FrenchAmerican

SBF is despicable but I have no sympathy for his victims. 99.9% of FTX users were motivated by greed: speculation, tax evasion or illicit deals. Greedy people stolen by a greedier one: I don't care but I appreciate the irony. Life savings? Well, you lost them at an online casino. I'd prefer that you get it back but I won't weep if you don't. Greed leads to terrible situations. Frankly, there are good people who are every day true victims to care for. Greedy gamblers, tax evaders and traffickers are not among them.

This comment is antisemitic and pornographic.

This refers to the Declararation of Rights of Man dated August 1789. It's still nowadays the foreword to the French Constitution.

Hence the idea that France is the home of the human rights, which is deeply rooted in the representation of many French of themselves as a country.

Obviously, there is a huge gap with reality - but that can be opposed to any idealistic set of principles.

My understanding is that Julius Caesar could have lost that war but there is little chance that Rome wouldn't have submitted Gaul in the end.

Current Spain and Portugal's territory required from Rome no less than 190 years of wars. Romans kept going on submitting a few tribes there every year for two centuries.

A sort of "proof" of this assertion is that Rome, in the end, conquered all territories around the Mediterranean Sea and far beyond. Of course, the course of events are by nature unpredictable but I find it reasonable tosay that the odds for a long term victory of Gaul were slim.

However, but that was much earlier, the two Punic wars against Carthage were much more existential threats to Rome.

Indeed, what could go wrong...

The author wants the scientists to be involved in the coming COP27, as if they were not already. As if no technical anf scientific solutions had been provided to climate change!

Plenty of solutions have been found already. We absolutely know how to resolve this issue on the technical aspects ; this doesn't mean that no research and development is needed: we can and will come up with even better solutions.

But we already have the solutions. No technical challenge here, just a political challenge: decide how to share the costs.

Because we are lazy and don't understand what game theory tells us about the current stand-still. This is a game where each country would benefit the most if it succeeds doing the least - as long as the others do enough.

Hence the need for a political COP27: the only issue is to find a consensus and start acting promptly at the required scale (which is a big one, but much smaller than WWII for example on the economic side).

Geo-engineering is a quest for the silver bullet.

As if technology had ever provided a solution to a political issue... It hasn't. When it looks like it has, it's always because the policies are embbeded into the technogly: cf "code is law" for example.

Despite his dubious past, the billionaire John Arnold has focused time and money to amend scientific research. I've read maybe 2 years ago about that endeavor and followed him on Twitter ; I found it quite interesting and original. For example, he offers researchers to save their initial data (before any screening) so that other researchers can check which cases were thrown out of the study. He also funded reproduction tests. I haven't followed since, so I hope he kept on doing good work.

Digikam is good. I haven't found anything great yet, but my 40,000 photos are well enough organized using Digikam's features.

What I like is that its database is easily hackable through scripts (I use Python). So one can fit one's - peculiar by nature - needs.

The face recognition feature is way back when compared to Windows Photos though. Of course MS has a whole team working on this, difficult to compete.

Without going to extreme extents, many of us can lead a more sober life: no plane trip, less meat, insulate the house, avoid fossil fuels on favor of electricity and choose an electricity provider selling only energy produced by renewable ways (no "compensation" or other BS greenwashing). Avoid buying plastic. Choose strongly build appliances ; repair rather than buy. My phone is a 6 year old Samsung under LineageOS so it runs Android 10: good enough and not slow at all. => I'm moving at my own pace toward a more sober life, without the guilt of not doing enough. I'm not at all having an austere way of life, just slowly getting rid of the habit of finding joy in buying new stuff. Except what I really appreciate: books, good food, technological product that I really own, that I can hack and repair.

But I totally refuse the self-righteous path of the neo-puritanism that some ecologists promote: as you said, my actions are limited. I'm transitioning to a more sober life, not punishing myself. By the way, many people are just not in an economic situation to, for example, avoid long car commute. But we can all renounce taking planes, at least for vacations. I miss diving in the Red Sea. And I'll never dive in the Philippines nor visit New Zealand. It sucks but at least I know I do more than many - without tying to be perfect.

