They get a cut for products that support this. So they’re incentivized to display those instead. It’s pretty close to standard affiliate advertising and the biases that introduces.
This is not an update for SpaceX fans. It's aimed squarely at people who have opposed SpaceX's expansion in Florida at Kennedy Space Center and Cape Canaveral. These people have made arguments about safety and the environment as well as disruption to the operations of SpaceX competitors. Some of these arguments may be made in good faith but some are simply aimed at obstructing a competitor or political opponent. SpaceX is countering those arguments here.
To be fair, when a company's infrastructure construction, and planned operational activities have a significant impact on the local environment, it makes sense to explain and signal these up front. You can bet environmental groups and SpaceX's competitors are already lining up their objections.
Wonder which way they'd come down on this, seems like it might be a big (and free) attraction, if visitors could see the aftermath of those sunset launches. Seems like at ~60 miles away, the noise shouldn't be an issue.
Mostly, it's SpaceX detailing how increases in launch count and scale are necessitating infrastructural, operational and organizational changes at launch sites.
Oh how the times have changed. We went from waiting months from one Falcon 9 landing test to another and to the point where people are having to rethink how to run spaceports to be able to sustain SpaceX's insane "2.5 launches a week" cadence.
>as far as I can tell, this doesn't contain any real updates
I don't think that's true? Pretty rare to see incorrect info boosted so high without any factual challenge. Just lucky timing, I guess.
Can anyone point out where they previously read about these methane blast experiments and SpaceX sharing the raw data with regulators? This was news to me, and I follow SpaceX news pretty closely.
> you're aware that the space shuttle was "reusable" though, right?
Shuttle was reüsable on paper. It couldn’t unlock high-cadence launch because it was not built on an assembly line and had long, manual and error-prone refurbishment requirements.
Put practically, one couldn’t build a LEO constellation like Starlink or aim for in-orbit refuelling with the Shuttle. One can do the former with Falcon 9. One can attempt the latter with Starship.
I don't disagree, after all, the shuttles booster was(at least to my knowledge) more expensive them the reusable shuttle, but that's once again a qualifier to the statement that - without that qualifier, does continue to point to the shuttle.
> without that qualifier, does continue to point to the shuttle
The qualifier is only semantically meaningful. The engineering benefits one gets from reusability--low costs and high cadence--weren't there for the Space Shuttle.
The shuttle’s solid rocket boosters splashed down in the ocean via parachute, and were recovered and reused. The main engines and thrusters/rcs were also reused. Only the external tank was disposed. The issue with the shuttle (among many) was that the reuse was not actually economical due to the maintenance required between each launch.
I think its not really aspirational so much as it is long term planning. If you 20 years ago had told people the launch rates SpaceX is achieving now people would have laughed you out of the room. And this is not from SpaceX private launch site, but a government owned launch site. SpaceX has really been the driving force behind advancing the nations launch infrastructure and launch practices.
I don't see any reason why SpaceX should not continue to plan in such an agressive fashion, as there isn't really a clear reason that anybody can point out to about how its fundamentally impossible.
Its mostly competitors and activists trying to slow down SpaceX and post like this are trying to tell people 'look these are what we are planning and it will benefit everybody'.
The USSR averaged >1.5 launches/week from 1967 to 1989. SpaceX has exceeded that, but not by a huge margin. Once they start doing daily launches, it will be something people would not have believed 20 years ago. But we are not there yet.
It is a huge margin when you take into account the size of the rocket. Also, the area where SpaceX launches has so much more distractions and other users that it is more impressive.
The other way around. SpaceX benefits from modern technology and modern manufacturing capacity, which make scaling things much easier than during the Cold War. Overall production has grown greatly in most fields, and top companies often rival superpowers of the past in their field.
Labor cost have gone up not down. Rocket manufactre is still incredible labor intensive. The Soviet Union had very low labor cost. The only way SpaceX could do it is by innovating into renewables.
The Soviets did it mostly be mass manufacture of 1960 technology and most launches still today use the same tech.
