Dig1t

I think this is a little bit oversimplified and I don't know that it's even true at all. It's basically the opposite story of what's told by "Bowling Alone".

That book was written in the year 2000, when the author observed that institutions that previously provided social fabric were all dying. The United States used to have a robust web of institutions that provided social fabric and they have mostly all gone away, and they went away because people just stopped attending them, seemingly because of lack of interest. This was then proceeded by the "problem of social alienation" that this author is talking about.

This problem of social alienation was predicted long ago by the people who worried about the collapse of institutions that provided social capital.

As someone who does organize many group events, I can tell you that it's really hard to get people to show up. A good percentage of people bail last minute or don't respond to invitations at all. The problem gets worse the older people get as well.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bowling_Alone

This is an Israeli company and all the data is almost certainly being sent back to Israel.

Texas has a specific law against boycotting Israeli products as well.

https://gov.texas.gov/news/post/anti-israel-policies-are-ant...

The government of Texas has a disturbing obsession with Israel that doesn’t really make sense.

Why would it be illegal? There are virtually zero drawbacks and huge advantages to these satellites. They are not rendered to scale either, in reality they are minuscule compared to the amount of available space. There’s room for millions more spacecraft.

The government paid for that by awarding contracts.

Only about 20% of SpaceX's income is government contracts, and for that 20% the government receives an absolute bargain. Compare cost per launch of the space shuttle or a Russian rocket to a Falcon 9/Falcon Heavy.

A monopoly isn’t an agreement we have to accept.

There isn't a monopoly anywhere in sight, you use that word without any understanding of its meaning obviously. Rocket Lab, Blue Origin, Relativity, etc are all competing with SpaceX. Rocket Lab and Blue Origin are both planning their own exact copies of Starlink.

Incentives drive outcomes, the government lacks incentives to produce high quality objects at scale, there's a century's worth of data to prove that point.

Compare the cost per satellite to operate the GPS constellation vs the Starlink constellation. The private company is an order of magnitude more efficient. GPS was launched in an era where the government had a monopoly on spaceflight, if it were launched today by SpaceX, the cost would be an order of magnitude cheaper.

The stealth bomber

I don't know which bomber you're talking about but if you're talking about the B-2, that was developed and manufactured by private companies.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northrop_B-2_Spirit

The government is great for funding basic tech, i.e. redirecting taxpayer money back into the private sector with a specific goal. Arguing that we should let the government have a monopoly on spaceflight is like arguing that we should let the government have a monopoly on building cell phones or cars.

The space shuttle was laughably bad compared to SpaceX’s rockets and they were not really rapidly reusable. They required an extensive refurbishment which involved disassembling the entire craft. The process took upwards of 6 months to re-fly. It also cost close to 1 BILLION per mission to fly it (that’s more than 10x what it costs to fly a SpaceX rocket).

What exactly are you saying is a monopoly? SpaceX is not a monopoly by any stretch, they are competing with Rocket Lab, Blue Origin, ULA, Relativity, and others.

providing services for which markets won’t be functional

We are talking about a situation (launches, satellite constellations) where the government had a monopoly for 70 years and then transitioned to a market model. Since switching to a market model mass to orbit has gone through the roof and costs have fallen off a cliff. So much so that entirely new types of missions are now possible because of the increased access to space (Starlink is one such example).

We are specifically seeing the opposite of your “markets won’t be functional” statement; the market is so much better than the state-run enterprise that the idea of returning to the old model would be unthinkable.

Before SpaceX demonstrated viability of reusable rockets nearly every single government industry expert on the topic dismissed the idea of reusable rockets as impractical and infeasible.

It’s not simply a matter of political will, the quality of what governments have been able to produce just is no match for what companies can do. It’s the same for rockets as it is for cars, computers, or anything else. Ever heard of a government-made car? There were a few that came out of the Soviet Union and they were laughably bad and only obtainable in small quantities. Rockets and satellites are the same way, the government just does not have the same incentives to produce things that companies have.

The proof is in the rockets. Compare SpaceX’s rockets with any government developed rockets anywhere in the world, it’s not even close.

Falcon 9, Heavy, Starship, Dragon. The government never would have come close to developing any craft like these let alone being able to launch a constellation like Starlink.

State regulations tended to help with that.

A law banning certain types of regulations at a lower level I would not call “state regulation” I would call that deregulation.

I suppose I agree with you that the solution to burdensome regulation is to write new laws which forcibly deregulate lower level things. But calling laws like that “state regulation” is true only in the most technical sense. Your example is a textbook example of deregulation.

