> And Bluetooth continues to suck, for a variety of reasons.
Does it? I have bluetooth headphones. They are not made by a company affiliated to either my computer or my telephone, the two devices I use them with. I turn my headphones on and audio starts coming out of them. The audio sounds fine. What part of my experience sucks?
Most of the author's complaints seem to revolve around how most fast-pairing protocols are currently proprietary, but... pairing your headphones is something you don't do very often, so it's at best a minor inconvenience.
With 80% of the transmission lines destroyed and the company responsible for rebuilding them essentially bankrupt, there isn't anything there to stretch. The powerwalls will more likely be used for single-structure solar and generator peak shaving. They can't do anything in the short term to help a grid that doesn't exist.
The power utility was $9 billion dollars in debt before this crisis even happened. They weren't able to maintain the network they already had, rebuilding it from scratch is even harder when you don't have any money to do it with.
The problem is that Puerto Rico currently does not have any transmission lines, and so load leveling the power plants that aren't connected to anything is not useful.
Significant percentages of the island are going to be relying on local power generation for months, and you can get a lot more out of a generator and limited amount of fuel when you've got solar panels and battery backs to back them up.
CloudFlare has several times handled DDoS attacks that were then the largest attacks recorded, including a 400Gbps in 2014 and a 600Gbps in 2016. Sometimes these are simple network traffic requests, sometimes these are masquerading as legitimate traffic. In the latter case, you'll see an interstitial page that appears to validate your browser using some sort of javascript. In either case, they certainly have a proven track record of handling very large attacks.
Many of those things are similar with what is probably the closest competitor with the Hyperloop, maglev trains (such as the Shuo Shinkansen being built between Tokyo and Osaka). Such tracks have many active components, and replacing any segment at all would require reconstruction, potentially including pouring new concrete.
Most of the hyperloop lacks active components: the original design featured occasional linear motors in the tube, with most of the distance being covered by coasting. Depending on the failure, replacing a segment of the tube (which would be pre-fabbed) could be as simple as detaching or cutting out a segment and replacing it with a pre-fabbed replacement. Damage to the concrete pylon would obviously require that to also be replaced, but those are also pre-fab, and so could potentially be replaced rather quickly.
There are probably still some things beyond just a metal tube involved. Potentially any given segment might have sensors, or emergency valves, or a segment of linear motor, or solar panels. All segments would require electrical cabling of some kind. That said, considering the system is designed to be rapidly assembled out of pre-fabricated components, it would presumably be relatively straightforward to replace a segment and reconnect the hookups.
If a hyperloop is built underground (as Musk's Boring Company seems intended to do), the risk of sabotage becomes much smaller.
Hyperloop pods are not large enough for you to be "wandering around": there is nothing but the seats inside. There wouldn't be enough headroom to stand up even if there was a place to stand.
If you blow up a train, or cause one to derail, you're also going to shut that train line down until it can be repaired. The same is true of the hyperloop, and assuming they have a few spare segments on hand, it would not necessarily be all that different of a process to fix than it might be to fix damaged high speed rail track.
The Shuo Shinkansen runs at roughly half the speed of the hyperloop. Regular high speed rail isn't that much slower, perhaps a quarter to a third the speed.
So you've reduced the problem to "no worse than the risks of train tracks, except probably lower fatality count on the hyperloop than derailing a train"
Security is tight on aircraft for a variety of reasons beyond the ability to cause fatalities on that particular aircraft: you can also crash planes into things.
There doesn't seem to be any reason why security on the hyperloop should be any tighter than it is on a train, but that said, there are still levels of security that don't go to the extremes of airport security. You could just have a simple metal detector check, for example. One of the reasons why you need to get to an airport so early is because your flight is on a fixed schedule, and you don't know exactly how long security will take, so you end up needing to get to the airport well in advance. When you're dealing with a system that operates on headway instead of schedules (like a subway system), that isn't a problem. If security takes a bit longer, you depart a bit later. There isn't a fixed "flight" that you would miss.
The pods have wheels (they'd need them for lower speeds anyhow, just like current maglev trains), presumably they will be rated to survive temporary use at 700mph while the pod brakes. A simple maglev failure (assuming it uses maglev, the original hyperloop design isn't maglev) should not cause any fatalities.
In an emergency, passenger comfort does not take priority over saving lives. If that means a 3G deceleration to avoid a an incident, that'd be acceptable.
If a hyperloop lost a couple of struts, all the vehicles would initiate an emergency stop, meaning that you'd only cause fatalities if you caused catastrophic damage to the tube right before a pod passed through it (leaving no time to stop).
The whitepaper described how to handle loss of pressure in the pod. Basically it boiled down to this:
1) If the leak is small enough, compensate with onboard emergency air supply until the destination is reached 2) If the leak is big enough, initiate a system-wide emergency stop and rapidly repressurize the tube.
You could arguably repressurize the tube faster than an aircraft could descend to a safe altitude.
