I refer you to my first question on this thread.

I’d like the long and fully detailed technical answer please, with references and footnotes.

DH is (was?) massive in Japan, why no riders?

A friend of a friend dated a guy who was Japanese national DH champ three years running about 20 years ago. He did some WC races, finished around 50th place from what I remember. He said that the WC courses were much faster with much bigger jumps than what he was used to and he wasn’t as physically strong as the top guys so struggled to muscle the bike around. He’d started out as an XC racer for a major brand, but switched to DH when he realized that he was more competitive at that. That doesn’t mean that there aren’t big, strong guys in Japan, but MTB is a niche sport so promising athletes would probably be steered towards baseball, football, or rugby by high-school coaches because that’s where the money’s at.

To take down ‘the Web’ you’d likely have to find some sort of vulnerability common to Web servers in the West.

North Korea aside, I think probably every major country is so dependent on technology now that state level attackers would need to be 100% confident that their own systems weren’t taken out along with their opponents. It’s not just mutually assured destruction, it’s self assured destruction.

Latinx voters are traditionally very conservative.

Problem is that Latinx voters are actually very diverse. In Florida, their vote is heavily influenced by policy towards Cuba. In Texas, they are probably more socially and religiously conservative. In California, different again.

It’s not outside the realm of possibility that Texas could become a swing state is it? I’m thinking of the very liberal Austin growing in influence and the latino and massive urban population.

Plus Trump is toxic to educated women. His BLM response that white suburban women will be overrun by scary black men scaremongering did not convince white women that he has any solution to race and law and order issues.

This is the map based on the Fivethiryeight model. Trump has to win every single toss-up state (bronze), both of Arizona and Florida, which Biden has modest leads in, plus at least one state where Biden has a solid lead (Pennsylvania, Wisconson, etc). That is a daunting task given that every thing he does seems designed to alienate the moderate voters he needs to convince.

In Texas, Trump leads Biden by 2 points, within the margin of error:

– Biden 47%
– Trump 49%https://t.co/2SL2SR97DP pic.twitter.com/tKiHICVD3t

— Morning Consult (@MorningConsult) October 13, 2020

Halfway through his presidency, one of Trump’s advisers told Axios’s Jonathan Swan: “He gets frustrated when there is a plan. He’s not a guy who likes a plan. … There’s an animosity towards planning, and there’s a desire to pick fights that have nothing to do with us.”

Analysis: Trump’s campaign isn’t gaining the traction it thinks it is https://t.co/YZfvHEizl5

— The Washington Post (@washingtonpost) October 13, 2020

I have four bikes I ride regularly two mediums and a large theyre all within an inch of each other in ett despite different size frames so obviously I just found the reach that suits me and kept setting up bikes kinda the same even though some are old and some are new thats what I think

What tomnavman said.

unless I remove the ability to do something it can just be switched back on or used for other purposes.

Microsoft is a professionally managed company that makes most of its money from large corporations and government departments that are extremely sensitive about security. Microsoft have no interest in spying on people in the way that the tinfoil hat brigade think. Your data is of zero interest to them except for troubleshooting and targeting ads. You can turn most of that stuff off if you spend 15 minutes Googling about setting up Windows. You can install another browser if you want, but if you’re worried about data privacy, I think you’ll find that you pretty much have to stay completely off the internet. It’s not a Microsoft thing, it’s an internet thing.

Surely he never had it?

How can he have recovered so quickly?

He definitely had it, there’s no question about that. He also had the very best medical care in the world. Even though Covid is much more dangerous for old, obese people, most people still survive so chances were he would survive. He probably hasn’t fully recovered, but he received high quality medical care as soon as the symptoms appeared and he never got sick enough to need a respirator so being able to walk around a week later isn’t hugely surprising.

As above, the built-in one is fine for normal people who aren’t being attacked by state-level hackers.

Don’t know if it’s a special no-bloat version, but I don’t get any of that shite that you mentioned!

Win10 is much easier to set up than Win7 because they’ve changed the update process. With Win7, you’d have to wait for it to install every single update sequentially. By the time it had been out for a few years, that was hundreds of updates, so you basically had to just leave it overnight to sort itself out.

