Agreed. We got around this by hacking the single use CVS/Rite Aid cameras according to the below guide. Dropping one of these in the water or on some rocks didn't feel quite so devastating.
That looks interesting for other purposes I'd like to try. I love builds that let gravity do the work.
I have been wanting to try it again using a swivel in the line to allow the balloon to spin freely, but then use a tail/fin type of attachment to keep the rig oriented. It seems like anything would have to make it better.
First thought (to the article title "Why we stopped building fatjars") was that the build person had "graduated" and took their newly "acquired superpowers elsewhere" [0]
Joking aside, fantastic idea =)
Have you received a cease and desist from SlimFast yet for violating their trademark?
They've already increased it from the originally published concurrent requests per function limit (originally 50, now 100) [1]
We'd like the "Total size of all the deployment packages that can be uploaded per account" increased. Since you have to "require in" (as you put it) all your dependencies with each published function it's plausible to hit that limit pretty quick.
The average node module is 1.6MB [2]. If your functions have 3 dependencies, you're near 5MB. That limits you to ~300 functions. That initially seems like a lot until you realize you may have to start breaking up complex logic into multiple functions to hit time limits. You also might need to maintain multiple versions for backwards compatibility (think v1 endpoints). And if you use Java 8, you're just screwed. That size limit can be hit quick.
It might be possible to write a wrapper function that pulls a larger function from S3. I think you get up to 500mb of /tmp storage per function. Obviously the initial startup time would be atrocious but if you have a high enough TPS it wouldn't be hit too often.
I could also see Lambda adding a paid-for option to keep a function "warmed up" at all times.
Someone did (Marty Lagina) and they attempted a number of things last year. This is the premise of a reality show on the History Channel called "The Curse of Oak Island."
Salt Lake City (also "in the West") already has ~45 miles of light rail track [1], 88 miles of commuter rail track [2], ~3 streetcar track miles [3], and 69 transit stations. It was named as one of the top transit systems in north america for 2014 [4].
This was approved in 2008 by voters in Salt Lake County [5]. Already under works are plans to expand the commuter rail beyond Ogden to Provo (from 88 to 135 miles) and expand the streetcar concept. Additional lines are also currently being studied [6].
Of course, when Fastracks is done, it may have more "track miles" but that will be mostly due to the airport being so, so far away from the city center (~23 driving miles from Denver to DEN compared to ~6 from Salt Lake to SLC).
I'm excited for Fastracks. Can't wait to never have to fill my rental car out at that single, lonely Conoco gas station by DEN again.
To me, SLC is the ultimate counterpoint to the whole "Republicans are destroying transit!!" hysteria. SLC's core is definitely left-leaning, but just a few miles outside the city center it is pure Republican territory. And despite the heavily skewed demographics, they are voting in massive numbers to extend rail transit to their cities. It is quite amazing what will happen to voting trends on transit investment when you consistently demonstrate fiscal responsibility, fast construction, and high ridership.
SLC light rail is significantly cheaper than RTD. The furthest zones in Denver are $10 round trip. When I was in SLC it was $2.50 round trip for anywhere on the entire line (I'm sure it's more by now).
Personally I believe that public transportation pricing should be based on an algorithm to maximize ridership rather than on being self-sustaining. Since the point of public transit is to reduce traffic, people that prefer to drive should be subsidizing public transit through registration and gas taxes.
Scaling costs for cars is linear (no congestion) to polynomial (congestion), whereas transit has scaling costs that are a step function on the level of an individual vehicle, and somewhat resembling a logarithmic scale in aggregate. That in itself isn't interesting until you understand the implications of subsidy policies.
For example, if you subsidize auto travel, you may pull people away from walking, cycling, or transit, and put them onto a congested freeway. Every marginal person that moves towards car use increases the costs of car use for every other car user. Transit, on the other hand, gets cheaper, on a per rider basis, with each new rider (although this can be muted if transit ridership is heavily biased in one direction, which can be the case for cities with strong central cores and no outer job centers, as half the buses may be riding at capacity while the other half are riding empty).
I essentially agree with you, but I'm of the opinion that if we would stop subsidizing cars, some small percentage of drivers would move back to transit, and that small percentage could be enough to make transit self-sustaining.
One of the major subsidies for auto drivers is deeply hidden in land use policies requiring huge amounts of free parking at all new construction, rather than the amount the developer desires at the price that the market will bear.
Auto-oriented land-use regulations (single-family-only neighborhood zoning, minimum parking regulations that can only be cheaply satisfied by surface lots, minimum setbacks, minimum lot sizes, building-height limitations, etc) also cause buildings to be built so far apart, with seas of parking in between and a road network that's inhospitable to walking due to poor pedestrian connectivity and the danger of high-speed traffic, that it isn't possible for pedestrianism to offer meaningful competition to automobiles in much new construction in the US. And since most transit trips begin & end with a walking trip, transit (publicly- or privately-provided) likewise becomes uncompetitive. And this is essentially all due to government policy, often at the local level but also sometimes essentially federally mandated due to FHA mortgage requirements and the like.
SLC is a counterexample to that trend, but Republicans definitely hate transit in many cities— for example, the Tennessee legislature tried to ban a bus rapid transit project in Nashville even when no state dollars were used:
http://www.wired.com/2014/04/tennessee-bans-bus-rapid-transi...
Totally agree. For example, the Frontlines project, or "70 miles in 7 years" was done 2 years early and 300 million dollars under budget. [1] That goes a long way towards future budget increase requests and tax increase votes.
I would say that Mormonism would make it even less likely. In my experience (I was raised Mormon), they tend to be even more ideological than southern protestants. That being said, the TRAX does connect with Temple Square, which I'm sure provides some utility to Mormons even if they only use it to avoid parking problems for General Conference (2x per year).
Honestly, I think the defining attribute about SLC was that they did what they set out to do, they did it within budget, and they exceeded ridership expectations. It basically silenced all the ideological opposition and let the projects be judged on their merits.
There's a huge racial aspect in anti-mass-transit politics in many American cities that's missing in SLC. Transit is fundamentally urban, and in a lot of the country 'urban' is code for black.
SLC is heavily Democratic, like a little San Francisco, while the outer suburbs are the most Republican urban areas in the USA. Utah County's suburban voters make it the most Republican urbanized place in the USA with frequent 80+% results for Republican candidates.
But both areas -- Salt Lake and Utah counties -- vote for transit.
Part of the reason is that there is no Religious Right in the Utah Republican Party. The local Republicans are libertarians, western Republicans, country club Republicans, and big business Republicans. But that cultural revanchiste Religious Right just doesn't have a foothold in Utah. The organizations that promote it are unrelentingly hostile to the Church (Specifically the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints).
My theory is that the people who hate transit are linked to the Religious Right cultural suburbanists and possibly the Neocons. Utahns may happen to live in suburbs, but aren't emotionally invested in hating the kind of people who ride the train. Also, Utah suburbs tend to be close knit because of the prevalence of one church where the community meets regularly.
That's an awesome observation. Maybe that's why he went back on his word of only being a one term senator, so he'd increase the window of opportunity for getting something right.
