Hundreds of workers to space out from NASA's JPL amid budget black hole NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) has confirmed that substantial budget cuts are inbound, with over 500 staffers affected – approximately 8 percent of the workforce. Dr Garry Hunt, a former member of the team responsible for the hugely successful JPL Voyager program, described the confirmation as a "blow," although not …
They say deflation is bad. Then it is puzzling how new technology and corresponding increase of productivity is not bringing cheaper everything. The reason might be inflation causes demand for higher salaries, which are not possible to undo: workers protest. So instead companies are forced to fire people, or die. Example: mobile companies. Maybe they fire most productive ones or the internal environment becomes so toxic, the good ones leave.
This happens to whole countries. It all depends which group dominates. Socialists, left, labor unions, a capitalist monopoly, a political party, top company management, or a dictator over-exploiting its position and sucking all possible resources. It does not matter.
Lazy people is one of the reasons. Everyone gets old one day and starts to have enough. But they like their comfortable positions, have families and mortgages. I have been wondering how SpaceX has become so much more efficient than NASA. Or which factors enable the constant stream of UK overspending scandals with someone else' money.
Evolution and capitalism are best friends. Somebody must die. Always.
Then it is puzzling how new technology and corresponding increase of productivity is not bringing cheaper everything.
One of the problems is late stage capitalism, where everything is owned by investment funds and competing businesses are bought and consolidated, so there is no incentive to actually compete and to make things cheaper.
Another problem is corruption and regulatory capture that remove any incentives for healthy markets.
For instance, you would think that by now the houses would be cheap as fish and chips. But since there is no competition and we have tight planning regulations, people can't start a business and build cheap, safe and fit for purpose homes. No. We have big corporations building low quality expensive housing mainly designed to be store of value for investors rather than place to live.
Those "tight planning regulations" have an effect too. Standards are higher than they used to be, and that costs money. I couldn't legally rebuild the house I live in now -- it's a fine house but was built 50 years ago, and it would violate numerous aspects of the building code if re-built as-is. Same with other things -- it would not be possible to manufacture the truck that I owned 20 years ago, because it wouldn't meet current safety standards. A 20-year-old phone would be laughably inadequate now. And so on -- we're paying more for many things, but we're getting more too.
Computers though... wow. Orders of magnitude performance increases, at lower prices. (Although I am typing this on a 15-year-old Lenovo W500.)
Those "tight planning regulations" have an effect too. Standards are higher than they used to be, and that costs money.
Whilst that may be true in theory, if you had to choose a new build versus a 100 years old build, I think you would choose the latter.
Regulations are one thing, but brown envelopes and building inspectors looking the other way is another.
A 20-year-old phone would be laughably inadequate now. And so on -- we're paying more for many things, but we're getting more too.
This is a false analogy. 100 year old house would be perfectly fine today (even for the fact it has been up for 100 years alone...).
100 year old house would be perfectly fine today
You wouldn't be happy about the knob and tube electrical wiring, the lack of insulation, the leaky windows & doors, crumbling masonry (chimney), etc. Sure, you can renovate an old house up to modern standards, but it usually costs more than knocking it down and rebuilding.
But of course old houses get periodic repairs, I lived in a house where the "core" was over 200 years old (with ore recent extensions).
But plumbing, wiring etc had been updated over the years.
Biggest pain was the insulation (lack) & dampness compared to a modern build - that could have been remedied, but at a cost (we did not live there long enough to address that as had to move to a larger house for family reasons)
In UK, so this is not unusual, it was on a fairly standard street (not listed, as old buildings are ten a penny in this area, so need to have a few very notable features to get listed here)
The only reason why a 20 year old phone would be inadequate today is that network operators don't support it. A 50 year old landline phone still works as well as it did when it was new but only if there's POTS service available to support it (or an adapter simulating POTS, of course).
A lot of modern things work better than their older counterparts but it doesn't necessarily mean they're more expensive to make. I have a 60 year old audio system which, like all electronics from that era, uses a multitude of parts all hand assembled (the tuners in particular are very parts intensive by modern standards). Compare this with a modern production run and you find that an infinitely more powerful and sophisticated version is to all intents and purposes just a handful of mass produced ICs. (Its one reason why the hi-fi market has gone off the rails -- its impossible to build an expensive audio amplifier without resorting to the audio equivalent of the gold toilet). What changes is primarily the asset spiral -- stuff costs more because the investment needed to make or maintain it constantly needs feeding.
