First thing I do with a new browser is change my default search to DuckDuckGo. I wish I could say I was entirely living a Google-free life, but I do watch YouTube. Is there some way to do that without any Google/DoubleClick tracking cookies - anyone know? I'd be far happier with no Google account of any kind to tie anything to.

But, sadly, most people still give their personal details to Google in particular to sell, and that means if you're trying to launch a new product, you have to care about Google search results.

Normally I agree with complaints abut summaries, but this time I found the summary somewhat terse but pretty clear. I guess you were looking for definitions of some of the terms used?

What does "given a pass" mean? I'm sure we'll hear what went wrong, and what they're changing to prevent it, before they launch again, just as with the failed landings. And of course we don't know what the failure rate is yet - my point was that "cheap" will make a higher failure rate acceptable for a lot of payloads. Of course I'd hope that as their process matures they'd continue improving both cost and reliability, but realistically it will take hundreds of launches to have a chance of both "good" and "cheap".

If they get even 10 re-uses, It will be remarkable, and allow much cheaper prices to orbit. I don't know what SpaceX expects in the next decade, but I don't expect them to reach their "!0%" pricing or a 1% failure rate that quickly: process refinement takes serious time. They don't need to to become a new, appealing alternative for launch.

Maybe I don't understand your point? What's being "rationalized" here? Or are you unwilling to participate in honest discussion here? I rather suspect you're just trolling.

You seem to be saying that it's unfair that /.er's don't hold SpaceX to the same standards of NASA? Of course not, that was never the goal, never the point, and no reasonable person ever expected that. SpaceX is cheap - a goal of 10% of NASA's launch costs. There will of course be trade-offs. That's as expected, and it's still a good thing.

The higher failure rate of SpaceX is expected. Setting aside Musk's marketing machine, it's understood that the medium-term goal here is to offer a higher-risk alternative (LEO prices below):

1. Western launch, traditional way: $4000-8000/pound (larger launches cheaper/pound). Low failure rate.

2. Non-western launch: $2000-3000/pound. Slightly higher failure rate.

3. SpaceX goal: $500-1000/pound. Slightly higher failure rate.

Long-term, SpaceX could achieve the same low failure rates through process refinement, but it's silly to expect that in the next decade.

Look, if your choices are $5000/pound with a 1% failure chance, or $1000/pound with a 5% failure rate, which do you pick? The rational answer depends entirely on the price to replace the payload, as two launches with a 5% failure rate have a very low chance both will fail. If your payload is "fuel" or "supplies" or something else cheaper than $5000/pound to replace, the added risk is completely the way to go.

Can't help but notice the headline "AI finding nudity" aligned with the one below it, about AI's getting Testy...

Hmm.

I went to a shitty underfunded public school in a major city, located in a poor neighborhood and only black people live there (magnet schools: because rich people object to "bussing"). I lived in a variety of poor neighborhoods during and after my college years (admittedly Houston doesn't have the problems with escape-proof ghettos that the Democrat-only cities do). The main problem keeping people there, where I lived, really was either "attitude and culture" or "spending money on someone else".

Don't get me wrong: attitude and culture are no small thing! The strongest prison bars are the ones in our minds. But if you want to actually fix the problem, instead of keeping the problem around on purpose to serve your political goal, then you must understand the fix has to be cultural. I was stuck there myself for a few years due to my own attitude.

Everyone I talked to (and you do spend time talking to your neighbors when there fuck-all else you can afford to do) fell into one of these 3 groups:

1. Hardworking recent immigrants, legal or otherwise, who were already making enough to live somewhere better, but were sending most of their money back home (these are the best neighbors, BTW). They were here because the opportunities were good, and were anything but trapped. I'm sure their kids are doing great here.

2. A hardworking woman who wouldn't still be in this shitty neighborhood except for some layabout relative, always male, she was unwilling to force to work or throw out on the street. (I always suspected I only saw the ones who hadn't done that yet, but either way the problem wasn't lack of opportunity).

3. The majority: people who were convinced that working a regular, full-time job was some sort of scam. They were just too smart to fall for that scam, you see, to be tricked into working long hour for shit pay. They knew that wasn't the right answer, and any day know their next scam would work and they'd be rich. I was definitely trapped there by this, for years.

There's nothing in entertainment that glorifies, or even explains, that working long hours for shit pay is what the start of the path upwards looks like. That living with roomates in a ghetto apartment longer than you have to, spending less than you can even when that sucks bad, is how you make the space to change to a better job. That working a job that sucks so bad that you sit in the parking lot in a daze sometimes unable to walk inside and start the workday is just a temporary step on the path. None of that is explained, but it's normal when you start from the bottom. My immigrant neighbors understood it - I wish they'd have been able to explain it to me at the time.

Software development is more open to non-traditional backgrounds than most fields. I've participated in a couple hundred interviews and phone screens while working with a variety of the big names in my career, and no one ever cared about anything but "can you code, are you self-motivated, and are you an asshole". The opportunity is there, if you have the talent and the training, but its ultimately on you to make the changes to get the training and go after the opportunity.

The iPhone 6+ is in fact less bendable than the Samsung phones, and the Samsung phones have screens that will shatter instead of bending slightly...

But in fact the iPhone 6+ is easily good for more than a day of charge. So if you want an iPhone that you don't have to think about the battery, they already sell one.

AirBnB will reimburse up to $50k in loss or damage from a guest. Read that in a recent article about AirBnB...

But you mitigate that as a host by not taking every single offer that comes along.

The norm for big software companies seems to be: you have some number of open reqs for your team, and you're eager to fill them (both to get the work done, and because the might vanish). So you work your pipeline as best you can, interview anyone who passes a phone screen, and hire anyone who passes the interview. At most places I've worked, we end making an offer to about 1 in 20 people we phone screen (about 1 in 3 who we bring in); where I am now we make an offer to about 1 in 5 we bring in, and they don't always accept of course, so that's maybe 50 people who look good enough to phone screen to hire 1. You're much more likely to have too few qualified candidates than too many. Normally, if you end up with an extra guy you'd like to make an offer to, another team will be delighted to take him.

None of my games that came on floppies are still playable. About half the games I have bought on CD/DVD over the years are gone or don't work now (I seem to move every few years, and long-distance moves don't always go well).

Heck, I've bought MOO2 three times now, once on physical media, once from some now-gone download, and once from GOG. Now that it's on GOG I'm very happy. (The games I'm most frustrated with are Fantasy General and Space general, as my media doesn't seem to work and no one has them for download - GOG has some of the Panzer General games, but not these sequels).

Meanwhile, I've bought hundreds of games on Steam, and all but a handful still work (some depended too heavily on GameSpy). Maybe Steam will itself vanish one day, but the risk of that seems lower than the risk of a box being lost the next time I move, or simply no longer having an OS or emulator that I can get to work with older games.

That's certainly true, on both counts. Has nothing o do with physical media though - if the game is written to need a server even in single player mode it's crap no matter how you buy it. But fuck EA in any case.

Just imagine what happens if you lose or damage your physical media. That's happened to me about 20x as often as the download servers being unavailable - and the servers came back. Especially for older games, where I'm happy to pay again for someone to port it to a modern platform (GOG FTW).

Buying anything with "always on DRM" is foolish of course, but you get that with physical media as well.