Posts by Elongated Muskrat

NHS would be hit by 'significant' costs if UK loses EU data status, warn Lords

Re: Surely this cannot be true

Why are you trying to divert attention from the fact that what was written was true false?

There, FTFY

Starting with the actual amount, which was false, and then moving onto the fact that we could give it to the NHS instead, which was also false, because the costs of leaving the EU far outweigh that number.

Still, brexit is like a religious cult. It doesn't matter how many facts you present these people with, they'll claim the opposite. It;s best not toe engage them. I know I'm breaking this rule right off the bat, but sometimes, the best trolling is poking the (definitely not Russian funded) bear and running away.

Musk's $1M election lottery raises serious legal concerns, says Pennsylvania governor

Re: 18 U.S. Code § 597 - Expenditures to influence voting, 52 U.S. Code § 10307 - Prohibited acts

So, what you've managed to do there, is describe some attributes of an autocracy, but conveniently jumped right over the definition, which is:

Government by a single person having unlimited power; despotism.

Good examples here would be North Korea under Kim, Russia under Putin, or, potentially, the US under Trump, especially if he is allowed to get away with his election interference.

Re: 18 U.S. Code § 597 - Expenditures to influence voting, 52 U.S. Code § 10307 - Prohibited acts

The far left tried to burn down the apartment complex where Ted Wheeler lived as they don't like him.

DOn;t know who that is, didn't hear anything about that, all of which is irrelevant. The bit you've missed by cherry-picking my comment is that this was not the act of the far left government or a far left politician in a position of power was it? You've cherry-picked a single nutter doing something nutjobby, and entirely swerved my point that there are, right now, far right people gaining positions of power, and there aren't far-left ones. Neither is good.

Tens of millions of people in the US are about to go out and vote for a far-right politician. That politician and his allies are happy to characterise the US version of "left" (which is more like centre-right, but there's the Overton window for you again) as "far-left" and "communist" to scare you into thinking that they are the rational alternative, whilst openly espousing far-right policies. I won't bother listing these for you, because it's not my job to educate you. It's your job. Go and fucking do it. Take some responsibility for the things you think and say, learn a bit of history, and if everyone did a bit of that, maybe we'd be able to head off the emergency the western world is heading into.

Those people who actually understand the terms you so happily throw about are in despair about how naïve so many people are. Honestly, instead of name-calling and fighting pointless culture wars, go and fill your head with some actual learning. I guarantee you'll benefit from it.

Re: 18 U.S. Code § 597 - Expenditures to influence voting, 52 U.S. Code § 10307 - Prohibited acts

Since you have invoked Godwin there, I feel it might be apposite to point out that Godwin himself has explicitly said it is fine to compare people to Nazis when they are acting like Nazis.

From the Wiki page on Godwin's Law:

In August 2017, while commenting on the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, Godwin himself endorsed and encouraged social-media users to compare its "alt-right" participants to Nazis

So now you know, it's absolutely fine to call your mates out for being Nazis, when they're being Nazis. Maybe don't be a Nazi, mmmmkay?

If you're having difficulty determining whether something you are saying or doing is directly comparable to the acts of one or another well-known fascists, maybe stop doing and saying them until you've checked and confirmed that you're not accidentally being a Nazi. You know, for your sake as much as everyone else's.

Re: Give away a water bottle and it's jail, give away a million and it's OK.

Still an obvious double-standard there, though:

Hand out water to promote one candidate over another: illegal

Enter people into a lottery to win $1M to promote one candidate over another: absoluuuuuutely fiiiiine

Re: 18 U.S. Code § 597 - Expenditures to influence voting, 52 U.S. Code § 10307 - Prohibited acts

So your argument here is "yes but someone else said this".

For fuck's sake man, get a grip. Take a walk outside, touch nature. Breathe. Get that blood pressure under control before you do yourself a mischief.

Re: 18 U.S. Code § 597 - Expenditures to influence voting, 52 U.S. Code § 10307 - Prohibited acts

The armchair psychologist is back, I see.

Re: 18 U.S. Code § 597 - Expenditures to influence voting, 52 U.S. Code § 10307 - Prohibited acts

Yeah, a term that appears to have caught on exactly as well as "the left can't meme" attempted meme, given that this is the very first time I've ever seen it, and I am frequently exposed to all sorts of nonsense on the internet.

