It's just new age Hatsune Miku. Is Miku still popular? I remember my niece being into it ten years ago.

Submission statement:

Normally we talk about the future as decades from now, but this is happening within the next five years and they'll be hydrogen fuel cell locomotives in commercial service by the end of next year, with mass production planned for 2024 and deliveries by 2025 and 2026. All three west coast railroads are considering some level of hydrogen adoption, as it uses components and methods similar to compressed gases they already have tools and labor for. All of them are already adopting battery-electric locomotives for use as battery tenders with diesels. Both North American railroad equipment mfgs are planning extensive BEV and H2 cell lineups over the next 36 months. The future is fast approaching.

This will have significant impacts, besides lower emissions it means leader (smaller) machine shops and a much greater scalability for hydrogen industrial equipment (forklifts, front loaders, excavators, etc) and hydrogen semi trucks. The Tesla Semi also happens next year, which will be the banner year for de-icing commercial freight logistics. It's no longer an if.

The article itself, reposted:

>NEW YORK — Canadian Pacific’s experimental hydrogen-powered locomotive made its maiden revenue run last month in Calgary, Alberta, taking the first step in determining whether the technology could one day replace diesel-electric locomotives. “I’ll tell you, the excitement around it, the potential of it, is real,” CEO Keith Creel told the RailTrends conference on Tuesday. “And to see it two weeks ago, running down the main line at main line speed pulling a load behind it, I mean it made the hairs on my arm stand up because I would have told you two years ago it’s a pipe dream … Well, it’s not a pipe dream. It’s a reality. Still a lot of work left to do, but it’s super, super exciting.”

>The home-built unit, converted SD40-2F No. 1001, is dubbed H2 0EL for “hydrogen zero-emissions locomotive.” The Oct. 28 revenue test run was the second main line foray this year for the unit, which uses hydrogen fuel cells and batteries to power its electric traction motors. CP is using solar power to produce hydrogen at its Calgary headquarters. It also has a separate hydrogen production facility in Edmonton. CP is partnering with the Alberta provincial government to build a DC-traction version as well as another AC-traction unit. By the end of next year, CP expects to have the three locomotives switching customers in Calgary, Edmonton, and Vancouver, Creel says.

>“The next step is scalability,” Creel says, through partnering with a customer that can build enough road locomotives to prove the technology on the rugged CP main line in the Canadian Rockies west of Calgary. “It’s the perfect test bed. If you can operate there — heavy haul, cold temperatures, the most challenging operational conditions I’ve ever experienced in my career … it will work anywhere,” Creel says. If the tests are successful, hydrogen fuel-cell locomotives are likely to first be deployed in local service until the railway can create a hydrogen fueling network across its system and build the tenders necessary to give the locomotives extended range.

>“I’m telling you this has the potential, if it proves its mettle and it shakes out in the very tough validation tests we’ll give it, it will be truly transformational for this industry,” Creel says. “And it’s something we’re extremely proud of.” Creel emphasized that the hydrogen project is very much an experiment and CP is not betting the farm on its effort to create a green locomotive. Alberta is aiming to transition to a hydrogen-based economy as part of a push toward cleaner energy supplies. CP would haul hydrogen from Alberta to customers across its system, as well as to its own fueling facilities.

>All of the Class I railroads have announced ambitious goals to reduce their carbon emissions as part of an effort to combat climate change. Wabtec and Progress Rail are offering battery-electric hybrid locomotives and are experimenting with higher blends of biodiesel and renewable diesel to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. BNSF Railway tested Wabtec’s battery electric locomotive as part of a hybrid consist that powered merchandise trains between Stockton and Barstow, Calif., last year. Union Pacific has ordered 20 battery electric locomotives — 10 from each builder — for use in tests at two yards. Creel spoke at the RailTrends 2022 conference sponsored by trade publication Progressive Railroading and independent analyst Anthony B. Hatch.

Ranking construction via Co2 emissions made by vehicles is incredibly dumb compared to the actual life-cycle emissions of the building including expected end-of-life and demolition. If Americans could see what insurance companies do, wood construction would be almost entirely banned.

The only reason concrete is considered "dirty" is because of America's construction lobby. Wood timber housing contains all the plastics that are leeching into watersheds and destroying the biosphere, and most wood homes aren't expected to last longer than 50 years. The amount of plastic in them doubles every decade, just within structural elements as more plywood types are used. Concrete homes are actually durable, can last longer than a century, and don't become a pile of construction debris crushed inside a landfill. I've seen hundreds, perhaps thousands, of wood homes dumped this way whereas every concrete structure I've seen dismantled was ultimately recycled to make new concrete.

It was boring 20 years ago when electric meant golf cart performance. Tesla changed this. Older people (who conceivably wrote the article and who design cars and who run car companies that aren't Tesla) haven't caught up and still think of modern electric cars the same way they did when they were 16. Basic entry-level Ubers now beat Corvettes, we live in a different era where EVs are already the preferred rich person car and not a weird hippie thing.

The algorithm is the current trend. There won't be deviation from the trend unless you're into underground or alternative media. This is where many in the arts will end up, but ultimately most people just want their Wheaties, their Tide, and their Ovaltine. Mass media reduces to the level of broadcast TV and commercial radio .. which is always was, but now they won't even need a human presenting, writing, or even participating in the commercials. Dove, Campbells, KitchenAid will just slot models into a prefab advertisement generator which will churn out ads without the need for sets, cameramen, or marketing brand managers.

This can already be seen in the blogosphere where most of the content is sponsored and mindlessly copypasted media bits. The average housewife does not need a human to sell her a new toaster. And when you think about it, why should the box the toaster comes in require a human to design? All the required labels sit on a prefab spreadsheet organized by barcodes, and the actual picture of the item does not necessarily require the item to be real.

