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Joined 9 months ago
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Cake day: December 2nd, 2023

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  • Charles Bolden once remarked that the congress would have shut down the Apollo program if they lost vehicles at the rate spacex does now.

    Well, yes. But it was really a show of force towards the soviets and anything that could be construed as ‘failure’ would be sensitive. And it was all public money so things were very political and optics mattered. Society was also hugely different in the 60s.

    Also in the years before mercury a lot of stuff went boom, of course. Apollo was built upon those failures.

    I have a feeling that for SpaceX the opposite is true. Every time they shoot something up it’s press coverage, even if it blows up. As long as they’re not blowing up people they don’t get the boeing effect.

    Consider the first flight. They decided to launch it without a flame deflector or a deluge system. They thought that it would be OK based on a hot test of the superheavy at half thrust. I don’t think any other rocket company would have made the same decision. Even if the concrete slabs didn’t shatter into a thousand pieces, the reflected shock wave would have been damaging enough to the engine compartment. They predictably lifted off with several failed and failing engines.

    Yeah that was indeed very stupid. Agreed. Especially for the environment. They were right to get flak for that.

    If this afterthought feels like a conspiracy theory, remember the time when Musk made a change to starship after Tim Dodd (earlyastronaut) asked him a question on the same? Or the time when someone on Twitter asked Musk why they didn’t start two raptor engines and then shutoff the underperforming one during Starship’s flip maneuver at landing? They do this now. Afterthoughts are evidently not a rare thing at SpaceX.

    Could be yes… But don’t forget, it is their money. They’re clearly rushing to market and cutting corners, but as long as they don’t blow up people or property, it’s kinda their problem. And it has worked for them with Falcon 9.

    I do agree they are kinda cowboys but they do also have a point in some ways: Field testing is better than theory. I’d rather step into a rocket that has flown 30 times than one that has never flown before but a whole team of scientists think things will be fine.

    But yeah you still need theory and they could do a better job at that, I do agree there.



  • Oh it works great for me. In fact a lot better than the Rift did with its dedicated trackers.

    It’s also handy to just pop it on and not have to set it up. I often bring it to the office and I’ve given a demo for friends, it’s much harder with lighthouses.

    And the cost of them is just insane. If they were 100 bucks for a couple it’s fine.






  • Yeah that slogan really captured very well the intentions at the world economic forum.

    I know it’s not what they officially stated but it really captured (they since walked it back and said it only was meant to “describe emerging trends”) the intentions of what happens when they all come to Davos and divide the world between them.

    But I don’t believe “as a service” models are more sustainable. They will just enable more rent-seeking behaviour meaning we will get even less for our money. The incentive to deliver will be even lower as they will get paid anyhow.


  • And the longer the time between episodes, the smaller the chance it would generate new sales because existing users lost interest.

    True, but with that particular game what didn’t help either was that there were many years between episodes, it was pretty awful. It’s one thing I really hate about episodic gaming. But Valve already proved it to be a failure, only Telltale And Dontnod still do it (and they do it consistently right, to be fair).

    The rest of the gaming industry has gone on to “Early access” which is even more awful. Rather than buying the first part of the story for a lower fee, you now pay top dollar for a game which isn’t even finished and never might be because once you pay them there is no real incentive to actually finish it :)

    But really, most categories of mobile games don’t interest me. Arcade and other simple crap like angry birds never interested me even in the 80s. Adventures yes but they’re few and far between on mobile and if they are they’re almost always desktop ports anyway. FPS really really sucks on mobile for me, the input is just too crappy and the screens too small.



  • Well in this case it’s not really about the fact that they’re Belgian. Because unlike China there is a big separation between state and corporation here. It’s more the fact that it’s only two private concerns which is hardly competition.

    Also, due them being based abroad the local legislation has less grip on them. The exact country they’re from is indeed less important as long as it can be considered friendly.


  • Media ownership by foreign countries is indeed a worry.

    Even in Holland we have this problem: 90% of the media companies (newspapers, magazines, websites) are owned by only two Belgian mediaconcerns. This is not a smart thing to do. But we never hear about that here.

    Not that there’s an explicit problem at the moment but such a huge imbalance is not smart IMO.



  • But this, in fact, is what actual war looks like these days: Sometimes it’s a volley of 300 missiles and drones, and sometimes it is lean, targeted, and carried out covertly. Gone are the days of vast conquering armies and conventional military confrontations between two parties.

    So, like what’s happening in Ukraine right now?

    I mean they use drones for some deep strikes causing minor damage but most of the actual advancement is made using artillery and boots on the ground.



  • On telegram it’s one of the many things you get if you pay for premium.

    I really like Telegram, they are really thinking about what the user wants. Live translations, icon packs, bots that can add amazing features to channels. I gladly pay for it because I use it so much, most of the communities here use Telegram.

    Whereas the signal devs are just sitting on their high horse and doing nothing but stupid cryptoscams.