations need to be weighed simultaneously, and in an opportunity cost fashion. The obvious modes of transportation to beat here are:
A. Regular maglev, if talking about vactrain maglev variants[1] of the "hyperloop". I like maglev; I like it a lot in principle, but from all accounts it isn't cost-competitive, and thus maglev-hyperloop probably isn't going to be cost competitive. If we could make maglev cheap then that would of course be utterly amazing, particularly if we could have longer-range hyperloops with hypersonic velocities.
B. Self-driving cars. This is an
To fit the definition of deuterostome, the first hole evolves into the anus of all decedents.
Citation needed. The definition of deuterostome as I understand it is that the first hole that the embryo develops eventually turns into the anus. The definition of deuterostome makes no claim about whether the anus-hole or mouth-hole evolved first. Evolutionary development is not synonymous with embryological development.
The fact that all organisms that have embryos which follow this sequence of development share a common ancestor does not necessarily mean that this hole was the one that first appeared, evolutionarily speaking.
The only way I can make sense of your claim is if you're claiming that this creature is an immature deuterostome embryo. But if this is a fully gestated creature with only one orifice, and if it is indeed an ancestor of deuterostomes, you cannot say for certain that orifice must correspond with the first orifice that deuterostomes develop embryologically.
Because there isn't any direct, temporal parallel between evolutionary changes and embryological changes.
LAMP may not have been popular yet, but it was certainly a household word by then,
Linux was, I mean. I've no idea if the LAMP components existed yet.
I just looked at your list, and the problem was that it was very subjective. for instance, wanting to go to Mars may seem like insane to you, but looks awesome to me.
But he's not going to do it. He's just talking shit. I "want to go to Mars", too. So far as I've seen, Musk isn't bringing anything interesting to the table there. SpaceX is, as I've argued elsewhere in this thread, a business success, not a place where awesome technological innovation happens. I just had an argument with a fanboy who was foaming at the mouth that I'd dare suggest such a thing, and he came back with "well, he soft landed using rocket power! That's technological innovation that will eventually lead to cheaper rocket launches, because reusability!"
I then had to explain to him that reusability isn't a cure-all for expense (see: Space Shuttle) and that automated soft rocket landings had been done at least as early as the 70s.
It's also worth noting that NASA's next big project, a megarocket using large Space Shuttle-like boosters, will not feature any reusable parts at all. Space travel is stupid expensive and it's going to remain stupid expensive even if Musk manages to save a few more nickels and dimes... and that leads me to ANOTHER point which is that his true cost savings aren't clear until we have more data points. If SpaceX turns out to have a persistent accident rate that's greater rate than NASA's because of their cost-saving measures, you have to look at more than just the raw, unadjusted per-launch or per-kilo cost.
nor are they clear flaws to begin with, with the possible exception of the last one
Flaws re: sanity? That was the context there, and specifically him being *so sane* that he would counterbalance Trump. You think that a "very sane" / reasonable / serious person openly suggests his competitors are sniping his goddamn rockets? What about digging a tunnel from the airport to his company because he hates the commute?
In terms of shit talking, the man is not dissimilar to Trump. I'm not saying their intellects are similar and they talk about different stuff, but they're both businessmen (and are primarily businessmen) who talk a hell of a lot of bullshit. Compare the stuff about rocket sabotage to Trump babbling about Cruz's father assassinating JFK. Not quite the same in scale, but it definitely tends to argue against the assertion that Musk is well equipped to balance any of Trump's insanity.
I think, your tone and the subjective nature of your arguments in consideration, you were more seen as a troll than being serious in your comments.
If true, that's only a sign of how far the brain rot has spread. The person dubbed "troll" should be the person talking about a Mars colony in our lifetimes without a very lengthy discussion on biotech or terraforming or plausible mining economic incentives, but instead apparently relying on his audience to say "hey, yeah! And he builds rockets, doesn't he?!" I understand the pining for retro-futurism but, Jesus Christ, this is really cringy.
The person dubbed troll should be the person who takes an awesome old idea (that I was familiar with a decade ago) the vacuum tube train, reduces max speeds from 4000+ MPH to barely faster than a jet[1], replaces the durable and silent electric propulsion with a noisy and fragile jet engine, crows that it'll be cheaper because we can just stick it a few feet away from the inte
ThunderF00t is, always has been, and always will be a moron. You do a disservice to your argument by bringing him up.