Win10 uses cumulative updates, so it just installs the latest update and everything is done. However, it does bug you a bit with preferences regarding monitoring and stuff. Microsoft aren’t spying on you in the way conspiracy nutters think, but it is a bit irritating until you turn it all off.

Is there some sort of quick guide?

Googling “Windows quickstart guide” would be an obvious starting point.

“I need a flag pole in my garden”

Whole bunch of great ideas going on here.

Gaudy bright hope stuff

This

But Apple with have millions of devices to process each with their individual work-scopes to get them back up and running so not only prohibitively costly for them but also nigh on impossible from a logistics point of view

Not really. They are all standardized models, so the logistics are relatively simple compared to things like car repairs. The most common repair will be battery replacement, probably followed by screen replacement, then switches/buttons/sensors. If the phones are designed so that it’s possible to disassemble them into major sub-assemblies, then the usable sub-assemblies can be rebuilt into refurbished phones with a new battery in an assembly-line type operation. Problem is that Apple appliances are designed with no consideration for disassembly or repair.

am pretty sure Adobe CS (last version is CS6 which is from 2012) will not run under W10

CS2 seems to run fine.

Before suspension design and tech had learnt how to overcome wallowing and sagging, you had to put a lockout on it to be more efficient but then riders would forget to unlock it and set off on a descent with the fork or shock still locked out

That’s an experience everyone should have at least once.

Three employees stole / resold over 100,000 devices in a two year period. How did no-one notice?

They were senior executives.

if its just a mech and chain in a box (as the honda system, and the shimano patent) then you can still have the cost/friction benefits of a mech system, but without things dangling off the back of the bike

Good point about the friction benefits, but that depends on whether it can be made reliable enough – a snapped chain in a gearbox is a whole different thing than in a traditional derailleur system.

A derailleur-in-a-box will always be more expensive than a traditional system because there are more parts to manufacture. You need a casing that has to be mounted in the frame and sealed against dirt and water. The frame will have to be designed around the packaging limitations of the transmission, which may add expense, especially for suspension bikes. There will be packaging limitations because you need a certain amount of chain slack to be able to shift gears, so there will be a limit to how close the two cassettes could be, plus you need to fit in a chain tensioner.

Plus the derailleur and shifting mechanism will probably need to be more precisely manufactured. Instead of one cassette, you need two, otherwise you’d need an insane amount of chain slack. You need at least two shafts and two sets of bearings, and you may need two derailleurs or some sort of complex derailleur that alternately moves the tensioned and slack sections of chain (i.e. you’re basically alternating between shifting front and rear gears on a traditional derailleur system). It might be cheaper than a traditional gear set, but that’s assuming that it can be made reliable enough for mass-production.

They will always be more expensive, heavier, and draggier than a derailleur system. They have a solid niche thing going, but it’s hard to see them ever being more than that.

All of that can be addressed through engineering design and development…but that is costly and the end product will be costly…at least initially until volumes go up and prices come down

No, those are fundamental limitations. A gearbox needs a lot of precisely machined parts whereas a derailleur can be made from stamped parts. The precision machining will always be more expensive. Mass-production won’t reduce the cost to that of a derailleur because the machining equipment required to produce the gear sets is expensive. If you want to increase production by 100-fold, you need 100 times the investment in factory equipment and skilled operators. Shimano already mass produces gear hubs so there’s unlikely to be huge areas to cut costs any further than that.

A gearbox has sliding friction where the gear teeth mesh. Car companies and everyone else who makes power transmission systems have been working for decades to minimize those frictional losses, but they will always be more than a properly lubricated derailleur system. There is no magic solution to that, it’s fundamental to how gearboxes work.

Key bits.

At least 100,000 Apple devices, including iPhones and iPads, that were destined to be destroyed are actually in use, according to a new lawsuit by Apple that accuses its recycling partner of violating its orders.

Apple claims in its lawsuit, filed in Canada, that Canadian recycling company GEEP violated its contract by reselling the devices, instead of shredding them. Apple is seeking $30 million Canadian (about $23 million U.S.) from GEEP, according the lawsuit, which was filed in January but only recently came to light.

