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Comment Re:And yet the Africans are breeding like crazy (Score 3, Informative) 65

While the westerners have fewer and fewer kids.

I wonder if ending USAID will stop Africa's population rise.

No.

USAID (U.S. Agency for International Development) plays a significant role in global family planning and reproductive health, providing contraceptive supplies and support to developing countries.

Comment Re:Still a throwaway booster in 2025 (Score 1) 26

You could have gone with the short answer: "no".

While it is true that there seem to be 11 launch capable countries, now, that has not been the case for decades. And certainly not the "China, India, Japan and a dozen other..." that you claimed.

Rocket science continues to be as hard as rocket science.

AI: "how many rocket launch failures have there been in the past year"
In 2024, there were 8 orbital launch failures out of 259 attempts. This resulted in a failure rate of 3%, which is lower than the previous year's 6%.

Pissing on a company whose first attempt was not a complete success says more about you than it does about that company.

Comment Re:Inferior to what? (Score 1) 183

You're not wrong except for a couple of assumptions:
* Satellites are not going to get smaller/more efficient - meaning less cost per satellite.
* They're going to keep launching on falcons

I'm pretty sure that the goal is to move to starship as a launch vehicle - which is supposed to be even more efficient.

Elon is a nutter. And this would be an obvious conflict of interest. But I don't think Starlink is financially unviable.

Comment Re:Musk'll Fix It! (Score 1) 246

With all the recent Mars talk, I decided to look up our bet:
https://science.slashdot.org/c...

I proposed not making it by 2027. You accepted "by the end of 2027." That's not what I said, but I'll tell you what: I'll double down on what you said.
$2 if SpaceX lands successfully on Mars by the end of 2027. I'm hoping to lose this bet, but I'm guessing I'll be $2 richer come 1/1/2028.

kurt@CircleW.org

Comment Re: Or? (Score 1) 235

Sorry - you basically said that I need experience to understand what you're talking about. Right? "This means getting experience, not trading a one or the paragraph blurb." "You need years to go from not knowing anything about methodologies beyond thinking there is only Agile and waterfall." Yeah - that's what you said.

"Why would I care how old you are or if you have a github account? (or check linkedin, I guess)"

With age comes experience? The point is not that I have a github or linkedin or /. account. The point is how very very old they are, how much crap is in them, how old the crap is, etc.

And a final point for the both of us - from Mark Twain!
Never argue with an idiot.

Comment Re:Or? (Score 1) 235

I dunno. I look at that list and squint just a little and they pretty much fall into the two camps - waterfall or agile. I just don't see the variations as all that meaningful.

It is entirely possible that I am more slacker than zealot.

As far as "doing it right requires a lot of work, time, and expertise" - I guess that's true from one perspective. I prefer the one where you show people what they asked for, ask why that's not what they actually want, and try to get from A to B (once you figure out where B actually is). I think that trying to make the folks that ask for software experts on that subject is usually time poorly spent.

In short, sketching some crappy software is pretty easy - it's a sketch, but it's pretty easy to bang out! It's very different than an architectural sketch of your new bathroom. People mostly know what a bathroom is for and how they are going to use it - ideally looking at a sketch is going to be useful. But it's virtually impossible to physically implement a sketch of the new bathroom and let the end user (hah!) take it for a spin.

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