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#41
Off the Record / Re: The AI dooooooom thread
Last post by The Minsky Moment - December 03, 2025, 04:41:15 PM
Quote from: HisMajestyBOB on December 03, 2025, 03:37:37 PMGonna have to replace my silicon chips with potato chips.  :(

Just like we make computer in Soviet Russia!
#42
Off the Record / Re: [Canada] Canadian Politics...
Last post by Jacob - December 03, 2025, 04:19:42 PM
So Rustad said he's not going to resign because of the letter (apparently the names of the 20 MLAs aren't public). Arguments in favour of his position are that he recently got 70% of the membership votes in a leadership review*, and that the party's constitution allegedly doesn't have anything saying MLAs can remove a leader.

(* though the turnout rate was only 15% of membership)

Against that argument, apparently the Board of the BC Conservative Party say they've removed him from his leadership position as of a few minutes ago. They've also, it seems, appointed an interim leader.

At this time it is unclear who's leading the BC Conservative group in the BC Legislative Assembly.

Exciting times for the BC Conservative Party.
#43
Gaming HQ / Re: Europa Universalis V confi...
Last post by Valmy - December 03, 2025, 04:13:19 PM
Quote from: The Minsky Moment on December 03, 2025, 04:08:13 PMThey fixed up Vic 3 pretty good; they'll fix up EU5 once they calm down and stop course correcting by spinning the wheel wildly in the opposite direction.   Like I keep saying, around 1.12 or so.

Sure. But EUV is perfectly functional and fun to play now. And even if there are balance issues the damn thing plays so slowly it will take you tons of hours for them to bother you.

And that last point isn't ever changing.
#44
Gaming HQ / Re: Europa Universalis V confi...
Last post by The Minsky Moment - December 03, 2025, 04:08:13 PM
They fixed up Vic 3 pretty good; they'll fix up EU5 once they calm down and stop course correcting by spinning the wheel wildly in the opposite direction.   Like I keep saying, around 1.12 or so.
#45
Gaming HQ / Re: Europa Universalis V confi...
Last post by Baron von Schtinkenbutt - December 03, 2025, 03:46:16 PM
Football EU5 is life!
#46
Off the Record / Re: The AI dooooooom thread
Last post by HisMajestyBOB - December 03, 2025, 03:37:37 PM
Quote from: PJL on December 03, 2025, 12:43:15 PM
Quote from: HisMajestyBOB on December 03, 2025, 10:25:49 AMI would like to get a new computer next year, please don't drive up the cost of components.

Not just computers but all consumables with silicon components will be affected. So everything from washing machines to cars.

Gonna have to replace my silicon chips with potato chips.  :(
#47
Off the Record / Re: [Canada] Canadian Politics...
Last post by Grey Fox - December 03, 2025, 03:27:15 PM
It wasn't cheap and the government has 5 years, iirc, to buy it from the CDPQ or they will be able to do has they please selling it to China or SA or some such.

The train it self is pretty awesome so far. Has really got rid of a lot of traffic on my morning commute.
#48
Gaming HQ / Re: Europa Universalis V confi...
Last post by Valmy - December 03, 2025, 03:18:46 PM
It really is crazy. I would love to spend some time in Japan. Or as a Horde. Or in the Balkans. Or the HRE. Or really  get into some of the mechanics around Catholicism. Or explore some different aspects of colonization or trade being the Netherlands or Portugal. And what about India? Or even LOL can I be: Ottoman Empire? Wow so many interesting styles of play and areas to explore.

But I will barely be able to do any of that. I could play for 12 hours and barely get through 100 years. Goddamn.
#49
Gaming HQ / Re: Europa Universalis V confi...
Last post by Josephus - December 03, 2025, 03:14:07 PM
I agree with what Valmy said two posts above. It IS a great game, but yeah, there's no doubt I'm missing out on things; there's just soooo much stuff. I am only automating two things right now: Trade and methods of production.
I don't really bother with characters so much yet. I educate just boys in my direct lineage (sons or grandsons of my rulers).
#50
Off the Record / Re: [Canada] Canadian Politics...
Last post by Josquius - December 03, 2025, 02:43:20 PM
https://macleans.ca/society/montreals-new-rail-line-is-the-future/


QuoteMontreal's New Rail Line Is the Future
Canada has forgotten how to build fast, cheap transit. A new megaproject has the fix.

