I have read NTSB air crash reports for decades...disasters are so rarely the result of just one mistake. And this is the same sort of thing. A series...and then lessons written in blood.

I had a friend who was a trained chemical engineer--he was always upset at BP's budgeting for maintenance and oversight. He felt they had a terrible history of accidents because they were always trying to cut it too close. That you just had to spend a certain amount of money to do chemical process and petrochemicals safely. He was right.

*promote
*quality

I think---and it's just a guess---that this is supposed to be simpler and easier to maintain and use? In part because the engines are outboard and there aren't all the shafts going to and fro that the V-22 has.

However, I had thought that the criss crossing shafts were part of the military redundancy plan (like, shoot out an engine and limp home on a one---or at least, limp to a better sort of crash landing)---so I don't really know.

Anything that simplifies maintenance will make the fleet cheaper to operate.

Not really surprising...it continues to get worse...The illegitimate Demander in Cheat attempted to deny this despite proof it happened due to written Whitehouse demand, denying any responsibility by first claiming it didn't happen at all and the ship name was only hidden due to routine maintenance not orders from the Whitehouse, then claiming it was a single staffer that with good intentions demanded McCain's name be hidden (but there's certainly not a reprimand in that subordinate's future) and he claims sailors from the USS McCain and another ship were really just on leave, not excluded from his speech....but multiple sailors from the McCain have said they showed up despite the entire ship being singled out/ being uninvited, and they alone were denied entry, fact contradicting the president once again.

Sweet zombie Jebus, Putin would be a better, less divisive American president....who wouldn't?

Not at all.



Now it's estimated at at least $60 billion, and another $750 million per year forever in maintenance, both estimates likely to quadruple before wall construction is stopped....I mean they've already doubled and construction hasn't even started.

Bob...do not try to teach anyone history, you simply don't know it. You are just wrong on nearly every point......again.

On 2 June 2010, (with oil at $80) President Chávez declared an "economic war" because of the increasing shortages in Venezuela.[1] The crisis intensified under the Maduro government, growing more severe as a result of low oil prices in early 2015,[12][19][20] and a drop in oil production from lack of maintenance and investment.[11] The government failed to cut spending in the face of falling oil revenues and has dealt with the crisis by denying its existence[21][22] and violently repressing opposition.[11] Political corruption, chronic shortages of food and medicine, closure of companies, unemployment, deterioration of productivity, authoritarianism, human rights violations, gross economic mismanagement and high dependence on oil have also contributed to the worsening crisis.

Fair points, but this is obviously a prototype.

Ultimately, the price of these will come down and even if you need to swap out the batteries, there's no reason that can't be automated too. Hell, a roomba basically does that now. The point is it doesn't need sleep or meal breaks and it doesn't care about working hours. Or you just leave it connected to a permanent power source (if you can teach it to drywall, you can teach it to avoid the cable).

And yeah, my numbers are obviously estimates, since this isn't commercially available yet, and you'd need to factor in capital investment, maintenance, etc. But you don't have to pay it a salary, it doesn't need medical and it doesn't have to comply with health and safety regs (at least, not for the robots H&S).

I find it difficult to believe that something like this could ever be less cost-effective than a human.

Of course, that's assuming a steady rate of improvement. Bipedal robots (like self-driving cars) have been "90% there" for many years now. It might be that the last 10% is REALLY, REALLY difficult.

My gut feeling is that we will see a tipping point. There will be some really challenging engineering/programming obstacle that stops these going mainstream, but eventually, someone will solve it and then the rate of progress will be exponential.

But you're right in that, that's certainly a few years away yet. I'm fascinated as to how we as a society/civilisation deal with mass automation.

But it's not going to be 1% of the cost for a very, very long time. It probably takes a team of technicians to keep it going right now. 5-10 years from now you can probably get one of those for a hundred grand or so, but maintenance would run you around the same as a full-time drywaller. You're throwing a lot of numbers out there as if they mean something, but they don't. Also, the thing needs downtime to recharge, even once the technology becomes practical and affordable, so 24/7 is not an option. Either you need a worker to replace batteries every few hours, or it needs to plug in to a base station and go offline for significant periods.

Your video, Maintenance, has made it into the Top 15 New Videos listing. Congratulations on your achievement. For your contribution you have been awarded 1 Power Point.

Your talking about it historically though. Historical abuse and mistreatment of Aboriginal people in Canada has been acceptable to discuss for at least a generation or two now, up to formal apologies and enormous numbers of court cases and cash settlements around the myriad past injustices.

The trouble is, even while addressing all the historical problems, there still exist new ones right now.