Once that said, the thing we can do is ... to build a group (friends, family, but most mostly like-minded people) and take responsibility for a piece of land. I'm fundraising to buy a forest of 1 km2 . The idea is to make what his necessary so that this forest will be thriving in 2100 - whatever the climate change. The climate changes too fast for the forest to adapt by itself. We'll need to plant more adapted species.

For the years to come, we are mostly learning since none of us has a clue of what to do. We know that we first need to learn (in books, moocs) and spend a lot of time observing how that parcel evolves by itself. We'll take advice from experts, visit other projects of the sort etc. Then make super small steps to help this small forest transition to the new climate.

That's how we imagine to really reconnect with Nature. We don't have financial gains in sight but the project is not a project of non-humane intervention or forbidding by principle some exploitation. The human beings must - in our view - learn to exploit Nature respectfully: all the species, from insects to birds and bigger animals must thrive. But we will hunt a bit, for our consumption but mainly because it's necessary over here to protect the local farmers' crops. We may also timber a bit, not for sale, nor to heat our houses but to build a few tiny houses over the years. To learn to build a truly sustainable way of life. Sober but comfortable enough, self-sufficient if possible (food aside, we buy food to local organic farms).

Anyway, the priority is the vitality of the forest, not us. But we want to learn how to live in a way that matches with the Nature's needs. We'll try to limit our interventions as much as possible. Especially in the first five years, where we don't plan to act at all, just observe and learn to see.

So I agree, we can't do much to save the world. But we can take responsibility for one particular parcel of Nature, big or small. Let it live, observe and act very cautiously to help it overcome the climate change. Many forests will turn to savannahs if we don't try to plant species to replace those that can't bear droughts and then sudden floods. Some species need a cold winter otherwise their biological clock is lost. They don't cope with the current "warm" winters.

But finding the right species to plant without provoking unexpected side effects is super super difficult. So that's a huge responsibility. Only local people devoting time and love can do this. If it's not us, that parcel of forest will either be cut for wood or be a savannah or yet another commercial zone and its parking lots. A local farmer may also buy it, cut it and grow whatever Monsanto seeds resisting to Monsanto pesticides.

In 2060 or 2100, when the climate and biodiversity situation will become unbearable, our small project will be there, an open-book of what works and what doesn't, in this particular area with its specific soils and specific local climate. We plan to document a lot the experience, so it can be reproduced in the area at least.

Let's not wait for governments and societies to act in time. Let's be the avant-guarde, by nature small groups with obscure projects ridiculed by the mass.

Taking care of a parcel of Nature can't be wrong. Learning how Nature works and how we can cautiously help it adapt can't be wrong. It"s like educating our children into decent human beings: it can't be wrong whatever the society turns into.

The link between monetary inflation and price inflation has been "demonstrated" by the Chicago Boys, with Milton Friedman as their guru. It led to the "monetarist" school of thought - which has been the reigning paradigm in economics since.

There is no such thing as "inflation" in general.

There are different types of inflation, such as the rise of the valuations of stocks, the rise of real estate price and day-to-day prices such as food. And monetary inflation.

QE has led to various effects in various countries at different times. There is no absolute correlation "always and everywhere".

The funny thing is that a rise in stock market is always interpreted as a positive thing - despite everybody knowing that bubbles happen very regularly.

Otherwise, inflation is seen as bad - which is ridiculous since the extraordinary low interest rates kept by the FED for years ("printing money") has sustained the economic growth and avoided recession.

Economists are historians of the economy. They are able to explain what happened - and if they agree on the general picture, they disagree on many points. Which is normal, that is a research field, so there are debates.

Some say lessons should be learned from History... well, for sure, all other things being equal, stuff tend to repeat, but as time goes by, the other things are not equal at all - or only to a certain point.

I majored in History but historians are not my first sources to predict the future. Despite having repeatedly failed at predicting anything, we can't help but ask economists to be oracles and ask them to set-up policies.

