...maybe this is a stupid question but ... who's going to determine if the AI gets it right, eventually?

Other AI?
I mean if AI is writing the reports and AI is evaluating the results and announcing "hey we solved it!'...who actually gives a shit at that point? Why would they honestly bother to tell us?

That seems a short route to Wall-E world where we're just sipping out SUPER GULP 1000s.

Ironic that the next story my feed is that Chief Economist at Apollo Global determines net benefit so far of all the AI investment and hype is....zero.*
https://slashdot.org/story/26/...

*in my experience, that may be charitable.

Why would they bother?

Why bother using NASA a civilian, largely open space agency when they could use y'know, the actual, specific, designed-for-task military space agencies that were designed, structured, and staffed PRECISELY for secretive military projects? Like DARPA, the Space Force, or the Dept of Defense programs.

I'm not saying the US doesn't have secret space launches, OBVIOUSLY they do.
What I'm mocking is the absolutely ridiculous assertion that the Chinese program is "open" to any degree, except very-calculated revelations...you know, like a military based program. From the bottom to the top. The ENTIRE Chinese program is purely secret, except for the shit they're trying to manipulate you with.

I get it, the concept of a major government program that's not secretive has to be incomprehensible to Chinese.

Obviously in 2026 most of the posts are going to be about how stupid Trump is just making meaningless goals for his own ego.

To be clear, he absolutely is.

Then again, I would point out that it seems pretty common that every president since the 1970s* has seen fit in the latter stages of their presidency to "talk big" on space commitments ... and then proceed to fund none of them.
Until I actually SEE $50bn flowing into NASA or space investment, I take ANY presidential assertions about expanding space programs as what they are: publicity bullshit.

*In fact the only one I can think of that didn't was Biden, but he was basically non compos mentis the last 12+ months anyway.

OK, OK we'll let Xi know you're earning your paycheck today.

The chinese space program is a fundamentally MILITARY program and thus its budgets, priorities, and developments are secret UNLESS there is deemed a value to public revelation.
The Chinese routinely withhold basic data that is generally shared across space agencies globally such as expected precise trajectories of vehicles and discarded stages.

Project 921, Shenlong, Or perhaps the 2007 ASAT test that was COMPLETELY unannounced and blew what, 3000+ of orbital debris?

Do you know what those TJS "communication" satellites are doing migrating into specific geostrategic orbits and then suddenly adjusting to park next to US or Euro satellites?

How's Yang Lewei feeling today?

https://undark.org/2019/01/29/...

What's chinese for "shut the fuck up, comrade"? I'm pretty sure you know it.

... But my request to the IT security mavens would be to extend your rigor beyond the employees to the programs that directly contradict your rules themselves.

I am told strictly: NEVER click on a blind link, yet I get constant emails from departments - including IT! - that are LINKS to training videos, educational resources, mandatory bullshit that when if don't click on it, I get stern warnings that I'm not doing mandatory things. (Oh, and all external email urls are replaced with unparseable 200-character strings that supposedly route the link through "URL defense" or some such.)

Or how about all the consultants? I work for an EU multinational and we have at least 3 REGULATORY-required systems that I have to log into to comply with EU bureaucracy that are myCompany.kpmg.com or whatever - and then I'm supposed to give that EXTERNAL pop-up my *corporate* user and password while it authenticates through our corporate cellphones.

I'm reasonably savvy, I believe, but when policy & security rules contradict, which am I supposed to follow? I can tell you that corporate IT doesn't appreciate being shown it's own use of blind links.

Absurd generalizations? Wut?

On what basis? It's unquestionable that the political left in the US has both:
- fought nuclear tooth and nail since the 1970s
- is clearly the most concerned (panty-wetting fear in other words) with climate change.

There is no sane person that can dispute those assertions, gaslighter.

"ignoring the fact that your tech isn't actually the only fossil fuel alternative out there" I said LITERALLY NOTHING about that. Nothing. Are you asserting that expanded nuclear WOULDN'T have reduced hydrocarbon emissions substantially, or... are you just afraid to admit that?

I think wind and solar are great; they weren't meaningfully part of the conversation 45 years ago, which is what I rather specifically referenced.

I feel like you might not be getting enough oxygen. I made a single irrefutable assertion and you go off on irrelevancies as if they matter.

If only the people crying about the imminent doom of climate change weren't exactly the same group that INSISTED we abandon nuclear 45y ago.

The *exact* same idea with the *exact* same complaints from the Left, the UCS, all the progressive crybabies...can reasonably be seen as having ended the Soviet Union by ramming it financially into its own contradictions.
Is that ACTUALLY what you guys at the Paul Robeson bookstore are all still salty about? That the guys you insisted all along were the "good guys" turned out not to be?

Anyway, the idea that defense = escalation hasn't been a thing since MAD was largely abandoned in the 1990s. Welcome to the post cold-war era, comrade.

...and it is genuinely an efficiency gain: now I can completely avoid 2 shit product families from only 1 vendor.

That's great!

"The US is escalating"?
That's a rather specious viewpoint, isn't it? Or did you intend to lie by omission?

The Soviets/Russians have had space based weapons platforms in orbit since the 1960s
The Chinese have had weapons aloft for at least 10y.
Honestly, if the US *doesn't* have functional, effective orbital weapons already up there, they're fucking incompetent.

And, if investors don't like it, they can walk away, can't they?
Isn't that how the free market works? Convince people to invest in you, great. If you're an asshole or do stupid things, they take their $ away.

Look, I get it, slashdot despises Musk for many, many things (some even have to do with actual business or technology). But this is up to investors and their choices.

SpaceX IPO $160 today $162. Not really compelling unless one believes in their mission.
Tesla 1y was $442, now is $385. Not very compelling.
 

...would somehow also cause Slashdot to seethe in fury.

You guys are hilarious.

Who says I'm NOT outraged by that? Why the simplistic binary?

Personally, I believe that anyone getting a dime of government $ should be banned from voting / donating politically due to conflict of interest.
This includes the welfare poor BUT ALSO the management (c-suites, I'd guess) of ANY company with
- federal contracts
- using public resources (ie oil companies on federal lands)
- in-law tax benefits.

I also believe corporations should have escalating tax rates for owned dwellings; that is, like people they can have that single homestead property, but the next is full-tax, the next 150% tax, the next 200% etc.

Make no mistake, yes, I do object to LONG TERM free ride programs for the poor as an alternative to sorting their lives out. But I'm even MORE aggressive about taxation of corporations that want to enjoy the upside of capitalism but be fully socialist on the downsides. "Too big to fail" is bullshit; capitalism REQUIRES companies to die like forests need fires.

So....no answer, confirmed.
I have read about UBI, extensively, because its advocates never tire of begging for other people's money.

I mean...the people who have for decades fought long and hard to inform people about the catastrophic threats facing corals should be DELIGHTED that there is a serious, significant prospect of improving their survival.
This is, very clearly, a pure, intrinsic good.

Right?

Because if they're not delighted then one might question whether they really were that concerned about the corals themselves in the first place. One might even speculate that 'teh coRalz are DyIng!" was really about just a useful poster-child for an ideology or something less salutary....