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Comment Re: Why were critical systems not replaced? (Score 1) 36

Iâ(TM)m aware of long-lived companies who got advised to: sell off then lease back their real estate, reduce cash on hand myriad ways, changing buying habits (so inventory value on the books plunges), etc. Literally, theyâ(TM)ve been coached to eliminate every bit of those decades of reserves.

When a bad thing happens, the company dies.

Comment Re:US senators ae shiteaters who swallow (Score 1) 131

The use-case for Concorde on trans-Atlantic passage was cemented for me when my uncle explained that every time he flew from NYC to London to talk to investors about his company, the stock price went up far more than the cost of his trip on the Concorde, and he could be back in time to sleep in his own bed the same day.

Seems like a no-brainer to me. I'm pretty sure (as others have pointed out) that if it weren't for the Continental-caused accident, the Concorde would likely have flown an additional decade.

Looking at current travel, there is enough demand to pack planes on BOS/NYC-SFO, SFO-HND, etc. routes that I'm sure there's enough business money to pay for supersonic service.

Comment Re:Oh look the grifters are back (Score 1) 107

Distributed power means having 2-3 orders of magnitude more power sources than with centralized systems. That increases the likelihood of an accident by the same factor.

In the US, we have already had near-disaster level nuclear accidents with about 100 total plants. Let's be generous and say that only one was really bad, TMI. That's a 1% failure rate where "failure" means the potential for disaster-level accident. If you want to remind yourself of what disaster-level accidents look like, recall what happened in Ukraine at the Chernobyl power plant, which was caused by human error. And recall that TMI was also caused by human error.

With 2-3 orders of magnitude more nuclear plants at 1% failure rate, that means 100-1000 nuclear disasters in the US, unless, somehow, we are able to engineer plants that are 2-3 orders of magnitude safer, and can find operators that make 2-3 orders of magnitude fewer bone-headed mistakes. As an engineer, albeit a non-nuclear one, I find that a daunting challenge. Yes, we as a society are capable of manufacturing at six and seven nines, but that's when we have lots and lots and lots of practice making things. Right now, nuclear plants only have two nines, with most of the relevant design and construction experience aged out. There aren't enough power plants to be made to develop that expertise, and we'll have plenty of disasters along the way as we learn, where disasters have centuries-long consequences.

So distributed nuclear power? No. Frelling. Thank. You.

Comment Re:Let's hope (Score 1) 207

Exactly. Just because a design is new with shiny gadgets does not mean it is automatically better than what has been previously on sale.

The sooner the newer generations understand this idea is nothing more than pure marketing hype, the sooner we can break away from and reject the enshittification.

Comment Re:Why do nerds care? Let the market decide + Marv (Score 1) 154

Yours is a far more eloquent way of saying what I had intended to: why is this on Slashdot? Is there any relevance at all? I fail to see it.

If these athletes were coached by AI, well... maybe, but that's a stretch. But they're not; they are just taking more extreme measures to performance enhancement than other athletes. And while I know (and employ) some smart jocks, I had the same experience as you in secondary school, because I, too, was not a jock.

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A method of solution is perfect if we can forsee from the start, and even prove, that following that method we shall attain our aim. -- Leibnitz

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