Why do we need to let this be a monopoly

This is the opposite of a monopoly, Blue Origin and Rocket Lab are both planning competing constellations. Eventually there will be many competing constellations in orbit delivering service.

Government could be the creator

Okay so why wasn’t it? The lifetime funding for NASA is 700+ billion dollars. With that incredible sum of money they weren’t able to even make reusable rockets let alone the satellite constellation. Launching a constellation with NASA’s pre-SpaceX approach (using Russian rockets) would have been literally impossible because Russia could have never built nearly enough rockets. Launching even a small fraction of Starlink would have consumed the entire NASA budget several times over.

Comparing GPS and Starlink doesn’t really even make sense because the scope of each project is so vastly different. Starlink if delivered by the same people who made GPS, would have been literally impossible, because the mass to orbit is orders of magnitude larger than the GPS project. Starlink was only possible because of the efficiency provided by SpaceX’s reusable rockets and the leading minds in the government literally said that reusable rockets were impossible and impractical until SpaceX actually delivered reliable reusable rockets.

The government could have absolutely done all of this

Yeah they totally could have, so why didn’t they? World governments have had massive budgets for space agencies for like 70 years, yet they were never able to build reusable rockets or do anything other than send a handful of extremely overpriced novelty science projects into space.

You say they could do it, but there’s no evidence to support that they ever actually would.

Well some creations are more marvelous than others, maybe you wouldn’t find a concrete road beautiful or interesting, though arguably you totally could (many people still to this day find the enduring road/aqueduct infrastructure of Ancient Rome to be beautiful and inspiring), but looking at a city skyline with massive skyscrapers and intricate infrastructure is very inspiring.

Humans are capable of incredible feats of engineering and many man-made things are extremely inspiring.

There are millions of people in Africa and rural areas around the world who have access to the internet because of these satellites. This massively reduces human suffering. Millions of people can now get medical information, farming, manufacturing techniques, talk to experts around the world. Connecting people to the wealth of human knowledge has a huge impact on reducing suffering. It also just directly saves lives by connecting people in an emergency to people who can help. Additionally, Ukraine would have lost the war a long time ago if these satellites didn’t exist. You could go on for a long time listing the ways these satellites reduce suffering.

Do you have any specific examples of how new state regulations actually eased the regulatory burden for building something? Adding new regulations at the state level almost never removes the hyper local restrictions, it just adds a new layer of compliance on top.

How can the solution to burdensome regulations be MORE regulation?

This is incredibly regressive thinking. Any technology or human progress changes the world around us. Do you lament the construction of new buildings or roads because they change the natural landscape? Would you prefer we never explore space or build anything new?

IMO it’s a marvel to look up at the sky and see man made objects flying through the sky, it’s incredibly inspiring to see the great feats of engineering that humans are capable of.

Also if you look up at the night sky you can still see ALL the stars, it’s just that you can now see a few extra tiny dots flying by, it subtracts nothing from the average stargazer’s view.

Your children will get much more amazing and inspiring sights from space telescopes and spacecraft that this new space industry will enable. They will benefit from new science and manufacturing techniques that are enabled by cheap access to space.

when it’s the government

The government had a monopoly on space access for the past half century and barely managed to put a handful of extremely expensive objects in space. They were never capable of creating reusable rockets or lowering the cost of access to space in a meaningful way. Maybe it feels nicer when governments do it, but cheap access to space will never happen if they are the ones running the show.

Apple announced AirPower and then didn’t end up shipping it. In a “functioning economy” should Tim Cook be indicted for misleading investors? Obviously not.

The only decent argument for the criminal case you are talking about would be if it was an outright lie with no intent whatsoever to deliver on the promise, but there’s obviously a huge effort to deliver on the robotaxi promise. Just ask any of the thousands of employees who work on the Tesla robotaxi and self driving software every day, just visit Austin and observe the ubiquitous cybercabs driving around the city.

They obviously haven’t realized the dream yet but it doesn’t mean that they won’t eventually, especially when you can physically see the progress first hand.

Your argument seems mostly driven by your disagreement with the founder’s politics instead of any rational argument against their technology.

Taking the approach with AI that we took with the atomic bomb would be catastrophic. If the only people who are allowed to use this technology are governments, intelligence agencies, and a select few anointed companies, then the risk of authoritarian misuse will skyrocket.

I worry that any attempt to limit their use and development will be abused and misdirected. We are already seeing people like Anthropic doing this, they are trying to use anti-AI sentiment to engage in regulatory capture. Go watch Dario’s speeches about how open weight models are dangerous and how they are “not really open”. Everyone can see that much of this “safety” conversation is ultimately just a tactic to shut potential competitors out of the market and establish a monopoly/duopoly.

