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Frame from Canada's 100-Foot Freight Railway To Nowhere Plays via YouTube's privacy-enhanced embed

Canada's 100-Foot Freight Railway To Nowhere

4 videos recommended on HN
YouTube
2 HN users recommended this explainer2 months2022–2023 score 2
Years with an HN recommendation, 2007–2026

HN recommends the channel for short, wry videos on obscure topics, and this one is cited as an example of gaming rules via a loophole.

A short, sarcastic Half as Interesting video about a tiny freight railway in Canada built to exploit a shipping regulation loophole. It explains how a track just 100 feet long counted as a railway.

“HAI makes interesting, short, sarcastic videos about obscure topics that HNers will probably enjoy.” (HN, 2022)

2 recommendations · 1 citations · 1 jokes · Explainers · news from the time

4 Hacker News comments

From the HN archive; up to 20 kept per video, favoring different commenters. Recommendations first.

Citations, criticism and jokes

@bombcar Dec 2022 Cites it
on HN thread Europe Makes Shipping Vessels Pay for Carbon Emissions
It'll be interesting to see how it's gamed, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't try - you will get things like this: [this video] but they can be corrected for later. One solution would be to switch the tax to a tariff on goods that can be avoided if you prove reduced carbon travel. So if your goods are from China, you get the 100% whatever it is, but if you can show that they travelled from China on whatever is considered acceptable, it drops to 20% or 0% or similar.
Example of gaming rules via a shipping loophole.
@shagie Jan 2022 Makes a joke
on HN thread Adding unusable RAM for tax reasons
> Someone figured out it was cheaper then to import unprocessed meat from Spain to Norway, turn the truck around as soon as they were customs cleared and drive the 3000 km or so back to Spain for curing. Ahh, those Norwegians and their customs evasions. [this video] (do note that I'm ascribing this to Norwegians completely in jest - tone is difficult to get across in text) ... Which recently had an update. [link]

Video list and Hacker News comment labels from HackerTube (prompted by @karpathy), released under ODC-By 1.0, built on the open-index/hacker-news archive. Hacker News data is provided by Y Combinator; comments remain the work of their authors. Video titles, channel names and thumbnails belong to their creators and are shown via YouTube. HackerTube Watch is an unofficial edition. Data export of 2026-10-31.

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