> Falcon 9 generously halved the previous price to orbit.

Note that there's a difference between price and cost.

I've seen estimates of a Falcon-9 flight with a reused booster costing around $20,000,000 which is about $1,000 a kilo to orbit. The Space Shuttle was around $20,000 a kilo and Ariane is apparently over $5,000 a kilo. So the cost is maybe 1/5 of traditional launchers.

The price is higher because when there's no competition in your price range there's no reason to cut prices lower than you have to.

If laws were primarily used by criminals to rob the law-abiding, why would you want laws?

The Sullivan Act was literally pushed by a gang-affiliated politician because the gangs were fed up with law-abiding folks shooting them when they tried to commit crimes and wanted the law-abiding disarmed.

Was that law a good idea?

"Just because something always fails, why should we stop doing it? Maybe it will work this time!"

That and because he's not Christian.

Regulation is always used by big business to keep small competitors out of the market. So why should we keep doing it?

It doesn't seem possible to disentangle LEO lift from missiles with rocket technology so you can understand the argument.

Same with Starlink. We just learned that the attack on the Girl's high school dorm in Luhansk last week was done with four plywood and epoxy drone airplanes with manually targeted rockets strapped to the wings. Strapped to the top of the fuselage was a Starlink mini, per analyst reports (cf. Garland Nixon stream from last night) so operators could guide the rockets into the dormitory.

Perhaps with Exodus Technology's lifters we can get away from rockets for lift. I'm rooting for their success.

Some are blaming AI targeting but that just shows Musk is hip deep in the whole kill stack. Most of his stuff is dual-use, so there is always public cover. Same can be said of NASA of course.

1. China has a real government, so Xi will subsidize sales in China to take the low/mid-range gaming market away from Nvidia.
2. China has a real government, so Xi will subsidize sales outside China to take the low/mid-range gaming market away from Nvidia. Even more so if necessary to make the choice between the Nvidia card and Chinese card a no-brainer.

Nvidia's nightmare is that China starts churning out cheap GPUs and AI chips which undercut Nvidia's market. If they put just 64GB of VRAM on this 3060-equivalent card they could easily start taking the low-end AI market from Nvidia.

> Russia is so far beyond bankrupt that resuscitating roscosmos doesn't belong anywhere on its radar right now.

Russia just successfully launched its next-gen Soyuz rocket and they're raking in cash thanks to the massive increase in the price of oil from Trump's war in the Middle East. They're still behind SpaceX because they aren't even trying to reuse the launchers but they probably don't have a high enough launch rate for that to make sense.

I don't know any Catholic who listens to the Fake Pope so he has nothing to worry about. He's pushing this because his master told him to.

> We should want appropriate government regulation of AI.

Big business wants regulation to keep small competitors out of the market.

"Appropriate government regulation of AI" will be used to kill open-source AI projects and ensure that our beloved billionaires control all AI models.

To support your point about a need for broad social&environmental improvements, consider: "The [critical of] RFK Jr. Op-Ed the Los Angeles Times Didn't Want You to Read"
https://www.yahoo.com/news/rfk...
        "... For decades, U.S. public health policy has been dictated by neoliberal principles that prioritize privatization, deregulation, "free" markets, and associated profits over public care systems. ... Illness is framed as a matter of individual behavior and personal failure--poor diet, sedentary lifestyles, or smoking, for example--rather than the result of policies that undermine rights to healthy environments. ... Meanwhile, social problems like poverty, isolation, and trauma are medicalized, treated as individual pathologies requiring individualistic interventions, like often-ineffective pharmaceuticals or psychotherapy that cannot touch root causes, while ignoring the necessity of investing in systemic, collective solutions. This diverts resources from community-based social care and prevention, generating profits for industry while leaving patients with endless bills and disappointments. ... For example, policies like universal childcare, housing-first initiatives, and direct cash transfers improve health outcomes while reducing poverty and economic insecurity. During the pandemic, expanded child tax credits and direct payments helped millions of families and brought dramatic health and safety improvements to communities--proof that public investments can make an enormous difference for public health. ... In this spirit, this approach to public health centrally prioritizes community-based, nonprofessional care services that have been shown to improve both mental and physical health while reducing medical needs and health care costs. ..."

Some satire similar to the logic fossil fuels sometimes uses against renewables:

(begin satire) Smoke alarms are a leading cause of deaths and fires in the home. Every years, lots of people are killed falling off of ladders to change smoke alarm batteries. False alarms from smoke detectors cause numerous kitchen injuries as people using kitchen knives are startled and accidentally cut themselves or stab nearby family members. Smoke detectors wired into home electrical systems can short out and burn down your home. Radiation from smoke detectors causes cancer. Many firefighter deaths are attributed to responding to smoke alarms. Worse, the Dihydrogen Monoxide used by firefighters responding to smoke detectors is itself a dangerous substance responsible for thousands of deaths annually. The answer to all this ongoing carnage is simple -- keep deadly smoke alarms out of your home if you want to stay safe! Brought to you by the American Association Of Cosmetic Undertakers, For-Profit Burn Care Centers, and Companies Rebuilding Homes After Extensive Fire Damage. (end satire)

For a more accurate picture about smoke detectors, consider what the National Fire Protection Association has to say:
https://www.nfpa.org/education...
"Smoke alarms save lives. Smoke alarms that are properly installed and maintained play a vital role in reducing fire deaths and injuries. Fire spreads fast--working smoke alarms give you early warning so you can get outside quickly. ... When working smoke alarms are present in your home, the risk of dying in a home fire is cut by 60 percent, according to the latest NFPA research."

That was the rebound year from Covid. It's a statistical anomaly, and chosen by a lot of news reports to highlight the severity of whatever point they're making.

Comparing today's employment against, for example, 2019 is also difficult due to the estimated 10 million illegal immigrants that entered under the Biden administration. For example, today there is about 4.3% unemployment, the average is 5.7%, so we're doing pretty good on that front.

Statistics can lie. Our 4.3% represents 7.4 million unemployed workers, while the 2019 3.5% rate represents 5.8 million unemployed. When you bring in 10 million undocumented people, it's easy to see how 5.8 million unemployed can swell to 7.4 million.

Statistics lie by comparing our employment to a year that had record values because of an anomaly, or compare the number of unemployed by number to a year before we closed the Southern border.

You'd get a popup to choose the port and grant permissions.

Have you ever flashed a Meshtastic or ESPHome device or updated firmware on a radio transceiver?

That's what they're talking about here.

Yeah, they could have suspended Air France and Airbus's business license for 17 years and given them parole by now.

Corporations as immortal unpunishable sociopaths will seem like one of the craziest ideas in History.

They switched to Mac, not Hackintosh.

If the company were serious they'd buy supported hardware from System76, Framework, Dell, Lenovo, local shop, whomever.

It is true that buying an untested Windows machine and expecting full Linux support on a traditional distro, isn't guaranteed to work.

A rolling Arch or Gentoo might do better, buy why not get the tested ones? Employee time really isn't worth saving a day's wages on a hardware promp discount.