Yeah it's a bunch of aspirational nonesense, their rocket is nowhere safe enough yet (or even in the near future), SpaceX is a proud member of the aspirational club alongside (the much loved by Hackernews members) intel foundry!
Why so? Falcons have reliably so many launches, they are undeniably the most battle tested rocket ever made. I genuinely have no idea, why are they not safe?
Yes, Boeing rockets have a much better track record on uptime, availability, and cost, like when that Boeing rocket famously saved the stranded astronauts after SpaceX demonstrated extended incompetence in getting a rocket up to space /s
I understand that you're being glib about buses or trains, but the driver is a large part of the operating costs of a bus, and additionally driverless buses might make more frequent but smaller buses more economical.
There are driverless light rails already, and there are cities that have built dedicated streets for buses which would be the first place I’d try actual driverless vehicles.
The reductive "you just invented $existing_thing" framing is so tiresome.
There are so very many opportunities for a better surface transport system than buses. Dynamic routing and scheduling, capacity somewhere between a city bus and a taxi, and potentially better economies of scale all make this far more appealing than what exists today.
Also – and I know acknowledging this will not go over well in some circles – requiring an app and a credit card will go a long way toward keeping riders of a certain disposition off the vehicles. No, it's not a perfect proxy for who will and won't make riding unpleasant or unsafe, but riders will intuitively understand it even if they don't want to think about it, and it will make a difference.
> There are so very many opportunities for a better surface transport system than buses. Dynamic routing and scheduling, capacity somewhere between a city bus and a taxi, and potentially better economies of scale all make this far more appealing than what exists today.
Anyone who knows something about transit already knows this is false. the idea has been tried and failed for hundreds of years. What people want is predictable transit that is there when they want to go and gets people places in a reasonable amount of time. Nobody cares about other stops.
People hate dynamic routing because it means they never arrive at the same time and in turn they can't use transit at all unless they plan to arrive way too early. Most trips are time sensitive, that isn't just the trip time, but also they have to be someplace at a specific time.
People hate dynamic scheduling because it means they can't take spontaneous trips. They can't be late for their planned trip. They will miss the bus once in a while because something didn't go to plan.
What people want is predictable routes that run so often they don't need to look at a schedule. They can figure out how to navigate it. Places people want to be will figure out those routes and location where it is easy to get to.
Okay, what people really want is Star Trek style teleportation. The point is to be someplace fast, not the journey. This is impossible though, so we compromise. the best compromise for transit is frequent systems that run predictable routes.
For some, but the reports I've seen suggest that for many it was just a cheaper Uber, but customers complained and stopped using it if they actually functioned as a dynamic pool. They could stop for someone who was already on the way, but they could go very far out of the way to pick people up before people complained.
An automated van that has roughly regular routes but goes slightly out of its way to pick up/drop off people would be a good middle ground between taxis and buses —- not unlike Jeepnys in the Philippines.
No, it is a terrible middle ground. They work only for people who are okay with being late to a meeting once in a while, or people who are okay with arriving far too early and then waiting once they get there. People who value their time want something predictable so they can arrange their time around things they understand.
This meme about self-driving cabs being glorified busses reminds me of the infamous Dropbox comment. It’s technically correct. But it misses the social context so entirely that it, when you realise it’s being seriously said, becomes farce.
> way these are pushed as "solutions to cities and traffic" make making fun of the too easy
It's funny. It's also dumb. An observation can be both at the same time--it's a cornerstone of humor. What it isn't is fundamentally true or revealing.
> their entire social context is "never encounter another human as you go from A to B"
Nope. It's recognising that humans have diverse and varying needs for interaction and privacy.
I like to dine out, even alone. That doesn't make everyone who eats at home alone an idiot. (That doesn't mean I can't make jokes about it. But they shouldn't be mistaken for truth.)
> What it isn't is fundamentally true or revealing.
Well, they are not a solution to transport problems, or to traffic jams.
Yes, they can be complementary to other types of transportation. Yes, companies will enshittify them beyond measure if/when they reach a certain proportion of cars.
> It's recognising that humans have diverse and varying needs for interaction and privacy.
