Recent submissions

Comment · 9 months ago
Allow me to remind you of what you said:

> I personally have a hard time believing that a “Real” ID that does not verify citizenship or residency is meaningfully different from my current one.

You seem to have conveniently forgotten that residency was part of the discussion. DHS hasn't contested REAL ID as a means to verify your identity or your residency. They have contested it as a means to verify your citizenship and they are correct because it was never intended to be proof of citizenship or legal residency status.

You do need to show your residency paperwork or prove citizenship when applying as only lawfully present residents are eligible to receive a REAL ID, but only citizens and permanent residents have indefinite legal status and REAL ID doesn't track your status.

I would argue this is a silly gap, but Congress intentionally did not establish a National ID which you would expect to identify nationality. Instead, they created a system which makes it difficult to create ID in multiple states concurrently or under multiple names.

I would further argue that the database required to make REAL ID work ends up with all of the negatives of a national ID, without the most useful benefits. So really, we all lose.

Comment · 9 months ago
That's a really disappointing source. The headline is '200,000 people a day fly without REAL-ID', which starts out quite interesting.

It then goes on to explain that the TSA has reported 93% of traveler's complied with REAL ID, citing a TSA blog from a week prior which in fact states the same.

They then take this and couple it with a single day, which they state was the busiest travel day of the Memorial Day weekend, and extrapolate that 7% of the travelers that day must've failed to provide a REAL ID.

For the sake of conversation, this is a reasonable statement. Going back and using it to suggest 200k fly without it on a typical day is not reasonable, nor is your suggestion that a 6 months later it's still at 7% (or even typical travel volume hasn't changed.) There has to be better data available.

I was curious about this, so I looked up travel volume. YTD the daily average is 2,130,136 passengers. At 7%, this is 149,109.5 passengers or $2.449 B a year in fees. This ignores that you only pay the fee once very 10 days and assumes that all travelers pay the fee on every occurrence.

Comment · 9 months ago
What states do you have to pay for your Real ID every time? Yes, you have to pay to renew your license or photo ID, but the Real ID fee in my state (PA) is one-time. Renewal costs are the same whether it's a Real ID or not.
Comment · 9 months ago
Why is this noteworthy in 2026?
Comment · 9 months ago
That is a name I haven't heard in a long time, pleasantly surprised to hear they're still in business.
Comment · 10 months ago
Comment · 10 months ago
This is a curious suggestion. Higher end go-karts I can't contest, but I've never found bumper cars to be anything like operating a car. It would probably help, but at some point they're going to need to drive something with more weight and horsepower.
Comment · 10 months ago
Russian is neither a common lingua franca nor is it commonly spoken by foreigners (with the obvious exclusion of former Soviet countries). It belongs culturally to Russia and it's people. English belongs to half a dozen countries.

I'm not sure I agree with the original commenter, but I see the merit in their perspective.

Comment · 10 months ago
Comment · 10 months ago
This is an interesting point. As recently as mid-2023 us-east-2 was 3 campuses with a 5 building design capacity at each. I know they've expanded by multiples since, but us-east-1 would still dwarf them.

Makes one wonder, does us-west-2 have the capacity to take on this surge?

Comment · 10 months ago

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