U.S. goods and services trade with Canada totaled an estimated $673.9 billion in 2017. Exports were $341.2 billion; imports were $332.8 billion. The U.S. goods and services trade surplus with Canada was $8.4 billion in 2017. https://ustr.gov/countries-regions/americas/canada
@adam the BART issue is probably like this, all local politicians only have 4 year terms and don't want to be seen as the ones that had to increase local taxes to fund a more future proof BART extension train track. The fact that building + running costs will be double overall after 15 years of running the train does not matter to them. Also the costs probably in the hundreds of millions of dollars in lost productivity by all the users having to switch trains is also not factored.
@adam when you swap, on your in-vehicle display or on your smartphone you click if you agree to use an older battery with less range you can get a discount on your monthly fee to maybe $80/month, and anytime when there are new batteries in the future coming with more range, if you want a newer battery with 30-40% more range, just upgrade your monthly fee to about $120/month maybe. Governments/industry should standardize EV battery sizes/weights/swapping bolts and systems, easy.
@adam the reason Elon Musk can't agree to sell Tesla cars without the battery and offer all batteries and swapping as a separate service is because Elon Musk has too many Billions of dollars invested in building a giant Gigafactory ERV battery factory, he needs to sell the batteries to every Tesla user, as a big part of the cost of a Tesla, over $15K per battery. Instead a $35K Tesla should be sold at $20K without the battery and you'd pay a fee around $100/month for battery+charging+swapping.
@adam the Tesla EV model would just be fully perfect if only they would implement it as Better Place once tried, Electric Vehicles need to run on standard sized batteries regulated by the Government and you must be able to swap your EV battery "for free" at EV battery swap stations which could be located pretty much everywhere. No need to plug and recharge if you are going on a long road trip. They should have battery swap stations along every highway. Elon Musk is too scared to do it this way.
@adam instead of just having compatible extended BART. This just shows how the USA always never thinks on the long term. Same thing about pulling out of the Paris agreement. The USA does not like to invest in the future. Public transportation in the USA is a joke compared to Europe and China.
The $500 million savings they got by building biodiesel BART extension will be all spent within 8 years as refueling by biodiesel is more than twice as expensive as running the trains on electricity. This means that if you look 15 years down into the future (especially looking into forecasts of electricity vs biodiesel costs), that BART extension will be twice as expensive including all that biodiesel fuel and all the users will need to endure the pain and time wasted having to switch BART @adam
@ChrisWilson@yukiame@Lordimpala and what I think sucks the most is for example Netflix 4K HDR is streamed at only around 15mbit/s kind of defeats the point of 4K and HDR, but still it's so convenient. Pirating 4K content with torrents is not convenient. Now for sure they need to interoperate and have some kind of peering agreements so one or two of these subscription plans needs to include all content, like sucks for HBO, CBS, Disney, etc others each having their separate streaming site.
@ChrisWilson@yukiame@Lordimpala thing is it's so convenient to instantly stream all that content off Netflix and Amazon Prime, and I got 6 months of free Netflix with my Chromebook, it's just not worth the bother torrenting all those shows when Netflix and Amazon stream them instantly in 4K HDR too, really pushes the point of also using one of those displays or even best a 4K projector (getting to sub-$1000 this year). Now for sure what sucks is Netflix and Amazon do not have everything.
@yukiame@ChrisWilson@Lordimpala if I am not mistaken most Netflix streams are streamed to Linux powered devices, Amazon Fire Stick, Fire TV Box, most Smart TVs, Android TV Boxes, all are Linux based. But I know what you mean, the DRM packages not openly implemented to every/any desktop Linux distro, it's not Netflix's fault, it's the dumb content owners that Netflix licences like Disney, Paramount, Columbia, etc they require stupid proprietary DRM.
@Lordimpala@adam Amy Schumer had tons of good stuff online, she did a quite impressive show I think it's called Inside Amy Schumer, she stars and made a bunch of movies in the last few years many of them are very funny. And some of her early standup is pretty great too. I think Michelle Wolf has maybe a chance if they write her upcoming show Break well, as well as her WHCD speech, who knows it could become yet another gangbuster talkshow. Dimension B dominates comedy, republicans aren't funny.
@Lordimpala@adam Amy Schumer is the most successful female comedian what are you talking about. Cancelling Netflix is dumb, they're spending $20 Billion per year on original content.
White House Correspondents Dinner comedian Michelle Wolf was awesome. Last year was also quite awesome. Trump being too much of a pussy to show up, as every president otherwise has since Nixon during watergate scandal, I think.
@IndyHavoc@adam the people are smart enough. Nothing is free. Direct democracy does not mean every vote should count the same nor that everybody should vote for everything. It just means the algorithms identify the best representatives instead of the current system of corruption and constant bullshit that had to be put in place centuries ago before cars, airplanes and the Internet were invented. The Government must represent the people and not the people with money.
@Charbax@adam and Amazon's algorithms work pretty great, Jeff Bezos is now the world's richest person, unless Trump slumped their stock recently due the cheap US Postal Service complaint. Sometimes people do want to buy something a second time or seeing an ad can trigger them to remember to rate the item which can help sell more of it. Thought Netflix was big? Amazon Prime is even bigger, to spend $20 Billion per year on content, becoming world's largest movie/TV content producer.