Human-equivalent AI won't exist until we have human-equivalent data processing hardware. Binary silicon transistors just can't do this given the constraints reality places on it. Quantum computing might prove different, but that's where the "50-100 nobel prizes" comes in.

The layman won't notice or care. The average car mechanic who calls Parts Center asking about alternators will get a human-sounding thing picking up the phone and answering his questions. The average Comcast customer calling about a service problem or complaint is going to get a human-sounding thing taking it's complaint with extreme, unlimited patience. The average McDonalds drive-through user will not notice when the human-sounding thing takes it's order accurately.

The big disruption will be in the media arts, journalism, and design industries. Now machines can write newspapers based off canned press releases, a 3D model can speak it on television and anyone can be an artist. For most, the change will be negligible. For corporations, they will mercilessly fire all their media staffs who are now automated. Media contacts are no longer necessary, the algorithms are in control. The next generation of journalism is tuning them inside Amazon Publishing or Fox News.

Since there's been New Fusion News every week since the 50s I'll elaborate on why I consider this to be different:

San Diego -based General Atomics is partnering with the Savanah River Natl. Lab in South Carolina to build a fusion reactor. This is due to the SRNL's existing experience with tritium-based radioactive gas used as fuel in a fusion reation while General Atomics is one of the contractors for yet-to-be-completed ITER, and this project will use designs evolved from ITER. The SVRNL will help them design and test all the parts needed for the plant and then assist with building one, including site selection. The site selection is notable because South Carolina is one of the biggest nuclear states in the US, having sparred several times with the Obama and Trump administrations over Nevada's refusal to take their nuclear waste. South Carolina is generally supportive of nuclear power, as is nearby Georgia and Tennessee, where work on the Watts Bar 2 and Vogtle 2 reactors has recently completed - "recently" in nuclear contracting terms. The supply chain elements for a fusion reactor like engineers, materials, labor and concrete all exist in these places and there is a no aggressive environmentalist movement like California's Sierra Club to stop construction. Adjacent to this are smaller Small Modular Reactor fission reactors planned for the Oak Ridge National Lab, and conceivably that would be an ideal site as a fusion reaction needs a lot of power to start it (similar to a diesel motor and compressed air or a gasoline motor with electric spark plugs).

Whether or not the plant actually works is anyone's guess, but there's other uses for a fusion reactor namely QA testing nuclear bomb components. This is what the US government's existing non-commercial fusor does in Livermore, California. Biden is already upgrading all the national labs for next-generation energy research, including new supercomputers capable of managing a fusion reactor, so this comes at an opportune time and will probably be built.

He can pull it off if he makes the first FDIC-insured crypto bank in the US, and do RFID phone payments. How this is useful is anyone's guess but he can integrate it with a Tesla taxi service and give people more upvotes if they spend more Musk Bucks. It wouldn't be a scam in such a case, just another low rent online-only bank competing with WePay and WU. There is probably a market for this especially if he gets big ticket names like the former President on board. There's enough idiots out there who can beilive FDIC-backed crypto is somehow better than FDIC-backed USDs.

Using a War on Drugs strategy can only lead to failure, similar punishments were doled out to weed possession/sales and look at how that has utterly collapsed. If people want guns they will get them. Post-facto policing and prison will just cause people to not report certain crimes to the police, creating an underground black market that criminals flourish in. Just as what happened during Prohibition when alcohol possession carried a 5 year prison sentence. Putting random people in jail for having guns at a checkpoint or door-to-door sweep means they are sent to prisons where they are introduced to gangs who are likely to recruit them. This is jet fuel for organized crime that can actually harm the government's operations.

Any effective government would address the reasons why people want to arm themselves. Usually, this is a result of ineffective policing, maladjusted courts, and poor social policies. Organized terrorism usually has the same origins.

All airports are dirty, there's no avoiding it, and LaGuardia isn't any worse than say Liberty or Midway or Stapleton. I don't have anything against LaGuardia but it's not green, and expecting the thing under it's approach pattern to be green is a big misrepresentation of what Rikers Is. is capable of.

What's planned for Rikers is needed, although I'd go much further ie moving the nearby Produce Terminal and ConEd facilities around - things that work well with new rail - but none of this is green. Though, at that point a whole LaGuardia/GCP reconfiguration should also be considered as it's a common complaint, especially if LIRR or subway expansion is considered. Turning Prison Island into Infrastructure Island is a good idea, but it's not going to be environmentalist. It's going to be a big dirty thing full of big dirty machines that preform some function normally done in the Bronx or Brooklyn.

That's nice but all it'll do is move the jail and it's problems from NYC to Buffalo or Rochester where the inmates can be fully forgotten about and, due to the distance, never return. Greenwashing a former prison as an "energy hub" is NIMBYism, as there's so many other places within NYC for an "energy hub" but locals don't want it and the amount of net prisoners will remain constant but will happen in the other part of New York where rich people don't live.

Which speaks to the other admission: new "waste" services will be included in this "energy" hub, this is an excuse to rebuild the city's sewage and trash collection system. This is certainly a good thing and Rikers is a good option for it, but let's not pretend like it's green. This will be a literal trash island with 200+ trucks servicing it daily, as there's no plans for rail service (even though this would be enormously good!). It is going to be dirty, polluted, and filthy just like the nearby airport. City leaders shouldn't be misleading people about what this is.

It's not that they can't get a job, it's that the work offered is so bad it's not worth it. Most people would prefer to be poor than subject themselves to crushing workloads, no time off, 24/7 availability and no reward for their work. It's especially bad in software as programmers are never credited for their work, will never see it's true application, and will never be able to appreciate what they've created.