They've optimized for the wrong things-- short-term profit while making the products crappy. For example almost all of the household appliances I've purchased in the past 7 years have failed because of poor design and inferior plastic parts. My expensive oven doesn't have enough insulation around the electronic control and its failed from heat, etc etc.
This isn't an actual argument against severely limiting cars. Most of the people traveling the super-region already use the subway or buses. That will become easier and more efficient without private cars.
Indeed, the space shuttle was so expensive it burned up much of the rest of NASAs budget-- keeping that disastrous, failed program running is why NASA doesn't have manned spaceflight capability at the moment.
Why was this flagged? It is a detailed New York Times article by a respected aviation journalist. Its opinionated reporting but I was looking forward to the Hacker News discussion.
One major problem of automotive transport is society's denial of the risks involved. Mandating showing autonomous interventions while hundreds die every day un-viewed in traditional cars will make everyone less safe.
Bernie's plan is massive economic command and control from Washington. DC couldn't execute on Obama's stimulus spending and we know state-directed economies have been an environmental catastrophe (see: Soviet Union). A simple, aggressive carbon tax that captured the true externality of carbon emissions is the way to go-- bring economic incentives into alignment with climate goals.
There was a lot of criticism of the cost of the Hubble program in the beginning and then then mirrors failed after it was initally placed in orbit, turning Hubble into a national joke. NASA and Congress seriously considered abandoning Hubble then and a couple more times in the last two decades.
I live in a DC exurb and literally do not have land-based internet access at home. The US broadband regime is a massive failure. It delivers neither high speeds nor universal access.
This is wrong in terms of the web space. With the modernization of PHP and the emergence of Laravel, and continued evolution of Drupal and Wordpress, I don't think PHP has ever been this dominant in the web stack. Django is an also-ran.
Nope. Drought is usually local and water shortages are often from the breakdown of regional infrastructure. There are recently discovered truly massive water lakes in the earth's mantle.
Hong Kong was created from scratch under British rule -- it was a sleepy village that the British identified as a terrific potential deep water port. This is important in understanding the current crisis there-- there's a degree of historical and cultural separation from "mainland" China in Hong Kong's roots.
This finding fits in with other research that trees absorb fine particulate matter (PM 2.5). PM 2.5 is a hazardous air pollution from burning coal and many other sources.
It isn't really small government culture-- both Republican candidates were very recently Democrats (the state has flipped parties). It is more a pervasive culture of natural resource extraction and disdain for the public's health and safety. Probably a function of the "resource curse". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resource_curse
I live in West Virginia and anything dealing with the state government has to start with an assumption that it is being done for corrupt reasons. Ask first how a contract or project financially benefits key state officials or their family. I can't emphasize enough how predatory and corrupt the government is here. Both leading Republican candidates for governor are under federal corruption investigations. There's a reason West Virginia is losing population and remains among the poorest states in the USA. Where West Virginia isn't corrupt, it is incompetent. The state can't even provide safe drinking water for its people, or even create a framework for official electronic signatures-- it has no business innovating in voting tech. West Virginia is the last place you want as your laboratory for voting technology.
The US (well, the Continentals) invaded British Canada early during the Revolution for some of the same reasoning-- rally the ethnic French and deliver a blow to British North America. That effort failed as well.
Wait. You'll need closer to $8 million invested at 2.57% (30 yr current yield) to earn $200,000 a year. And consuming that every year means you'll destroy much of the real value of your hoard over 30 years (you're not reinvesting something to cover inflation). Further putting it all into Treasuries is actually riskier than diversifying across multiple assets - foreign stocks, real estate, etc. If we go into an inflationary period and you're locked into a 30 year at 2.6%, you'll watch your fortune collapse and your stipend's buying power crumble.
What's your source? Mexico's per capita GDP is the same as China's and Mexico's data is probably more accurate. Mexico is a middle income country and NAFTA has been transformative for Mexico in the last couple of decades.
Here's some additional color on this remarkable character. But to circumnavigate the globe in that boat? I can't help but fret that this isn't going to end well.