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Cake day: June 23rd, 2023

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  • Y’all can down vote me all you want but it still won’t change the fact the United States has a functioning railroad system outside of passenger service. I only mention network size because it was the easiest metric to pull up. But the point is whatever metric you use outside of passenger service the US is in the top three countries which is something not possible unless you have a functioning railroad system.

    • The US is third for tonnes per kilometer.[1]

    • The US is second for tonnes hauled per year.[2]

    • The US moves more intermodal containers by rail then all of Europe combined. [3]

    It might seem like the United States doesn’t know how to run trains but in reality we have one of the best freight networks out there.

    I’d also like to add that on the passenger side of things the US is really trying to improve but the investments haven’t had time to come to fruition yet. Amtrak has 768 siemens venture cars and 175 ALC-42 locomotives on order so it can expand to 39 new routes [4]. There’s been a significant amount of funding into high speed rails for other corridors outside of the northeast corridor [5].








  • There’s a few routes (pun intended) you could go.

    DIY with opnsense on an old PC will give you the most flexibility and will allow you to build your router to your exact needs.

    Ubiquiti is also another choice albeit a contentious one. Their hardware is pretty good which also doesn’t require a recurring charge to use (unfortunately rare when you get into the enterprise grade gear). The software side is where people have such mixed feelings as for consumers and prosumers it’s pretty good but when you start getting into enterprise level configurations you’ll find their software pretty lacking. For example if you need a L3 switch for inter VLAN routing you’ll want to go with a different vendor as ubiquiti’s L3 is practically broken.


  • This is incorrect in most states.

    Employers can require an employee to be “on-call” and available to work on an emergency or as-needed basis. Employers are generally not required to pay employees who are “on-call,” unless the employee is actually called to duty. However, if an employer places significant restrictions on how an employee spends their time while on-call, this time may need to be compensated as hours worked.

    The tenth circuit of appeals came up with this test to determine if the employers restriction constitutes on call hours as hours worked.

    Where the employee is not required to remain on the employer’s premises, the critical inquiry is whether the employee is able to use the time effectively for his or her own purposes. Here, the report requirement necessarily entailed that the employee could not drink alcohol, must be able to dress in uniform, and must be able to travel to the airport, park, and pass through security within one hour of a call. She was not able to make or attend doctors’ appointments for herself or her children, do her weekly shopping, nor go on field trips with her children. The court compared these circumstances with many FLSA cases presenting similar, or even more restrictive, circumstances involving availability by pager, inability to drink alcohol, and ability to report within 30 minutes or one hour. In the FLSA cases, it was determined that the employees’ activities were not so curtailed as to require the on-call time to be considered compensable working time. The court followed this precedent.


  • No, vehicles have gotten larger because of the same problem as most of the issues in the United States: politics!

    You see automobile manufacturers have to meet an average fuel economy across their entire fleet under the CAFE (Corporate average fuel economy) act of 1975. CAFE was a good idea as it forced the auto industry into actually improving on fuel economy year after year throughout their entire fleet or be met with steep fines for ever 0.1mpg off the target.

    In 2011 CAFE was changed which directly caused the auto market we have today. See in 2011 the formula on how you’d calculate your fleet’s avarage MPG got changed to now factor in vehicle footprint as a variable which auto manufactures quickly caught on to mean the larger a vehicle is the smaller their entire fleet’s MPG has to be.

    On top of that in 2012 “medium-duty trucks” was added as their own category with a lower MPG requirement meaning if your truck or SUV fell into that category then you would have a smaller MPG target for your entire fleet.

    Now put yourself into the shoes of an early 2010s auto manufacture, would you rather design small and light vehicles that require you to meet a pretty high fuel economy level across your entire product range or would you inflate the size of your vehicles and move all R&D into finding ways to get your entire fleet classified as a medium-duty truck/SUV with a smaller MPG requirement? Of course you are going to take the latter.

    The changes to CAFE in the 2010s killed small vehicles as we knew it. Ensured light duty trucks stayed dead domestically built or chicken tax be dammed. Caused the explosion of crossover SUVs to flood the market. All while making vehicles more dangerous and worse for the environment.


  • For 12k a month just the DDoS protection would be worth it for a site of that nature and size but they also get CDN access with full control over the caching, and a web application firewall.

    The way I see it the casino was trying to plate share at a buffet and got caught so now they are complaining about having to pay the correct amount.




  • Looking at what happened to every Zeppelin that Ferdinand von Zeppelin built you start to get a good picture on why it’s maybe not the best idea. I got to hand it to him though, dudes got dedication.

    LZ1: damaged during initial flight, repaired and flown two more times before investors backed out causing the ship to be sold for scrap.

    LZ2: suffered double engine failure and crashed into a mountain. While anchored to the mountain awaiting repairs a storm destroyed it beyond repair.

    LZ3: built from salvaged parts of LZ2. Severally damaged in storm. After LZ4’s destruction LZ3 was repaired and was accepted by the German military who eventually scrapped it.

    LZ4: suffered from chronic engine failure. While repairing the engines a gust of wind blew the ship free of its mooring and struck a tree causing the ship to ignite and burn to the ground.

    LZ5: destroyed in a storm.

    LZ6: destroyed in its hanger by fire.

    LZ7: destroyed after crashing in a thunderstorm.

    LZ8: destroyed by wind.

    LZ9: this one actually worked and survived for three years before being decommissioned.

    LZ10: caught on fire and destroyed after a gust of wind blew its mooring line into itself.

    LZ11: destroyed while attempting to move the ship into it’s hanger

    LZ12 & LZ13: both flew successful careers before being decommissioned a few years later.

    LZ14: destroyed in a thunderstorm.

    LZ15: destroyed during an emergency landing.

    LZ16: was stolen by the French.

    LZ17: decommissioned after the war.

    LZ18: exploded during its test flight.

    LZ19: damaged beyond repair during an emergency landing.

    LZ129: the Hindenburg.

    LZ127: retired and scrapped after flying over a million miles.

    LZ130: flew 30 flights before being dismantled for parts to aid in the war effort.



  • And the FBI confiscated their cellphones and other methods of communication?

    The FBI did seize their phones but the crew has received new phones from aid groups along with a Hotspot that was provided awhile ago.

    Why the fuck are poor foreign workers being treated like that when we’re letting the company almost completely off the hook?

    The crew has been stuck on the ship because they are essential to the recovery process. The crew knows how to operate the ship and all of it’s machinery. They’ve been responsible for keeping pumps on board the ship running and ensuring there’s no flooding as the clean up goes on.

    The real question is now that the ship is back at a berth and in a position where only a skeleton crew is needed why hasn’t the US granted any emergency visas to the crew so they can start rotating shore leave?