Good way to think about it - I usually summarize it as "talent is cheap!" Meaning that there is lots of talent out there - it's not as rare as everyone thinks, nor is it all that is needed.

But maybe there is a 4th axis - humility/insecurity. Quite a few of the best in every field are humble or insecure to a degree. Drives their work-ethic, and makes them open to accepting criticism and strive to make themselves better. An arrogant talent won't.

Sounds to me like the launch/deployment went just fine. Problems started when the rescue craft started heading to the telescope. Agreed the company made shoddy components.

Maybe the takeaway for $30M was to simplify - make the equipment on the rescue craft as simple as possible. More like a remote controlled jetpack than an autonomous rescue vehicle.

Steep price in any case.

Maybe California is right - everything causes cancer!

You seem to be under the delusion that Congress people are somehow dependent on their USGov. paychecks. I sincerely doubt that has EVER been the case.

Back in the Stone Age I drove back and forth from MA to OH for college. AC/DC's Back In Black album saved my life on more than one occasion.

Yeah, I know what you mean - the '70s were pretty darn good all around, except of course for all the scandals in '72 and the market crash of '73. Still had Reconstruction going on, but what ya gonna do?

Yep, good times!

There are also additional sensors besides camera, lidar, etc.

Thermometer - is it cold enough for ice to form? Is the temp rising or falling? What's the wind speed. This can be from weather data feeds.
Road type - is there a bridge or elevated roadway? Those freeze faster. This can be from Maps I suppose.

Grippiness - This is something I do. On a straight wide street with nothing remotely near, hit the brakes. How fast do you stop? How much sliding do you get? Do you fishtail at all? Does not have to be fast - do it at 20 mph / 30 kph. With little "grippiness" extend every buffer you keep around your car appropriately.

Are self driving cars testing themselves for grippiness? They should be!

You may have meant it as sarcasm, but not everyone will take it that way. There have already been WAY too many examples of bending, folding, stapling, and mutilating of laws going on for anyone NOT to be on a hair trigger. Including several other Constitutional Amendments.

Plus, please don't feed the bears (MAGAs).

May be only 5 customers because it's touted as "milliseconds" - holy crap, if I'm putting out $100K I want a 10 minute head start on everybody.

Not really. You capture the other 24 and lay them out in a curved simulated wrap-around view - with the extreme left and right being the same snapshot. You can see 360 that way - even behind you - as well as seeing "forward".

Marry that with a small explosive payload and you're in business.

Don't pay much mind to drinkypoo - he's just here to troll everyone. Anything to get a rise out of you.

I had a similar experience to you up in NH - ours was an ice storm instead of a hurricane, but same deal - made for a very tense night, without power, as we listened to the trees exploding around us from the weight of the ice on them. Like a slow walking artillery barrage I imagine.

Over the next few days we all came out with chainsaws to try and clear the road, mindful of the downed wires. I got out a few days after the storm and borrowed a friend's generator (who lives in the next state over and missed the ice), "hot-wired" my furnace and had enough power left over to run a microwave. Had all the neighbors around for a big community meal with all the food we had stashed in the snow outside from our refrigerators.

Never made nothing over it - just seemed the least we could all do for each other. Power was out for a solid week for us - we were the last neighborhood to get power back for miles around (ours was the worst hit).

Keep the faith!

No, they designed it right. You are supposed to *walk your bike across the street*, not ride it across.

Exactly! THIS is what all the hype is really about (but is not well explained). Software, world wide, is almost a 1 trillion dollar business. AI *if it never did anything else useful - ever* can accelerate that trillion dollar business (slated to be 2.2 trillion within a decade) from profit margins of 60% to 90% or more. Hundreds of billions a year, just in the US, in additional revenues and profits. And accelerating over time as software gets cheaper, better, faster; and the AIs get cheaper, better, faster as well. And all we need to do to get that is build a few, several hundred billion dollar data centers? Basically a one time cost? Sign me up!

And on top of that, AI can speed drug development, basic materials research, provide cheap personal assistants for anyone that wants one, operate autonomous vehicles, improve agriculture, and operate autonomous robots that toil alongside us in factories.

And that's just what I can think of off the top of my head.

I also assume it is coding assistance. But $150K in tokens / year is the cost (not salary) of another engineer making about $110K. Assuming that LMB is paid roughly that, I would say that if he is doing the work of 3 people, the company is coming out WAY ahead on that deal.

If he is doing the work of 2, it's break even, if more than 3, the company is making bank with this arrangement.

In addition, there are other benefits too - more intangible. Like better morale - seeing stuff come together faster is very satisfying for a SW engineer. Faster, smoother implementation of features helps the 'flow' - leading to better software coming together faster. Better architecting - because AI is doing more of the low level coding and 'shoveling coal' as I call it - leads to more focus by the SW engineer on the overall design. That leads to finding and fixing the holes in that design faster.

Tough to measure, but adding to the benefits.

I think the quote from the original Blade Runner said it best:
"You're either Cop, or you're little people"