Or maybe we don't care much about what happens in our jails. As if being raped in jail was part of the sentence. Note that rape is only the extreme form of the violence that inmates, mostly males, endure.

I can't see where the suffering of men would be silenced because of their gender.

On the contrary, at last, more and more often men express their suffering, which is great because the "silent strong" man used to be the reference. Men as warriors don't ever complain etc.

There are more and more often in the news men stating their feelings: veterans with PTSD, Johnny Depp courageously telling how he has been abused by his partner, men denouncing being on verge of burning-out at work etc.

As a man, I consider that yes, there is still plenty of men suffering in silence. And that needs to come out. The more men are able to get over the silent strong man figure - John Wayne! - inherited from the past, the more the media will talk about it.

Nobody is silencing the suffering of men ; the men need to reconnect with their feelings and learn to express them. Most women are more able to express their feelings and they are indeed "silenced" - even if less and less so.

An example? The "mental load". In many modern heterosexual couples, the woman is still in charge of the general on-going of the home, and the man goes to work without that load. When he comes home, he waits to be asked or just does the minimum.

If you have ever been in charge of a project at work and your colleagues are only participants, you know very well the difference. Being in charge of the general coordination, ensure that everything is done when required, is quite a load.

Things are improving. Slowly.

This reflects the abnormally high proportion of people jailed in the USA: - 80K inmates for 68.5M inhabitants in the UK => 0.12% - 1,215K inmates for 331M inhabitants in the US => 0,37%

There are therefore around 3 times more people incarcerated in the US than in UK, proportionally.

As rapes are very frequent in the US jails (as this terrible report points out) and most of the jail population are men, then indeed, what can conclude that - statistically speaking - that most rape victims are men.

But if you take apart the population in jail, most rape victims are women.

Of course, one can argue that prisoners are human beings like others: they are. But the gendered statistic on rape is turned upside-down by the totally abnormal proportion of people in jail in the US, when compared to comparable countries, PLUS the totally despicable jail system where rapes are numerous.

Note that rapes are very common as well in jails of comparable countries. I have no information about this, but I can't see why rapes would be more frequent in American jails rather than British jails - all others things being equal. But maybe the US jail system and/or the US jail population may lead to more (or less, why not) rapes: I have no clue about this.

I'm not saying that they are in jail for no reason, but that the US society is ... dysfunctional. That analysis may appear outrageous in the US, but it is something obvious to many other countries.

But from saying "dysfunctional" to point out why it is so, there is a huge leap where political inclinations are bound to express themselves. In this case, these are not biases, because politics is precisely about how we live together in a society. And indeed, people don't live in the same world, in the sense that their interpretative frameworks are so diverse.

That's why I find the formulation of that figure problematic. I would find it less click-bait-y and trolly to say: "Rapes of men in the US jails are incredibly numerous" - maybe adding "to the point of outnumbering the rapes of women".

Why is it problematic? Because it echoes a large incel, masculinust, far-right discourse against feminism. Each time women (and "woke" men, to use their vocabulary) denounce something, there are always troves of righteous men pretending that the issue is true for all sexes alike (since in their views, sex and gender are the same thing).

The formulation "Most rapes victims in the United States are men" is a way of saying that all genders are equally victims of rapes in general. But they are not. In the world, and probably in all countries except the US, rape victims are overwhelmingly women and girls. The US exception is not related to a gender equality but to the abnormal rate of incarceration.

I don't know if there was an intention in the formulation or not. Maybe not, so I'm not at all in an accusatory mode. I'm just saying that this formulation offers ground to misinterpretation.

https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/prison-population-f... https://www.statista.com/statistics/203718/number-of-prisone...

FBI Searched Data of Millions of Americans Without Warrants - https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-04-29/fbi-searc...

Always the same arguments are used to justify invasion of privacy by governments: terrorism, pedo-pornography, human trafficking for sex (especially children).

Which are solid arguments but of course those laws are in 95% of the cases used for everything but the 3 reasonable causes mentioned.

