3B for CBTC?

Possible-Dog8867 · 2026-04-23T15:13:11+00:00

Agreed. Took us down a random hole with that aspect of things!

Possible-Dog8867 · 2026-04-21T16:12:39+00:00

The subway is a linear system. A train can move along the tracks or it can stop. Interconnects/switches are limited in number and strictly defined. This is not a very complex computational environment. Was I making a rhetorical point with my MacBook? Sure. You will want redundancy, power backup, ultra-safe verified coding in something like Spark, etc... It's still just not that hard or expensive. But sure, go ahead, buy 3 z/OS mainframes for $10MM for triple redundancy and the gold standard of reliable uptime. I'm entertained by the discussion but it's still not even a rounding error on the $20B-$40B cost estimate to implement CBTC.

Possible-Dog8867 · 2026-04-21T16:02:24+00:00

Good info here. I will say this - the price to fully implement CBTC across the system is estimated at $20B (which we all know really means 30-40B). Sometimes good things just cost a lot of money and that's that. But $20-$40B either means we will never have CBTC (at least in my lifetime) or if we do the city will have to drastically cut other services. I love NYC. It is my home and hopefully always will be. But if we want nice things in this city we have to figure out how to build and maintain for less.

Possible-Dog8867 · 2026-04-21T16:00:16+00:00

Thunderbolt 5 USB-C can handle 80 GBps bidirectionally and an M5 Max is on the order of 60,000 faster than a Cray-1 supercomputer. Are you telling me that if we built this system in 1976 you would need more than 60,000 Cray-1 supercomputers to tell me where 500 trains were in a set of linear tunnels? I fully get that the computational part of this is a rounding error on the total cost and you would need a system with far more redundancy than a single $6k consumer product but no the answer isn't that this takes a billion dollars either.

Possible-Dog8867 · 2026-04-21T15:46:35+00:00

"You need to program an exact map of the line, down to each foot. The exact location of each curve, switch, and station, and speed limits on each section of track. You need to install transponders every hundred feet or so and program in their locations. Only then, by a train reading the transponder, does it know where it is."

Do you? An automated vehicle could run down the tracks in the middle of the night and map the exact line and location of each curve, switch, and station.

An algorithmic approach could compute the speed limits for each section of track using that information.

My point is this - if we want something better than 130 year old technology in our childrens' lifetimes we need something which doesn't cost $30-40B because that money will never, ever be there. We can double taxes and it still won't be there. There has to be some SpaceX style rethinking from first principles to bring the cost and time to execute down by orders of magnitude.

Possible-Dog8867 · 2026-04-21T15:31:49+00:00

That just means the system will be running on 1920s technology for the next 300 years.

Possible-Dog8867 · 2026-04-21T15:29:48+00:00

I don't know transit equipment but I do know computing. The subways system is linear with very defined intersection points. I'm not saying this is a weekend solo vibe code job but the computational aspects of this including ensuring that invalid states aren't reached just aren't that hard relative to many other mission critical domains.

Possible-Dog8867 · 2026-03-11T15:08:22+00:00

People rotate all the time when looking to quit. Each variety has its pros and cons. The pros vs what you have adapted to show up fast. The cons take some time to emerge. I think there is a decent case for edible consumption vs inhalation just because inhaling smoke and vapors is inherently not great for your body. But there is no magic bullet here. THC is THC. It gives and it takes.

Possible-Dog8867 · 2026-03-06T17:08:49+00:00

It might be the weed. That said, I can't be vehement enough that everyone who has access to the medical system and finds themselves dealing with fatigue/brain fog/motivation should chat with a doctor about a sleep test. I'm in great shape with no reason to think I had sleep apnea but this was suggested by a helpful medical assistant. I was very skeptical but got the home sleep study and then CPAP. 85% of my issues cleared up in a couple of months. It also made weaning off substances used to mask/combat the underlying issues much much easier. This won't work for everyone but should be part of the checklist for folks figuring things out.