No. I don't think this was even uttered by any of these companies.
> they are not a solution to transport problems, or to traffic jams
Nor to world hunger.
> companies will enshittify them beyond measure
A hypothetical applicable to every mode of transit, private and public.
> don't think this was even uttered by any of these companies
Things can be true without being in a corporate press release. (Also, you're the one who originally argued these services' "entire social context is 'never encounter another human as you go from A to B'." If not being in a press release is an argument against one, it 's an argument against the other.)
Though, in this case, it has been said: "Waymo gives you your own personal space to focus on more meaningful things" [1].
These companies literally hail themselves as "future of transportation".
> A hypothetical applicable to every mode of transit, private and public.
These are private companies looking for profit. These are not hypotheticals given what is happening to other cars and car manufacturers.
> Also, you're the one who originally argued these services' "entire social context is 'never encounter another human as you go from A to B'."
These are literally robo taxis. A taxi is literally a car that is taking you from A to B. And they are also removing the driver from them. Oh, and don't forget the existing of things like Boring Co. which exists almost solely to undermine public transport.
Their intended future is nothing but endless roads with isolated vehicles going from A to B. There's no other "social context".
I don't know if GPT-5 is an exception and is overcooked on XML specifically, but in general Markdown and XML seem to work about equally well for LLM inputs, the important part is just that they like hierarchical structured formats. The example on that page could probably be replaced with:
## Code Editing Rules
### Guiding Principles
- Every component should be modular and reusable
...
### Frontend Stack Defaults
- Styling: TailwindCSS
> Many data centers rely on evaporative cooling, or “swamp cooling,” where warm air is drawn through wet pads. Data centers typically evaporate about 80% of the water they draw, discharging 20% back to a wastewater treatment facility, according to Shaolei Ren, an associate professor of electrical and computer engineering at the University of California, Riverside.
The refrigerant is closed loop, but the condensers are sprayed with water which are much more efficient at removing heat than a fan + air.
I did some research on additional cost of water + increased efficiency of the condenser, but it's not just that. The water needs to be treated, otherwise it leaves way too much sediment.
AI data centres rarely actually need to resort to using water because they're using DTC and not air cooling, so we're looking at cooling 60 degree Celsius water down to ~40 which you can do compressorless with dry coolers alone. In practice many will use cooling towers instead or aswell but they still don't need to evaporate nearly as much water as a normal low density data centre would per KW.
By the way "spray the condenser" technology is very very rare because it's pretty much worst of both worlds and nowhere near as good or efficient as a cooling tower but much more maintenance than a dry cooler + compressor. Typically for high efficiency modern sites you'd be looking at cooling towers or dry cooler + compressor for water facilities or spray the water directly onto the air (direct or indirect adiabatic) for air based facilities.
To complicate things many (typically city DCs/Colos/ enterprise facilities) are air based facilities that convert to water by using heat exchangers in the datahalls.
I watched it and I found him less convincing than Dalio's Principles of a changing world order, which I found to be extremely intuitive although not at all rigorous.
Ezra gave Rogoff a lot of push back and Rogoff came off as a guy who intuitively understands things but doesn't rigorously understand them so he looked kind of foolish multiple times. Rhetorically he was poor and if I hadn't already gone in agreeing with his general consensus, I would probably have been left fairly unconvinced. Of course, the curse of knowing a lot is that your knowledge of what you don't know is much larger than other people's knowledge so it's harder to confidently present things because you can think of exceptions or why they might not be true or how things could be much worse or much better than what seems most likely.
Agreed, I left the episode thinking I didn’t take the right college courses to understand it. There were a lot of “proof is trivial” or “draw the rest of the owl” types of explanations
I find both Rogoff and Dalio interesting and useful. Useful because it is good to get my fellow Americans used to the ideas that US exceptionalism will slowly (hopefully slowly!) end and that a national debt much above 3% of GDP is a dangerous thing that will someday crush us economically unless some miracle happens and, for example, AI really does lead to hyper-productivity gains (I doubt this will happen, I guess I don’t listen to Sam Altman enough.)
