Admittedly, this is work-in-progress on building something so I should cut them some slack. It does seem tough to get over that energy density x payload = range issue. True that early electric autos were also range-starved, waiting for the better LiPo's to be developed and scaled to cost.

But if the Wikipedia is correct that "106 foot wingspan plane" maxes at 110nm range currently. Not sure what sort of altitude that includes. 110 miles to ride a plane is a tough sell, even if you are just trying to connect a spoke city to a hub city. Like would someone fly from Milwaukee to Chicago...maybe, I guess. That Joby air taxi says 150 miles range, but they are only carrying a handful of people.

But leave it to the chemists and engineers to tweak some more miles. Fundamentally I agree that most stuff on the ground should be powered by electricity (trains, trucks, cars, buses) and stuff in the air could use bio-fuels once widely available.

Appreciate the insight from an aviator. Agreed I still want a human in the tower (and two in the cockpit). In some ways your post reinforces what I am noting, namely that there have been a host of technological improvements in aircraft and ATC like GPS, TCAS, and the ones you listed above. But then those improvements are all pushed through the same bottleneck of one or two controllers managing hectic workload on a few common frequencies.

A recent example of an 'unforced error' might be the tragedy Air Canada jet crashing into a fire truck at La Guardia. Truck was incorrectly cleared to cross an active runway.

For decades it seems like FAA has be

It's pretty crazy to think of all the advancements in aviation technology over the decades are still then at mercy of a guy in a (figurative) tower, shooting off rapid fire directions over a shared radio frequency Radio channels being talked over, static, mistakes in delivery, let alone regional accents and international language. I don't know one thing about this other than as a frequent flyer and sometime viewer of VAS Aviation channel.

But when I think of say aircraft approaching airports for landing. Seems like a computer could determine how to sequence planes into the approach pattern. It could transmit instructions to the airplane's computer digitally and simultaneously with the same instructions verbally. The pilots can then decide to accept instructions or if there is some issue call back on the radio at which case the human takes the call. 90% of the routine stuff gets handled by computers, but with a 99.999% success rate. I dunno, something like that. The current 'system' is crazy antiquated tho.

Next let's solve health insurance.

This. Look at Oracle as an example. Moved their HQ from California to Austin, Texas in late 2020. Then in 2024 they announced they are moving to Nashville, TN. So there is no reason trust or depend on them for anything. They will probably leave CA regardless. And it perhaps someone will kickstart a new studio to make more interesting, more entertaining content than that Succession wannabe at Skydance/Paramount

1000 calls per day in a population of 450,000 people. Iâ(TM)d start by having the AI work on reducing the number of non-emergency calls.

I don't know about banning them, but the studied and demonstrated facts around the failures of most M&A should make firms pause and really, really, really think about how their proposed M&A is going to work better than the historical average. But executive hubris in the early 21st century is off the charts. There is a 0% chance this acquisition will every amount to anything other than a write-off loss 5 years down the road.

This. All of the manufacturers want that sweet, sweet, subscription money. It's gotta be like 95% profit margin. And based on my new car purchase a couple years ago (not a GM...can't think of one GM that is vaguely interesting/value) the sales dude will pressure you for your credit card for vague reasons. For me it was as some part of a 'credit check' ...yeah, wrong. They will also really sell you on the "Just try for free for 1 year" and 100% they are counting on you forgetting to cancel.

For myself, no credit card was given, even though the a----- made me come back a day later with some other random baloney paperwork. And I politely, but persistently demanded that they pre-emptively cancel their "Onstar" and the SiriusXM. Car buying is still distinctly unpleasant. I hope the Slate truck concept of back-to-basics transportation spreads.

Agreed that people are awful. I was once working on a very high floor of an office building in Calgary. There was a fire alarm, and we all started to evacuate. The number of idiots in front of me got me so upset. There was no smoke, so I wasn't actually fearful of my safety, but I could totally see how all these in front of me with their coffees, and breakfast sandwiches, laptops, binders, etc would get me killed in a real emergency.

Anyway, on the airline stuff one option I think airlines should pursue is aggressive automation of baggage handling. The only reasons people bring a carry-on is because
1.) airlines lose or mis-route luggage
2.) getting your checked bag to the carrousel can take forever depending on how they are staffed at the time.
3.) they charge lots of money for checked bags

If there was a standardized, plastic hardcase format that would allow for easy automation I bet you could zip these on and off planes such that your bag was waiting for you by the time you got off the plane. Then make the overheads super tiny, like the ones on commuter jets such that only 1 purse or small back pack would fit.

This would also greatly speed up the loading and unloading of planes.