Moreover, most of the time, the law grants access to police without decision by a judge, in the name of efficiency. In France, the proposal to trace what information is accessed by each policewoman or policeman has been rejected. So the misuses of the police databases are daily occurrences with total immunity.

Who knows what are the misuses of NSA databases in the US. I don't know at least but I don't think the Americans' privacy is an issue among NSA staff, nor for Congress. I may be totally wrong and would be happy to be enlightened on the matter.

"we all know we can’t decarbonize in time"

I guess you mean "we all know that almost no current government has the political courage to do what is necessary so that we decarbonize in time".

Or " we all know that we don't have the fortitude to do to do what is necessary so that we decarbonize in time". => that version is better if governments do what their public opinion is willing to do.

To fight in the WWI and WII, the most advanced economies of those times turned in less than two years into war economies, where more than 50% of the GDP was directed to the war effort.

True for Germany, France, the UK plus, for WWII, the USA, the USSR, Japan.

The Apollo program amounted during the 60s to 4% of the US GDP, just for the political sake of keeping up with the USSR.

If we considered - as we should - the dereliction of climate and the on-going massive reduction of biodiversity as an existential threat, we would act accordingly.

We can decarbonize in time. But we don't want to "look up", e.g. to listen to the Science.

Australia is having huge fires and large floods every year now - but still elect a government in denial of the causes.

In the USA, the natural disasters are rising sharply in frequency and magnitude (current drought in the West, hurricanes etc).

Etc etc.

When it will become unbearable, we will at last act accordingly. The solutions are there already.

There are many breakthroughs (batteries for example, to store surplus of renewables energies so that it can be used at will when necessary). Far many more would occur if we invested money in research and R&D.

We ought not to bet on a hypothetical magic bullet. Not that we shouldn't fund those research. Startups with small odds to succeeded easily raise VC money since a success would offer a huge ROI.

But the trap is to bet the future of the world on a hypothetical magic bullet when the solutions already exist. We just don't want to do what necessary to implement them.

The USA, Canada, Australia for example emit 3 times more CO2 than France per inhabitant. However, the loss of biodiversity is as fast (and maybe higher) in France (which governments do very little to tackle gashouse emissions).

I don't know, really. You may be right but he's smart and very familiar with Twitter practices so despite the apparent no self-restraint, maybe he knows how to stay on the edge?

So I guess we'll see if the tone of his tweets changes when he's really in possession of Twitter. We'll know then for sure.

A big thank you! This is an amazing list of things to look into and keep in mind. Many points are obscure to me, but I'm going to print this and keep it at hand. Thanks again.

OK, thanks, I will take that into account.

Thanks! I appreciate, really.

I'm open to discussion of course, but I'd more a more argumentative reply.

My point is not about equity but just plain efficiency. I'm all for a more equitable recruitment - but that's not what I addressed here.

Of course reputation matters. But reputation is not provided by references - at least imo. That person is reputed in a community or not. If you are looking for a top-notch dev, her/his reputation will be apparent.

Social proof is of utter importance, hence the idea of hiring fast to see if that person fits well in your company. How is it relevant if that person did not fit well in the previous company? It may be in some cases, if you know that previous company well, like having work for them or at least with them.

If you are looking for someone who fits well anywhere, well, that can be a must for the role or you just prefer people without much personality.

Go fast, fail fast, anybody?

A human being behaves very differently in different social contexts. Your company's context is more often than not very different than the previous company's.

1 month trial is more efficient and costs less than 6 interviews + 3 references. Give people a chance and let them surprise you. Of course, that doesn't mean hiring the first resume received but if the person appears qualified and do well in 2 interviews (HR + the new boss or colleague), that's plenty enough.

I'm learning Python. Do someone knows a resource to learn the well-known tricks for "fast" Python?

A book, a website, a cheat sheet or even a MOOC or part of a MOOC?

Taking references should be prohibited altogether, except for specific jobs (if the job implies interaction with children).

They remind me of house employees' conditions in the "Downtown Abbey" area.