All you've really demonstrated there, is that right-wingers, when they have realised that whatever argument they were making was flawed and unconvincing, move straight on to name-calling.

Here's a crazy thought, though: Just because the far right are wrong, that doesn't mean the far left aren't wrong as well. The bit that idiots seem to keep failing to grasp, however, is that not being far-right doesn't automatically make you far-left.

Now, the far-right is actively harmful, and a growing force in politics, which makes it an actual threat to people. The far-left isn't. I can't think of any liberal democracy that has elected a far-left leader in recent living memory. Again, centre-left politics, which is about as left-wing as you'll ever get in places like the UK and US, isn't a threat to anyone. The idea that you should treat each other nicely and give people basic human rights isn't a threat to you, it's only a threat to those who would profit off denying people those rights, freedoms, and respect. This is exactly why you see the billionaire-owned right-wing press in the UK vilifying the most vulnerable in society; you know - that meme with Rupert Murdoch sat next to a guy with one cookie, saying, "watch out, that foreigner wants your cookie" whilst hoarding a whole pile of cookies. Except, of course, if that was proportionate, those billionaires that right-wingers love so much would have many houses full of cookies.

It is literally obvious what is going on here - it's no conspiracy, it's just greedy sociopaths doing what they do best: lying, cheating and stealing to get rich at every one else's expense. Again, pointing this out isn't radical leftism, it's basic observation. "Right wing" equates to giving freedom to those most destructive elements in society to continue to accumulate wealth in this way, with no oversight or regulation. "Far-left" equates to confiscating all property and distributing it evenly. Most sensible people want the middle ground, of proper regulation to prevent abuse. This is why you should never trust anyone who talks about "cutting red tape" because, although they may present his as being to your benefit, what they actually mean is that regulations that are there to protect you from them, are preventing them from exploituing and abusing you, in exactly the way that they are designed to do, and they would like to trick you into agreeing to remove them. People who think that those billionaires are instead on their side, are known as "simps," or "chuds," but I generally refrain from using those terms, except for effect, because it's better to use a real argument, rather than name-calling. Sometimes, though, you just have to point out idiocy when you see it.

Re: 18 U.S. Code § 597 - Expenditures to influence voting, 52 U.S. Code § 10307 - Prohibited acts

Hello Jeel, err, I mean "Anonymous Coward".

How's that word salad coming along for you? Did you have a point to make, or just a bunch of trite ad-homs? A bit or armchair psychology thrown in there too, what a treat.

I'm pretty sure consumerism is a product of the neoliberal economic model of Reaganomics, not exactly a left-wing thing, now is it?

It's almost entertaining watching right-wingers demonstrating the myriad ways in which they are not clever, and have failed spectacularly to grasp the argument, whilst completely failing to realise that "not being right-wing" doesn't equate to "being left wing", and more than not being a white supremacist equates to being Chinese.

Yes, random stranger, I do consider the possibility that I might be wrong. It's this thing called self-awareness, and couples nicely with self-reflection. It's how you grow as a person and learn and adapt. It's how intelligent people move away from simple but wrong concepts, such as right-wing beliefs, to evidence-led centre-ground politics. It's not the fault of those to the left of you on the political spectrum that rational thought and evidence doesn't lead to your beliefs, and I'm afraid that those people only look like they're acting like they're superior to you because they're actually brighter. Do try to keep up.

Re: 18 U.S. Code § 597 - Expenditures to influence voting, 52 U.S. Code § 10307 - Prohibited acts

Oh, and you need to go back and re-read my post, because, unlike you, I didn't use the therm "far right".

You also, probably deliberately and deceptively, falsely equated "right-wing" with "right-thinking". The etymology of "right" as in "correct" is entirely different to "right" as in "politically right-wing", which originates from power in France being held by hereditary privilege. A little history refresher, if you've forgotten how that ended up: The guillotine; ironically, not entirely unrelated to the formation of the US as a republic, where the "republican" party is now very much the party of the political right despite the historic origins of its name.

History, bitches: learn some.

Re: 18 U.S. Code § 597 - Expenditures to influence voting, 52 U.S. Code § 10307 - Prohibited acts

Call me simplistic, but people who advocate far right views are on the far right. This includes a lot of the things that both musk and Trump advocate, as well as the groups they support (such as the "proud boys"), and your best buddy there, who you're always advocating for, Vladimir Putin, too. A more obvious modern-day fascist dictator is really hard to find*.