My skepticism of hyperloop predates Thunderf00t's videos, but he obviously mentioned a valid point and I asked you if you knew of a dramatically different figure than something on the order of a hundred meters. It certainly sounded plausible enough to me, given that would be less than 0.1% of the total length of the pipe.
To put it another way: actual engineers have solved these problems long ago. Which is why you listen to actual engineers rather than listening to a chemist playing armchair engineer like Thunderf00t.
The term "ad hominem" is tossed around *far* too frequently, so let me be clear here: you're well within your rights to insult Thunderf00t. That isn't a logical fallacy. Pretending that those insults substitute for a refutation of his calculations *is* a logical fallacy, though. If the figure is given in the paper and you don't feel like looking it up, so be it, but this is just white noise.
Which is accounted for in the Hyperloop Alpha design document, via the increase allowing the pipe to slide along its length because - as was mentioned in the last post - it's not rigidly attached to the pylons, but rather held up by a multiaxis damper. The expansion would be visible as a millimeters-per-second crawl of the pipe. The document describes how to deal with thermal expansion in this manner, including the need for the end stations to accommodate the length changes.
Which is something I *directly* alluded to when I mentioned the terminals. And as I said, that's doable in principle I suppose, but certainly a bit strange. Strangeness in large engineering projects often leads to unforseen issues and costs.
That said, that's hardly the only thing they can do.
The hyperloop is possible. It is entirely possible. Anyone who thinks it's impossible to travel at those speeds and in that manner, safely (putting aside the issue of terrorist attack), is a moron. The question has always been about cost effectiveness.
It was always perfectly possible (and in fact was discussed for a long time) to dig a tunnel under the English channel, too. Guess what? It wasn't cost-effective. For whatever reason, the majority of large-scale engineering projects are over-optimistic, even if the construction is entirely conventional and well-understood.
Just because the anus forms first in the embryo does not necessarily mean that the embryo of a proto-deuterostome used that same hole "first" before evolving the second one. Embryo development itself changes with evolution; there's no reason to suspect that each evolutionary step could only add features onto the very end of gestation.
An AC has helpfully linked Wikipedia's sourced article on recapitulation theory, which says:
The theory of recapitulation, also called the biogenetic law or embryological parallelismâ"often expressed using Ernst Haeckel's phrase "ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny"â"is a largely discredited biological hypothesis that the development of the embryo of an animal, from fertilization to gestation or hatching (ontogeny), goes through stages resembling or representing successive stages in the evolution of the animal's remote ancestors (phylogeny). Since embryos also evolve in different ways, the theory of recapitulation is seen as a historical side-note, rather than as dogma in the field of developmental biology.
Well I'll bite. I think David Frum said it most accurately. "When liberals insist that only fascists will defend borders, then voters will hire fascists to do the job liberals wonÃ(TM)t do"
Sam Harris said something similar in 2003ish I believe:
"The same failure of liberalism is evident in Western Europe, where the dogma of multiculturalism has left a secular Europe very slow to address the looming problem of religious extremism among its immigrants. The people who speak most sensibly about the threat that Islam poses to Europe are actually fascists.
To say that this does not bode well for liberalism is an understatement: It does not bode well for the future of civilization."
I mention this that not to imply any sort of plagiarism, but rather the opposite. This is a multifaceted phenomenon that has been around for a long time, at least since 9/11, a problem that many people are discovering and re-discovering, but still very few liberals or leftists seem to understand or accept that this is what is going on. They think that the solution to rightwing extremism is leftwing extremism[1], instead of taking advantage of the golden opportunity to simply portray themselves as The Sane Position/Party[tm].
A related phenomenon is the backfiring of what I call "Operation: Conflation". It's widely observed that words like 'misogyny' and 'racism' are losing their punch due to their overuse, due to their being shoehorned into more and more inappropriate situations. And that's quite true, but it's only half of the story.
What is less commonly observed on is that the attempt to marginalize people and ideas by branding them racist or misogynistic or fascist is beginning to flow in the opposite direction as intended. Instead of making it less acceptable to support Trump, they're making racism (actual racism) more socially acceptable. "If being worried about Mexican immigration is racist, well shit... I guess I'm racist then." And the next time an actual racist opens his or her mouth, they listen a bit longer than they normally would. And they don't feel as ashamed to even nod their heads now and then. Wash, rinse, repeat for fascism and misogyny.
