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0 pointsmrguyorama10mo ago0 comments

Forgive my arrogance, but nothing presented in that article should be such a big blocker. Spare parts for the traction gear sure, but none of the computing "problems" make any sense.

It's not like hard real time systems aren't available. More concretely, they talk about running a DOS virtual machine on a laptop to download logs from the cars, but there's no way that protocol is so complicated it couldn't be re-implemented reasonably.

This sounds more like "It's cheaper to just buy old stuff off ebay than it is to actually care about this system"

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jkingsman10mo ago

I'd wager it is technically a "cheaper" problem, but I'd also consider the axis that this is public transit, an industry known for being neglected budget-wise. Reverse engineering/reimplementation with competent parties may be laughably out of budget.

deepsun10mo ago

It's neglected because public transport is usually subsidized in almost every country. It's just not directly profitable, like roads.

US is in general very reluctant to invest into profitless projects.

xethos10mo ago

No, but like roads, public transit leads to greater economic activity and boosts GDP. Good public transit also increases social and financial mobility, makes other clean air targets easier to hit, and decreases medical costs [0] while increasing the number of financially-productive hours a citizen can work - because a healthier citizen is a more economically productive one.

America seems utterly incapable of grasping many second-order effects. For another example, look to the ROI of investing in the (coninuously underfunded) IRS [1]

[0] https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4917017/

[1] https://www.businessinsider.com/irs-tax-audits-recover-12-do...

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hluska10mo ago

It sounds even more like decades of low budgets.

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