I'm not going to get drawn into what is or isn't "far right" because the information is there, for anyone who actually want to go looking for it, and the term is well-defined, as is "fascism". You can keep your rabbit hole to yourself, buddy. Comparing one polical extreme with another, on the grounds that it is a binary choice is exactly the rhetoric of fascism. Mischaracterise every alternative as something terrifying to force your will on others.

Most people without an axe to grind are neither "far right" or "far left". The fact remains, however, that there are plenty of far-right people on the internet, and that they tend to be very vocal. If you don't identify as one, then you should probably be careful about who you are associating with, and the things you are saying, because if it looks like a goose, and steps like a goose...

Perhaps remove yourself from the echo chamber you seem to have found yourself in, go outside, and meet some new people.

*worth noting, too, that the far-right Putin likes to hang around with the nominally far-left Kim, a good indication, if any were needed, that the far-right and far-left converge on dictatorship, at which point, any political dimension is entirely moot, because the people have no freedom to exercise their political beliefs. Trump has promised American's that if they re-elect him, they'll never have to vote again. If you think any of this is good for anyone, except of those in power, you, my friend, are batshit crazy.

Re: 18 U.S. Code § 597 - Expenditures to influence voting, 52 U.S. Code § 10307 - Prohibited acts

I see, and you are equating "not agreeing with batshit right-wing opinions" as far left.

I refer you to my previous comment about the Overton window.

I mean, if any more evidence was required that the right-wing is populated by idiots, I'm not sure what it could be, because this is such an obvious and complete breakdown of rational though processes.

You are aware, are you not, that "downvoting" is the accepted method of signalling your disagreement with something? And that something being unacceptable is good grounds for disagreeing with it?

Only in the mind of someone deeply down the rabbit hole is a large number of people disagreeing with you a signifier of "the woke mind virus" or whatever, rather than a straightforward indication that what you said might have simply been wrong.

Re: 18 U.S. Code § 597 - Expenditures to influence voting, 52 U.S. Code § 10307 - Prohibited acts

If throwing labels like 'far right' around is ok, so is 'far left', surely?

Except the internet is teeming with far-right simps, yet the number of actual far left commenters is tiny. What is massive is the mischaracterisation of everyone who isn't a raving Nazi as far left.

I mean, we don't see the internet awash with morons claiming that "Stalin did nothing wrong," do we? We do see fuckwits equating basic social security with Stalinism, though.

Re: Pay Me, Please.

Perhaps they could pay Jeel not to post here, on the grounds that he's turning off the sensible, sane, commenters?

A bit like the hungover wedding guests paying the piper to go away.

Re: 18 U.S. Code § 597 - Expenditures to influence voting, 52 U.S. Code § 10307 - Prohibited acts

"Why are so many on the far-left"

I think you need to go away and learn what the "far left" actually is, if you think there are many of them, anywhere.

This sort of thing is the mainstay rhetorical device of people very much on the right. Their Overton window has shifted so much from the centre ground, that they can't tell the difference between public goods, like road maintenance, and gulags, and it's all "communism" to them.

Meanwhile, they're quite happy to endorse a world where the vast majority of people work hard to earn a pittance in order to further enrich a tiny minority, whilst living in barely habitable housing and being unable to afford proper food, which is functionally indistinguishable from the very thing that they are mischaracterising the centre-left as being.

All this, whilst steadfastly ignoring the many examples of functioning social democracies.

It's almost as if having a tiny number of people hoarding all the wealth renders the distinction between left and right moot, but those people are still quite happy to have idiots argue about a simplified view of politics, whilst continuing to steal from them.

Re: Hasn't Musk already said that if Trump doesn't win, he'll likely be jailed

Hold on, are you suggesting that very rich people might not be entirely honest? I'm going to have to go away and think for a bit about the consequences of that...

Big browsers are about to throw a wrench in your ad-free paradise

Keep AI in the search engines, thank you very much as it is useful there in its summary answers at the top of the page.

I think you might be working with a different definition of "useful" to me. I have to now mentally skip past the AI bollocks at the top of the search results, as it is often not just wrong but contradictory, when I am asking the search engine to find something specific. It turns out that generating an answer based on the average of what the contents of the next sentence might be isn't particularly helpful when you want an exact answer, not a stochastic one.

Elon Musk's disaster relief promises: Should we believe the hype?