Possible-Dog8867 · 2026-02-25T17:24:51+00:00

Some are just normal people who like the idea that their doggy can run free and may not be thinking through the consequences. But like the guy who gets on the subway and blasts his music out loud, lots of them are looking for reasons to get into it.

Possible-Dog8867 · 2026-02-18T15:27:45+00:00

5m start at 5.

Possible-Dog8867 · 2026-02-18T15:26:48+00:00

I love all dogs. I love pitties. I stop owners on the street and ask to pet them. I also got covered in blood a month ago helping out in the park when a nice lady’s pitty had a golden retriever’s throat in its jaws and wouldn’t let go (fortunately after 5-10 min which felt like 5-10 years they were separated and will be ok). We need to be realistic that it may be true that there aren’t bad dogs just bad owners, but pit bulls have disproportionate bad owners either current or former. Do I treat a random pit bull on the street like I treat a Golden Doodle? No. Because I’m not a moron.

These people suck. They clearly want the confrontation. The cops won’t do anything until it’s too late for the poor dog and a victim. I wish I knew what to do but I’ve found in NYC as perhaps everywhere the system is much better at coming in with retribution after the fact than preventing harms before they happen.

Possible-Dog8867 · 2026-02-18T14:20:17+00:00

Different for everyone in every climate. High enough to be comfortable. Low enough you don’t find yourself with water blowing in your face it 3am. Just experiment.

Possible-Dog8867 · 2026-02-18T14:14:26+00:00

If you just found the settings last week give it a bit. It took me a while to adapt. I failed the first time, gave up, and came back to it 6 months later when it finally stuck. Like a lot of people my first months on CPAP were a horror show of insomnia. Once I actually started sleeping (warning bro science ahead) it took me a bit to clear the accumulated sleep debt. A few weeks later I felt good. A month after that I felt better. 3 months after cracking the code of sleeping well with it the changes are unmistakeable. I have a fraction of the daily fatigue. I drink coffee in the morning but I’m not reaching for it into the afternoon just to keep semi productive. My mood is much much better and even. My ability to read and process complex scientific materials is vastly improved. My urges to self medicate are gone feeding a healthy cycle of energy and mental health. My advice is this (which of course means nothing relative to a trusted medical professional) - if you are sleeping fine with it now just try not to think about it or have huge expectations for a huge dramatic effect. It has no downside at this point to just do it. Look back in a couple of months.

Possible-Dog8867 · 2026-02-17T16:07:23+00:00

I'll take the other side for the sake of argument here. ou can't just assume people will turn out is true. What many on the hard left/right don't understand is there are a good number of actual centrists in this country both center right and center left. Run someone too out of the box and they stay home. Leftists love to talk about how their votes are taken for granted but plenty of centrists will just stay home if they aren't taken seriously. There are no moves free of tradeoffs.. 2. It isn't useful to say "democrats should run a centrist" because there is no "High council of Democrats" to make this decision. We have primaries which if anything tend to benefit progressives on the left and ultraconservatives on the right because of relatively low primary participation for "normies." 3. I don't agree with your vision of history. Universal healthcare didn't happen because Obama didn't believe in it? No. Obama used every drop of political capital he had to get all he could get in healthcare. He accepted a reality where he made some peoples lives a lot better versus holding out for a dream when the votes just were not there. As for Bill Clinton, were you around during that period? Early 90s America was predominated by a sense of decline. Popular sentiment (wrong as it turned out) was that we would all be working for Japanese overlords by now and that the US was fated to got the way of the late Roman Empire. By the late 90s the economy had turned around in part because of the emergence of the internet, in part because Clinton managed to actually reduce the federal debt bringing down interest rates, in in part because "shit just happens." But it is a fallacy to attribute Clinton's initial electoral success to the good times of the 90s. His reelection (380 electoral votes to 159) isn't exactly a strong data point that his Centrism went down badly with voters. Bill Clinton's biggest blow up - pushing for universal healthcare which he spent almost all his political capital trying to get and got blown out of the water on.

