grue

You're right: when traffic is at its critical density, that's often what triggers the shift from the free-flow regime to the congested regime. But just because you make computers drive the cars -- even assuming they did it perfectly without randomly braking, which they don't -- that doesn't mean it eliminates that flipping between regimes. At best, it might get you a little bit more capacity before hitting that critical threshold, but eventually it's still going to, and then something -- a squirrel darting into the road, a sunbeam glinting off something the wrong way and momentarily confusing the AI, a bump that disturbs the car just enough to make it slow down a fraction of a MPH, etc. -- is going to trigger that shift to the congested regime anyway.

No, that's not how traffic works. That's like saying a pipe can flow an infinite amount of fluid when you used a liquid instead of a gas because you got rid of the empty space between particles.

Even with theoretically-perfect timing and control, the road still has a finite capacity because cars take up a certain amount of space, both stationary and moving (following distance is still a thing even with computer control because of the mechanical limitations of brake performance). Moreover, it isn't that much higher than we can manage with humans driving the vehicles already.

The only ways to exceed that limit are to make the vehicles smaller (e.g. bikes) or pack more people into them (e.g. buses or trains).

Hi, traffic engineer here.

That's never going to happen. It's nothing but a tech-bro bullshit fantasy.

Why? Because cyclists and pedestrians exist. In order to make it possible for the kinds of gains you're talking about to happen, every road user has to be an autonomous vehicle, but (aside from freeways) streets simply do not work that way and never will.

(Oh, and also: even at the limit, the best it can ever accomplish is to be an inferior approximation of a train.)

The funny thing about !THE_PACK is that it has both meanings, every single time. The entire point of the community is exploiting double entendres and the ironic dissonance of using AGGRESSIVE tone to express wholesome/supportive messages.

That's great and all, but I'm still waiting for it to be affordable to install my own so that it can also be a whole-house uninterruptible power supply.

So by that logic, when are they coming out with the OXO Good Grips anti-tank missile?

Damn it, I was hoping to comment "INB4 Project Plowshare," but nope!

I should've known better.

Just kidding... mostly.

Realistically, your diary is safe enough on your Mac. (By the way: you say "I am certain I need to install a Linux distro or a BSD," but technically, MacOS already is a BSD.) IMO the main threat vector you have to worry about would be Apple changing something to start harvesting your data itself, either for its own purposes (e.g. AI training) or legal compliance with Orwellian bullshit. That risk is a lot lower than the certainty it is with Windows, but it's still proprietary software so it can't be zero.

If you're really that paranoid about it, any device without an Internet connection would do just fine, including something that isn't on the Internet because it's too old to be compatible with it (hence the typewriter, but a very old computer running DOS would do fine, too.) Otherwise, if you want a maximally-paranoid but still modern system, look into something like Tails or Qubes OS on a PC, or Graphene OS on a mobile device.

Then why were you even asking when you already knew?

Your bitching was like complaining about a footnote citation because they didn't copy and paste the entire referenced work into the middle of the article for you.

IDK, maybe "5-over-1"?

They’re notoriously a cold adapted species.

So are the Finns, but look at all the saunas!

RTFB[ible]. It says which passages were quoted; look them up yourself if you're that fucking worried about it!

At least, that's what you would do if you were actually "curious" and not concern trolling.