Half the purpose of the entire practice of engineering is exactly that. Making a reliable thing that you need, from unreliable things that you have.

TCP/IP being the obvious example.

The booster has worked property through stage separation on all but the first launch, and has had 8 landing attempts that would have been successful apart from things like GSE problems or extreme descent profiles meant to push its limits. The final 3 block one starhips made it to near-orbit successfully and survived reentry to splashdown. The initial block 2 starships had some trouble, but the final three all made it to near-orbit and the last two both survived reentry and splashed down successfully.

You have to keep in mind that this is a development project and they are improving the design with each test flight, they're not just failing over and over again, or having a small number of successful flights at random. Even the block three ships are not the final planned ideration. SpaceX intends to mass produce these, and fly them at an incredible rate. If you think about other things that are mass produced, like cars, they make tons of prototypes and release candidates before they settle on the final version and tool up to mass produce it. What SpaceX is doing with Starship is no different. They really want it to be as inexpensive and reliable as possible. It's nothing like any space development project that's come before.

What I asked relates to my comment because I'm NOT assuming he actually meant anything. I'm asking what he meant, or at least I'm pointing out the inconsistency if I were to assume a particular meaning; but at no time did I assume he actually meant a particular thing. That aside, I'd hope that a software engineer would be more precise when using computer-related terms.

.. but I don't think it means what the author thinks it means. FTFA:

The Apple Calculator leaked 32GB of RAM. Not used. Not allocated. Leaked.

First, AFAIK, leaking memory means you allocate it, but don't deallocate it. So how can he say "Not allocated?"

Second, leaked how? If it's leaking 32GB of RAM on, say, every keystroke, that would be serious; but if it allocates 32GB RAM once on start-up and simply forgets to deallocate it upon termination, it doesn't matter since the OS will reclaim the RAM for the entire process.

Today's real chain: React > Electron > Chromium > Docker > Kubernetes > VM > managed DB > API gateways.

OK, those are lots of layers of abstraction and they each use memory, perhaps a lot, and he has a point that modern software tends to use too many layers, but that doesn't mean that any of that memory is leaked: just used.

Based on that part of his rant, is he complaining more about the 32GB size of the (alleged) leak of the Calculator app, i.e., why should a calculator need 32GB? Sure, complaining that a calculator using 32GB is valid, but it's not a leak, just inefficient or lazy on the part of the programmer.

They are initially streamed on twitter, but they will still post them to YouTube afterward.

They haven’t completed an orbit because they want to be definitely certain they can deorbit it reliably as it is not demisable. They have absolutely demonstrated that it has the ability to reach orbit and survive reentry consistently.

All those goals are reasonable when you consider the assembly lines they are building and their success with recovering the first and second stages. Consider the launch rate of Falcon 9 and then consider the fact that they are building twice as many launchpads while designing the boosters to be immediately reflown.

The only real question is whether they will have the same initial teething problems with their third generation of the rocket that they did with the first two, but I doubt they will.

Why on earth should content creators get to control derivative works and levy a tax on them?

Suppose I make an independent film and it becomes popular in the limited places I've shown it. Suppose at one of the showings, an audience member is a big movie studio executive who loves my film, then goes back to his studio and creates a very similar film, a derivative work, and makes many millions for the studio and I get nothing. Are you OK with that? Copyright works for both the big and little guys.

That's true whether the panels are on the car or on the home. Putting panels on the car only allows the battery to be reduced but Aptera hasn't done that since a car needs more than 20 miles of daily range. Panels on the home provides a superset of what Aptera provides.

The only subset of people that would benefit from solar panels on the car are those who live in apartments that don't own a home to put solar panels on.

Once I wanted a particular oil-based stain. My local hardware store didn't carry it; not even Home Depot carried it.

Less esoteric: every few months, I buy cat treats: buying a 2-pack gets me past the $25 minimum for free shipping, plus the unit cost is still less than my local store. No getting into my car, no driving, no parking, no standing in line.

In some cases, Amazon is both more convenient and less expensive.

I am serious, this 1984 insanity should not be legal. Editing old photos and videos without some kind of disclaimer should not be allowed, and the original must always be available.

For hunter-gatherers (which we were for most of a million years) an older female can continue to dig roots and pick berries, but an older male can't keep up with the hunting party. If the older male has some talent like flint knapping that would still make them valuable to the group, but any older female can continue to cook and herd the children.

And older men can't start helping out with the things older women do because ..?

We can barely get people to vote once every few years. Voter turnout is appalling low, even for major elections. Asking the unwashed masses to vote for every issue wouldn't work well. Ideally, every voter should really understand the proposal, arguments for and against, unintended consequences, cost, and other nuances, that's beyond most people.

Some states do have direct voting due to ballot measures. For weeks leading up to the election, both supporters and detractors spam everything with ads that distort the truth or don't include the whole truth.

Representative democracy is still better, but a parliamentary system is better than a presidential system. In the former, electing a leader doesn't devolve into a popularity contest.

Similar to Uncle Simon.

Of course, with Apple dropping support for the Intel macs, I have to replace my mac too, but there’s no chance I can skip that, since I need it to develop iOS apps.

It’s been very problematic for my customers. I have an original threadripper in my CAD machine, and with Microsoft dropping windows 10 support, I’m going to have to replace it to upgrade to windows 11 in the near future. I’ve been seriously considering switching entirely to Mac instead.