incision's comments

You're right, I did mistate the length.

In general though, I think you're misunderstanding my thrust here. You're talking about value, I don't think this project is a good value at all, quite the opposite [1].

I'm just thinking about engineering and construction...

The Silver Line is a demonstration that building 23 miles of 45 mph commuter rail line costs at least $6.8B despite the benefit the benefit of 40 years, 100+ miles and 90 stations worth of experience doing the same.

Given that, actually building a first of it's kind 40 mile 300 mph rail line through the same sort of aerial and tunnel requiring [2] suburban counties around DC for 'only' $10B seems completely implausible.

1: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8492525

2: http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/maryland/bal-maglev-train-i...

Perhaps, but it's right on par with the cost of the recent Metro extension which cost $6.8B for an 11.6 mile extension running on existing tech.

Successfully building an entirely new Maglev line for 'only' $10B would be a steal relatively speaking, but I don't see that happening.

More likely, I'd expect the planners want Government buy-in because they recognize how susceptible the Government is to chasing sunk costs and covering all the difference when the project predictably balloons to 5x what was proposed.

1: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silver_Line_(Washington_Metro)

>'A maglev train may help ease traffic that has made roads in Maryland’s Montgomery County, which lies between Washington and Baltimore, the fourth-most-congested in the country, according to digital-mapping company TomTom NV. (TOM2) Washington ranks seventh.'

Not really.

Prince Georges, Anne Arundel and Howard lie between Baltimore and DC, hence the existing MARC lines running through them [1]. Any new lines would undoubtedly follow those paths.

It's not DC <-> Baltimore that's miserable it's Northern VA <-> North / East DC suburbs. Transit in the DC area is built around bringing people in and out of DC, not from suburb to suburb.

People who don't take MARC for the DC <-> Baltimore now aren't doing it for time, they're doing it because they don't want to ride the MARC, deal with the bottleneck of Union Station then ride two Metro trains and a bus to get to work in VA. Swapping MARC for Maglev won't change that, but it will cost a lot of money.

Improving the existing infrastructure and/or figuring out how to draw more business into DC proper would be a better use of any funds.

1: http://mta.maryland.gov/sites/default/files/MARCsystemmap.JP...

Anecdotal of course, but at this point I've noticed and heard / seen it demonstrated by other people enough to give me pause.

When I think about describing someone, it's almost always in terms of what they've said - specific choices of words, tone or body language, certainly never about the face.

If true, I wonder if this would be any sort of advantage / disadvantage?

While I totally agree with this I wonder about whether / why people working this jobs would be re-classified?

Many if not most people I know in work in technology on 1099 and are applied in ways which would seem to be more clearly misclassified than these workers.

I feel like I read stories about horrible jobs and tough times finding work from young college grads regularly and the news would seem to corroborate them [1].

Apparently, these people end up serving coffee or answering phones for clown shop start-ups.

Meanwhile, I know people trying to hire for what I'd consider traditional entry level jobs (clerks, reception, no-risk security, no-experience necessary apprenticeships) offering full benefits plus 35-45k+ salaries who would be overjoyed to see a single college-educated applicant.

What's going on here? Do people believe in this Amway-esque pitch for a "world of opportunities"? Do traditional jobs feel like giving up? Are they too restricting?

1: http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/she-the-people/wp/2014/0...

It's easy enough to understand this applied to fast food, but I get the impression other industries would rather not believe it to be true.

Thing is, I think it's clearly evidenced in tech by every "I went through two days of interviewing on algorithms and distributed systems to hack on PHP boilerplate?" story. Tech might go to the trouble to select for brilliance, but they aren't necessarily using or paying for it.

Further it's readily admitted by folks like a16z [1].

"Thus software itself becomes the driving force of leveling the ability to write software to solve problems. This is a good thing: As software becomes a high-impact, low-skill trade, we decouple the technical ability and experience needed to write tricky software from the ability to solve problems for people."

1: http://a16z.com/2014/07/30/the-happy-demise-of-the-10x-engin...

Personally, I'd much rather see advancement / acceptance of self-drivers even if limited to highways than incremental improvements to traditional cars.