I suspect this particular poster also believes that the Nazis were socialists, you know, because they called themselves "National Socialists", and this tiny piece of information, taken wholly out of context, has completely bypassed any part of their brain that might be used for thinking.

The fact that they clearly conflate socialism and Marxism just demonstrates their ignorance. Their inability to correct their ignorance when presented with its existence demonstrates their stupidity. Being ignorant of something is nothing to be ashamed of, nobody can know everything. Holding a position based on ignorance after bing shown that this is the case is the problem here.

The left also lies incessantly and I would suggest more than the right.

"You were born with no genitalia and I would suggest also a cabbage where your brain should be."

See, anyone can come up with absolute unevidenced horseshit, and post it on the internet. Whodathunkit?

Meanwhile, there have been numerous studies to suggest that left-wing opinions are over-represented amongst those with higher intelligence, those in scientific and technical disciplines, and those working in the arts. Right wingers will point to this being evidence of some massive conspiracy against them, rather than draw the obvious conclusion that right-wing opinions are simplistic and wrong, so only thickies swallow them.

There's also this element of "sour grapes" that some sort of "left wing elite" are somehow subjugating them, rather than acknowledge that they are simply less intelligent, less talented, and less able than those who hold open-minded and inclusive opinions, and that their own prejudices and greed, are probably more likely to be the things that are holding them back.

You're welcome.

Re: FTFY

Nice projection you've got there.

Please give an example of me blaming him for something SpaceX/Tesla/etc. has done, that wasn't directly caused by him, or is this just one massive fucking ridiculous straw-man you're building?

Elmo is perfectly fair game when he does something stupid in his role as the owner of these companies, and he has all the usual responsibilities for governance that this entails.

Here's the thing, though, take a counter-example of Microsoft for example. Here's a company that often makes questionable choices. Why don't I criticise Bill Gates for this? Because, unlike Space Karen, Bill Gates isn't publicly making claims about Microsoft and he takes a completely hands-off role. Those bad choices are mostly made by marketing people some level below him. A lot of them may not even be "bad" per se from a business point of view, they're just shitty choices from a user's perspective. This doesn't mean I don't think there are valid things to criticise Bill for, either, but he sure doesn't make continuous and very public bad personal choices like Elon.

Meanwhile, Musk is publicly doing and saying things that are perfectly valid points for criticism. The people running his companies, when he doesn't interfere, generally do a fairly decent job of it, but pretty much every time he involves himself, for instance by deciding to fire all the moderation staff from Twitter and then give it a stupid name, based on his own ego-trip obsession with the letter X, it's a poor choice, made directly by him. He's a fucking massive man-child who, for some reason, people with cognitive difficulties seem to think is a "genius".

Re: FTFY

Which part of that was him? Was he cosplaying as a rocket booster now? Oh wait, you're giving him credit for the work of people employed by him, aren't you?

I expect he thinks he has done a bang-up job and has his sycophants crow about it when his cleaners get his toilet nice and clean too.

Opening up the WinAmp source to all goes badly as owners delete entire repo

Re: It might even be a useful application for LLM bot-based "AI" tools.

It's far worse than that, I'm afraid.

Your Honour, may I present Exhibit A: Windows 8.

I've always assumed that was a Jeff Minter reference, given that he has a thing for camelids.

Maybe ask Jeff?

https://www.polygon.com/23613576/jeff-minter-profile-akka-arrh-atari-llamasoft-arcade

Re: which permits forking but prevents distribution of modified versions

I'd suggest that if the compiled binary for the application (ignoring other projects and material included in the repo that doesn't compile into it) contains anything that is compiled from GPL's source code that is included in the repo, then that GPL license applies to the whole. IANAL though, and I only get one lifetime to play with, so I'm not going to spend it reading and analysing the GPL license terms for fun.

Re: which permits forking but prevents distribution of modified versions

In any git-based source control system (such as GitHub), and indeed pretty much any other source control system (how is Subversion doing these days? Anybody?), the word "fork" has a very specific and well-defined meaning. That will be almost certainly be the one they mean.

It might even be a useful application for LLM bot-based "AI" tools.

I can foresee absolutely no problem with feeding someone else's proprietary and copyrighted code into an "AI" LLM, trusting that it will remove anything problematic, and not use any of the copyrighted material for its own training model. None whatsoever.

Re: Simplest solution

40-something former users of Winamp? Probably most of us.