"100 year old house would be perfectly fine today (even for the fact it has been up for 100 years alone...)."
I've noticed that homes a few hundred years old that are still in use tend to be the best examples of their time. Those are the ones worth renovating and bringing up to more current standards since the electrics might have been fitted so long ago that the materials are just plain dangerous at this point. The same goes for plumbing. What it's rare to see are cheaply made tenements a few hundred years old. They were crap to start with and wouldn't age well if they survived. Some of the issues with today's builds is with modern understanding, they aren't overbuilt as much as was done in the past. Given this winter's heating bills, I'd love to have an old house with walls 2' + thick and a comfy snug with a wood burner.
We had the roof re-done on our extension a couple years ago, partly to beef up the structure in order to put solar on it. We had all the boxes ticked by the council on building regs and what have you. Low and behold, on completion of the work they come back and change their minds.
Duck and Off.
Honestly the crud that I see in my day job I don't know how it gets off the drawing board let alone past inspection. Civil engineering all over the UK is crumbling away hopelessly without repercussions for the responsible parties. That Italian motorway that collapsed? Only a matter of WHEN not IF.
If you want an interesting experience and don't mind the minor issue of being one of the dodgiest areas of Birmingham, a walk underneath Spag Junction near Gravelly End will highlight just how dreadful the differences in standards of what certain organisations get away with are.
Sir Dieter Helm made the point that if you want these things you have to do the capital maintenance. We should certainly not be surprised at old stuff needing work; and definitely not at new stuff built to pish poor standards going wrong.
it is puzzling how new technology and corresponding increase of productivity is not bringing cheaper everything
If everything stays the same then sure new technology will make it cheaper. If the biggest TV you could get was 25" like it was when I was a kid, and it had no "smart" features, no HD (let alone 4K) and so forth you'd be able to buy them for $50. Sometimes people want to use new technology to get something better than they could get yesterday.
Especially NASA, which wants space probes to have greater capability than Voyager 1 & 2 had, etc.
You misunderstand evolution.
Evolution has nothing to do with death.
It has to do with exactly the opposite.
The winners in the game of evolution are those who reproduce. Nothing more, nothing less.
A critter can have the best genes in the cosmos and if it doesn't reproduce, it's all for naught.
"With rare exception, a robot will outperform a human, probably by orders of magnitude."
Care to expand on the reasoning behind that?
If you'd written 'outperform a human at any given specific task' I'd agree with you, however, as you didn't here my take:-
I think you've got that arse-about-face...a robot that will outperform a human at *any* task is the exception case, as the robot must be programmed for said task in the first place. The robot who can *generally* outperform a human has yet to be born/created.
Oh yeah... AI can't do anything in the physical world without assistance, so it don't count.
"JPL is getting budget cuts, but we are still dumping billions into SLS. It sounds about right!"
JPL is getting budget cuts because NASA is required to dump money into SLS without a proper allocation. FTFY.
Common Sense Sceptic has done a series on the moon lander contract that was awarded to SpaceX. There were supposed to be two finalists, but through some suspect dealings, SpaceX was the sole awardee and NASA didn't have the funds to properly fund that due to an insufficient appropriation from Congress. It's worth a view as it makes it plain how NASA gets whipsawed with changes in the political wind.
I'm not a fan of the SLS, but it's here and the Artemis missions (return to the moon) are built around it and I don't want to wait any longer for that even though I'm too old to go now and don't have enough money to do a DD Harriman. I think I can remember my dad waking me up to watch Neil and Buzz take the first steps on the moon and I've met most of the men who have left their footprints and dreamed of doing it myself when I was younger. You take what you can get.
"Common Sense Sceptic has done a series on the moon lander contract that was awarded to SpaceX. There were supposed to be two finalists, but through some suspect dealings, SpaceX was the sole awardee and NASA didn't have the funds to properly fund that due to an insufficient appropriation from Congress. It's worth a view as it makes it plain how NASA gets whipsawed with changes in the political wind."
The amount of money initially allocated was too low for two fully formed bids but there was a widely held expectation that an old space firm would win it and continue to drain future budgets under the normal cost+ contract.
What wasn't anticipated was that SpaceX would come in with a significantly cheaper bid based on Starship so they got the contract.
Then the shenanigans started by Congress to get more money so that a second contract was awarded.
The Register 
Biting the hand that feeds IT
Copyright. All rights reserved © 1998–2025
