Data should help transient situations as well.

There are a lot of people that just don't pay the fines and ignore suspended licenses as money stops becoming a motivator on the other end as well.

It feels like the drone factories should be targetable and who controls that may control a war.

Ukraine has shown that a drone factory can be made on any old building, it's not like they need huge machines. Would you carpet bomb all usable buildings? Cheap drones as a defensive weapon make war way more costly to the aggressor.

Cheap drones have made war more expensive for people that care about where they inflict the damage.

No, they made war expensive for people that are used to overwhelmingly superior but expensive military force. Drones are perfectly capable (even excel at) surgical strikes, and if the enemy destroys a $1,000 drone with a $100,000 missile, it's still a win for the drone.

There are definitely hints that it is Oregon on the page.

Are trains really less expensive and more efficient than busses? One additional stop to Vancouver WA on the Max train is 22 million a year in operating cost. https://www.columbian.com/news/2024/dec/11/it-seems-so-outra...

You can drive a lot of busses for 22 million a year.

I use the train a lot in Portland and I would not endorse something so expensive.

Yes, trains are much more efficient than busses.

I could see a future where I decide to generate my own power locally if the infrastructure costs become too much.

I bought a chinese mini excavator. It is super simple and I am sure things will break on it (I already had a qc issue with the fuel gauge) but I don't fear things breaking. With the competitors the dealer had to service everything. With the chinese one I text someone on whatsapp, diagnose remotely, and they send me a part. Honestly I like this model more. If you have a lot of money the dealer is great.

Mine comes in tomorrow. When researching, I was amazed at the simplicity of these machines. The engine is essentially available at Harbor Freight, then it’s basically just a hydraulic pump and valves. When things break, I’m sure I can find a replacement part or hack something together.

Which one did you buy?

AGT dm12x-plus.

I liked that it had the dual speed walk mode. Don't want to be creeping around the yard.

Why not install and not attach to the grid? My understanding is if you have them attached to batteries and not feeding back it is considered off grid in some places.

I don't know anything about Alabama but in California you generally can't create off-grid developments without permission from a local authority, because it's a recognized problem that "off-grid" systems are often under specified, leading to danger for the occupants. And nobody really wants off-grid to proliferate because it would tend to concentrate the costs of the grid upon the remaining users who will be the ones least able to afford it.

For a place that was two miles from a power line, I would think anyone would approve of off-grid.

Lots of places that will get $150k+ quotes for electrical service too.

At that point, off grid is a no-brainer for everyone except industrial users (and those lots aren’t useful for them anyway).

There are so many scams in the solar industry. I feel like a ton of installers joined just to make a quick buck with no effort.

This tends to happen when a lot of government “free money” is on the table.

See also: War profiteering.

A pilot is pretty expensive.

In convential modern terms, sure.

In WWII terms they come as a function of aircraft production capability as the stategy was to keep putting fresh young faces in trainer cockpits and advancing everybody that didn't crash after a quick run down of controls and a couple of paired instructor flights.

I had a couple of aunts that were both members of the UK/AU Women's Auxiliary Air Force (1939 - 1949) and they each had rudimentary training for spitfires, heavy bombers, jets, etc that came down to mere hours and "see how you go".

> I had a couple of aunts that were both members of the UK/AU Women's Auxiliary Air Force (1939 - 1949) and they each had rudimentary training for spitfires, heavy bombers, jets, etc that came down to mere hours and "see how you go".

Worth noting that their mission was delivery flights with the produced aircraft (a handful of them saw combat, because if you're flying a fighter plane into a warzone your guns might as well be loaded, but it wasn't the main aim). Those who were intentionally flying into combat got a little more training AIUI.

And recovery flights of downed / incorrectly landed (wrt airfield) aircraft, crossing active zones while unarmed, international delivery across the globe, and officially no fighting stuff ... although that was somewhat divorced from practice in the asian theatre.

Still, thanks for chipping in with a "no true Scotswoman" pilot variation - of course bombardiers got training in sighting, navigators in map reading .. largely at that time combat pilots got experience or got dead while exposed to all the barrack room theory about tactics that may or may not survive enemy contact.

They're not fighter planes in Ukraine they're people with conventional weapons shooting at the drones when the planes get close!