I attribute it down to mostly the elimination of leaded gasoline. 18-20 years after use drops, crime drops as well.

It's not a lie. The unemployment rate is crap. Both parties like to use it to lie about how good things are when they are in charge, which is why most of them don't want to kill that goose.

It's destroying the planet. Sustainability is job #1. SMH here.

No, it literally is not an ad hominem in absolutely any sense whatsoever, period. If you think otherwise, you may or may not be stupid, but you're definitely ignorant. I could have phrased it some other way, if I were trying to be dishonest, but that is not what I do. I'm not here to be nice about shit ideas which ennoble or enrich shit people, nor to coddle their enablers.

Ad hominem means insult from a person. It is an argument that an argument is false because a certain person made it. It literally does not matter whether an insult is involved, although it can be. The fact that you're issued moderation points for a site like Slashdot when you're so eager to be so fundamentally wrong about what something means is utterly pathetic. This is exactly why moderation should be public, so people can know whether it means anything, or it was executed by someone who has no fucking idea what they're on about. This is also why moderation is and always has been fundamentally broken on Slashdot. Posting and moderating in the same discussion isn't allowed, but the people who are most qualified to moderate are also the people who are most qualified to comment.

I also note that you failed to understand the part about comments whose sole purpose is to insult and enrage, with your comical focus on insult when that is not even the core of what ad hominem even is. It's especially amusing that you quoted that section in light of your inability to understand either thing.

Now go away, or I shall taunt you a second time.

lolololol etc ad infinitum.

Yeah, Musk could definitely drive the whole thing sideways. I'm afraid he might be getting increasingly detached from reality. I'm not so worried about the lack of focus on the chomper; it seems to me that the real issues facing Starship are all about how to handle re-entry heat. Also engine re-lights, but I have little concern they can solve that; it's been done many times before, including by SpaceX. If they can solve the rapid reuse after reentry problem, something no one else has done, ever, building various form factors will be a simple matter of engineering.

Yes, it was all super entertaining, especially with PJ covering all of it, and rarely missing a trick. Good times for those of us watching from the cheap seats. A huge waste of time and resources for IBM.

That's absolutely not what it means.

"Left the labor force" doesn't mean "they lost their job" it means "they aren't looking for a job". Examples of cases where people "leave the labor force" include (but aren't limited to):

* Retired.
* Had a child and decided to become a stay-at-home parent.
* Decided to spend their time caring for an elderly relative.
* Decided to go back to school.
* Gave up on working after being unable to find a job.
* Had a financial windfall and decided to stop working.

And so on. The "gave up after being unable to find a job" is not particularly likely in a job market where only 4.2% of people who want a job don't have one, though I suppose some may choose not to work rather than work in a less-desirable job than they had before.

Also, it's July 2. June employment numbers are basically worthless at this point. Give them a quarter or so to get more data and correct the numbers. The initial numbers are based on only on employer reporting data, which skews it in various ways. The government uses several other data sources including surveys, but it takes time for that data to come in, which is why these numbers are generally corrected 2-3 months after they come out.

Counterargument: Who would have predicted a few years ago that one private company would dominate global launch, launching more by every metric than the rest of the world combined, and -- all by itself -- triple the number of satellites in orbit in 7 years.

Sure, 200Xing the satellite count is a lot harder than tripling the satellite count, about 66 times harder. But if Starship is successful (by no means a given, also far from impossible), SpaceX will reduce per-kg launch costs by 100X, maybe more.

I'm skeptical... but I would also not just write it off as a "pack of lies". The things SpaceX is actively working on should make the launch part of it feasible. Will it be cost-effective? That's a harder question, and heat dissipation is the core thing that may make it infeasible.

Also, the final paragraph of the summary seems to be confused:

So, why are the hyperscalers hyping orbital data centers? Answer: because it's lucrative. "The Elon Musk part of it is honestly genius because he's got xAI building the data centers, SpaceX sending them to space, and Tesla building solar panels," Genkina says. "It's almost like he's paying himself."

Yes, SpaceX will be incredibly lucrative if it owns the whole vertical stack, building, launching and powering -- but only if it works. If it doesn't work, and if orbital compute isn't cheaper than planet-bound compute, then SpaceX will have no buyers.

The other possibility is that it's just a pump and dump, but that's not how Musk has ever worked in the past. Yes, he makes crazy promises, and delivers only half of them, and delivers years after the promised date, but those half-realized, years-late results are still often world-changing.

Doesn't really matter because it has to be done, unless we want to pay the much, much higher costs of just living with the hotter planet. We're all going to pay, one way or the other. It's just a question of whether we want it to be expensive or really, really expensive.

You don't even know what an ad hominem attack is, since I didn't make one.

Learn what words mean before you use them, kid.

I guarantee it was an off the shelf device running their app. It's the elon phone!

If you don't hate Elon after what he did to USAID, which has killed thousands abroad elsewhere and also resulted in the screwworm showing up here, you're stupid.

Fine words from someone who has done neither.

What you're doing is called simping.

Not just history but the present is replete with counterexamples. Cartels abound.

wank wank, flonk flonk.

I remember a time when Slashdot was peopled mostly by humans who looked down on copyright law in general as a farce. Those were better times in a lot of ways, and this is only one of them.

There is no ethical consumption under capitalism. Everything is coercive.