Comments by "Scott Franco" (@scottfranco1962) on "Wendover Productions" channel.

  1. Correct. Spring driven clocks existed, but the spring changed the amount of force it had as it unwound. The answer was a new type of escapement that relied on the mass of a wheel in the watch turning left, then right, then left again, etc. You can still see this escapement at work in most mechanical watches.
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  2. I came across this basic idea while looking in my refrigerator. We had butter from France in there. My wife likes to shop at Trader Joe's, who has a lot of stuff like this. Now the thing is, we live in California, which recently passed Wisconsin as the biggest dairy state in the USA. So let's say there is not a lack of butter here. Further, I have been to France, they like products of California, they are all over the stores there. Thus I don't think it is a stretch to imagine that our French butter headed for California passed another ship with California butter headed for France. Thus, everything is going everywhere on our little planet. And that's why the ports are all stuck up.
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  3. For us non-truckers, what is the issue with the term "semi" for Tesla trucks?
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  4. I'm a California born American. And I got mine. So get STUFFED.
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  5. This is taking shortcuts with history. At the time of the Louisiana purchase, Napoleon was fighting a slave rebellion in Haiti and realized (correctly) that the US would start a war over the territory if it were not sold to them from France, which was exactly what happened to Mexico later. Thus Napoleon sold on good terms.
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  6. A great overview of how the government messes up the housing markets. In Santa Clara CA (aka Silicon Valley) housing prices are out of control, but this is primarily due to the government's restrictive zoning laws.
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  7. I got a 2018 model 3. It had a leaking right taillight, and developed a crack in the back roof glass. Both issues were fixed punctually by Tesla. When I got the car, everyone was on about the panel gaps, but I never had that issue. In exchange for this, I got a car that was 10 years ahead of any car on the road. Unfortunately, it is still 10 years ahead of any car on the road. Now everyone is trying to copy Tesla. If Tesla was and is a failure, it is a dammed successful one.
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  8. So a Cessna Caravan is still a fairly big aircraft, seating 9 people. If they are not filling that, what is the matter with filling the "essential need" with Cessnas/Pipers? (4 seater aircraft). An independent company could do that.
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  9. Why does Rwanda have a low murder rate? There is nobody left to murder...
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  10. Dedollarization is a good idea, but not for the reasons in the video. Its because the USA is inflating the currency.
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  11. These "displaced people" saw the value of their properties skyrocket and, unless they were stupid, sold at a huge markup and moved away to cheaper places. I'm not going to cry for them.
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  12. Decided by whoever has the biggest guns.
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  13. They should use the USA/Mexico agreements over the Colorado river as a model. Oh, wait, there was no agreement and the USA cut off the river from Mexico. Never mind.
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  14. A lot of systems are GUI (graphical user interfaces) overlaid on command line interfaces. There is nothing wrong with this sort of system if it is properly one.
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  15. Ditto the other comment. This reads like an ad for the park, and leaves out the important detail of an accident. Its not up to your usual standards, and earns a thumbs down.
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  16. When I toured Rocketdyne as a 15 year old, they were making the shuttle engines. They showed us also what looked like a 2 story tower that had the shuttle engine and a turbine mounted with it. The idea was that it could be transported where needed, then lit off and generate huge amounts of electrical power on demand. I don't know if they ever used it.
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  17. Ships go UP and OVER Panama. The rainfall into the lake is what powers the system. It was a work of genius after the French found that a sea level canal wouldn't work. I flew into Panama city once at dusk, the sight of all of those ships lit up waiting for the canal was an impressive sight.
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  18. I disagree with the "sameless" theme. We don't live in a museum. People get what they want and value most. If you want a counter example, look at Portland, or indeed, Oregon in general, where people flock to individual businesses. Funky restaurants have lines out the door, and offbeat coffeeshops and bars flourish, in the same environment as the franchises.
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  19. "Who would WANT self driving cars?" That's really the right answer. I don't, I enjoy driving. The standard answer I hear from technology jingoists is "yes, but a computer driver is safer than you are". I have never had an accident that I have caused in my life (only been rear ended - including stopped and not even in the car). Hard to have less accidents than zero. I'm 60 years old. By the time they wring out the bugs, establish a track record of self driving cars, and then (inevitably) pass a law against humans driving, I will be very safely dead or in the drooling lounge. Now having said all that, I plan to buy a Tesla and play with self driving mode, probably a lot. Its a neat toy. I just don't plan to trust it 24/7.
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  20. You don't need price controls for education. If the colleges charge more than the market will bear, then their attendance will go down. The fact that this didn't happen in the face of massive price increases is clearly because of the continual ratcheting up of Federally backed student loans, even WHILE we were being told that federal aid was the answer to college affordability.
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  21. The only fair way to split California, and it does need to be split, is north-south along a line of latitude that evenly divides the state for population. This would be roughly 1/3 up and would make LA/SD a superstate by itself, and leave SF and most of the open agricultural areas as the Norcal state. It would not politically advantage anyone, and it would stop CA from being run primarily by LA. So Norcal and Socal, which is already what a lot of people here call it.
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  22. Why worry about Amaon? GIve them the job of moving the Coronavirus vaccine around the country, and the pandemic will be over by march. As opposed to next year at the current rate.
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  23. I think most of the Reunification was paid for by selling chunks of that wall.
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  24. Good job Wendover. A timely and needed video.
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  25. rrrrrright!
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  26. Yea I saw the other documentary on the water system: "Die hard".
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  27. We need to talk to the real experts on dam building: The beavers.
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  28.  @sulljason  " It's kind of like 75% on the kid" congratulations, that is the stupidest thing I have read on the internet this year. Its the 6 year old's fault. Do the world a favor and NEVER have kids.
