Not like the US didn't try. California spent 15yrs trying to build a high speed train and failed. Canada has been talking about building trains forever too and it usually goes nowhere because the budgets explode like every major infrastructure project these days.
California high speed rail isn't running now but it is improving lots of things along the way. For example one of the most dangerous crossings in the state is now grade separated with the Rosecrans/Marquardt Grade Separation Project.
I wonder what's different between these English speaking countries you mention failing to build out rail transit, and places like Japan and China that have built fabulous rail networks.
Japan is a fairly unique case, and probably does not share much with China aside from being in the same region. Japan is geographically well suited to serving a large portion of the population with one long line with a few branches. That's a convenient advantage.
China just doesn't have to worry about environmentalists or anyone else locally trying to stand in the way, they just bulldoze them and build.
China also has much lower labor costs, and even Japan is a good bit cheaper (than the US, at the least)
Most of the rail has get around mountainous, uneven terrain subject to earthquakes, strong winds, and heavy rain. California should be able to build rail parallel to the I-5, a long, flat terrain without extreme weather or strong earthquakes. The problem seems to be a political one, not an engineering one. In fact, if the Interstate Highway System did not already exist, I doubt the U.S. today would be able to accept and complete it.
> one long line with a few branches
I currently live in Japan, and that does not really match what I've observed. There are three distinct railway companies in my area (JR, Tokyu, Yokohama Municipal Subway), each with their own dedicated rail, trains, power supply, etc.
The situation is more like "a disjoint union of graphs, where some of the graphs are connected".
LA proper seems to have a density of 3000/km^2 according to Wikipedia
A perhaps more interesting use case is the utsunomiya light rail. Utsunomiya has a density of around 1200/km^2.
What they ended up doing was building a new tram with exactly one line. The main thing they did was make sure the tram comes frequently, including off peak.
End result is people rely on the tram line and the tram is making good money, being operationally profitable (still gotta pay back construction costs of course).
Utsunomiya is obviously not exactly greater LA, but Utsunomiya has on average 2.25 cars per household[0]. It has traffic issues and people feel the need to own a car. And yet the tram line is finding success because transportation is a local issue, not a global one!
You can solve for transportation issues in crowded areas. Few reasonable people are lamenting that you don't have a train between madison, WI and Chicago every 15 minutes. Many are simply lamenting that even at a local level PT in many places is leaving a lot on the table despite there being chances of success!
Smaller focused PT has proven itself to work time and time again, and compounds on other PT projects in the area.
I wonder if California high speed rail will ever surpass quadcopter personal vehicles in passenger miles per year. I know which way I'd bet for the year 2040.
Github released that split PR beta, so sounds like they are still thinking about the future which is moving towards small manageable PRs which are part of a parent ticket. That's a solid way to dealing with AI codegen bloat.
UAE's major issue with Saudis is their quiet support for Islamism as well. They know countries like Iran exploit for it like a wildcard which always backfires and destabilizes the region, which is bad for business.
MBZ is definitely more anti-islamism than the saudis. UAE really doesn't like muslim brotherhood while Saudis have supported groups aligned with them in Yemen plus Saudis are getting closer to Turkey/Qatar.
Even UAE/saudi backing different groups in Sudan war is rooted in Yemen/brotherhood issue. Both Sudanese groups sent competing troops to fight in Yemen.
> While Saudi Arabia does not have any problems with Islamists and in fact more or less openly supports them, according to Donelli, the UAE sees radical religious groups as a threat to its domestic stability, as well as stability in the wider region. This distinction is also evident in the two countries’ support for the respective sides in Sudan. The UAE supports RSF’s more secular version of Islam, whereas the SAF under al-Burhan’s leadership is widely seen as more or less a continuation of the regime of Omar al-Bashir, which was heavily influenced by the Muslim Brotherhood. https://nai.uu.se/stories-and-events/news/2025-02-07-gulf-st...
> UAE's major issue with Saudis is their quiet support for Islamism as well.
What is the meaning of "Islamism" here? GCC is something like 98-99% Muslim by native population. Also, Saudi Arabia is the home of the two most important masjids in the Islamic world.
ISIS and Iran are pan-Islamist, which is the strain of Islamism that the UAE and Saudi Arabia fear most. Pan-Islamists don't respect national boarders, democracy, nationalism or monarchies.
America could just reduce their cost of living, optimize their healthcare, make domestic business more attractive etc instead of trying to ban everything to duct tape over deeper problems
Maybe it was never really about maximizing the model technology as the ultimate end goal and far more
about the business side and infrastructure.
The software will only improve for so long before it hits a wall. The best models were just a proxy for early mainstream market adoption, keeping your head above the water … plus some useful marketing hype about longshots for developing something bigger than LLMs (“AGI”).
People who work in tech are biased to obsess about the technical side and short term uptime/performance outrage. Despite that being mostly just standard immature market issues.
I should say it’s “mostly” a myth, there are some fleeting competitive advantages to first mover but a lot of them don’t apply well to tech companies and there isn’t strong historical evidence supporting it.
Why? Being a first mover only counts for something if it can yield exclusivity that is durable.. you should know this being a VC and all. Real options - hello?
If you want to benefit massively off being a first mover, you better do the work in figuring it out how you are going to acquire exclusivity that lasts long enough that keeps most firms out.
UK spent $100M just to deal with bats in a single train tunnel, which is representative of the issue https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c9wryxyljglo
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