vOv posted:

has anybody said blocktrain yet

unpacked robinhood posted:

and when you add the time it takes to board a plane plus going somewhere that is actually a place as opposed to the 5 min it takes to get on a train that stops in the middle of the city

neonbregna posted:

a likely scenario is that driverless cars are maintained by some central authority and you just get on your iPhone and tell it where to pick you up and drop you off

Dr. Honked posted:

you fuckin mongeese tear yourselves to pieces whenever the bitcoin lols die down

crusader_complex posted:

thats a lot of cars to buy and maintain

Nintendo Kid posted:

it doesn't take 2 hours to board a domestic flight and that's what you'd need for high speed rail to be faster from say chicago to nyc then taking a normal train out to the airport, getting on the plane, flying over, and taking another train.

Dr. Honked posted:

you fuckin mongeese tear yourselves to pieces whenever the bitcoin lols die down

theflyingexecutive posted:

it does take this long in some cases but I think high speed rail is only worthwhile for closer-together cities like on the coasts

theflyingexecutive posted:

it does take this long in some cases but I think high speed rail is only worthwhile for closer-together cities like on the coasts

QuarkJets posted:

TRAINS TRAINS UNGH UNGH UNGH MY PRECIOUS TRAINS *cums all over a picture of a train*

Nintendo Kid posted:

over on the east coast, having a continuous 120 mph would do well enough and that's a good way short of high speed rail, since the cities are so close together. like yeah boston to washington all the way through would be better at like a full 200 mph crusiing speed, but you have to make several major stops at intermediate cities on the way and right now it's looking like the main solution for stuff above nyc being slow is a new route that bypasses most of connecticut and rhode island

everywhere else cities start getting far enough apart that you quickly lose any time savings versus air travel, or may be just close enough to be practical, but there's nowhere near enough demand between them to justify a direct link between the cities on its own, and a longer distance route connecting one of them with other cities would need to bypass the middle city to have a reasonable route at high speeds.

like what's the point of having a bullet train between des moines and kansas city for the 5 people who need to get between them fast and often rather than building commuter rail in both to cover millions of people together, every day?

Nintendo Kid posted:

oh wow you can now do chicago to nyc by rail in 5 hours great why didn't you just fly for 2 hours, taking 30 minute commuter rail trains out and in to the airports

crusader_complex posted:

thats a lot of cars to buy and maintain

Nintendo Kid posted:

theres just about nowhere that high speed rail is useful though.

normal 80 - 120 mph rail works just fine for commuter and intercity rail. and when you start going really long distances a 200 mph train still means you're going significantly slower than a plane so what's even the point. oh wow you can now do chicago to nyc by rail in 5 hours great why didn't you just fly for 2 hours, taking 30 minute commuter rail trains out and in to the airports

evilweasel posted:

because you:

1)can't get from any nyc airport to manhattan in 30m reliably (no idea about Chicago)

evilweasel posted:

3)can't get a last-minute plane ticket without paying through the nose

QuarkJets posted:

You can't do this with trains, either. Or at least that was the case when I lived in Europe. You might be okay in places where the trains are owned and operated by the government

quote:

How is anyone surprised by this? I announced a long time ago that the total cost of the project would be around $1 million. This wasn't paid in a single lump sum -- it's paid monthly.
If you think that $100,000 per month for 4 highly-skilled full-time developers is a completely ludicrous rate, then you don't know anything about this business. It would be fair to argue that it's a high rate, though I'm not even sure that this is true. You probably walk past a dozen cheaper developers every day, but their skills/experience would be very different, so it's difficult to compare.
The goal of this project is to create forum software that directly competes with stuff like phpBB and SMF. This is a massive project that will be helpful not only for bitcointalk.org or Bitcoin, but for the Web community as a whole. The expense is justified.
Before I started this project, people complained constantly about the money just sitting around. Now people are complaining that I'm spending too much!? Make up your mind.
You don't have any right to influence how I spend forum money. I am not a politician, and you are not my constituency. If you didn't donate (pretty much everyone reading), then this issue is totally unrelated to you. If you did donate and you're disappointed at the way I'm spending money, then I'm sorry to hear that, and I will carefully listen to any suggestions you have, but the donation page has always said that donated money is managed by me. It is my responsibility to determine how to spend forum money. Moreover, I believe that the donators who oppose this project are the minority.
Any accusations that I'm "stealing" forum money is nonsensical. The money has always been transparently visible via the block chain. I'm clearly not using it except in the stated amounts. There is some room to question whether I get some sort of kickback from Slickage (I do not), and it's totally reasonable to argue against the wisdom of spending the money in this way. But I almost never see reasonable criticism -- I see insults and nonsensical accusations
Most forum money is from ads, not donations. The money from donations was typically worth far less when it was donated than it is now.
The code is here. The constant work on this code is evidence that I'm not just channeling the money through Slickage to pay myself (though it's impossible to completely prove that I'm not doing this). This code has been available for months, but I am amazed at not having received a single complaint about the actual code. I guess that means that either the trolls are too lazy to actually read the code or it's so good that no one can find even a single fault in it.
Remember that I was given varying degrees of control over bitcointalk.org, bitcoin.org, /r/Bitcoin, the Bitcoin alert key, etc. on separate occasions by different people. That is strong evidence (though obviously not proof) of my trustworthiness. But again, I'm not a politician and I don't particularly care whether you trust me or not. (I write these posts because I find it extremely annoying to be criticized for my attempts to help the Bitcoin community, especially when the criticism is just mindless nonsense.)
Before immediately believing criticism and downvotes against me, think about whether you're believing actual arguments or just ad hominem attacks and the popular opinion. Reddit is absolutely terrible for this kind of groupthink... I know from experience that if I caught this post early enough, my reply will get upvoted and I'll get many positive comments. If not, readers will believe "the crowd" and I'll get a bunch of hatemail. And then everyone will forget about this in 2-4 weeks and I'll have to do it all again...