Yes, your network is down – you annoyed us so much we crashed it

Well, if they weren't a viable business, they weren't a viable business. Nobody has an automatic right for a business venture to be successful.

See also: Business owners who claim that if they pay their staff a living wage they'll go out of business and everyone will lose their jobs. If your business can't make a profit whilst paying people properly, but it can whilst it doesn't, then you're not in the business you claim you are, you're in the business of exploiting other people by driving them into debt. In this case, you're not a "business owner," you're a parasite profiting off the misery of others.

Re: Important word

Demanding payment and securing it by disabling a computer system until you get paid has previously been ruled to be a crime.

I think it would be down to a court to decide whether this constitutes "disabling a computer system" though, or whether it is withdrawal of a service (through technical means) following non-payment of a contracted debt.

IANAL, and I suspect you aren't either. The only time I've been in a courtroom has been as a juror.

Elon Musk's X isn't important enough to feel the full force of EU regulation

Re: WWhy all the kerfuffle about such a non entity ?

He mostly used other people's money to buy it, so its death won't take him down, unfortunately.

Yeah, some of that money came from the Saudis. They're not known to treat people who steal from them (which is how they may perceive it) particularly kindly.

TBH, a post-apocalyptic traffic warden is probably just about preferable to The Zuck.

So, yeah, not exclusively on "X" though, is it? For example:

https://www.threads.net/@networkrail

(I'm assuming you meant Network Rail)

Most public sector bodies now use Twatter as their main communication means.

[citation required]

I don't think I've ever come across any important public service that requires its use in any way. There may be government agencies out there that "tweet," but I would imagine that this is only in the same sense that they disseminate information through multiple social media platforms, in order to get a wider reach (such as posting links to services on Twitter / FaceBook / TikTok / Insta / Threads / Bluesky / MySpace / whatever)

I do know people who still use Twitter. They tend to be bloggers and podcasters, artists, etc. and there are small communities on there. As Elon makes the platform ever more toxic, more and more of them are leaving.

Twitter isn't a gatekeeper for businesses for pretty obvious reasons: In the same way that advertisers fled the platform when their ads started appearing next to far right "content", businesses who are not explicitly using the platform just for advertising, and using it as a platform will not want their brand to be tainted with the sort of adverts that are still there. The whole site is sliding into a cesspit of far-right bile exactly because of Elon's failure to moderate hate speech, in the name of "free speech", and promotion of content that reflects his own political views (see how quickly your tweet gets limited if you use the word "cisgender").

Biz hired, and fired, a fake North Korean IT worker – then the ransom demands began

Re: Identity

The problem with remote working is that it makes all this stuff so much easier for a rogue employee.

I'd argue that this point is completely moot as well. Where a person is physically located when they exfiltrate company data onto a pen drive is totally irrelevant. Unless a workplace keeps all employees under constant surveillance, from multiple angles in the workplace, if anything, doing this sort of thing "in the office" will be easier because you could just transfer those GB of data straight off a corporate network onto a pen drive, rather than having to squeeze it through a gateway server, VPN, and domestic broadband.

I think I can detect a faint whiff of someone who has an ulterior "get everyone back to the office" motive. You don't happen to be a corporate landlord by any chance, do you?

Re: Identity

That's nice, but it depends how much pushback the hiring managers give.

There's specific legislation that means employers can get fined very heavily for failing to do DBS checks on their employees, establishing their true identity, and their right to work.

If an employer isn't doing all of this, there's very strong odds that they're also not paying any taxes and operating out of a caravan in the car park of a disused industrial site as well. If this is your employer, you should probably dob them in. If it's you, then expect a visit from plod any day now.

'Newport would look like Dubai' if guy could dumpster dive for lost Bitcoin drive

Re: Ymerodraeth State of Mind

Wow, was that really 14 years ago?

Here's the link for those who need it...

Re: Has it ever occurred to M. Howells...

I reckon the inhabitants of South Wales might appreciate a drop in rainfall, but global warming is only going to make it wetter.

Whilst these are all valid points, if you had in your possession one bitcoin as of the time of writing, you could exchange it in various ways for currency, goods or services, worth £52,061.42 (according to Google), minus transaction fees, etc. Tomorrow, this could be £30,000, or £70,000, or pretty much the same value. Bitcoin's lack of utility stems from its instability, but this also historically has made many people who like taking huge risks quite rich by buying the lows and selling the highs. There is, of course, absolutely no guarantee that the current price is higher than any price it will ever have again, or that the "value" will slump to zero any second now. Caveat emptor.

