JanSolo

Derp; I meant SpaceX.

I think they saw how SpaceX was using Starlink as launch lever to provide SpaceX a baseline of regular launches at bare-minimum cost. As RocketLab starts to scale up, being able guarantee a minimum number of launches is a significant hedge against the dips in the global satellite market.

Also, RocketLab builds their own sats and can add the Iridium constellation replacements to their order book. It's a win-win. A smart move by Peter Beck and his team.

It's becoming self-aware! Quick, lock down the nuclear codes!

Agreed. All humans need to learn to fact-check their sources. Especially those in decision-making roles.

I'm surprised that Apple is not considering opening up its own fabs. Tim Cook is all about vertical-integration and they have a mountain of cash that they could use to fund the initial startup capex.

Great! Another bunch of micromobility products that nobody asked for. And the price! I can buy 6 very decent Chinese ebikes of various formats for the $4500 this thing will cost. I'm sure it will be more advanced and nicely designed, but it's just way too expensive. Bicycles are a mass-market item. Price is the primary decider. If you want to be successful, you have to be cheaper than the competition. Who is this for?

This feels like a labor-of-love to me. I doubt very much that the original author is still participating in music to the same degree as he was when he made this. I don't think that current musical trends would inspire the same fastidious urge to document and archive as it once did.

The article highlights how to get into the modding industry. While that is part of the games industry, it is a small fraction of the larger game production business.

I've hired many game programmers and the key to getting into the industry is demonstrating a few critical skills:

1. Sufficient technical skill in whatever your field is.

2. Curiosity applied to problem solving. How can we make this work?

3. An ability to finish what you start. Get it done.

If you're a new programmer looking to start out on this journey, I recommend picking an engine and just start making stuff. Participate in as many Gamejams, Mods or minigame productions as possible. Ship things; Finish them. Then, when you're interviewing for a 'real' game job, you will have some experience to share and discuss.

For technical candidates, there's a minimum threshold that you must cross to be considered. For programmers, it's often C++. So learn the basics, get proficient, use the tools. Read the books on programming interviews and learn the types of things that are expected.

Beautifully written. Especially when you consider that the author suffered a brain injury to her language centers. Fascinating insights to how the mind works and how we process our world. I was supposed to be working, but I read the whole thing.

Some high-impact reporting there from the BBC! Also contains my favourite quote of the day: "Westcombe Dairy's maturing cave is equipped with cheddar-turning robot, nicknamed Tina the Turner"

I still struggle to see how this ends up favorable for Tesla in the long run.

They're expanding their customer-base by maybe 2x or more. Those new customers will be be giving recurring payments to Tesla. For vehicles that Tesla didn't build. How is that not favourable?

Experienced software people are difficult to hire. Doubly so if your company has a bad reputation for not valuing software and the benefits it can provide; which GM certainly qualifies as.

This seems, on the surface, to be a pretty major own-goal. I wonder what the rationale for it is? I expect there's something going on that we havn't heard about yet.

Woah woah woah; we use the hackernews rules here; you'll need to apply the prologue variation before you can land there.

This smells of vaporware to me.

Certifying a new electric aircraft is hard. There are several other startups who are trying to do this and they're all struggling.

Certifying a pilotless aircraft is really hard. There are no pilotless commercial aircraft because nobody has created one that can be trusted to never crash. I'm not sure that the FAA even knows HOW to certify such an aircraft.

So logically, certifying a new, pilotless, commercial electric aircraft is likely next to impossible. At least to a cynical bum like me. Good luck Wisk; I hope you prove me wrong!

Oh dear, USA; you have a real problem with your Supreme Court enacting precedents for things that are clearly not in the interest of a succesful USA.

The Supreme Court is supposed to be the last-resort, the fail-safe, the watcher of the US legal system. But somehow it has become infected with partisan BS and now we have to wonder Who watches the watchers? How do we get out of this mess?

Star Liner has all the same problems that the Space Shuttle had. In an emergency, how do you get the crew out safely?

The home-computer wars of the 1990s have always confused me. There's seems to be a kind of tribal-allegiance that computer-buyers participated in when they became computer-owners. I've never understood why it had to be PC vs Amiga or Nintendo vs Sega or whatever. My best guess is that a lot of the buyers were young kids who did'nt have the maturity yet to see the world in a more flexible way. I was certainly guilty of that back when I was a teen.

The critical part of this article is this:

"But in June 2023, Musk said at an energy conference that "there just weren't enough batteries" for Tesla to reach "volume production" of the truck."

It looks like battery production is the major constraint on Teslas endeavours. Someone at Tesla clearly did the math on ROI-per-cell and decided that Semis just don't pay as well as Cybertrucks or Powerwalls. That's why they're starving the Semi operation until they can spin up more battery production.