It's just a sign of employees' subjection to the always more extreme capitalism.

If an employee is leaving or has been fired, it means that things were not doing well anymore. How can one tell apart truthful feedbacks from all the biases? Most of our biases are unconscious, so the person you're talking to will be sincere but still unfair.

It's sort of weird to pretend to be able to sort feedbacks on the phone while not being able to judge if a person will fit well despite often numerous interviews by different persons in the company.

What if a woman has been sexually harassed but can't talk about it, for fear of the reach of her harasser, a respected entrepreneur, or even to be sued for false accusations?

Can you a person of color easily denounce racist biases that blocked his/her career? What if the previous boss can't stand a gay person?

Can one say plainly that one has little herd bias so one's point of view make the group uncomfortable? You may need such a person in your organization - or not. That person may not be even capable of such a diagnosis.

A reference won't add more unbiased information than several interviews. A lot of money and time is spent screening because the on-boarding process is costly. That makes sense but we could as well change the on-boarding rather than keep refining the screen.

Talent is important but how the person fits in a team and the company's culture is much more important. So give people a try with a sort of temporary status, limited responsibility and light onboard process. Of course, people may try and fake to fit in, but that can't last very long. The feedbacks of your colleagues are much more reliable because you know them and therefore you can sort them.

And what if that person has great references but for some reason, there is a clash of personality with a major person of the firm? Totally unpredictable but that happens.

That's totally imaginary. As if Putin, through Gazprom, could decide the price paid by the EU for its fossil fuels.

Putin doesn't have to sell and the EU doesn't have to buy.

Cheaper price for Serbia and Hungary? Well, those countries will be economically sanctioned. The EU can bankrupt both countries at will.

Not that the EU wants to. But there is no love for Serbia in the rest of Europe. Ugly nationalists with blood on their hands. We used to like Djokovic. Even that isn't the case anymore. And Hungary just received notifications of the blocking of all EU money for their recent very undemocratic elections.

If Putin thinks the EU will implode because of this blackmail, he lives in a imaginary world. The EU is like NATO: it arises to unity when challenged.

Putin has made NATO stronger than ever. Now he's about to do succeed in doing the same for the EU. Well, Hungary will have to choose a side soon. Frankly, I'd be sad for the Hungarian people if they are expelled from the EU. But I like the idea of expelling undemocratic countries out of the EU.

So Putin cut the pipelines. Well, that would trigger a recession in the EU. But no soldier from the EU is killed, because the Ukrainians are doing the fighting. So the public opinions won't withdraw their support to the Ukrainian cause.

On the contrary, in my opinion, but that point is debatable.

But a recession in the EU just when the USA's growth is decreasing sharply.... that would lead to recession in China too. I can't see the Chinese leader risking that this very year, because he needs to appear strong to be confirmed in a lifelong mandate in power.

And Putin would take a huge risk by cutting the pipelines, e.g. the flow of euros when its war in Ukraine is not getting momentum, even after the change in strategy. Russian troops are doing better, for sure, but their territorial gains are super slow.

We'll see.

PS: my admiration to the Ukrainian people for its courage and fortitude. May the Russian people find the same courage and get rid of Putin.

If you want not to be gullible to any parties, stick to the facts.

Before Putin's so-called "demands": 1/ EU companies paid energy in euro or dollar to Russian banks NOT under sanctions 2/ Russia sent the energy.

After: the same, except that the EU companies must use a specific Russian bank, so that Putin can pretend to be paid in rubles.

It is just a show, since the EU companies still pay in euro or dollar.

That changes nothing in practice. It does enable Putin tough to underline that the EU sanctions make a huge exception for energy.

Well, OK, but everybody at a certain level of power already knew it.

Maybe the public opinions in the EU had not yet clearly understood that the EU pays $1B per say to Russia in winter for energy, despite proclaiming "huge sanctions".

But now the pressure of the public opinions to get rid of the EU dependency to Russia is super high. And they feel guilty towards Ukraine, so they want more weapons and ammunition delivered to Ukraine.