It does not need to be a choice between having internet or seeing stars at night.

It’s not, we’ll be able to see the stars no matter what. There are many millions of people who are getting real broadband access to the internet for the first time right now because of these satellites. It really does enable an entirely new way of living for people in rural areas, I see this myself firsthand every day. Many areas are just economically not feasible to run fiber cables to.

Cheap access to space means you can put space telescopes into orbits that provide views entirely unobtainable from earth. And with cheap access to space we can eventually put space telescopes which exceed the size of the largest ground telescopes which won’t have to deal with atmospheric interference or light pollution at all.

Starship will lower the cost to orbit by 15x. Making entirely new types of scientific missions economically viable including extremely large space telescopes.

Starfox 64 (N64) -> Starfox 64 (3DS) -> Starfox (Switch 2)

I assumed that's what OP meant, all of those are the exact same game with the same story and dialog, remade in 3 different game engines.

Connectivity for the entire globe does more for progress. Millions of people have access to the wealth of human knowledge that wouldn’t otherwise have it (Africa, rural people around the world).

Additionally, what we lose in visibility from earth we will more than gain in visibility from space telescopes, which will be funded by profits provided by LEO satellites.

Any way you slice it, it’s a massive net increase in scientific progress and quality of life for many millions of people.

What sort of insurance do they have for that person breaking something in your home?

Probably just make the user accept a license agreement saying they accept the risk? I suspect most people would accept the risk something might get broken if it means they no longer need to clean their house.

How did you buy 3 V100's for $1500??

but instead leave behind micro particles that float around for a long time. People are studying this and hopefully raising appropriate alarms

The number of satellites required to create a measurable number of particles in the planet's atmosphere would be impossibly large. How much mass to orbit do you think is required to create a 1 PPM increase in earth's atmosphere of these "micro particles"?

I find it extremely disheartening how much anti-technology, anti-science, and anti-progress sentiment I read about lately.

Junk yes, but think of the new science and industry it will enable as well. Microgravity experiments, new space stations, space tourism, new types of manufacturing in space, asteroid mining. Any technology is a double edged sword, but the benefits surely outweigh the drawbacks here.

Anthropic has been touting how their newest model is basically a cyber weapon and is so dangerous that they need to only role it out to trusted people and make sure it has super restrictive guard rails. They are begging to be regulated. This is exactly what they’ve been asking for.

A huge number of people in the US use these cars for transporting large items like plywood and drywall (4 feet by 8 feet), a full sized truck or SUV are the best options for this type of work. Additionally, most tradespeople need these types of vehicles for their work, ask any carpenter, plumber, electrician what they drive. A non-trivial portion of the US economy relies on these types of vehicles.

Safety can dramatically be improved just by focusing on the design of our infrastructure. For example adding bike lanes to a road can dramatically improve safety for both pedestrians and cyclists. The vast majority of the US road network has no bike lanes. Instead of trying to regulate the types of vehicles people are allowed to own even more, why isn't the focus on improving the design of our infrastructure? The amount of taxes we pay is a staggering sum, there's more than enough room in the government budget to spend on roads.

This looks great, it just needs some hardware to run on with a nice remote. Does any hardware like that exist?

[flagged]

Yes it is natural to prefer your own ethnicity and culture, which has existed for thousands of years. It is okay to say you want it to survive.

Japan, Korea, China, all have a strong preference for preserving their culture and ethnicity. Japan is 99% ethnic Japanese and has strict immigration laws. Yet they are also tolerant to outsiders who are visitors and we respect their right to govern themselves. I don’t think anyone regards the Japanese as a hateful people, yet by your definition they are indeed “racist” and “xenophobic”.

If the choice is to see your people replaced or be labeled “phobic”, then the obvious choice is to just accept the label and fight for your people.

Up until 1965 the US had strict origin requirements for where immigrants could come from and it was capped at a relatively low number throughout much of the 20th century.

Yes actually up until 1990 the US was overwhelmingly European ancestry, just go look at any demographic data from before 1990. Many states were 90+% white and indeed many were even higher.

The places with African slave descendants in the US were the main sources of “diversity” and were of course the ones with lower social trust and higher crime/poverty.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical_racial_and_ethnic_d...

I mean yeah it is basically a keylogger, it's closed source, and it was made by a guy in Israel. I would not install it on my machine.

I did not say Africa was a country..

changes your country to be more like Africa

All of the countries in Africa, every single one, have a vastly lower standard of living than the USA.