If the largest concern in a failure is "people will be delayed" instead of "people will die", I think that's a pretty successful disaster mitigation strategy.
Hyperloop doesn't make a lot of sense for such long-distance travel, because at a certain point the infrastructure costs far outweigh the benefits. But for Montreal to Toronto, or Montreal-Ottawa-Toronto? That could potentially be done at a relatively reasonable cost, with high traffic, and the competing flight is short enough that at least half the trip time is spent on airport-related things rather than the actual travel.
Keep in mind that the original hyperloop concept that Hyperloop One is working from isn't really intended to do much tunneling, instead using elevated pylons.
In any event, getting from Montreal to Toronto by air currently takes several hours in total and costs perhaps $200. To be able to pop over to Toronto via a half-hour hyperloop trip with no limited schedule and security theatre to add delay, and at a more reasonable cost? That would be huge, suddenly you could say something like "Let's go to that concert tonight in Toronto" (or any other event/venue) as if it were in the same city, wheras today the 10-12 hour round trip time by ground transportation makes that difficult.
Partial failures don't really count if they put the payload in a good enough orbit. The partial failure didn't put IRS-1D in the correct orbit, but it got it close enough that it could be corrected. So it's more like two full failures in 42 launches, 4.7% failure rate.
If you do want to count partial failures, then the shuttle failure rate is much higher than 1.5%. STS-1 suffered an overpressure event that caused damage to the vehicle (bent struts), STS-51-F suffered an in-flight main engine failure that caused an abort to orbit, STS-27 suffered from severe damage to its thermal protection system that put the crew at risk, STS-51 (different flight than STS-51-F) suffered from an unplanned detonation of backup explosive bolts for payload release, STS-93 suffered from a coolant leak leading to an underspeed situation that only got to the desired orbit because of backup units. Add the two RUDs and you'd get seven partial or total failures out of 135 launches, or 5.2%.
The space shuttle may have had a lower percentage rate for failed launches/missions, but 40% of space shuttles also killed their crews, not exactly ideal.
There's already crossplay between Nintendo/Microsoft/PC platforms for games like Rocket League, doesn't seem to be any walled garden involved. Sony is currently the only one blocking any crossplay.
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> And Bluetooth continues to suck, for a variety of reasons.
Does it? I have bluetooth headphones. They are not made by a company affiliated to either my computer or my telephone, the two devices I use them with. I turn my headphones on and audio starts coming out of them. The audio sounds fine. What part of my experience sucks?
Most of the author's complaints seem to revolve around how most fast-pairing protocols are currently proprietary, but... pairing your headphones is something you don't do very often, so it's at best a minor inconvenience.
With 80% of the transmission lines destroyed and the company responsible for rebuilding them essentially bankrupt, there isn't anything there to stretch. The powerwalls will more likely be used for single-structure solar and generator peak shaving. They can't do anything in the short term to help a grid that doesn't exist.
The power utility was $9 billion dollars in debt before this crisis even happened. They weren't able to maintain the network they already had, rebuilding it from scratch is even harder when you don't have any money to do it with.
The problem is that Puerto Rico currently does not have any transmission lines, and so load leveling the power plants that aren't connected to anything is not useful.
Significant percentages of the island are going to be relying on local power generation for months, and you can get a lot more out of a generator and limited amount of fuel when you've got solar panels and battery backs to back them up.
iPhones were shipping with the FM support disabled long before Apple Music or Spotify existed.
I've never had that problem using uBlock Origin.
CloudFlare was handling roughly 10% of all web traffic a year and a half ago, presumably it's higher now. They're already one of the gatekeepers.
CloudFlare has several times handled DDoS attacks that were then the largest attacks recorded, including a 400Gbps in 2014 and a 600Gbps in 2016. Sometimes these are simple network traffic requests, sometimes these are masquerading as legitimate traffic. In the latter case, you'll see an interstitial page that appears to validate your browser using some sort of javascript. In either case, they certainly have a proven track record of handling very large attacks.
Many of those things are similar with what is probably the closest competitor with the Hyperloop, maglev trains (such as the Shuo Shinkansen being built between Tokyo and Osaka). Such tracks have many active components, and replacing any segment at all would require reconstruction, potentially including pouring new concrete.
Most of the hyperloop lacks active components: the original design featured occasional linear motors in the tube, with most of the distance being covered by coasting. Depending on the failure, replacing a segment of the tube (which would be pre-fabbed) could be as simple as detaching or cutting out a segment and replacing it with a pre-fabbed replacement. Damage to the concrete pylon would obviously require that to also be replaced, but those are also pre-fab, and so could potentially be replaced rather quickly.
There are probably still some things beyond just a metal tube involved. Potentially any given segment might have sensors, or emergency valves, or a segment of linear motor, or solar panels. All segments would require electrical cabling of some kind. That said, considering the system is designed to be rapidly assembled out of pre-fabricated components, it would presumably be relatively straightforward to replace a segment and reconnect the hookups.
