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mozumder

Re:Dugout Loop on Thursday August 16, 2018 @07:37AM (#17773736)
I'm saying the numbers are so astronomically off that there is no viable path to profit without public subsidy, for any theoretical future system, big or small.
Re:Dugout Loop on Thursday August 16, 2018 @07:35AM (#17773720)
In the US, "public transportation" means "transportation system owned by the public". This is opposed to "private transportation", which is owned by private entities.

All tranport systems are available for use by the general public.

Also, the MTR infrastructure is government subsidized.

Re:Dugout Loop on Thursday August 16, 2018 @07:29AM (#17773699)
This was possible because cities weren't as developed as they are now. Property was cheap back then.

These days, the major expense of building a mass transit system is just buying property. And in cities, these properties are going to be already developed.

Right now, there are individual buildings in US cities that cost over $1billion, so grade-separated ground rail is not going to happen for cheap. That only leaves tunneling, which also isn't cheap.

Re:Dugout Loop on Thursday August 16, 2018 @12:46AM (#17771955)
It's not anywhere close to self-funding a real public transport system.

How do they expect to make money as a private enterprise if these are the numbers they propose?

Public transportation is supposed to lose money, not make it, hence the "public" part. It's paid for by tax dollars, because it is impossible for private companies to make money from it.

Even the private rail systems around the world are largely subsidized pubicly during construction, with only operations being privatized.

Re:Bullshit-sensitivity predicts prosocial behavior on Wednesday August 15, 2018 @04:32AM (#17764505)
At the root is narcissism. Narcissism blocks profound insight, and rewards anti-social behavior.
Re:Nvidia Unveils Quadro RTX, a Raytracing GPU on Monday August 13, 2018 @08:22PM (#17754687)
Die size is ridiculous, causing such high prices due to exponential costs associated with die size. It seems like an opening for AMD to use their EPYC Infinity Fabric interconnect for their next-gen GPUs in multi-chip modules with smaller dies.
Wouldn't people be able to traverse the continent in a few months? Why are they giving estimated ranges that span thousands of years?
Re:Six Months at Riot Games on Thursday August 09, 2018 @08:44AM (#17723697)
> I've been in the industry 20 years and not had that happen anywhere I worked in the UK.

Do you think that's because of the corporate culture you're at or due to you personally not knowing about it?

What do you do after-hours at conferences in Vegas? Check out the Britney Spears show or Cirque du Soleil?

> The guy I knew who did that at his gaming company Christmas party got put on "final warning" for a year.

So, how come he didn't get fired? Was he critical to project success at all?

Re:Six Months at Riot Games on Thursday August 09, 2018 @08:28AM (#17723576)
So, in tech, do people not go to strip clubs anymore?

Like, what's the culture now? Are all interpersonal relationships now formalized into an algorithm?

Do people not get into actual fistfights at the office anymore?

Not if you're one of the many people that don't pay taxes! (retirees, children, the poor, etc..)
You're making the mistake of thinking that Alex Jones and his followers are rational and good-faith actors - a pre-requisite for debate.

The best thing to do is just silence their voices; no ifs, ands, or buts.

Remember, these people are against the idea of democracy.

OK I get that booster reuse cuts down costs, but the fact is the 2nd stage is still not reused, which limits the economic benefits needed to open new markets. We get a 50% reduction in costs, instead of the 95% reduction in costs.

You can get a 50% reduction in costs just by going to India for launch..

Is SpaceX going for 2nd stage reuse at all? That's going to be a lot harder than booster stage reuse, since you're returning to land at orbital velocity.

And then there's the whole issue of increasing reliability of the 1st stage for reuse hundreds (or thousands) of times needed for new business models...

Re:Young people don’t want construction jobs on Thursday August 02, 2018 @11:59AM (#17672496)
And this is how you cause an economy to collapse, by raising inflation.

The market doesn’t know what’s good for it. It’s only interest is the immediate short term.

