Try 78: https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/life-expectancy.htm

Obviously not everyone reaches that. Even if you set the retirement age at 50, some people would die first.

Yes,

But also, perhaps superannuation being (at least here in NZ) not means tested and larger than all other welfare combined implies there is a problem.

It means more tax take and less superannuation spending. Depends on the country’s superannuation system, of course.

That means more money available for all the things taxes are used for, many of which are very very necessary.

How can you justify cuts to the healthcare system because you claim to not have enough money, but then pay pensioners some thousand dollars a fortnight, regardless of what assets or other income they have?

Most phones seem to give you the option to skip the next alarm. That may be better than disabling it?

Brick does really badly in earthquakes, at least without major reinforcing. ‘Unreinforced masonry’ can be fatal pretty easily.

Brick veneer over timber framing can be a thing.

Lots of places also have variable limit signs that get updated based on traffic, accidents etc.

Here in NZ those seem to all be marked on the speed limit maps as 100km/h even if in some places the signs never go above 80.

Ngauranga Gorge is one such location and I believe has the country’s highest grossing speed camera.

“Greater Canada”.

Everything burns up regardless of size. Big things might not finish burning by the time they hit the ground.

You need either enough thrust to slow you to ~mach 2, or a heat shield to do the same by aerobraking.

It’s called aerobraking for a reason: you’re using friction to turn kinetic energy into heat to slow down, but that heat goes into the air and your heat shield instead of brake pads and rotors.

IR thermometers aren’t particularly accurate. Especially when pointed at reflective surfaces like glass, where some of the return will actually be reflected heat coming from you.

Most wall thermostats are designed to read the temperature of the air; the wall behind may be warmer or colder.

This is why it’s important to operate with enough available reserves (fast and slow) to cover the unexpected loss of your biggest generator, transformer, and/or transmission line.

Their black start procedures are going to be getting a good workout; I hope they’re well tested.

Oh, I’ve had the name for a lot longer than that.

As Someone Somewhere, I urge you to post more.

Where on earth do they get the ‘AYD’ from?

Seems like spifk, sporf, or knorkoon might be more sensible.

Never ask questions you don’t want answers to. Rule 34.

It’s often a disaster recovery type of thing.

603 for maglevs, 574.8 for steel rail, set in France in 2007 by a hotted up, modified TGV.

China holds the record for a stock train at 487, set in 2010.

(all per Wikipedia)

It looks like the article might be implying that they will be the fastest trains operating in revenue service when they enter service, but that surely needs to be demonstrated with a production train in revenue service.

There’s still a lot of flights through Russian territory.

Korean 007 could have been intentional (I believe the pilot involved still claims it was a military plane) but Hanlon’s razor still applies here. They’re firing a lot of SAMs at many targets without good controls.

The US is barely better; they shot down one (nearly two) of their own fighters about a week ago and then there’s the Vincennes incident.

NZ law just says it has to be adequate for the intended purpose: https://www.legislation.govt.nz/act/public/2002/0035/latest/whole.html#DLM154837

(1) Subject to subsection (2), a legal requirement for a signature other than a witness’ signature is met by means of an electronic signature if the electronic signature—

(a) adequately identifies the signatory and adequately indicates the signatory’s approval of the information to which the signature relates; and

(b) is as reliable as is appropriate given the purpose for which, and the circumstances in which, the signature is required.

(2) A legal requirement for a signature that relates to information legally required to be given to a person is met by means of an electronic signature only if that person consents to receiving the electronic signature.

“I want this to finish at 6PM” can be easier maths than 11h 15m from now.

1. Most of these are in a metal box, which blocks signal. Adding careful routing to get an antenna in an unshrouded position where it’s still physically protected is a pain. Also, in the middle of an apartment building can give you pretty terrible reception in the first place.

2. GPS doesn’t provide time zones or daylight savings info. The appliance would know where you are and what UTC time it is, but not which time zone you’re in. The manufacturer could pre-program shape files in (yay, more memory) but they become obsolete the next time a politician decides to move time zones or change daylight savings. If this happens to you, your device will keep repeatedly changing to be an hour fast/slow no matter how often you reset it.

   You could have the GPS satellites continually broadcast shape files for the time zone but this would be a big change, use up a lot of the limited bandwidth, and it would take your clock half an hour to set itself.

3. it’s like an extra $5-10 in parts and unlike a WiFi module, the manufacturer can’t make any big data or ad revenue from it.