They've literally spent half a century exporting our essential production to China to save a few bucks, while replacing competent employees with Indians and people who can't tell you what a woman is. Now we're supposed to believe that those people can suddenly turn all that around in time for WWIII?

It's not going to change until the West does fight one of the wars its pushing for and is decisively defeated because it's run by idiots who exported all the manufacturing to countries who don't see us as friends. Only then will people be ready to throw out the current 'elite' and replace them.

On a percentage basis, mostly what we get for our tax dollars is entitlements, like social security (22%), medicare (14%) and medicaid (10%), plus interest (14%).

Those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it.

I attribute it down to mostly the elimination of leaded gasoline. 18-20 years after use drops, crime drops as well.

Unless the Internet is lying to me, Leo orbits around 600km and Starlink around 350-600km. So it doesn't appear that will make a lot of difference.

Most of the latency in my Starlink connection is because the signal comes down in the US and has to route back from there to Canada if I ping my office from home instead of going direct through a cable. So I wouldn't expect to see much difference if I was using Leo instead.

Yes. One thing to remember is that Boomers are retiring en masse and older Gen-X are saying 'screw this' and retiring early because it's not worth the hassle of working any more. So it's not just people being laid off but also people deciding they don't want anything more to do with the awful work culture of the modern world.

Yeah, Musk could definitely drive the whole thing sideways. I'm afraid he might be getting increasingly detached from reality. I'm not so worried about the lack of focus on the chomper; it seems to me that the real issues facing Starship are all about how to handle re-entry heat. Also engine re-lights, but I have little concern they can solve that; it's been done many times before, including by SpaceX. If they can solve the rapid reuse after reentry problem, something no one else has done, ever, building various form factors will be a simple matter of engineering.

Yes, it was all super entertaining, especially with PJ covering all of it, and rarely missing a trick. Good times for those of us watching from the cheap seats. A huge waste of time and resources for IBM.

That's absolutely not what it means.

"Left the labor force" doesn't mean "they lost their job" it means "they aren't looking for a job". Examples of cases where people "leave the labor force" include (but aren't limited to):

* Retired.
* Had a child and decided to become a stay-at-home parent.
* Decided to spend their time caring for an elderly relative.
* Decided to go back to school.
* Gave up on working after being unable to find a job.
* Had a financial windfall and decided to stop working.

And so on. The "gave up after being unable to find a job" is not particularly likely in a job market where only 4.2% of people who want a job don't have one, though I suppose some may choose not to work rather than work in a less-desirable job than they had before.

Also, it's July 2. June employment numbers are basically worthless at this point. Give them a quarter or so to get more data and correct the numbers. The initial numbers are based on only on employer reporting data, which skews it in various ways. The government uses several other data sources including surveys, but it takes time for that data to come in, which is why these numbers are generally corrected 2-3 months after they come out.

If you actually find anyone doing that in the real world, you should point and laugh until they get angry.

They could charge a subscription so other "Smart Glasses" users will see you wearing pants. If you don't pay then the other users' glasses will automatically AI-remove your pants whenever the glasses see you.

Although I guess some people might consider that a feature rather than a bug.

Yeah, I have bigger batteries in the basement connected to the solar panels in the yard but they're not powerful enough to run AC. Can run a few fans though.

And our wifi is the only one on the street that's up when the power is out so curious neighbours could figure out something's going on at our house.

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.

Looks like it's currently $849 in Bluetti's summer sale. That's for about 2kWh of battery, 2kW-ish inverter and solar charger in one box, which is a lot less than it would have been five years ago.

Designed to fit on top of a fridge but it can be used for powering other things too.