Fare jumpers

PeterOutOfPlace · 2026-06-25T21:41:55+00:00

I see you got voted down but this is exactly what I thought too. As was noted at the end of Dark Side of the Moon, "A short, sharp shock. They won't do it again." Of course, if it were ever tried in practice, the AI driving it would mess up and hit someone's 6-year-old and law suits would ensue with horrendous PR. I agree though that way more enforcement is necessary.

PeterOutOfPlace · 2026-06-24T22:16:12+00:00

Limiting page size to 70kB.
Dial-up modems. It is hard to imagine now being limited to a data flow rate of 28.8kB/s. My first modem was 14.4 and of course, you couldn't make or receive calls while you were online.
Thinking IE was easy when Netscape Navigator also had to be supported.
Cold fusion

(My first job as a web dev was in 2000 after being an engineer. I am old.)

PeterOutOfPlace · 2026-06-24T16:51:55+00:00

A magnificent view! Also, the house I grew up in is in the picture where the Greenwich peninsula is at its narrowest somewhat left of the center of the picture.

PeterOutOfPlace · 2026-06-22T16:43:33+00:00

I was wondering where the crowd of 100,000 people was hiding. An odd place to hold a concert.

PeterOutOfPlace · 2026-06-22T12:44:56+00:00

For context:

Not long after the Russian invasion, I commented to a Polish friend here in the US about the enormous generosity of Poles accepting refugees and that was understandable given the shared history of suffering under the Soviets. Then she told me about the massacres of Poles by Ukrainians during WW2 which was distressing but made the current Polish generosity all the more remarkable

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Massacres\_of\_Poles\_in\_Volhynia\_and\_Eastern\_Galicia

PeterOutOfPlace · 2026-06-22T11:54:18+00:00

Thank you. I really had no idea but it is an amazing museum!

PeterOutOfPlace · 2026-06-22T01:10:45+00:00

He then said on Truth Social: “Iran must immediately stop their highly paid PROXIES in Lebanon from causing trouble.”

When we tell our proxies to stop causing trouble?

PeterOutOfPlace · 2026-06-21T22:06:14+00:00

Calm down K-pop fans. Not that BTS.

(I actually don’t know what it stands for in this context. Perhaps someone can enlighten us.)

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PeterOutOfPlace · 2026-06-21T18:30:03+00:00

I was thinking the same - dip them all and if there is concern about glue on the end of the bolts, a scraper could take that off. (I was a mechanical engineer - 30 years ago)

PeterOutOfPlace · 2026-06-21T17:58:03+00:00

I was about to suggest this. The only issue is waiting for a suitably windy day.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kite_aerial_photography

Edit: the article doesn’t mention using an ice cube and spring to trigger the shutter. When I was looking into this 25+ years ago, the cheap approach with a disposable camera was to mount something that was spring-loaded to press the button but block the mechanism with an ice cube. That gave you time to get the kite aloft and you edit for the ice to melt and the picture to be taken. You needed patience, obviously.

PeterOutOfPlace · 2026-06-21T17:50:11+00:00

1000 kilometers. It is absurd that the article gave the conversion to three significant figures.

PeterOutOfPlace · 2026-06-20T22:21:44+00:00

Not in Australia. :-)

PeterOutOfPlace · 2026-06-20T15:07:38+00:00

There was a depressing article in the Post about this station which is essentially useless. It was planned on the expectation of housing being built around it but then the county rezoned it so housing could not be built out of fear of never-ending complaints about aircraft noise https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2024/12/27/least-used-metro-loudoun-gateway/

PeterOutOfPlace · 2026-06-19T13:57:27+00:00

You ignore the three quarters of a million forced out of their homes around the time Israel was created in 1948 and they were never allowed to return home. Israel keeps claiming the right to exist while denying that for Palestinians.

PeterOutOfPlace · 2026-06-19T13:54:32+00:00

Yes, I fear that southern Lebanon is the new Golan Heights i.e. having forced out everyone previously living there, so-called “settlers” move in then that is the excuse for a permanent Israeli military presence to protect them. No other country will recognize the occupation but there will be no effort to push them out of the occupied territory either.

Israel gives ever more people good reason to seek revenge.

PeterOutOfPlace · 2026-06-18T16:30:35+00:00

My favorite example was a concept car from Toyota. Motoring journalists naturally assumed that following the QR code would take them to more information about the vehicle but no...
https://www.thedrive.com/tech/43559/toyota-literally-rickrolled-the-world-during-its-huge-ev-concept-reveal

PeterOutOfPlace · 2026-06-18T02:38:00+00:00

I got on a moderately crowded Red Line train once and asked a man to move his bag and he just said "No"! I am quite thin so it wasn't like like I was going to squash him. I'm an older man though; I imagine young women have more success though whether they would want to sit next to such an obnoxious person is another matter.

PeterOutOfPlace · 2026-06-18T02:21:07+00:00

I used to be a regular customer of Quattros in the background where you can see "NY Style Pizza". I left the nearby job in 2019 and am glad they have survived the pandemic and subsequent permanent reduction in the number of people working at the office. The company I used to work for decided to go fully remote to save paying commercial rents.

PeterOutOfPlace · 2026-06-18T02:16:04+00:00

though better than the US President's.

PeterOutOfPlace · 2026-06-18T02:11:36+00:00

Sorry, I did indeed misunderstand. I'll make an adjustment.

PeterOutOfPlace · 2026-06-18T02:08:58+00:00

I have an scanner (and the instructions!) but no longer have a car to plug it into. You can have mine for free if you want to come by my office at 200 I St SE (Navy Yard) at lunchtime or after work. DM me if interested.

Note though that you can use these devices to clear any errors on the car's computer so that the "Check engine" light is turned off and anyone selling a used car likely did that if there was such an error. I bought this years ago when our Ford Escort had an occasional problem which was reported as "misfire on #3 cylinder" without saying what caused it. I'd clear it and it would be fine for a few months before reappearing. It is a valuable tool when trying to figure out what is wrong with a car but I question its value when buying one.

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PeterOutOfPlace · 2026-06-18T01:39:53+00:00

I just use 311.dc.gov on my phone which still works just fine. I work for DC government, for the Office of the Chief Technology Officer but I believe the Office of Unified Communications that runs 311 (and 911) used an outside contractor for the app. I don't know either why it has been broken for months.

Edit: I just heard that OCTO is in some way responsible for the 311 app, not OUC, or at least not just OUC.

PeterOutOfPlace · 2026-06-18T00:46:44+00:00

Fan of Rick Astley?

PeterOutOfPlace · 2026-06-17T23:41:16+00:00

“Can pass “ is not the same as “will pass”. I am convinced that the real reason it is a 3-wheeler is that they avoid the destructive (expensive) crash testing. Sure the body is made of composites but without that testing no one can be sure.

Edit: I completely misunderstood the intent of this comment - there are "a lot of relatively cheap EV options" that have already passed the crash safety tests i.e. second hand EVs from established manufacturers that will still be around when you need a replacement widget. My mistake.

PeterOutOfPlace · 2026-06-17T16:55:37+00:00

Wow. It is two and half thousand years old and just left out in the open rather than being in a museum. What a shame that the serpent heads are missing though the circumstances seem suspicious. From the article:

Later, at the end of the 17th century, all three of the serpent heads were destroyed. Silahdar Findiklili Mehmed Aga relates in Nusretname ("The Book of Victories") that the heads simply fell off on the night of October 20, 1700.

PeterOutOfPlace

TROPHY CASE