Agreed that I think we need an organization that is like a technologically capable "ACLU". It's not practical nor reasonable to make "abstinence" the only answer to questions on technology v. people questions.

Perhaps such an organization could create technical privacy standards that could then be readily adopted into law. First by aligned local govs, then hopefully states, then Federal. For things like doorbell cameras, dashcams, home security maybe we are talking about default encryption, restrictions on sending data /telemetry off-prem by default. Default retention periods, and so on. Those can be then extended to the problematic government programs like Flock, etc. In other words, the cameras are here to stay, so let's get ahead of the curve and codify something that is privacy focused.

Lotsa similar opportunities on social media, AI , online identification, and so forth. Maybe EFF isn't the org for this sort of thing...scrolling through the website they do seem more like an offshoot of the ACLU, just with a focus on technology topics.

YMMV but in my view the phone situation is out of control. It is like being absorbed on a computer for hours on end, but worse since the computer is on your person basically 24/7. I'm no role model, I have to consciously put my phone away for dinner time, and even still I find myself wanting to reach for it as my mind reminds me I should look this up, or respond to this message, or whatever.

And as others have said if you are at any place with kids, playground, yard, the kids sporting events, even a play, you will see a large chunk of the adults nose into their phones. And you will see kids saying "Mom, look at me!" on the monkey bars or whatnot and the parent isn't looking up. The phones are bad news. Real bad news.

Yeah it's hard to contemplate this other than some sort of lobbying effort that paid off. I'm fully in support of firms like Boom & Spike doing research and development on this, and would even say the FAA could issue experimental waivers of the type described in the summary. But why at this point is there a need to change the existing rule? The only thing not related to being bought off, is to say the firms trying to build these aircraft need investment dollars and the risk of them not being able to fly domestically is a block to those dollars. Counterpoint is, prove you have the tech to make the booms acceptable first. FWIW looks like a 737/A321 at a cruising altitude is like 40 dB which is pretty darn quiet on the ground.

But really, the trade-off of 60 well-to-do passengers getting coast-to-coast a couple hours faster versus the 1000's...100,000's (?) people on the ground getting the noise pollution is telling about the priorities here.

Just RTFS describes what's happening here. Only tangentially related to "Quantum Computing". Trump administration gave IBM $1billion dollars to spend on ...basically anything as long as the Subject Line contains the word quantum. IBM says that the will kick in another $1 billion of their own...then may $9 billion down the road. I doubt that will occur. But honestly this government gift just pays for the SVP to get promoted to CEO of the new offshoot, his lackies likewise get promotions. They will hold up a recycled RISC chip to the camera and declare quantum supremacy. Someone in the administration who got Trump to sign the paperwork will get their payola, everyone wins!

This is why the government picking winners is bad policy all around. This $1 billion was better off being unspent, versus creating a weird market distortion, or more likely just being redirected to a bunch of rich, but useless execs that should be retiring already. I say this as someone who made a pretty penny on Intel stock after Trump decided the US government should give them $9 billion free money too. **

**Previous admin with their green new deal, etc was likewise bad policy throwing away free money at pointless projects that we are increasingly unable to afford. Comparing Trump / Biden is apples and oranges. Trump is a rotten, senile apple with the appearance of a rotten orange. Biden was just senile

Recalling the state of OpenAI's corporate IT security when they dropped their first LLM model to the public. It was crazy pathetic. Like Mattel's "My first company" bad. No idea on Anthropic but I would strongly expect that China, Russia, among others have already penetrated. Only the fact that neither govt really knows what they are doing yet, and don't have the full-scale hardware would keep them from running Mythos or whatever today. Also that you don't use your secret weapon to just steal credit card numbers**

**Like .ru probably shouldn't have revealed the whole "We can jam continental GPS from 2000km in space" bit so soon

That's a fair point. However I would posit that altering current culture to be less selfish, less consumer, etc is such a big lift at present to be in the league of fusion, living on Mars, and global vegetarianism.

France's nuclear program has been a success for it's intended goals. They are energy independent**, developed an in-house industry (employment) , met environmental goals, defense goals, and done it all safely. Including the handling of waste, and their uranium/plutonium recycling. The major ding against ASNR is cost, but most nations subsidize to some extent (US -> oil; Germany-> autos; China->...everything) and France chose this. Hard to argue it's success from a 1970's perspective.

Where the conversation changes is looking at nuclear from a 2026 perspective where solar/wind+storage is competitive in most (but not all) places. And new, drilled geo-thermal options show promise for larger baseline/continuity. Renewables also have negative externalities which should be part of the discussion.

** Few if any western countries are 100% energy independent mostly due to economics