My point is, that whilst the value is volatile and not a sensible investment, it isn't worthless.

As for the drive? If he chucked it in the bin, it legally belongs to the council, just like everything thrown into the big skips at the local recycling centre. It's theirs as soon as they take possession of it. I seriously doubt any 2.5" laptop HD is going to have fared well under tonnes of wet landfill anyway. Tough luck, buddy, here is a lesson in backing things up. I kept a copy of my wallet keys from my mining days (when it could be done cheaply as a curiosity), which means I got to "spend" the 0.1 or so bitcoins several years later.

Starlink was offered for free to those hit by Hurricane Helene. It is not entirely free

So let's rephrase - anyone BUT elon shows up with a request to define what would be an offer that wouldn't offend. What should the offer be ?

Okay, I got some down-votes for taking the piss, fair enough, but your question, if I am reading it right (and it really isn't well structured), of, "what should someone who isn't Elon do?" is a bit of a nonsequitur. I'll explain why.

What Elon has done here is to take a natural disaster, and use it as an opportunity to make a sales promotion. What he has "offered" in the guise of disaster relief appears to be a month's free trial subscription, to an otherwise expensive service. What should he have done? Not that. Honestly, not trying to use a loss-leader sales technique to ensnare new customers on teh back of a human tragedy.

What should people who aren't Elon have done? What they are already doing. Offering genuine disaster relief. Also, at this point, I should point out that the rhetorical device of "if you think that is wrong, what should be done instead" is a logical fallacy that blames the observer. The format for this is, "Oh, X did Y wrong did he/she/t? What would you do instead?" This presupposes that someone criticising the actions of another for being incorrect in some way is responsible for putting those actions right. This is a form of the tu quoque fallacy.

As it happens, Elon didn't "show up with a request to define what would be an offer that didn't offend," he "showed up" with a well known high-pressure sales tactic, with no sort of consultation on what was required, or how he could actually help people.

Re: UK Phone Operators often provide free calls to areas affected by disasters but you need a phone

This is the correct response to all of his acolytes. Slimy little brown-nosers who think billionaires wouldn't kill and eat them given half a chance.

Re: Free, just provide credit card info

See also: anything that requires your phone number to sign up. I had to supply one for a fucking DBS check the other day. Mandatory, unskippable field for mobile number. Why do they need that to do a periodic re-check for a job I've been in for the best part of two decades?

Re: 'SpaceX isn't just saying now ... you'll need to get a dish'

Starlink is doing a run-of-the mill "first month free when you sign up" deal, which excludes the cost of the equipment, and requires you to sign up to s $120 a month plan (probably with a minimum term).

That's what I see. Absolutely bog-standard marketing ploy, and fuck all to do with disaster-relief.

Not even the half-price-for-12-months sort of deal ISPs here in the UK throw out like free biros at a marketing convention.

First time's the charm: SpaceX catches a descending Super Heavy Booster

Re: There's a few telling things here

Please give us the benefit of your vast experience of running a rocket research and development programme.

Ah yes, the old "if you know better, do it yourself" straw man. What a worthless thing to say.

My point stands, if the people in charge of the launch were reportedly* nervous, and didn't appear to expect it to be successful, that indicates an expectation of failure. Admittedly, this was a test, where failures are expected to happen from time to time, but the expectation should be that things like smaller component tests, and modelling should give reasonable confidence of a success, not expectation of failure.

*Yes, reportedly, I'm not making concrete claims here, as you seem to think that I am. I am going on what is reported in the article.

Re: There's a few telling things here

The FAA is built for one test launch of significant test vehicle a year, not ten or one hundred and can't cope

Perhaps Elmo could fund it, then, it’s not like he's short a bob or two, it's just the concept of performing any sort of public service is anathema to him.

Re: There's a few telling things here

"Tight regulation" does not have to be the same as "bureaucratic regulation".

This is absolutely true, but I'm not inclined to take Elon's characterisation of it as "bureaucratic" at face value. Years of observation have demonstrated that removal of regulations based on their perception as bureaucracy is literally the mechanism that private equity has used to carve off massive chunks of public infrastructure and run them into the ground for profit.