Re:Young people don’t want construction jobs on Thursday August 02, 2018 @11:58AM (#17672483)
and increase inflation, punishing the poor and elderly on fixed income the most?
Re:Young people don’t want construction jobs on Thursday August 02, 2018 @11:55AM (#17672441)
OSHA has largely supplanted union safety regulations but the real issue killing this work is just workforce education.

We spend thousands to pay for 12 years of public education for each student to teach them things like Calculus and Geopolitics and Literature only for them to perform manual construction labor that an illegal immigrant from Central America with zero schooling can do?

Yah that’s not happening...

How would you build an order-processing & accounting system with only SOLR/Elasticsearch? Can you guarantee data reliability?
I'm more "Encino Man" here..
Re:Looking Glass – A new type of holographic interface on Wednesday July 25, 2018 @02:50PM (#17611764)
Tru dat. Interpolation will probably be too difficult in 4-D space.
Re:Liquid water 'lake' revealed on Mars on Wednesday July 25, 2018 @11:05AM (#17609819)
This is hilarious. "Why don't we just send the rovers to the cities and historic sites and other more interesting places of Mars?"
Re:Liquid water 'lake' revealed on Mars on Wednesday July 25, 2018 @10:47AM (#17609661)
No, you also need an ancient alien race to have created a reactor that can free the air which can be activated after pressing the button at the top of the elevator platform, but only if you can get past Cohaagen's goons, perhaps using holographic trickery.
Re:Looking Glass – A new type of holographic interface on Tuesday July 24, 2018 @10:29PM (#17606513)
> That assumes your pixel distribution has much higher potential addressable resolution than the signal you care about.

It doesn't need that at all. Light fields can be interpolated like anything else, just like bayer filter for color on camera sensors or 4:2:2 color compression on the signal side. But if you're doing 3-D rendering, you can match rays exactly to your distribution on the display if the renderer knows the distribution of rays on the display.

Interpolation is always going to reduce quality, but it's better than aliasing, so there's going to be a trade-off analysis that needs to be done. I don't know what the results of that would be, so this is all theoretical.

Re:Looking Glass – A new type of holographic interface on Tuesday July 24, 2018 @08:47PM (#17606124)
Which is why I said you need to distribute the rays around randomly in a gaussian distribution. Don't just arrange them in perfect rows and columns - that's the worst array option that guarantees aliasing. You can shift each pixel (or subpixel) lens around slightly in a permanent pattern.

Anti-aliasing techniques are common elsewhere in 3-D graphics, and can be used just as well in light-fields.

Re:Looking Glass – A new type of holographic interface on Tuesday July 24, 2018 @06:06PM (#17605346)
Yes the problem with light-field displays (and cameras) is that they do need massive bandwidths.

But there are ways to mitigate it somewhat. It's possible to have a gaussian or random distribution of light rays so that you end up with only average about 10 or so rays per pixel, instead of the 45 here.

But yes, expect to need a massive increase in bandwidth for light-field holographic displays. This includes headset VR mounts, where you can finally have a display without the limited field-of-vision that you'd have from current VR headsets. A VR headset can focus the light rays towards the range of each eye, which can also cut down on bandwidth.

Yah the last thing I want is for anyone to treat Facebook as necessary.
It's Facebook's editorial policy to allow hate speech. It has nothing to do with not limiting "free speech".

They allow it because it expands their audience.

Facebook isn't government. It can do what it wishes, including banning or allowing free speech, and has no obligations either way.

Given that, if I was a major advertiser, I'd steer clear of them considering that I might have my beautiful fashion ad next to some neo-Nazi propaganda.

This is the kind of argument that makes people more dependent on Facebook.

The best way to fight Facebook's monopoly is to just get people off of it and let them form their own independent social networking strategies.

You are basically making the case for Facebook by arguing for them as the de facto social network.

Facebook is completely unnecessary. We need to remind people of that.

Re:Trump is going after California’s clean car mandate on Tuesday July 24, 2018 @01:40AM (#17598380)
TSLA was going to die anyways, mostly from competition from better manufacturers.
Re:Intel’s Plans for 3DXP DIMMs Emerge on Monday July 23, 2018 @11:55PM (#17598006)
Mainframes have always led the way in computer architecture.

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