I credit most of SpaceX's success to CEO Gwen Shotwell. She keeps things going even when Musk is off on an irrelevant tear somewhere else.

Unfortunately, Musk seems to be on a path to sabotaging her efforts. The SpaceX prospectus showed that xAI (which bought Twitter, because why not?) was the reason they posted a loss in the last fiscal year. Even with all the expenditures on Starship, SpaceX would have been profitable. Like every other major AI company, it is not at all clear that xAI can reach profitability anytime in the near future, especially since xAI is blocked from so many enterprises and doesn't seem to be able to keep up with the big three at all. As Starship production scales up, the costs are going to increase, and they need payload revenue to offset those costs. There's so much focus now on the Pez dispenser and the lunar mission that I haven't seen any hints of the conventional payload delivery version (aka, "Chomper") in a couple of years. Maybe it's being quietly worked on. I hope so, because the big space station payloads that were talked about a few years ago will need it.

It seems like it should be just theming, but there's a separate architecture to it. Even the APIs are different, with new using a GraphQL-based API and old using a more traditional structure. The core data (users, posts, comments, etc.) is the same, but the pathways are completely different. New has links into capabilities that old doesn't have (especially around abuse and scraping), and old has capabilities that new doesn't always have (especially around mod tools, which new apparently breaks on a regular basis).

"Many users" is going to be relative. I saw some numbers recently that only around 1% of users go through Old Reddit, and in many of the largest subs, it's a fraction of a percent. I don't think it will have the impact that some people think. I prefer Old Reddit on desktop, but it's clunky on mobile, so I stick with the new interface (I don't use the app).

For global energy, that typically includes transportation. As more economies have expanded, there has been more use of cars, trucks, trains, ships, and aircraft, almost all of which are powered by fossil fuels.

Global electricity generation has changed. In 2000, 64.1% of global electricity came from fossil fuels, 16.7% came from nuclear, and 18.7% came from renewable. In 2023, despite overall electricity generation roughly doubling, fossil fuel generation was down to 60.1%, nuclear was down to 9.1%, and renewables were up to 30.23%. Looking at the renewable mixes, in 2000, it was 17.4% hydropower, 0.7% biofuels, 0.2% wind, 0.01% solar, and 0.3% geothermal. In 2023, it was 14.6% hydropower, 2.2% biofuels, 7.75% wind, 5.4% solar, and 0.3% geothermal.

That's still a lot of fossil fuel electricity generation, but it is declining by percentage and their growth curves are flattening. Renewables are up by quite a bit and still growing. Nuclear is declining, and isn't likely to recover in any meaningful numbers. This program is a lot like past programs meant to encourage new nuclear power plants. Odds are that maybe one will get started, and it might not get finished.

Itâ(TM)s like they think every person they have ever responded to is actually the same person, and so all those disparate conversations were one conversation with a single individual whoâ(TM)s refusing to listen.

there was a professor I knew who worked like that. He always seemed to jump into the middle of an ongoing conversation when he started talking with you. A conversation YOU might not have been part of previously, but it was the only conversation he ever had.

I always just chalked it up to him being autistic AF.

Exactly. The reason they do it this ways is it is that it keeps the power in private hands. They can decide to change funding, change priorities, use their position as leverage against municipalities wanting the funding, or simply as a corrupt bribery fund masquerading as charity.

Seriously, I am sick of these vanity charity projects. Just pay your fair share of taxes, and let us, collectively, decide on our priorities. Because this shit will not be evenly applied, and considering the popularity of a antivax beliefs, and the level of international travel, it his will simply not work without a global commitment. And as bad as the cold and flu can be, there are kids who are going into debt with their school over getting breakfast.

Construction isn't expected to start until 2030 at the earliest. From TFA:

By that time, the AI bubble may have burst, or the grid may have gone even further into renewables, or both.

We need more power, but nuclear isn't the way anymore. I was a supporter of nuclear until around 2020, when I saw how fast solar and wind were gaining. Both have consistently shown enormous growth because they are not as specific in their land requirements, can be installed in small numbers, and the levelized cost of energy (LCOE) for them has plummeted to become profitable even without subsidies. Storage is still a challenge, but we're seeing rapid improvements in that, too, with sodium batteries rapidly catching up in capacity.

TFA says that construction on these won't start until at least 2030, and if they make that, it would be amazingly fast for how reactors are built these days. In that time, wind is expected to expand by almost 50 GW and solar by 40 GW. Battery storage is expected to almost quadruple in that time. By the time the reactors are built, they will be a tiny fraction of the new power generation installed and they will probably be the most expensive part of it.

IAI hasn't build a fighter since the Dagger/Nesher that Israel sold to Argentina after the IAF was done with them. They tried to build an F-16 competitor, the Lavi, but stopped when the US refused to allow any funding to be used towards its development.

Israel likely has the technical capability to build a modern fighter. Whether it has the money to do so on its own is an entirely other matter.

What an utterly naive interpretation of world history you have. I can assure you, if you'd been a Jew being rounded up for extermination in WW2 you'd have a different opinion. Likewise, if you were Chinese or Korean being subjugated by Imperial Japan, you'd have a different perspective. There is such a thing as a "just war" even though you somehow ignore the concept. It's usually when your opponent starts the war and is hell bent on eradicating you and your way of life.

Alas, you sit there in perfect safety and comfort, passing judgement on those who sacrificed fa more than you can ever imagine so you could impugn their sacrifices.

Banned for who? And who's going to enforce this ban?

You have to remember any treaty (a) must have signatories that agree to follow it and (b) there must be a method of enforcement. If you lack either of these two conditions, the treaty has no effect.

Not sure how you think you could pull that off, but whatever.

Again...exactly how do you plan to accomplish this? It's not like Iran hasn't been firing missiles at our carriers this whole time. Yeah, it's a halfhearted effort by the Iranians, but what exactly do you think would happen to Iran if you managed to even damage one of our carriers, much less sink one? I can describe it thusly: the American gloves would come off. Iran would be plastered into oblivion via conventional bombardment, and there's very little Iran could do to stop it. Sure, we'd take losses, but the Iranian regime would cease to exist in totality. America has had this option available to it since day one. We haven't exercised it. Not because we couldn't do it but because we chose not to. Do not mistake restraint for a lack of capability.

I am reminded of some source code for a company-specific program that I saw in the late 1990s. I don't remember why I was perusing it, as I was in IT and absolutely not a developer. But I remember being tickled at one of the comments before a block of code. It was something like, "I have no idea why or how the following code works. But every time someone tries to change it, everything breaks, so please don't touch it."

That's not the reason that both bombs were dropped. They were dropped because the military saw them as just another tool in the toolbox, just like the bombs dropped on all the other cities that continued to be dropped on other cities until the surrender. Truman ended the military's control of atomic bombs after Nagasaki, when the USAAF was preparing to use a third bomb, establishing civilian control of atomic weapons. Firebombing continued, though, right up to Kumagaya, Akita, and Osaka getting hit in the 24 hours prior to Hirohito taking to the airwaves.