So once again, Putin miscalculated: Germany was reluctant to provide Ukraine with weapons and now they are sending modern tanks, heavy artillery etc. That u-turn happened within 2 days of Putin's demands.

Yes, Putin can provoke an economic recession in the EU by blocking pipelines but then he will miss that money. He had prevented that problem by putting aside $600B ... but almost all of it is now blocked by sanctions.

The EU has had recessions before. It just did because of Covid and decided to inject €750B of magic money: the EU Central just created that money. But that money is labelled in euros. Its value has not plunged despite this huge artificial input of money, because the EU is a safe bet in the middle term (10 to 20 years).

So the EU can inject again hundreds of billions so that the recession will be limited - if not totally reversed. This would fuel the inflation though, which would pose social issues. Social compensations can be put in place. Well, there will be a price, but nothing like we had in 2008 or even Covid.

Putin can not print money like the EU. Well, he can print as many rubles that he wants except that... nobody wants to be paid in rubles. The ruble value is keeping up because it is artificially maintained (super high interest rates + strict limitation of use of hard currencies by Russian entities).

If Putin stops the pipelines, within months Russia would have no hard foreign currencies left. It will need to buy them in rubles. At the value that the global markets will decide. Which will be a fraction of its current value. A large inflation will ensue.

In the end, China will - or not - help Putin. Because the "West" has very deep pockets and a huge credibility on markets. The current alliance supporting Putin amounts to 600M persons living in advanced economies against the 145M Russians and their second league economy and an untrusted currency.

But being help by China will have a huge price. Russia will become partially vassal to China.

Putin needs to win its war fast. The more it lasts, the more the sanctions will show their effects. The EU will find substitute to the Russian energy faster than Russia will be able to deliver its energy to new clients all being equal.

But things are not equal: the "West" is rich enough to pay its energy at an expensive price. Putin will have to meet the global markets' prices, e.g the price all included: production + transportation. It means that Putin will need to give large discounts. Hence the low price paid by India recently.

So there are two simultaneous races going on:

1/ Who will get out first of the mutual energy entanglement? At what cost?

2/ Will Russia be able to end the war quickly before a huge amounts of weapons of all kind are sent to Ukraine?

Be to end a war, Putin needs either complete victory (which is quite doubtful) or a partial victory (big enough so that Ukraine will agree to a peace treaty).

Predicting how a war will unfold is just impossible. The most probable issues are either: - a Russian defeat: the public opinion evolves against the regime, because of the economic recession and the casualties. And/or the morale of the Russian soldiers keeps going down. - in the coming weeks or months the front line will stabilize, with strong positions on both sides. This is said by many military experts as the most probable, especially if China provides ammunition and weapons.

In both cases, Putin's regime will fall in the following years. Economic crisis, lost of legitimacy since the glorious Red Army (which was indeed glorious during WWII) would have been defeated or in stalemate), shame of being vassalized by China instead of being the glorious Imperial Russia. Therefore social unrest => repression => more social unrest etc and then Putin escape to China. Or the regime becomes totalitarian, like North Korea.

In the end, the only problem for the West is political: keep the alliances united (EU, NATO) + limit the economic consequences whatever they come from. => one can fairly say that the EU and NATO will be put to test. Are the peoples in those countries committed enough to democracy to pay the price of supporting Ukraine. => there will be tensions but I think it will unite the EU more than ever. Because it give the EU a very profound meaning: an alliance of democracies against tyranny. Hungary will have to choose. Poland too, but at a later stage.

For Putin, only a victory can preserve his power. Otherwise, he will have to turn Russia into North Korean. If he can, which is doubtful. I can't see the Russian people going back to the Soviet era.

Putin knows that perfectly. Hence all his pretending of using nuclear bombs etc, which is nonsensical: if defeated in Ukraine, what's the point of a mutual destruction of Europe, the USA and Russia??? He keeps saying "I have nuclear heads, be careful!". So what, we have too. No edge, just another show to scare the public opinions. Like being paid in rubles: just a show.

