China Suspects Its 'Car-Eating,' Traffic-Straddling Bus Is a Total Scam (qz.com) 59
China's "Transit Elevated Bus" or TEB-1 made headlines last year for its futuristic design that let it straddle two lanes of traffic, allowing cars to pass under it. Now, that very bus is the focus of an investigation. According to Quartz, "police in Beijing announced that it had started an investigation into the company behind the TEB for alleged illegal fundraising." From the report: More than 30 people associated with Huaying Kailai, an online financing platform that has been selling an investment product to raise money from individual investors to develop the bus, have been held, said Beijing's Dongcheng district police bureau in a statement (link in Chinese) on microblogging site Weibo. The statement added that the police is working to recover funds from the firm, and advised TEB investors to report their complaints to local police stations. Huaying Kailai couldn't be reached for comment. The number listed on its website is invalid and a message to the email provided bounced back. Bai Zhiming, who runs Huaying Kailai and is also chief executive of TEB Technology Development, a Beijing-based company that purchased the patent for the elevated bus, was among those detained, according to the police statement. Bai bills himself as "the father of the TEB" on Weibo. Days after the Qinghuangdao government announced the TEB track's demolition, Bai told Chinese media that the bus would be relocated to another Chinese city.
Flost tosp (Score:5, Insightful)
Looks like somebody didn't bribe the right people. Schoolboy error, that.
Re:Flost tosp (Score:4, Informative)
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What exactly does some shifty business in china have to do with shifty business here?
You're like that annoying dude in every 100 level class who goes out of his way to come up with some contrarian opinion during a lecture, despite it being totally fucking unrelated to the lecture at hand.
No one finds that guy interesting or clever -- ever.
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I wasted a boost on a Rogue and almost immediately wished I'd gone with a Druid.
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well since the nerf(s) to quad kiting, druids are not quite as awesome.. though having handy access to ports would be a plus (not to mention on-demand SOW)
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One problem with Capitalism is that crime and corruption are so intrinsic that NO ONE builds a working database to take to the judges to get "prior bad acts" admitted in lawsuits and criminal trials against the 1% who coordinate these crimes.
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It is illegal to take and give bribes in China. While it is deeply ingrained in society making it hard to root out the Chinese government severely punish this crime - some are executed.
Scams happen everywhere BTW.
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The only ones executed are those that did not pay the right bribes to the right people.
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The people executed were political opponents of Xi Jinping. Their arrests and executions had very little to do with "corruption".
Xi's term in office ends in 2022. By then, he will have completed the purge, stuffed the central committee with his cronies, and should have no problem getting rubber stamp approval to extend his term "for the good of the nation".
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More stories about Kardashians please! (Score:2, Interesting)
I don't want to read about a stupid chinaman's elevated bus.
Welcome to the rough and tumble world of China (Score:3)
The financial markets are a joke and there is zero transparency into the banking and investment banking businesses. If you know the right people, you ride their coattails to riches (which you quickly slip out of the country into banks in first world countries along with your corrupt partners in crime, the very government officials who are supposed to be monitoring and regulating the industry). Otherwise, you may as well be playing roulette.
Enjoy the ride.
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So...just like the US, eh?
No. The opposite of the US. China has the world's biggest trade surplus, yet the value of their currency is falling. That reason is that much of the surplus is leaking out of the country into offshore investments. China has implemented capital controls, but those are easy to work around, and actually increase the desire to get money out before restrictions get even worse.
America has the world's biggest deficits, Yet the dollar is rising. A big reason is that America is the biggest destination for inve
Clearance (Score:3)
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Doesn't seem to be a complete scam (Score:1)
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You just gave the perfect illustration why scammers would build something! Take a token from the "investments" and build something (a model most often or in this case a track segment) - suddenly people thinking like you is interested in investing as the project "can't" be a scam.
Advanced scamming operations tend to produce multiple models/parts as time goes by with no intention to make whatever they claim they are doing.
Seems they have much bigger problem (Score:1)
Not very smart (Score:2)
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Eh... Tritium isn't required for fusion reactions.
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That claim was messed up in several different ways. Most cold fusion schemes used pure deuterium fuel. The problem with cold fusion is simply that cold fusion doesn't work. The notion that fusion is a scam if it can't produce more tritium than it consumes is an odd one too...the goal is power production, not tritium production. Fuels are typically consumed, tritium is unusual in that the process that consumes it can also produce it.
And finally, D-T fusion can actually produce excess tritium by breeding it f
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The USA holds about 5% of the world's population but about 25% of the world's wealth. That makes us idiots?
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Being complete dumfucks electing Trump and even nominating Hillary makes you idiots.
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I'm glad to see that you would like to limit the influx of poor, illiterate people - especially as automation removes their lawn care, dish washing and taxi driving jobs.
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And funnily, in this endevour he actually got farther than most of you yanks do when you're trying to get that lifetime payout.
..which means they're not as smart as we are, apparently.
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For a country that ostensibly wants to be the preeminent world power, they sure can be dumb. Who would fall for that thing in the first place?
It is called being willing to take a risk; a lot of the things we now consider obvious parts of everyday life, will have been considered frivolous, hare-brained schemes initially. Computers, for example: didn't the CEO of Digital once, famously, say that he could see the need for perhaps 2 or 3 computers to be built, globally? The very idea that they would be owned by everyone and used mostly for idle play would have been ridiculed. America became the world leader, at least for a while, by being willing to
I liked the straddle bus. (Score:2)
I liked the straddle bus. I found it an interesting and unique concept. It's that weird, out-of-the-box genius ideas the world needs.
Very disappointed I'll never see it developed.
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What about the people in the cars? (Score:1)
Am I the only one who's thinking of what it must be like for the people in the cars? As it's coming up from behind, it's impossible to know what's going on and people will freak out. Just imagine driving and suddenly you're enveloped by something above you, the entire car suddenly dark. It would spike my blood pressure! It should fail on that alone.
Really (Score:2)
So are solar paved roads and sidewalks. Bridges with wind turbines, and putting water turbines in water mains.
My theory is that people make up stuff like this to get funding to study it and if that fails to put it into a book about brilliant ideas for the future.
AKA see flying cars.