1,111 karma · joined October 20, 2017
https://www.youtube.com/@VideoFromSpace/streams
Or if you would like additional commentary and extra camera views, there are independent channels such as Everyday Astronaut, NASASpaceFlight, Spaceflight Now, etc.
https://www.spacex.com/updates/#sustainability
> SpaceX operates its satellites at an altitude below 600 km because of the reduced natural orbit decay time relative to those above 600 km. Starlink operates in \"self-cleaning\" orbits, meaning that non-maneuverable satellites and debris will lose altitude and deorbit due to atmospheric drag within 5 to 6 years, and often sooner, see Fig. 1. This greatly reduces the risk of persistent orbital debris, and vastly exceeds the FCC and international standard of 25 years (which we believe is outdated and should be reduced). Natural deorbit from altitudes higher than 600 km poses significantly higher orbital debris risk for many years at all lower orbital altitudes as the satellite or debris deorbits. Several other commercial satellite constellations are designed to operate above 1,000 km, where it requires hundreds of years for spacecraft to naturally deorbit if they fail prior to deorbit or are not deorbited by active debris removal, as in Fig. 1. SpaceX invested considerable effort and expense in developing satellites that would fly at these lower altitudes, including investment in sophisticated attitude and propulsion systems. SpaceX is hopeful active debris removal technology will be developed in the near term, but this technology does not currently exist.
> https://sxcontent9668.azureedge.us/cms-assets/assets/figure_...
> Fig. 1: Orbital lifetime for a satellite with a mass-to-area ratio of 40kg/m2 at various starting altitudes and average solar cycle.
https://www.starlink.com/updates#update10
> Starlink satellites operate in a low Earth orbit below 600 km altitude. Atmospheric drag at these altitudes will deorbit a satellite naturally in 5 years or less, depending on the altitude and satellite design, should one fail on orbit. SpaceX proactively deorbits satellites that are identified to be at an elevated risk of becoming non-maneuverable. This proactive approach minimizes the number of non-maneuverable satellites in space.
Musk isn't Tony Stark, single-handedly building everything. But then again, that's not how most innovations work.
Engineers who worked directly with Musk, such as Tom Mueller, have spoken about Musk's technical acumen and involvement in managing projects.
There have been many rocket programs, both public and private, that have accomplished less with more money. Bezos's Blue Origin, for example, started earlier than SpaceX and had a much richer backer for most of its existence, but is only now hoping to launch its first orbital rocket (and I hope they succeed).
There's more to it than just writing a check.
If the facts aren't on your side, then pound the law I guess.
My point is that the "mess" the original comment complained about was not a major environmental issue, as they implied, and that it did not prevent subsequent launches from being approved.
It's true that some people connected to SpaceX were also interested in missile defense, but that's hardly unusual given that we're talking about the intersection between defense and the aerospace industry.
To the extent that SpaceX enables missile defense it's in the same way they enable any other space endeavor, as a natural consequence of lowering the cost of lifting payloads to orbit.
Throw enough at the wall and something will stick.
I am not convinced he is correct in this case either, just that he's gotten the ear of a likeminded journalist.
The point that the launch did not cause major environmental issues remains true.
The fact that subsequent launches were approved demonstrates as such.
I would also point out that other rocket launches routinely dump their boosters containing solid or liquid fuel in the ocean.
I want to point out that while giving people time to comment sounds harmless, it's actually a systemic problem that's at the root of many issues.
Allowing special interest groups to delay development is a major reason why it's nearly impossible to build anything on time and on budget in the US.
If they don't cancel the project outright, or prevent it from starting in the first place via chilling effects, then the delays increase the price tag enormously.
Jerusalem Demsas at The Atlantic often writes about this:
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/04/local-gove...
> Development projects in the United States are subject to a process I like to call “whoever yells the loudest and longest wins.” Some refer to this as participatory democracy.