The Overton Window is not being moved by the extremists alone; at this point in history, the heavy lifting isn't being done by the KKK or even the self-identified alt-right. It's being done by self-described liberals and leftists and progressives overplaying their hands and insisting that we talk about extremist right views all day long, and by tossing a cornucopia of reasonable sounding ideas (and even a few actually-reasonable ideas) into that giant bin marked "evil extreme-right bullshit", they're making it a lot easier for people talk themselves into simply diving into that bin head first.
And they're still doing it. With glee. Hands rubbing together, expecting Trump to crumble to dust at any moment under the weight of their sweeping "any form of immigration restriction is bad and racist" positions. I was going to say "go look at the Guardian if you don't believe me", but you don't need to go that far. Bruce Perens, a man of some small notability around here, is of the opinion that we should not / cannot ask not just prospective refugees, but even prospective American citizens what they think of the constitution. That people who openly despise freedom of speech and religion (not quibble over the details of interpretation, but outright reject them) should be invited in and be granted citizenship, because to do otherwise smacks of... well, something unsavory. And Mr. Perens isn't alone. I've had a dozen other similar conversations.
I certainly don't agree with all or even most of Trump's recent activities, but when otherwise reasonable-sounding leftists start insisting that the only way to serve the ideals of liberty is to allow people who openly hate those fr
Well I'll bite. I think David Frum said it most accurately. "When liberals insist that only fascists will defend borders, then voters will hire fascists to do the job liberals wonÃ(TM)t do"
Harris said something similar in 2003ish I believe:
"The same failure of liberalism is evident in Western Europe, where the dogma of multiculturalism has left a secular Europe very slow to address the looming problem of religious extremism among its immigrants. The people who speak most sensibly about the threat that Islam poses to Europe are actually fascists.
To say that this does not bode well for liberalism is an understatement: It does not bode well for the future of civilization."
I mention this that not to imply any sort of plagiarism, but rather the opposite. This is a multifaceted phenomenon that has been around for a long time, at least since 9/11, a problem that many people are discovering and re-discovering, but still very few liberals or leftists seem to understand or accept that this is what is going on. They think that the solution to rightwing extremism is leftwing extremism[1], instead of taking advantage of the golden opportunity to simply portray themselves as The Sane Position/Party[tm].
A related phenomenon is the backfiring of what I call "Operation: Conflation". It's widely observed that words like 'misogyny' and 'racism' are losing their punch due to their overuse, due to their being shoehorned into more and more inappropriate situations. And that's quite true, but it's only half of the story.
What is less commonly observed on is that the attempt to marginalize people and ideas by branding them racist or misogynistic or fascist is beginning to flow in the opposite direction as intended. Instead of making it less acceptable to support Trump, they're making racism (actual racism) more socially acceptable. "If being worried about Mexican immigration is racist, well shit... I guess I'm racist then." And the next time an actual racist opens his or her mouth, they listen a bit longer than they normally would. And they don't feel as ashamed to even nod their heads now and then. Wash, rinse, repeat for fascism and misogyny.
The Overton Window is not being moved by the extremists alone; at this point in history, the heavy lifting isn't being done by the KKK or even the self-identified alt-right. It's being done by self-described liberals and leftists and progressives overplaying their hands and insisting that we talk about extremist right views all day long, and by tossing a cornucopia of reasonable sounding ideas (and even a few actually-reasonable ideas) into that giant bin marked "evil extreme-right bullshit", they're making it a lot easier for people talk themselves into simply diving into that bin head first.
And they're still doing it. With glee. Hands rubbing together, expecting Trump to crumble to dust at a
Well I'll bite. I think David Frum said it most accurately. "When liberals insist that only fascists will defend borders, then voters will hire fascists to do the job liberals wonÃ(TM)t do"
Harris said something similar in 2003ish I believe:
"The same failure of liberalism is evident in Western Europe, where the dogma of multiculturalism has left a secular Europe very slow to address the looming problem of religious extremism among its immigrants. The people who speak most sensibly about the threat that Islam poses to Europe are actually fascists.
To say that this does not bode well for liberalism is an understatement: It does not bode well for the future of civilization."
I mention this that not to imply any sort of plagiarism, but rather the opposite. This is a multifaceted phenomenon that has been around for a long time, at least since 9/11, a problem that many people are discovering and re-discovering, but still very few l