EDIT: A rough timeline of events here:
- In 2024, a user noticed this odd traffic on their local network, took a screenshot of the graph, and posted it to Twitter
- After discussing the issue with other Twitter users, the original poster realized that this graph was actually a mistake with their router or something. This reporting software was reporting some other device's network traffic as being the washing machine's traffic. The washing machine was actually only using a reasonable amount of data.
- Despite this past revelation, in 2026, someone put together a "meme" of sorts comparing past predictions of the future to that 2024 graph
- For whatever reason, that "meme" was put through AI post-processing of some sort. Was the attempt to "upscale" this image after it had been passed around and been automatically compressed down by various platforms? Was it someone using some newfangled AI-assisted compression technique in an attempt to create a smaller file size than any of the more traditional compression techniques? No idea. For whatever reason, it seems someone put it through some sort of AI post-processing that left the image with some nonsense text on the graph portion.
- I saw this "meme" and decided to share it here without scrutinizing the text on the graph. As mentioned in my first point, this graph was originally posted years ago, so I was already familiar with it and did not feel the need to read into it in the image I was sharing. I felt safe assuming it was just the same graph that I remember seeing years back.
- After users here called out the nonsense text, I just recreated the "meme" from scratch. I grabbed the original screenshot of the graph from Twitter and a stock photo of clouds, and just placed some text on the image so that this is more-or-less the same exact "meme", but without the AI gibberish
say what you will about al-qaeda but at least they made a solid demonstration as you why flying cars have always been a stupid fucking idea.
Hmm. This sounds like maths.
Quick google search say that averag plane weights are about 40 000 kg for small jets, 70 000kg for narrow-body planes and up to 570 000 kg for large wide-body planes.
While average car weight is somewhere in the 2000 kg mark.
If the dreams of flying cars come to trough the way most scifi/cyperpunk depicts them and the flight speeds would be at the similiar range than driving on the street.
So lets be generous and say flying cars would be much hevyer and weight 3000kg and the flight speed would max 175 km/h wich is pretty much the max speed for regular cars.
Lets go with the average plane so Weight is 70 000kg and flight speed is 930km/h
So maths:
E = 0.0386 * m * v^2
Car: E = 0.0386 * 3 000 * 175^2 ≈ 3.5MJ
Plane: E = 0.0386 * 70 000 * 930^2 ≈ 2.3GJ
So you would need about 670 cars to get same impact as one plane.
*all the numbers came from google-fu and from my ass. Also all the maths was done while sitting on a toilet, so there is large margin for error.
who says you need the same impact? a car can still fly through your window.
I'm not talking about literally recreating 9/11 itself, especially since the twin towers are not as tall as they were. shame. anyway, my point is flying cars make any kind of accident a potential mini-9/11. you can put guardrails on roads, what the hell are you going to have for flying cars?
Talking about the danger. Cars can allready be driven to masses and many houses or businesess dont have any guard railings protecting them from normal cars, but we dont see those happening that much. Why it would suddenly change, by adding additional dimension.
Also small planes are not really that hard to come by. Why we dont have those driving in to buildings now?
Also doing "mini-9/11" would most certainly kill or atleast hospitialize the driver. I can somehow understand giving your live for cause you support and cause the enemy lot of pain, but i think there would be much higher treshold to give a life for something that is very unlikely to do anything but structural damage and hurt your self.
More likelly would be crashing while driving under influence, but i would imagine there would be higher treshold for anybody to fly drunk than drive drunk.