Typical conditions on Aboriginal reserves in Canada are unacceptably awful. You can have a thriving municipality right neighbouring an aboriginal reserve that is a mess of dilapidated homes, boiled water and grossly increased rates of unemployment, substance abuse and suicide. Small wonder then that increased crime rates also come along with all that.

Even that you can talk about, though the increased crime rate will get you in trouble for flirting with being racist against aboriginals.

What you can't talk about is many of the causes of the disparity.

Aboriginal reserves operate under a different legal framework than the neighbouring municipality. They operate under a different framework of governance. They operate under a different system of taxation. Organisation of all related government services like education, healthcare, policing and civil works like roads, water and sanitation are ALL different if you're on a reserve.

Talking about all that you need to be very careful how you say it, because if your not careful my above observations are a statement that coloniser systems are superior to aboriginal ones.

Private property rights are IMO an even hotter topic. The dilapidated housing on a reserve 10 minutes away from the municipality with everything in order is a direct result of who is responsible for maintaining them. In the municipality if a roof is missing shingles, the owner replaces them. If a window is broken, the owner replaces it. On the reserve though, the community is the owner. Unsurprisingly, that abstraction means maintenance on the homes is worse. If the mayor was responsible for using tax dollars to maintain all the homes in the neighbouring municipality it'd be a mess too. This leads to the poor aboriginal family stuck in a destroyed and overcrowded home and a chief saying sorry, the Canadian colonisers didn't give us enough money to fix your place, go yell at them. This just stirs up the Winnipeg citizens I mentioned earlier to respond with wonderment at why you don't fix your own home up yourself instead of protesting hopelessly for the government to hand out the money to do it for you.

The differential treatment still in place now, today is a cancer and needs to be fixed but calling it out like that would get me in trouble.

Not just throwing rocks, but---what is the practical application of this? As a pleasure craft, maintaining all those extra hydraulics would drive maintenance expenses through the roof from the perspective of a recreational boater.
I'm also concerned about reliability, elevation of center of gravity, response to being sideways in a seaway... the second half with the outrigger "sled' maybe would have application in military stuff? Air/Sea rescue?

Both the cammer and the trucker did awesome, but I give props to the truck's owner for obviously keeping up with their maintenance.

If you can go to all electric motors, redundant ones at that, you can cut out a ton of the spendy maintenance that forces helicopters to charge thousands per hour of operation. And fuel savings are just icing on the cake.

I have no interest in defending Trump.

...Yeah, you smell it coming. BUT:

Budgetary concerns for telling trans people "thanks but no thanks" regarding desire to serve in the military might possibly be defensible and comparable to other conditions / states / whatever.

Manning was in jail (whether you think that deserved or not) and got ACLU assistance to be provided with hormone therapy and eventually gender reassignment surgery, because it was deemed psychologically damaging to withhold them. That's some pretty expensive treatment. Paid with tax dollars.

Perform a thought experiment and replace barring trans people from military service with some other group that would similarly require expensive medical maintenance. There's a pretty good example available: Type 1 Diabetes, requiring insulin. And guess what -- diabetics are barred from military service. If you develop diabetes while in the military it isn't grounds for discharge, but if you have it beforehand and want to join up you're SOL.

Back to trans. Do I personally think that they should be barred from service? No, not based purely on that. But if somebody feels that they need hormone replacement and/or gender reassignment surgery, I think they should be paying for that themselves, not on government / military dime.

I'll admit that I see those things not as necessary, but elective. Maybe that's unfair, but at what point does it become ridiculous? Can bald soldiers get hair transplants? Botox? Breast implants?

Trans people want to serve and either A) don't need hormone replacement / gender reassignment or B) are willing to pay out of pocket for them? Sign 'em up. Otherwise, it becomes murky. If that seems insensitive / bigoted, sorry. But plenty of things beyond your control can make you ineligible for military service.


**edit:
Oh, forgot to mention. Do I think Trump really had that sort of argument in mind when he made this decision? HELL NO. He's a spiteful prick. He probably did it for a combination of trying to curry favor with prick GOP congressclowns and just to prod.

I never knew they did off road train rides.

The scary part to me is "Maintenance was deferred for decades", especially when I consider how many bridges have had maintenance deferred for much longer.

Keeping a sealed pneumatic tube along the entire track? Sounds like a maintenance nightmare, to be honest. How do you switch rails? How do you get a stranded propulsion module off the track (can't just get a diesel locomotive to drag the thing, can you now)? What are the backup breaking systems for failures on those 10% grades?

I suppose this might at the very best be a niche thing, more so than the current Transrapid/Maglev system. Airport shuttles, maybe.