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Comment Re:Isn't Robert X. Cringely a pseudonym? (Score 1) 32

The original guy got to keep using it. There was someone else hired for a brief time.

I remember the author's name but he really doesn't want to use it, so that's OK to respect. He's given me a lot to think about over the years. I remember when he wrote on his PBS site about unicast becoming cheaper than radio broadcast for TV, predicting that it would overtake by 2012 (IIRC). Youtube became huge around then. We were smart folks around the water cooler in the late 90's who could follow the math but had nagging skepticism. He wss right.

I think I have one of his science writing books under his real name about atomic energy somewhere. You can find it if necessary.

Nice to see Bob back on the Dot.

Comment Re:Cool Cool (Score 4, Insightful) 62

> The lender can't repossess a college degree to make themselves whole.

No but if the borrower can't get a good job there should be cause of action for Warranty Act claims against the college.

Extremely few people go to college with the expectation of borrowing to be unemployable.

Comment Re:3D printing whole rockets was such a dumb idea. (Score 1) 47

Oh god. If I spent enough time digging through my ancient Slashdot posts, somewhere back there there are posts of me going, "While I loved the strategy behind Falcon 9, I'm really not keen on this plan to make Starship out of huge carbon fibre tanks, that sounds like a really failure-prone solution..." I'm glad they only spent like a year on that idea before deciding it was dumb; somewhere back there there's also a bunch of posts of me cheering their switch to steel ;) . SpaceX still keep having random COPV problems (most of which they don't even make themselves). Not too encouraging for the notion of the cold gas thruster add-on to the Roadster, where the plan is to replace the back seat with COPVs, so you have a COPV right behind your head.

Electron has been getting by on CF, and honestly I'm impressed, but they've also been only working with very small launch vehicles thusfar. We'll see how neutron goes...

Comment Re:Fan of owning your own device (Score 1) 37

Sure, but border guards and spooks probably already had this exploit so the difference is minor. Their PoC page also says there's no access to Secure Enclave so perhaps the damage is minimal?

Curiously I saw some commits for an iPhone platform in LineageOS a month or two ago. Perhaps an option for EoL Apple hardware with working exploits.

Comment Re:Good luck with that. (Score 1) 183

He's the same kind of con man as Trump.

He railed against the Banks so when Ron Paul's Audit The Fed bill came to the Senate he cosponsored it.

Then behind closed doors he killed it to protect the Banks. Same way he endorsed Hillary with zero concessions after she maligned him and stole the primary.

It's all Kayfabe and he's a multi-millionaire communist for his efforts.

This proposal is just the latest Theatre Kid stunt to get him some attention. The only kind of attention he deserves is derision.

You don't even want to know about the rumored blackmail event. ("Crying Bernie Sanders" is the most vile rabbit hole.)

Comment Re:Make it stop (Score 0) 80

> Just build some fucking windmills and stick them to batteries and you'll be fine

Please compare the human death rate of wind and solar to atomic energy.

Yes, workers lives matter.

Might as well do coal too.

Also, we have a moral obligation to transmute the 300,000-year waste that the postwar generation left us with (besides their mountain of debt and impossible Empire).

Comment 3D printing whole rockets was such a dumb idea. (Score 1) 47

Don't get me wrong, there's a lot to say about printing small rocket parts, such as for the engines. But they were printing basically sheet metal cylinders, which is such an immensely slow and inefficient way to go about it, and it left them with parts that were heavier and less aerodynamic (rougher surface). Crazy that idea ever got any funding.

Comment Re:Anyway SpaceX is a huge scam so I suspect (Score 4, Insightful) 47

"SapceX has got to be a huge scam too" - SpaceX launches the vast majority of the world's commercial cargo to orbit. The Falcon 9 FT has the highest success rate of any rocket with a statistically significant number of launches under its belt, and is dirt cheap. SpaceX's core operations are roughly breakeven, but that's including subsidizing the development of Starship. Starlink is a money printer.

There are lots of things sketchy about the SpaceX IPO, to say the least, but SpaceX, as a company, has been extremely successful with rocketry.

Comment Re: Inner monologue (Score 1) 70

The funny thing was that I knew him for like six months online before I realized he was fully paralyzed. He's been covered in the Finnish press a number of times. Amazing guy. Up until recently he was living in a house he built himself before ALS struck, but the medical service decided he was too far away and he had to move closer. You lose a lot of control over your life with ALS.

He wrote a book about nuclear safety engineering recently, which is a fascinating read, and which I strongly recommend.

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