But the lawsuit raises new questions about the iPhone maker’s environmental practices, because Apple says it never destroys electronics that are still suitable for use. Apple said in the lawsuit that the devices sent to GEEP had been “repaired.” But Apple didn’t explain how they were repaired or make any specific allegations in the suit that the devices were damaged or unsafe to use. Apple spokesman Josh Rosenstock declined to say whether any repairs were made to or what was wrong with the devices Apple sent to GEEP.

The recycling company is saying that employees stole the phones rather than shredding them. My guess is that Apple is legally justified here because their property was stolen, but it’s also pretty obvious that they were destroying phones that were still usable. Problem for Apple is that they are a profit-driven company and having millions of recycled phones on the market is less profitable than selling new ones, but they don’t want to advertise that they scrap usable phones that aren’t profitable to recycle because they are trying to push an image of environmental responsibility.

They aren’t lying they just define “still able to be used” in their own way.

However I can imagine a leaky seal would end up being pretty disastrous…

Oh God, not another Shimano brake thread, please.

With Ricciardo’s P3, that’s now seven of the ten teams with podiums so far this season.

Very kind of Ferrari to “fix” that part of F1 courtesy of its 2020 car… #F1 #EifelGP

— Chris Medland (@ChrisMedlandF1) October 12, 2020

As for gearboxes, I think there’s still hope

They will always be more expensive, heavier, and draggier than a derailleur system. They have a solid niche thing going, but it’s hard to see them ever being more than that.

Hulkenberg now has as many top-8 finishes this season as Ferrari’s Sebastian Vettel.

https://www.formula1.com/en/latest/article.eifel-gp-facts-and-stats-hamilton-makes-history-and-mercedes-equal-ford.2yZV42FfS31PwJ410layRm.html

U-Turn forks worked well (I’m still running some), but were expensive and I think the geometry changes recently probably made it less useful.

Flippy-shift was a way of bundling Shimano brakes with drivetrains. People wanted to mix and match components.

Low-normal derailleurs probably had benefits but experienced riders were used to the existing direction and had no interest in changing. Maybe if they’d managed to make a shifter that worked in the opposite direction so that riders didn’t have to reprogram themselves – but that might have been difficult because you’d have to have a lot more leverage for the finger lever than before.

Comparing Pew’s new national poll with its validated exit polls from 2016 let’s us see why Trump is now faring so much worse. https://t.co/aP5AlPKe0S pic.twitter.com/V8dKcfRZDc

— Philip Bump (@pbump) October 10, 2020

Trump thinks that everything is professional wrestling and honestly it's one of his advantages in American politics this totally would have worked https://t.co/ruHpp11bdw

— Michael Caley (@MC_of_A) October 10, 2020

NEW @ABC/@washingtonpost national poll (Likely voters, MoE 4%)

Biden: 54% (+12)
Trump: 42%

Among men
Biden: 48%
Trump: 48%

Among women
Biden: 59% (+23)
Trump: 36%https://t.co/ROsA4NIxqK

— Johnny Verhovek (@JTHVerhovek) October 11, 2020

Sounds like a pretty honest statement from Vettel.

This headline says a lot – they don’t understand what is happening with their car.

https://www.motorsportweek.com/2020/10/10/leclerc-at-a-loss-to-explain-ferraris-improved-pace/

Hola ??‍♀️ @HulkHulkenberg !

Hulk is here !! #EifelGP #hulkenback again ! pic.twitter.com/fajw6eCYog

— Noemí de Miguel (@Noemidemiguel) October 10, 2020

Clutching at straws, but is the decision to switch the rally to the White House a sign that he is not feeling so good?

I think part of it might be that so many White House staff are in quarantine, including Secret Service personnel.

Not often I agree with Laura Ingraham.

Laura Ingraham says Democrats want to make sure that someone like Donald Trump is never elected again pic.twitter.com/mPhQiDzzAC

— Acyn Torabi (@Acyn) October 10, 2020

https://twitter.com/WilliamsRacing/status/1314580017914023937