> Across the country, angry residents and neighborhood associations have the power to delay, reshape, and even halt entirely the construction of vital infrastructure. To put a fine point on it: Deference to community input is a big part of why the U.S. is suffering from a nearly 3.8-million-home shortage and has failed to build sufficient mass transit, and why renewable energy is lacking in even the most progressive states.
> . . .
> Every new development has so-called negative externalities: Construction is always annoying, trains can be loud and unsightly, wind farms may obstruct ocean views, and for some the simple knowledge that a nearby home is actually a duplex is enough to ruin the neighborhood character. Regardless of how valid you find any of these complaints, they should not by themselves be sufficient to block new projects, or else no mass transit, no new housing, no wind or solar farms could ever be installed.
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2023/03/national-e...
> Signed into law in 1970, the National Environmental Policy Act and its state and local equivalents require federal agencies to assess the environmental effects of major projects before they sign off on them. Supporters argue that NEPA “empowers local communities to protect themselves and their environment.”
> But NEPA is more burdensome than it may sound. As the economist Eli Dourado has documented, environmental-impact statements were initially very short—just 10 pages, in some instances. But now they average more than 600 pages, include more than 1,000 pages of appendices, and take four and a half years on average to complete.
> How did this happen? Lawyers—the answer is always lawyers. Over time, the courts have embraced more and more expansive definitions of what these statements should cover. And lawyers—terrified of getting their clients caught up in lengthy court proceedings where a judge tells them they should have thought through the fourth- or fifth-order impacts of an apartment building—spend eons fleshing them out. The goal is not to mitigate environmental ill effects but to get an A+ for thoroughness.
> . . .
> Caution and deliberation are good in moderation, but waiting cannot relieve this uncertainty; it merely changes its form. Doing can cause harm, but not doing won’t preserve the world in amber. Neighborhoods in desirable communities that don’t build more housing see skyrocketing prices and demographic shifts toward high-income, white, and older residents. And nations that don’t build the necessary renewable-energy infrastructure will be subject to the very environmental degradation that 20th-century activists tried so hard to prevent.
> The unforeseen consequences of blocking change should weigh as heavily as the ones that come from allowing it. Those lost students, missing refugees, absent neighbors, and failed government projects may never intrude on our sight line or cause us frustration during our commutes, but they cost us all the same.
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/10/environmen...
> Delays run up the cost of vital infrastructure and exert something like a chilling effect on new projects, as developers may not want to contend with the expensive legal battles that lie ahead. These laws have been used to stymie wind farms in Nantucket (residents dubiously claim that offshore wind kills whales), Martha’s Vineyard (the owner of the solar company that opposes the project lives near the proposed site part-time), and dozens of other purportedly progressive communities across the country.
> . . .
> Consider the way NEPA preemptively chills development or the fact that the delays themselves are costly. The economist Eli Dourado has studied NEPA’s failures for years, and he is skeptical that thoroughness and time spent should be read as a policy success: “If every review were done so thoroughly that it took 100 years to complete and the resulting lawsuit rate were zero, that would be a failure, not a success.” The problem is “the threat of litigation continuously increases the burden of NEPA review, rendering our agencies unable to make speedy decisions even in cases where it is obvious there is no significant environmental impact,” Dourado told me.
Also, as dramatic as it looks, it is hardly an environmental disaster. I daresay paving over the land with asphalt and concrete had a larger impact.
And there have already been several launches since then. Those went more smoothly and were not delayed. The reasons for the delay this time have nothing to do with this.
If it wasn't clear before, it should be clear in hindsight that the board's desire to welcome Altman back was, at best, overstated.
The leaks were probably an attempt to pressure the board or, failing that, undermine OpenAI.
For the mobile app I used one of the smaller Wikipedia subsets, since I didn't want to take up too much space on my phone. The full offline Wikipedia download is saved to my laptop.
If this (very sparse and lacking in detail) article is true, is this a genuine attempt to get Altman back or just a filip to concerned investors such as Microsoft?