Exhibits A-G: Trains, water supplies, the postal system, gas, electricity, telecommunications, healthcare...

Sometimes tight regulation is exactly what is needed to protect public goods and public safety, and the means by which it is removed is rich and greedy people characterising them as bureaucracy.

Re: To the Moon and Mars

SpaceX Raptor and Merlin engines are designed NOT to require a full rebuild or service after every launch.

This is a good goal to have. I do wonder how many uses they'll get before they do need this, though. Do we have enough launches with these engines to know the mean-launches-to-failure?

Re: To the Moon and Mars

1. That infrastructure cost is a one time investment.

This was my point, though. It's a one-time cost, if every landing is successful. Otherwise that cost (plus remediation cost) is multiplied by the failure rate, multiplied by the number of launches. If the failure rate is 1%, and you do 1000 launches, then you'd expect to be rebuilding it ten times.

All that red tape that Elon complains about is precisely because you want that failure rate to be as close to zero as possible. If you take a gung-ho attitude of ignoring safety and impact assessments, sooner or later, something goes bang loudly on your launch pad, and you need to build a new one.

Re: To the Moon and Mars

These are interesting sums, but certainly not the whole picture. There are a couple obvious additional costs with reusable boosters, beyond those of the boosters themselves:

1) The cost of the infrastructure required to "catch" the returning booster, I don't know how much this is, but could be comparable to that of the booster itself, or even more? Multiply that, plus clean-up costs, by the probability of a failed "catch" for the recurring costs. Are we expecting a 50% success rate, 9%, 99%? Succeeding first time is impressive, and it sounds like it wasn't entirely expected. If there is a failure here, what happens? The booster may not be full of fuel, as it would on launch, but will have enough in it to operate the engines for a controlled landing, so I can think of several failure modes here that would result in complete destruction of the landing tower, and the subsequent need to clean up a tangled mess of half-melted metal and toxic waste produced from an uncontrolled fire.

2) Servicing costs. Once a rocket engine is no longer disposable, and is intended for re-use, it presumably has to be designed to be stripped down and rebuilt after every use, and this servicing has to be performed. I don't know if the entire booster assembly gets disassembled and rebuilt, but if not, then I'd imagine the likelihood of failure on the next launch would rise significantly, due to uneven stresses and heating on the thing whilst it's belching flame and travelling at supersonic* speeds. After each landing, the landing tower presumably also has servicing costs, too. These costs may not be comparable to the cost of the booster itself, although I'd imagine it makes the engines more expensive than they'd otherwise be, but I'm sure they'd be significant enough.

*not having watched the launch, I'm not sure at what point the booster detaches, if it's reasonably early in the launch, it might not be going *that* fast when it detaches, but reporting suggests it was still travelling at supersonic speeds not long before landing. There's a very definite shockwave to deal with when breaking the sound barrier. It's worth noting that this was a suborbital launch, so won't have been trying to get anything to escape velocity, either which is a mite over 11 kilometres per second.

There's a few telling things here

Firstly, the clear surprise from the actual technical and engineering staff that this worked perfectly first time, which has the subtext that maybe they were pushed to try to do too much, too fast, amidst instructions "from above" to throw caution to the wind that go against sound engineering principles.

And secondly, this:

"Elon Musk also used the event to criticize regulators – commenting that getting the license "was the limiting factor" and "it will get far worse, potentially impossible, if the slow strangulation by overregulation continues!

...which tells us that Elmo simply doesn't understand the need for tight regulation with things that can explodey very quickly above other people's heads, and rain fiery death down upon them. This tells us all we need to know about Space Karen's attitude towards other human beings, which is that they are all disposable pieces of meat to be exploited for his own gains as required.

Never forget that people who would do away with regulations, especially safety regulations, and human rights legislation, are those who we most need to regulate, because otherwise they'd have us all in chains working in mines with no safety equipment.

BOFH: Boss's quest for AI-generated program ends where it should've begun

Re: Oh the sentiment!

Well, "AI" is currently at the point of doing things that are already easily automated (like boilerplate code), and producing code akin to that written by a junior programmer, with all the naïve implementations, poor performance, security holes, and wheel reinvention that entails, but with added random hallucination and incorrectness thrown in to boot. I think that those of us who know how to analyse and solve the problem domain properly are still safe for a while, for at least as long as it takes for the "AI" bubble to burst, and all those loss-leading massive data centres start to charge full whack for their services.