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  29. Mmmm... the twilight zone ride at Disneyland is also an indoor drop (being both up and down).
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  30. You are not SERIOUSLY going to sell this canard. Nobody is going to buy an expensive EV car and tether it to their house. People have to go to work. Give it up.
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  31.  @bud_kleric2771  I don't have a problem. I was born in this state. You guys came here from other states to scoop up some gold (good paying jobs), then you voted for idiot democrats who are ruining MY STATE. Get STUFFED. Can't buy a house? Too sad, too bad. LEAVE.
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  32. There is one small issue with the text of this video. Electric motors may have substantially lower failure rates and maintenance costs than piston aircraft, turbine and jet engines are also significantly more reliable and low maintenance than piston engines as well.
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  33. I don't think it needs to be that complex to explain how banks can create money. Everytime you or the bank writes a check its making a promise to turn it into cash, and the presumption is that everyone won't try to take the money out at once. To me this makes more sense, because the key is that you are going to take that check and put it into another bank, not actually cash it out (or expect gold from it). Thus money becomes an accounting problem between the banks, and banks honoring each others checks mean they effectively print their own money.
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  34. Go away...
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  35. The Malaysian crash and similar incidents have ushered in a new age in aircraft operations. Satellites now scan the earth's surface looking for their transponder emissions, even over the oceans. We will know exactly where an airliner crashed into the ocean.
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  36. Checks at the border to save California from invasive Republicans...
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  37. Hey, it's not fair to compare China to California. One is run by a single party state with corrupt officials that pass taxpayer money out to friends. The other is..... oh never mind.
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  38. Do you happen to live in SA?
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  39. I think you just blew the Wall Street Journal article on the airlines in quarantine out of the water. Good job.
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  40. My ford ranger has 200 miles of range. There are/were many cars with that range, and nobody complained that was too little. If you ask people to name their desired range and then take the answer as 300 miles, you might as well ask them if they would also like the car to be able to time travel. Of course they are going to name an unreasonable figure. Range anxiety is something non-EV owners have... before they buy an EV. After you actually GET an EV, and realize that it is not a problem, it goes away. The press feeds this fear with completely made up nonsense about it taking hours to charge, and making it sound like you have to go wait somewhere for hours every other day, instead of charging at home.
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  41. The Jones act never made sense. It was a giveaway to shipping unions.
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  42. Democracy SHOULD go on after doomsday. Too bad our government has little to do with it.
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  43. The answer is: internet/web voting. https is already more secure than voting machines, encrypted and secure. We can give voters one time certificates that can only be used once, can be verified by additional data provided by the user, etc. At the end of the day a voter would have to actually give away their right to place that vote, which is an individual decision. Such a system would be more secure, save huge amounts of money, eliminate fraud, and increase voter turnout due to not having to attend in person.
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  44. I know what the value of my life if I NEVER go outside. Basically zero or close to it.
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  45. Good news: You can go to space. Bad news: Only in incinerated form (ash).
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  46. California should not vote to leave the union. They should be thrown out.
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  47. Look at how "Omaha steaks" are shipped. If some cheesy late night TV meat sellers can do it, so can Pfizer. PS. one solution not considered here is "box in box", that is, a dry ice box will last 10 days in room temperature, but if you put that box in a common refrigerator, voila!, you have extended deep freeze storage. Another thing we can do now that we could not do before is cheaply "chip" the box with a small computer that can both RFID with readers and provide a temperature tracking that can tell if the box ever exceeded the correct temperature.
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  48. "There is no radar over the north Atlantic" This is finally changing. The iridium satellite network received an upgrade to be able to input transponder extended mode S data, which includes GPS data from airplanes. This means that virtually all "dark" spots in the world are now covered with what is sometimes called "active radar", that is, aircraft that self report their position instead of waiting to be swept by radar. This system was partially advanced by the idea that it would make Malaysian airline type accidents less likely (aircraft disappearing over ocean regions). However, it has long term consequences on aircraft spacing in over ocean routes. You can put flights closer together if you know exactly where they are.
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  49. Newsomstan.
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  50.  @echonozz8929  Two reasons: 1. Turns out Panama is not flat. The canal would have to be level. A lot more digging would have to be done to get down to sea level. 2. The Pacific and the Atlantic ocean are not at the same level. You would have a constant flow in one direction. The suez canal didn't have either of these factors going against it, so it worked. The French tried the same thing in Panama and stopped.
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  51. More specifically Loudoun county is made up of people getting rich off government paychecks, while the rest of Virgina is an example of the result of government policies.
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  52. There is no ethics problem. The car should never be programmed to cause harm to a person. It is not reliant that doing that would save other people. Cars are not people, and computers and AI is nowhere near the state where they can make such tradeoffs. All that matters, and all that should matter, is that the car's programming is NEVER to hit anyone or anything. Think about it. Its hard to trust your computer to keep your documents safe. Do YOU want it to make life or death decisions?
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  53. This ends when Russia wants to develop its own airlines more. Then it would be forced to join the exchange of transit rights just like all other countries.
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  54. I want my own satellite that zaps people I don't like with a laser...
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  55. I suspect the guy from Wendover had better never use an air ambulance after this...
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  56. So if it is this easy to explain money, why don't the politicians get it?
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  57. Wendover is near 3m subs, and probably is required viewing at airline boardrooms. I'm guessing he is doing ok.
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  58. That's it, time to invade Canada!
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  59. I didn't go to college because I couldn't afford it even if they gave it out free. I could certainly have taken night jobs and barely got by, but instead I took a regular full time job and got on with my life. There are not a lot of computer programming night jobs. To this day it stuns me to hear that somehow I was "lazy" for not attending college. Because I had to complete with college graduates I had to work twice as hard and yet made less money.
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