The main, perhaps only reason I really care about response and acceleration is the generally selfish, adversarial behavior of human drivers.

The contrast between the same daily drive in a 4-cyl compact and torquey V8 is stark. In the former, every lane change has to come with permission - that drivers are often unwilling to give. In the latter, I'm in complete control.

I'd much rather the third possibility - to know we're all on autopilot gliding along at a safe, predictable rate to our destinations.

I use the site regularly, but I put it in the same category as most single topic 'communities' - something I'll use (reference), but know better than to engage with.

Basically, I find that such places tend to end up heavily steeped in their own customs and hierarchy which are dominated by the sort of super users and relationship-driven mobs that the author ran into.

At least Amazon finally acknowledged the toxic elements of the Goodreads community [1]. It's surely a tough problem.

What I really wonder is what exactly causes a community to end up that way? Every successful community has a struggle with growth and groupthink, but some get particularly bad. Is it a failure in moderation or are some topics and demographics just more susceptible?

1: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goodreads#Criticism_and_controv...

I don't think any of that matters.

How many smartphones run on AA batteries [1]? How many people have ever configured anything involving gearing [2]?

Rethinking an icon feels like a contradiction. It doesn't matter what it's 'supposed' to be.

It's not a floppy disk, it's the save icon.

1: https://www.iconfinder.com/search/?q=battery

2: https://www.iconfinder.com/search/?q=settings

Where I grew up, everybody was pretty damn poor. Still, probably half my neighborhood or more was beholden to Rent-A-Center for a dining room set or couch. Most were ashamed to shop at K-Mart or even buy generic cereal.

That said, I think IKEA could do tidy business by targeting a slimmed down catalog to the areas where rent to own thrives.

I regularly see comments on one project or another pointing to a XYZ license as the reason a project failed / has few contributors as if the 'problem' with that particular license is entirely self-evident.

It's awfully confusing as I'm sure I've seen polar opposite opinions on every major license under the sun, each entirely bereft of context.

As others have noted, the product could benefit from promoting the "camera + smarts = faster, easier and better than visiting a tailor" aspect more.

I'd use this if it could do pants as well.

It sure looks that way and I'm normally pretty tolerant of design flourishes, but I find this simply unbearable.

Still, I really wanted to read this, but neither Pocket, Readability nor Instapaper are able to pull more than a few paragraphs of usable text out of it.

The design isn't just bad or annoying it's hostile.

I have no solid idea, but my impression from glancing at solutions for healthcare years ago wasn't that Hospitals are choosing Big Co so much as they have little choice.

As I understand it, smaller companies don't try / give up on keeping up wit the costs of required certifications (possibly the wrong term) and the like.

This also seemed to help explain the slow pace of advances and updates to such systems as patches and changes have their own onerous process.

Labeling Americans as a group and particularly certain subsets within as lazy is just as credible and, I'd wager, often done for many of the same reasons as labeling immigrants freeloaders.

I often wonder what sort of path the people who used to work those jobs have taken since.

It's solid advice for dealing with most anyone, particularly people with any sort of 'power' over your work and decisions.

With slight modification, these are the same sort of red flags to note precautions to take when dealing with a manager, executive or customer.

I think managing the expectations of non/semi-technical people and taking care in the way we evaluate and represent each other's work to those people is an important, but often overlooked part of this business.

It's my understanding that this is not the case. That remittance from the US is a pretty significant part of many developing economies [1][2].

I've yet to a met an immigrant professional in the US who didn't send huge amounts back home along with itent or at least hope of retiring there.

1: http://www.havanatimes.org/?p=94444 2: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-12-17/global-immigrants-s...

This is begging for disaster.

I've personally witnessed the ugly mess of an overzealous rescue, a rescuer labeled assailant when the victim changes their mind or late responders are simply confused and of course violent wisdom of gathering mobs.

Digitally amplifying a scream this way is serious business. Assault and attacker, words the site uses freely, are dead serious yet being applied to an easily activated 'bunny' pin with implied 'rewards'.

I hope these folks think heavily about the potential implications - not just intent of what they're doing here.