Does OpenAI's board really want Altman back so soon after deposing him so decisively?
Would Altman even want to come back under any terms that would be acceptable to the board? If "significant governance changes" means removing those who had removed him, that seems unlikely.
The Verge's report just raises so many additional questions that I find it difficult to believe at face value.
I also wish Apple would make it easier to switch to a different credit card for a one-off purchase. And stop forcing everyone in a Family Sharing group to use the same credit card for all purchases
DDG's main search results mostly come from Bing, as the source for that Wikipedia statement reveals:
https://help.duckduckgo.com/results/sources/
> We also of course have more traditional links in the search results, which we also source from multiple partners, though most commonly from Bing (and none from Google).
Anyone can see this for themselves by comparing a number of Bing and DDG searches.
But short keywords must be manually assigned, so only power users for whom the feature is working as expected would encounter that behavior. (Power users have probably also learned how to minimize conflicts, such as by using two-letter keywords instead of a single letter.) The casual users that might be confused won't run into the issue in the first place because they don't even use short custom keywords.
When Chrome automatically detects custom search engines, it by default assigns the full domain name as the keyword, e.g. "en.wikipedia.org". What sort of user would type out "en.wikipedia.org elephant" and get confused when they're sent to Wikipedia instead of Google? Casual users would have typed "wikipedia elephant" instead and gone to Google as expected. Power users would know about custom search engines (and probably manually changed the keyword to something shorter).
It's not clear who this change is supposed to help. Casual users who are somehow using keywords set up by power users? Users who knew how to set up keywords but forgot how to use them?
On top of all this the change was not communicated to users, so users had to go to reddit to find out what had gone wrong and broken their custom search queries.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2020/12/18/zoom-he...
> Prosecutors said the China-based executive, Xinjiang Jin, worked as Zoom’s primary liaison with Chinese law enforcement and intelligence services, sharing user information and terminating video calls at the Chinese government’s request.
> Google’s own estimates show that eliminating those cookies will reduce advertising revenue to news outlets that show online ads by as much as 62 percent.
The fact that they're focusing on this, of all things, does not exactly boost my confidence that this investigation will be handled competently or in the public interest.
https://blog.google/documents/57/Overview_of_COVID-19_Contac...
Apple and Google should have included the chart in their announcements, IMO. It illustrates the process in a way that's easier to understand than text alone.
Chrome Settings > Passwords > "Export passwords..." (under the three-dots menu).
Not sure when you last checked but the option has been available since at least Chrome 66, which was released almost two years ago: https://www.ghacks.net/2018/04/18/google-chrome-66-password-...
I distinctly recall the option to manually import passwords being harder to find (solution is to either import them from another browser or enable a flag to import passwords from a CSV file).
Ironically Firefox currently still lacks the native ability to manually export passwords, relying on add-ons or third-party tools: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/20/technology/personaltech/f...
Not too many yet, but the writing is on the wall.
> "When Chrome launched...
... many of those same folks started to use Chrome, making it easier to miss Firefox bugs?
Jonathan Nightingale is claiming a company-wide conspiracy ("coordinated plan" in Jonathan's words) across "hundreds" of different product teams could be executed without any Firefox users or other internal Mozilla sympathizers picking up on it.
We're talking Google here: they have a hard enough time coordinating internally when they're openly trying.
This seems like a very complicated theory when the natural consequences of everyone switching to a different product provide an obvious and ready explanation for what we're seeing.
Ideally developers ought to test everything across different browsers, I agree, but we know in practice developers are only human and humans are lazy. And testing is still no substitute for using a browser day in and day out.
I want better support for Firefox and other browsers, but blaming lack of support on a conspiracy is an easy cop-out that doesn't help us address the real issues at stake.
Assuming the fatality rates are as given (3.2% versus 0.05%), that would be 3200 vs 50.
> it allows them to crawl websites more easily – before web fonts, many websites used pre-rendered PNGs to show web-unsafe fonts, which made crawling impossible