The Russian people needs to get up and fight for its freedom - put Putin out of power. Or be a vassal of China. I can't wait to see Navalny in power. Unthinkable? Well, remember Mandela.

Winter has come.

Old light technologies: lenses, glasses, telescopes, prisms, Fresnel lenses for lighthouses, ... laser may be too recent to be considered as "old".

Despite being worked on for centuries, optics are still a super active field for fundamental research, R&D, and new products.

LEDs are incredible for example. Extraordinary efficiency.

Steel is amazing, but nowadays I find even more amazing that we can replace it by wood in many circumstances. Skyscrapers in wood? Checked.

And wood can often replace concrete.

Building using wood sequesters carbon from the atmosphere and, as an ever bigger importance, avoid the CO2 emissions due to drilling, melting, refining etc, e.g. all operations needed to produce steel and concrete.

However, we need to "grow" wood in a truly sustainable way. Plantations of tree for timber are not forests from an ecological point of view: monoculture (and even cloning of a single tree), many pesticides, home to very little biodiversity and far less carbon sequestered in the soil (only 25% AFAIK).

Musk will rebrand Twitter as SpeechX.

1/ Political power: allowing Trump back or not give him a huge leverage. On Democrats, on Trump, on Republicans still loyal to the Constitution (therefore anti-Trump). That decision will be more influential in the 2024 election than any of Putin's pro-Trump propaganda in the last two elections.

2/ God's eye on one of the main place of discussions on Earth. He could basically monitor the evolution of the opinions in many countries. It's an huge intelligence hedge on an infinity of subjects.

3/ Being in position to say whatever he wants without risking being banned like Trump. He'll still have to respect the law, but he doesn't care paying millions in fines in a worst case scenario (except if the SEC considers it a market manipulation).

4/ Decide what is free speech and what is not. Here again, he and Twitter can be sued. But a court decision often takes time. Furthermore, Musk will use his top lawyers to make his decision to allow speech A and forbid speech B. The same for ads.

Elon Musk is not a fool and everybody in the space community knows that he is not really working on a colony on Mars.

Then why does he say so? The NASA has understood after Apollo that huge budgets require large political support, hence huge public opinion support.

Going to the Moon has cost 4% of the US budget during 15 years or so.

The world space community knows that humans do badly in space in general ; Mars is no better because of cosmic rays. A colony on Mars would have to be underground. In fact, the whole space community knows that robots are much more efficient and far, far less costly.

The International Space Station has a shallow bottom line in terms of Science, beyond the effects of lack of gravity on humans. I discussed of these effects with the official physician of an European astronaut: it's quite worse than publicly acknowledged. It's not a secret, it's just that journalists don't really do their job on the issue. They would not need to "investigate" in a Watergate way but just to circumvent the press departments of NASA and/or ESA in Europe.

The public opinion wants the dream. The NASA has heavily invested in filming and sharing the expeditions. And they are great at it.

In Europe, Thomas Pesquet is the incarnation of ESA: good-looking, super bright, truly a nice guy by nature, communicative enthusiasm... We all like him. But it would be fun if a journalist calculated the science / communication ratio of his time aboard the ISS. Something like 20% maybe and only because he needs to have something to talk about. Otherwise a robot could have conducted the experiments. Except for the experiments on his own body but... what for, since there is no scientific nor technical rationality for humans in space anymore?

But sending humans instead of robots implies a tenfold budget. So the dream of humans in space / on Mars / on the Moon is vital to maintain a large space industry.

The proof of this is... SpaceX. They do better than NASA and ESA for a fraction of the cost.

But SpaceX has an issue here: NASA, ESA and other space agencies are... its clients. SpaceX wants deep-pocketed clients. So SpaceX must participate in fuelling the dream of humans in space.

The ISS is old now and we have seen it all. The movie "Gravity" was great but also the coffin of space stations orbiting Earth. It's a bit like car races: for most people, me included, we only watch... if there is an impressive accident, on YouTube. On TV, following a car race is just a bore. Another live feed from the ISS? Well... who cares? Thomas Pesquet did super well the last five years, exploiting the ISS to its maximum. To fuel the dream.