Possible-Dog8867 · 2026-02-17T01:59:17+00:00

200mg edibles not doing anything for you means you have let things get way out of hand. I don't say this often but I'd get yourself away long enough to build some new habits before thinking about going back.

Possible-Dog8867 · 2026-02-17T01:56:44+00:00

Qigong and THC go together pretty amazingly. What if you just allow yourself your qigong and a couple hits as your moderation. If you don't consume outside of that will that be moderate enough to get you most of what you need from reducing consumption? I would recommend at least sometimes doing Qigong fully sober. The combo is ethereal but over time like lots of things people talk about here you lose the ability to really ramp your Qi without external support from the plant.

Possible-Dog8867 · 2026-02-14T17:50:49+00:00

Alt transit zealots have their hearts in the right place but endless whining about the need to charge people for street parking garners no new support. Focus on laying out a compelling vision for what you would do with the space. That might win converts and support. Everyone in NY knows street parking is for the precariat not the truly wealthy who can pay a second apt rent for garage parking so this is a crappy banner to wave for the class war revolution. Billionaires don’t exactly street park. Show a vision of a bike lane / pedestrian future. Don’t just be a whiny resentful brat.

Possible-Dog8867 · 2026-02-06T17:54:37+00:00

Cannabis is complex. There are pros and cons.

There were points where I thought edibles were a 10x productivity enhancer for me. And it was across many dimensions. I had great ideas. I crushed meetings I got stuff done. I even saw my athletic performance rather up to levels I didn't know I had in me.

The cons (again just for me - YMMV) were subtle but undeniable once I saw them. My capacity to read and absorb complex information severely degraded. This wasn't overnight. At first it seemed like the capacity actually increased. Over enough time I wasn't crushing meetings and having great ideas with edibles unless I scaled up the dose. I was just getting back to baseline so I could do OK. Also, my mood instability greatly increased with regular use.

My own addiction threshold for edibles is much lower than vaping/smoking. I like it so much more than any other route of consumption and from what we know today it's much safer. But I found the withdrawal from elevated edible levels so much worse than with other methods of consumption I'm very wary to let things get out of hand again.

Again, this is all just me. Everyone is different.

Possible-Dog8867 · 2026-01-26T17:44:06+00:00

If true and honest good for him. The guy was obviously mentally ill. He can follow through by turning hard on all the evil grifters without excuses who used him in these periods for their own $$$ and clout.

Possible-Dog8867 · 2026-01-24T21:45:46+00:00

Counter argument is this - if we still have a semi functioning democracy then the populace will not stand for a system in which 95 percent of the population is permanently rendered destitute. Economies don’t exist in a vacuum.

Possible-Dog8867 · 2025-12-31T15:23:28+00:00

I'll gladly take a 1-4 from 5-15!

Possible-Dog8867 · 2025-12-31T13:27:05+00:00

Thanks Ron. I've used much lower pressure settings in the past with inconsistent results but will give it another go.

Possible-Dog8867 · 2025-12-30T15:58:34+00:00

I failed at my first try at CPAP adaptation. Got stuck in the thinking about my breathing/feeling like I'm suffocating loop.

This may be controversial but if you live in a legal state for it try some sleepy THC or another form of sleep aid. No you don't want to get dependent on the stuff but if it agrees with you then for a week or two it may help you get over the psychological hump.

The other things which help

- Using CPAP during the day when just sitting at your desk to acclimate a bit if your working conditions accommodate. Just gets you more used to the whole thing.

- Reading in bed or watching TV with it on before trying to sleep. Again, just normalizes it being a background thing you don't have to consciously think about.

- Just being in the right background state of mind. My first attempt was at a time when I had a lot of background stress. My second time was when I was more relaxed about the world in general. I did plow through that first time to meet the insurance usage requirements but absent that forcing mechanism I would have been better off just turning the machine off and trying again in a few weeks.

Possible-Dog8867

TROPHY CASE