If you aren't saying that in a Dr. Evil voice, you are seriously missing out.

The orbiters on the STS program cost 10 billion to make in 1981 dollars. That would be about $50 billion today. Now, I know that Elon is doing what he can do to drive that cost down, but there is only so much you can do. We are comparing a reusable rocket vehicle that made it to LEO vs one that is going to Mars.

Granted, Elon gets billions from government contracts. I don't think this extra billion is going to do much if he can't deliver HLS

That's the stupidest take I have heard in some time but it's one that I have heard repeated quite often.

Some people do have loyalty to this nation and their job over a paycheck. Just ask any teacher. Is it true we could pay some people more to retain talent? Definitely. At the same time, some have a sense of a higher calling. We do need adequate pay because as with my other example, teachers, that field is getting left behind. Is it only about pay? Nope.

I see some already talking about how it was easier/cheaper when the state paid 80% of the costs. This is true. We also saw colleges and universities being told to run themselves as businesses, that was to grow and focus on the dollar rather than the product.

I watched as my expenses grew every year. I was able to keep up but only because I took a few hours ever year until I was done.
At the same time, I watched how international students filled the graduate programs and that became the more important programs of the university as they made more money.
Next the online programs started to become more and more popular which drove down people moving to town to live and get the college experience. So you have remote students not moving to town and you have an administration doing everything they can to deport and deter international students. You will never guess what the end result is going to be for this small country town.

The writing is on the wall as the anti-intellectuals are in charge.

Yet, you're going to have to have people who setup the welding robots and jobs to maintain the robots. Then you have to have engineers who make alterations when the program changes. You also have to fund people to feed the robot unless you fully automate the production. Then again, this only works if you have a model that doesn't change that often. When you have product lines change rapidly, it becomes more problematic to have welding robots create a production line than it does the use manual labor to do the job. AI will help change this some, but you still have human labor involved in setting up some of these tasks.

There will continue to be jobs, they just won't be the same jobs. In some cases, these jobs tend to be higher paying jobs for people who are specialized in fields that don't quite exist yet. You're going to see people migrate and train in these new fields just long enough to become relevant and watch the fields evaporate because corporate found some new hotness.

If you like fixing other people's shit with how way to scream at them for their incompetence, this is the future for you!

Good.

We need to rid ourselves of the rot economy and get back to making things people want rather than focusing on number go up.

Every day I look into the eyes of my daughter and feel like I didn't do enough to protect her future. Meanwhile my parents continue to post fossil fuel propaganda to Facebook, yet they gush over how they tried to protect my future.

It is the greatest sin that I must ask more of my children than I could ever ask of myself.

You mean I could be an English speaking programmer in the Philippines?
I would have to consider it.

Local press has been dying for years in that it's too slow and takes time to adapt to the quick landscape of the world. This has caused news deserts and pushed us to a point where Facebook or other social media locations become the community hub. I say we find a way, a framework to take that back.
Let's make the local news central community but find a way to provide news without a paywall, but provide services. Sell a subscription to local users that give them access to post comments or interact with the town space and moderate it in such a way that only local users have an opportunity to interact with the site but share the media to outsiders. Create social spaces for local organizations to plan events and gatherings but again, allow it to be restricted. Sell a business license that allows them to setup their own space and promote their business in the community, but also push their daily specials, host events.
Setup ties with local schools so that they can also promote events or news to the community. Establish APIs so they they can tied to their LMSes.
Give local people a chance to host their video blogs or podcasts without having to go through Google or whatever number of 3rd service far off mega corporations.

Again, the goal is to create an easy to adapt framework that can't scale past a community. Bring back the sense of community that the newspaper once did. Make the content accessible to all, but edited by some. Keep the ads local so that people think of a reason to come to the community.

I saw this article and I can't help but think that I want to help the small communities build that level of connectivity that has been lost over the decades. I live in an area where the communities gets smaller and are dying. The town that once lived near is now unincorporated. Other towns are half the size they once where.

I think with the right design, and the right level of local management, this could become something that catches on like wild fire and builds around the area. I know it's missing and paywalled papers are not long for this world.

You have that guy who gets lots of tickets done but always works on the piddly shit so that he looks better for his bosses.

Then you have that crazy mofo that never appears to get anything done because he's taking on the impossible regularly.

From a level high up, who do you think is considered the low performer?

Who is the one who should be let go?

I know people are pissed off how often fascism is brought up, but damn if this doesn't feel eerily familiar to nations bending over backwards to appease a certain German leader.

I feel like if I dig further, I could find certain businesses in Germany that did the same thing.

I see this as a big story that will likely slide under the radar until it's too late. The summary should be that American processors need to get off their ass or risk losing access to 1.5 billion customers. That's just if RuPay stays confined to India. If it integrates with BRICS and works to supplant the U.S. Dollar, that would likely weaken the U.S. market share.

While a large majority of transactions go uncharged, there is likely enough larger transactions to fund the system to the point where it's profitable. It sounds crazy but it's a version of the American tax system where the lowest portion doesn't get taxed or gets enough of a refund that the tax no longer applies to the person yet at the same time the people in higher income brackets effectively fund the government.

Is it a good system? That's questionable. Is it a fair system? I think so.
You don't have to monetize every single transaction to be profitable. And to those who find a way to exploit the system by always buying below $23.3, congratulations for putting in all that effort.

Maybe they should have bought another private jet or something. That would have fixed everything.

I am trying to think of the last good merger.
  HP and Compaq? Newp
Microsoft and Nokia? Negative
Boeing and McDonnell Douglas? Gonna pass on that one.
AOL and Time Warner? Who?
MySpace and Newscorp? Read about it on Facebook
Daimler Benz and Chrysler: I heard they got a divorce.
Quaker and Snapple? No Go
Sears & K-Mart? I don't recall the last time at shopping at either venue.

If you want to talk about some sort of good ones, Disney and Pixar but they had a pretty tight knit relationship to begin with.
Some talk positively about SiriusXM, but I honestly don't think that should exist. They should continue to be competitors.
Exxon Mobil is another that is spoken of positively but I don't see how being a near monopoly is a good thing.