On a sunny morning this November, I boarded the Réseau Express Métropolitain, Montreal's brand-new light metro line, for its first voyage. From the front of the driverless train, the crowd got a privileged view of the rough rock walls of the century-old tunnel under Mont-Royal and the ice-rimed shores of the Rivière-des-Prairies. The journey was not just a tour of the REM's 14 new stations, however—it was a preview of the most ambitious transit expansion in North America.

My Cure for Student Reading Fatigue? Movies., and other top stories from December 02, 2025.

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The last time Montreal celebrated the opening of a new rapid transit line, the Expos were still running the bases at Olympic Stadium, and Mitsou was tearing up the pop charts with "Bye bye mon cowboy." Since the inauguration of the Montreal Metro's Blue Line in 1988, the city's network has added just three stations. Now, the opening of the REM has vaulted Canada's second largest city from a transportation laggard to a frontrunner. It's also provided a low-cost template of quick-to-build rapid transit that every Canadian city struggling with gridlock, long commutes and inflated transit costs can, and should, emulate. Next spring, a new branch will open to the island's western suburbs, and another is slated to reach Trudeau airport in 2027. By that point the REM will span 26 stations and 67 kilometres—it's an expansion that invites comparison to the long-awaited Grand Paris Express, four new lines of automated trains that will serve Paris's outer suburbs by 2030.

Riding that train made me feel like Canada was finally building transit fit for the 21st century, a worthy counterpart to the systems that are now common in Asian and European cities. This is a sharp contrast to the rest of the country. For the most part, Canada's cities are lacking the kind of transit networks people now take for granted in much of the world. Toronto has struggled for years to finish the Eglinton Crosstown, a light-rail project that is now going into its 15th year of construction. The Ontario Line, the successor to the Downtown Relief Line—a project first proposed in the 1980s—won't be completed until 2031. And while second-tier cities in China have metro systems, smaller Canadian cities like Halifax, Saskatoon and Winnipeg struggle even to set up express bus lanes.

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The REM has taken best practices from around the world and gives them a made-in-Canada twist. As in Shanghai and Taipei, you board the trains through safety-enhancing platform doors. Like most modern European networks, the trains draw power from overhead wires; this being Montreal, the rooftop pantographs that connect to the wires are reinforced to break up ice on the lines. As on Japanese commuter trains, the seats are heated for winter riding comfort. And because it's automated, it can run trains at greater frequencies—they can arrive as often as every two and a half minutes.

Maybe most importantly, given Canada's cash-strapped municipal budgets, the REM is being built for a fraction of the cost of comparable projects in North America. In Toronto, the Eglinton Crosstown has swollen to $13 billion, or $684 million a kilometre. The second phase of New York's long-overdue Second Avenue Subway may cost $3.7 billion a kilometre, and current rail expansions in San Francisco and Los Angeles have gone north of $1 billion a kilometre. The construction of a five-station extension to the all-underground Blue Line, which has just begun in Montreal's east end, has a similar price tag. The REM is being built for $140 million a kilometre—an astonishing bargain.

How is Quebec getting so much bang for its transportation buck? Typically, governments finance existing transit agencies, giving them the licence to build and operate new lines for 30 years or so. The city of Montreal ponied up $100 million to fund the stations that connect to its metro, but this isn't a municipal project. The REM is being built by CDPQ Infra, the construction arm of the Caisse de dépôt et placement, the manager of Quebec's massive public pension fund, which has undertaken other infrastructure projects: Eurostar's high-speed trains, the terminals at Heathrow airport and Vancouver's Canada Line. CDPQ Infra has a 78 per cent equity stake in the REM and will reap revenue from the service, paid out at the rate of 75 cents per kilometre per passenger, for 99 years. From the start, it was in CDPQ's interests to keep costs down.

Continued on link. Copying and pasting is working weird.


Montreal is getting a lot of positive attention for it's new rail line. Really bucking the trend for anglo countries (yes I know. Montreal) to spend a bazillion times what Europe does for a fraction of the results.