If a hyperloop is built underground (as Musk's Boring Company seems intended to do), the risk of sabotage becomes much smaller.
Hyperloop pods are not large enough for you to be "wandering around": there is nothing but the seats inside. There wouldn't be enough headroom to stand up even if there was a place to stand.
If you blow up a train, or cause one to derail, you're also going to shut that train line down until it can be repaired. The same is true of the hyperloop, and assuming they have a few spare segments on hand, it would not necessarily be all that different of a process to fix than it might be to fix damaged high speed rail track.
The Shuo Shinkansen runs at roughly half the speed of the hyperloop. Regular high speed rail isn't that much slower, perhaps a quarter to a third the speed.
And being able to see what's ahead of you on a train that can't stop in time to do anything about it is different how?
You're talking about less than double the speed of the Chuo Shinkansen, it's fast, but hardly 10x faster than existing/near future trains.
So you've reduced the problem to "no worse than the risks of train tracks, except probably lower fatality count on the hyperloop than derailing a train"
Security is tight on aircraft for a variety of reasons beyond the ability to cause fatalities on that particular aircraft: you can also crash planes into things.
There doesn't seem to be any reason why security on the hyperloop should be any tighter than it is on a train, but that said, there are still levels of security that don't go to the extremes of airport security. You could just have a simple metal detector check, for example. One of the reasons why you need to get to an airport so early is because your flight is on a fixed schedule, and you don't know exactly how long security will take, so you end up needing to get to the airport well in advance. When you're dealing with a system that operates on headway instead of schedules (like a subway system), that isn't a problem. If security takes a bit longer, you depart a bit later. There isn't a fixed "flight" that you would miss.
The pods have wheels (they'd need them for lower speeds anyhow, just like current maglev trains), presumably they will be rated to survive temporary use at 700mph while the pod brakes. A simple maglev failure (assuming it uses maglev, the original hyperloop design isn't maglev) should not cause any fatalities.
In an emergency, passenger comfort does not take priority over saving lives. If that means a 3G deceleration to avoid a an incident, that'd be acceptable.
If a hyperloop lost a couple of struts, all the vehicles would initiate an emergency stop, meaning that you'd only cause fatalities if you caused catastrophic damage to the tube right before a pod passed through it (leaving no time to stop).
The whitepaper described how to handle loss of pressure in the pod. Basically it boiled down to this:
1) If the leak is small enough, compensate with onboard emergency air supply until the destination is reached
2) If the leak is big enough, initiate a system-wide emergency stop and rapidly repressurize the tube.
You could arguably repressurize the tube faster than an aircraft could descend to a safe altitude.
Sort of like a train, then?
An explosive charge on an aircraft or train (or runway or train track) would also likely have a similar effect.
If the largest concern in a failure is "people will be delayed" instead of "people will die", I think that's a pretty successful disaster mitigation strategy.
Hyperloop doesn't make a lot of sense for such long-distance travel, because at a certain point the infrastructure costs far outweigh the benefits. But for Montreal to Toronto, or Montreal-Ottawa-Toronto? That could potentially be done at a relatively reasonable cost, with high traffic, and the competing flight is short enough that at least half the trip time is spent on airport-related things rather than the actual travel.
Keep in mind that the original hyperloop concept that Hyperloop One is working from isn't really intended to do much tunneling, instead using elevated pylons.
In any event, getting from Montreal to Toronto by air currently takes several hours in total and costs perhaps $200. To be able to pop over to Toronto via a half-hour hyperloop trip with no limited schedule and security theatre to add delay, and at a more reasonable cost? That would be huge, suddenly you could say something like "Let's go to that concert tonight in Toronto" (or any other event/venue) as if it were in the same city, wheras today the 10-12 hour round trip time by ground transportation makes that difficult.
Partial failures don't really count if they put the payload in a good enough orbit. The partial failure didn't put IRS-1D in the correct orbit, but it got it close enough that it could be corrected. So it's more like two full failures in 42 launches, 4.7% failure rate.
If you do want to count partial failures, then the shuttle failure rate is much higher than 1.5%. STS-1 suffered an overpressure event that caused damage to the vehicle (bent struts), STS-51-F suffered an in-flight main engine failure that caused an abort to orbit, STS-27 suffered from severe damage to its thermal protection system that put the crew at risk, STS-51 (different flight than STS-51-F) suffered from an unplanned detonation of backup explosive bolts for payload release, STS-93 suffered from a coolant leak leading to an underspeed situation that only got to the desired orbit because of backup units. Add the two RUDs and you'd get seven partial or total failures out of 135 launches, or 5.2%.
The space shuttle may have had a lower percentage rate for failed launches/missions, but 40% of space shuttles also killed their crews, not exactly ideal.
There's already crossplay between Nintendo/Microsoft/PC platforms for games like Rocket League, doesn't seem to be any walled garden involved. Sony is currently the only one blocking any crossplay.