quote:

[–]BeijingBitcoins 55 points 11 hours ago*
If you think that $100,000 per month for 4 highly-skilled full-time developers is a completely ludicrous rate, then you don't know anything about this business.
Okay, sure, if you are hiring super-top-of-the-line poached from Google engineers. Let's take a look at the team of four who are getting paid $25k A MONTH, EACH to "build new forum software" (that's three years in the works, mind you.)
Theymos continually insists that these master builders are the best that money could buy, he would never do such things as funneling money into his friend group.
Let's take a look at Theymos' proud A-Team of coders: http://slickage.com/
Whoa, hey, what's this? No contact info? No portfolio? Something fishy is going on. The only two links on the webpage are to a github page and a twitter profile. The twitter profile, curiously enough, only has 46 followers. For these guys to be commanding $300k/year salaries, they would have to be at the top of their field, right? Wouldn't that come with more uh, social standing and observable networking/references?
Let's take a look at the guys behind Slickage. I found them through the github page.
https://www.linkedin.com/pub/anthony-kinsey/55/141/17a - This guy's only credentials are a bachelor's degree and a consultant position at "eWorldES," a Honolulu-based "enterprise solutions" firm that boasts such prestigious clients as The Honolulu Advertiser and Catholic Charities Honolulu. Remember guys, this guy gets paid $300k a year.
https://github.com/FFAxKenny This guy, who is currently earning his bachelors degree at the University of Hawaii at Manoa. His personal website makes no mention of Slickage anywhere. I'm sure he writes great code for $300k a year, but I wonder why one of his most popular github repositories is of a Java implementation of the game Hangman.
Next up, we have "SomeoneWeird" https://github.com/SomeoneWeird He seems to have a bit more experience and more followers on Twitter, but still, no mention of Slickage anywhere.
The last guy, "WangBus" https://github.com/wangbus actually does mention Slickage on his page, but nothing stands out to me to indicate that this guy is somehow a top-coder. Also lives in Manoa, Hawaii.
In an AMA that theymos did one year ago, he wrote:
I am a 21-year-old computer science student in the US and an avid bitcoiner since early 2010.
Information on Theymos' real identity is difficult to come by, I was unable to find out where in the United States he resides. What do you want to bet that he lives in Manoa Valley, Hawaii?
Are we really to believe that these four not-particularly-remarkable guys in their early twenties, one not even out of college, and only one of the four apparently even employed at "Slickage", are each contributing enough to command a $300k/year paycheck?
Let's also remember that Theymos has been collecting these donations "to improve the forums" basically since the forum first began. At this point, the forum coffers hold millions of dollars worth of bitcoin, all controlled by this single unaccountable twenty-one year old, while the forum has never received an upgrade or a facelift, and has in fact been compromised by hackers several times in the last couple of years.

evilweasel posted:

because you:

1)can't get from any nyc airport to manhattan in 30m reliably (no idea about Chicago)

evilweasel posted:

3)can't get a last-minute plane ticket without paying through the nose

Boxturret posted:

ruby idiot railed posted:

I bought a bunch of Thomas the Tank Engine wooden railway toys for my son. This year I found out they have battery-operated engines, both ones that run and ones that make the chugga chugga choo choo sounds. This Christmas his grandma's going to buy him some wooden tracks and buildings, like the crane and the engine garage thing.

This train-related grandma-father-son bonding moment could only be improved by bitcoins.

neonbregna posted:

intentionally exposing your children to infectious sources of autism should be child abuse

Segmentation Fault posted:

get him a 2000-era PC and a copy of Roller Coaster Tycoon: Loopy Landscapes