Counterargument: Who would have predicted a few years ago that one private company would dominate global launch, launching more by every metric than the rest of the world combined, and -- all by itself -- triple the number of satellites in orbit in 7 years.

Sure, 200Xing the satellite count is a lot harder than tripling the satellite count, about 66 times harder. But if Starship is successful (by no means a given, also far from impossible), SpaceX will reduce per-kg launch costs by 100X, maybe more.

I'm skeptical... but I would also not just write it off as a "pack of lies". The things SpaceX is actively working on should make the launch part of it feasible. Will it be cost-effective? That's a harder question, and heat dissipation is the core thing that may make it infeasible.

Also, the final paragraph of the summary seems to be confused:

So, why are the hyperscalers hyping orbital data centers? Answer: because it's lucrative. "The Elon Musk part of it is honestly genius because he's got xAI building the data centers, SpaceX sending them to space, and Tesla building solar panels," Genkina says. "It's almost like he's paying himself."

Yes, SpaceX will be incredibly lucrative if it owns the whole vertical stack, building, launching and powering -- but only if it works. If it doesn't work, and if orbital compute isn't cheaper than planet-bound compute, then SpaceX will have no buyers.

The other possibility is that it's just a pump and dump, but that's not how Musk has ever worked in the past. Yes, he makes crazy promises, and delivers only half of them, and delivers years after the promised date, but those half-realized, years-late results are still often world-changing.

Doesn't really matter because it has to be done, unless we want to pay the much, much higher costs of just living with the hotter planet. We're all going to pay, one way or the other. It's just a question of whether we want it to be expensive or really, really expensive.

That's it, he is doing it to generate fake potential future business for SpaceX. In reality, what will probably happen is others enter the market and undercut Starlink and launching to LEO, and that business dries up. It's already happening with Tesla cars, which are constantly heavily discounted because rivals make better ones at lower prices. They are hanging on in the UK by somehow being a "prestige" badge along side BMW and the like... Actually I can see the connection there.

There are plenty of car batteries well over 10 years old now. As long as they are treated reasonably well, 10 years isn't difficult at all for many chemistries.

Typically home batteries are cycled between 20 and 80%, as degradation is faster at low and high states of charge. They are also kept at a reasonable temperature and charged relatively slowly compared to their size. Mine are around 0.5C charge/discharge rate, for example.

For that reason most home batteries here come with a 10 year warranty. Some are longer, and some are insurance backed.

I took Reddit to Small Claims Court for failure to process a GDPR Subject Access Request (SAR), and as part of their defence they accidentally admitted that their system is badly broken. The particular account I was requesting data for was apparently automatically banned because the system thought it was a bot, and then when I appealed a *manual review* also decided that it was a bot. To compound the error, they then lied about it in emails and on their login page, and failed to process the SAR.

I expect that will offer to settle soon, which is fine (I don't care about the money, beyond my costs) as long as they complete the SAR. The details will be fascinating. Their website gaslights you, their staff lie to you, and it all seems to be in aid of dealing with a bot problem that they have very little control over.

Using it will be like having your head up Elon Musk's arse 24/7.

In case Steam ever shuts down. Also what happens if your Steam account gets banned for some reason?

I tend to avoid games that use DRM as well, because I don't want that shit screwing up my system.

It was a prestigious service for Air France and British Airways. When they decided to stop flying Concorde, Virgin Atlantic wanted to buy the aircraft and keep flying them. Of course, BA refused to sell them and made sure that every single one ended up beyond the point where it could be returned to service, because they didn't want anyone else to operate a supersonic service.

It took a long time for a few reasons. You can reduce the boom with an exotic shape vehicle, but then it starts to suck as an aircraft. Less lift, awkward to use existing airport facilities, difficult to take off and land, pilots need a lot of training etc.

To be commercially viable it has to carry a reasonable number of people, in relative comfort, and be relatively fuel efficient for a supersonic aircraft.

Some of the tech to enable that is relatively recent, or still in development. Engines in particular.

It should be mandatory to allow sales of used digital games. There is no reason why these companies couldn't allow it on their platforms, other than greed.

Some people got partial refunds for them removing Linux. I wonder if it might be possible to do the same here. Harder to argue as the Playstation itself has not been altered, just the opportunity to buy physical copies has been removed.

I would buy a physical copy but then pirate it anyway. Quicker and easier than ripping, adding all the metadata, encoding etc.

For digital only stuff I will only use platforms like GOG where you get an offline installer you can backup and keep forever. I used to buy a few games on Steam but don't now. If a game is Steam only I just won't play it.

You can decide how aggressive Cloudflare's defence of your site from bots is. Since mine doesn't have anything users can post on, I keep it on the lowest setting and never see any captchas.

Either that was a long time ago or your utility company is shafting you. Here the payback time is a few years depending on your usage, and then it's all profit. Batteries should last a minimum of 10 years even with hard cycling every day, much longer if not hammered. I cycle mine almost fully every day to maximize profits.

You can even DIY your own battery cheaper than you can buy one, although even buying one is very cheap now. Before tax a ready-to-plug-in 15kWh battery is about $2000 here.

Yes, it was very loud even at sub-supersonic speeds. The engines were tuned for performance at supersonic cruise speed, and due to the wing shape it needed a lot of thrust and relatively high speeds at low altitude to generate enough lift.