So, what's next? The storytelling around robots on Mars surface was a great success. Rosetta and the comet was super exciting too. But we are used to it now... However NASA made a brilliant stunt of the tiny helicopter on Mars: first fly on another planet. I loved it. The Webb telescope... well super interesting for Science and technology guys like us here but for the public opinion... It's just OK. Children don't care for example and it tells a lot. And it's only a 10 billion-dollar project. The ISS amounts to 140 billions.

So what's next for maintaining the over-large space industry? A base on the Moon. That's realistic. And SpaceX rockets will enable it.

But Elon Musk can not been seen as a mogul so influential that a inhabited base on the Moon is budgeted. If he was on TV all the time selling us a Moon base - which is what he really wants - he would be stealing the dream sold by his own clients.

The NASA wants to be again the center of attention like during Apollo. And to get the hundreds of billions it needs. SpaceX? Just an efficient commodity provider in the dream, transportation.

But Elon Musk wants his share of attention too. He can't focus his communication on the Moon base? Let's invent a colony on Mars!

Everybody is happy: it promotes the humans in space, Musk is the dreamy visionary and the NASA... the much more responsible governmental agency with a rock-solid and reasonable project of a base on the Moon.

And, oh boy, press, media and social networks just keep on talking about Musk's Mars colony, endlessly.

Elon Musk has no project of a colony on Mars. He is enabling the NASA moon base, helping his client to get the hundred of billions it requires... SpaceX has rockets to sell and a rocket require a client with a need to send big payloads into space.

Robots are fun... for a while. Humans in space? A never-ending dream: Star Wars and Star Trek have been proving it for 50 years. Robots? Well, there was Wall-E.

Humans in space : tens of billions of dollars per year for the next fifty years. Everybody is happy in the space community.

It will certainly result in technological leaps. But for Science? Robots are better and much much cheaper.

Too cheap in fact. This is true for all space agencies around the world. China wants a manned space station to demonstrate that they are closing the gap with the USA and Russia. Purely technological and proof of power, not a scientific project.

Musk is also creating his own market by sending tens of thousands of satellites around Earth. Space observation from Earth will mechanically become problematic if not unfeasible.

And it happens that SpaceX has the rockets for installing telescopes on the dark side of the Moon. An old dream of scientists, since this is the best possible area for telescopes. But scientists have not been able to get the budgets for it. Don't worry, Musk is paving the way to get them, by privatizing the sky.

Google needs to invade our privacy to get going. SpaceX needs clients for its rockets. In a sense, Musk had to invent this bullshit colony on Mars. He needs to fuel the dream.

You may be interested un what game theory indicates about this.

I'm not a specialist of it, just a book I read years ago.

Basically: you wrote some code and didn't know how to make money of it, otherwise you would have.

If someone reuses your code (according to the license of your choice), there is a chance that you get something out of it. It may be recognition (something to add to your resume) or maybe a job offer or be paid for specific development as a contractor or just to help that firm's dev team make the most of your code.

So releasing your code publicly is an appeal for cooperation. Without doing it, well, nobody makes money out of your code but you don't either.

Classic example: A and B are two persons with no connection. You tell B you will get $1 if he/she accepts that A get $10. Otherwise both get nothing.

Most people prefer having nothing than having the extra $1.

If don't know how to monetize the code you wrote, well... game theory pleads in favor of being in cooperation mode. You may get only a small fraction at first of the profits but by cooperating, you're in the game. That is then up to you to make the relation evolve so that you get your fair share at some point.

The other answers display the variety of what people get out releasing their code. It varies a lot from a person to another.

The difficult part is to stay in an healthy relationship, e.g. where all parties are happy. If you can't stop complaining about being treated unfairly, that won't work. But the firm using your code should know as well its own interest in the relationship, so they should want you happy.

I didn't know about "capacitors". Thanks for mentioning it.