The thing is, though, that command line instructions work on most flavours of whatever distro you have running. If you have an xfce problem it's fair game to tell you where to click, but if your issue is not related to your desktop environment, giving a solution that works on most, if not all, systems that may have the same issue, is actually a good idea. No?
Do you know about gaming consoles? 3D accelerator cards? Graphics cards? Or... CD ROM drives?
People have been buying hardware to play a certain game for literal decades. The games are called "system sellers". Games so good they sell hardware. It's usually even the opposite: if your hardware doesn't have such a game, it doesn't sell (atari Jaguar anyone?).
Same here. Just with three kids added to the mix so I don't even really have that "downtime that I'd like to use for hobbies but do use to rest" anymore.
I'm well aware that rail/wheel tech works well. However
It would be cheaper
is not true. High speed rail is precision engineering and what you gain from the reduced complexity of not having magnets on the rails is lost by the required precision to make trains as fast as you claim them to be. The cost for a Transrapid line was claimed to be pretty much on par with an ICE line, with trains carrying fewer people but on a higher frequency, so even that would have evened out. The advantage you claim, which is compatibility to existing rail networks, can be regarded as a disadvantage, too, as high speed trains suddenly compete for the same limited resource as all other trains in the network and are sometimes travelling quite slowly as they utilise the same, old rails because the pain of using the old network isn't big enough to make people build new high speed infrastructure. Add to that the issue of too many stops that are added for political reasons and high speed trains suddenly become less and less of a competitive player when it comes to international traffic. If there was another network that would simply be incompatible to existing ones, a lot of these issues wouldn't even arise. A Transrapid just wouldn't stop in Erkelenz, Züssow or Altenbeken and no overly confident mayor could even suggest it, simply because there wouldn't be the infrastructure. And that would be a good thing.
Also, the speed comparison is not that simple. You're comparing wheeled trains that took decades to evolve with the first generation of maglev trains and as far as I see, that's also the highest speed recorded, which isn't what they're allowed to do during regular operations. I highly doubt that there's no room for improvement to get faster for maglevs.
All that said, I'm well aware that "the train has passed". Europe uses wheels and I'm fine with that. I don't want to sound overly negative and I'm happy for every cm of rail that's built. It's just that high speed rail needs to up its game a bit if they want to compete with planes. Right now, they're still too slow. Next week I'll be in Italy for a conference... High speed trains would have taken 4 to 5 times as much time, so I ended up getting a plane ticket booked. That's a pity and had we built a maglev infrastructure 20 years ago, maybe it would have been better by now.
Guess what, I am a taxpayer and you can't tell me what I "really don't" want. Do you think i have come here from the stone age to not know that infrastructure and services cost money?
That was discontinued after two iterations. Was going to switch to ios just for their mini range after years of Android, then saw that they got rid of small phones as well. Like, what would I gain by switching ecosystems if I know that the next phone is still going to be huge?
BTW, I settled for an S24, which is considered "small" now but still way too big, but at least Samsung has a decent one handed mode that doesn't hide half of your screen like ios or stock android but instead decreases the whole screen to bearable sizes:
Still feels like the damn clown mask meme, where, after years of increasing phone sizes, they now add a stupid software feature to virtually decrease screen size to remain usable.
That shrinks in a vacuum but grows as other matter gets too close. Matter such as "the earth". Explain how we're not fucked if it escapes from its magnetic vacuum suspension because Kevin accidently drops it.
That image has been living in my head rent-free since I first saw it.