200 bucks for an e-scooter is really really cheap. Don't expect to get anything worthwhile for that price unless it's some kind of sale. The realistic price for a basic, entry level one is more like $500. A decent one is $1000 and a good, dual-motor one will be $1500.

I have an electric scooter with 3000kms on it. I use it for commuting to work several times a week.

I much prefer it to driving; you get to experience the open air; it's exciting, there's no traffic and it's often faster than driving. If I look at the money I've saved in gas & parking, my scooter has paid for itself almost 3x so it's cost-efficient too.

I heartily recommend that anyone with a commute of 30km or less per day try one out. Especially if you live in an area with good cycle-lane coverage. It really hits that sweetspot of efficient, enjoyable and cheap transportation.

Outsourcing production sounds great conceptually; "It's great! Production issues are someone elses problem now!" Until you realize that producing EVs is hard and when there are problems you now have many layers of management between your customer services and the people who can actually fix the problem.

People bitch and complain about Tesla all the time, but their vertical integration means that they can fix problems with their cars relatively quickly.

I think this is why Fisker failed. Twice.

Didn't they just legalize unleaded avgas very recently? After a multi-decade regulatory review process? Seems odd that they were so hesitant to legalize it and now that they did, it becomes the only option!

Don Pettit is my favorite astronaut. I loved watching all his ISS videos where he did wacky experiments and nerded-out about capillary flows, static attraction and similar stuff. He's also a renowned photographer and has taken some of the coolest space pictures from the ISS. He actually refined the guidelines for shooting pictures thru the glass windows of the station. I hope that they fly him again soon; I can't wait to see what he'll come up with next!

The article mentions that due to consolidation there are only 4 major airlines in the US and they are very aligned in their prices and policies thus giving little choice to US consumers. Doesn't that mean there's an opportunity for someone to start a new airline that could compete with the big 4 by offering better prices or more lenient policies? Demand for flights is clearly very high right now; perhaps there's an entrepreneurial opportunity here? Thoughts?

The tweet seems to imply that the entire Ubiquiti Networks line of network hardware could be compromised. That's a shame; I was thinking of installing some in my house. I'm sure that Ubiquiti's customers will not be happy if they find out that the US Govt can access their private data.

I live in Montreal; many of the concrete structures in my city are crumbling and decaying due to the constant freeze/thaw temperature cycling that they're exposed to. I wonder if the self-healing property of this new advanced concrete would help to avoid some of the cracking & flaking we're seeing in constructions from the 60s & 70s.

Agreed; I was expecting to see some kind of incubator for producers of animated content.

Perhaps there's a lesson here about naming your organization when there's already something with a similar name in the zeitgeist. The Santa Cruz Operation is another one; my teenage brain automatically associated it with skateboards!

In astronaut Mike Mullanes book, he mentions that they often used to fly shuttle re-entries outside of their seats. I'm sure a shuttle has a much softer entry profile than a capsule, but if it's possible, I'm sure they'd consider it in an emergency.

Soyuz is used as a return capsule for 3 of the crew. One of them becoming unavailable is a big problem if there's an emergency on the station and they need to get the crew out fast.

Mission Controllers have only a few options here:

1. If they determine what the problem is and that the leak will not affect Soyuz's ability to return safely, then they can stay on board and continue as normal. This is unlikely; Spacecraft are not supposed to leak 'substances' like this. They also do not carry 'substances' that are not critical to the mission.

2. If they determine that the leak is slow enough to safely allow a reentry attempt, I expect them to pack up the 3 cosmonauts who are assigned to that soyuz and send em home pronto while that window is open.

3. If this soyuz is now toast and the Russians have a spare somewhere on the ground, they will likely have to fill it with supplies and launch it, fast, unmanned to the station. We are in a dangerous, unprecedented time where there are astronauts on station with no ride home. Every emergency is now life-threatening until they can get another soyuz up there.

In an emergency there is one other option that they might consider; Dragon is human rated in theory for up to 7 people. That's what the original design was for. However, NASA only fits theirs out for 4 astronauts. Presumably, they could, in an emergency be used to carry the 3 soyuz refugees. Perhaps they would need to bring extra life support equipment and dump cargo to lose some weight. But it could be made to work. At a stretch, an unmanned cargo-dragon could even be used if appropriate life-support equipment could be employed. Such as putting the passengers in an EVA suit for the ride home.

Either way, it's thinking-cap time for the people at NASA and Roscosmos. Good luck!

I think you're being facetious here. NATO expansion was Russias stated cause of the Ukrainian Conflict. However, Putin's statements since then have made it clear that the real objective is more of an ideological one. He wants to expand and build into a sort of neo-russian empire. Ukraine was considered the easiest target because of the ongoing Donbass conflict. However it could easily have been Georgia, Khazakstan, Azerbaijan or others.