Do we need all these launches? We, apparently, can't afford the Headstart program - a early childhood education program that's proven to help a lot of kids - at the cost of a few launches. We're too poor to provide critical drug and food aid to developing countries, (which is, essentially a marketing program promoting the US) so why are we spending $80MM on launches? Of course, I'm being facetious, we could do all these things. But, if we want to do that and reduce the deficit we need some of the richest people, and mega corporations, to pay taxes at a reasonable rate. There's simply not enough expenditure to balance the budget on the bottom 90%.

Are we going to start with the handouts to Elon that are funding SpaceX? Or maybe, we could start taxing billionaires at the tax rates that were in effect in the Bush era and have them pay their fair share of taxes (or at least some taxes). The ideological cuts that we're currently seeing are just that, politically motivated moves that will do little or nothing to solve the deficit.

Why is China making investments in industry bad, but the US doing the same is completely ignored. SpaceX, and the whole military industrial complex gets huge amounts of government funding. States and the feds offer grants and tax incentives to industry. There's money for R&D and other activities.

That a progressive tax policy, where billionaires pay more in taxes than we do, would be politically very popular, but totally unimplementable because those same people have long ago bought all the politicians (both sides of the aisle) because you need such huge sums of bribes, sorry, campaign contributions to get elected?

This article https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fkrghospitality.com%2F202... , linked from the FC article say $480/sqft for a coffee shop, but that included everything, insurance, staff training, etc. etc. The FC article suggests that this was more of a POC and not expected to be economical. I'd absolutely accept that, and the idea that costs for this approach could be expected to come down over time, except the emphasis of the summary is how efficient/cost-effective this approach is.

I suppose it depends on what's included but even then $850/sqft is still a surprisingly high number, even if you include high-end fixtures and fittings. The coffee equipment is not that expensive. This is in Brownsville, not a notably high cost area, maybe the total cost includes site purchase, then it might start to add up - but it's a little disingenuous to include that since stick-frame construction would also have that cost.

How is $1.2 million for 1400sqft a deal?

Is there a reference for this? All searches just return this article.

IIRC you could mix ASM and BASIC (certainly on the TRS80) so you had a way to write the code that needed performance in ASM and the rest of the stuff in BASIC. It's rarely faster to write everything in ASM. Write the non-time-critical code in a high level language - faster to write and debug - leaving more time to optimize code that really matters. That was true with C code until the compiler optimizations became so good that they would usually exceed anything a mere human could do.

BASIC really didn't get surpassed until Borland release Turbo Pascal in 1983.

A great expression and, unfortunately, currently the design metric for Washington policy...

They don't need engineers, as long as they've got lots of MBAs - Boeing proves that.

If the article is to be believed, there's nothing new and relevant. It suggests that all documents of any significance had already been released. The problem with an unfounded conspiracy theory is that the believers want the, non-existent, documentation that validates their beliefs to be released. I doubt that event the current President can satiate that appetite.

"Oceania was at war with Eurasia; therefore Oceania had always been at war with Eurasia."

I would say that recognizing a good pickup/drop-off spot is a weakness for Waymo. One time we had a clear space right in front of us, but the car choose to stop half a block down on the other side of the street. Legal drop-off in a busy spot pretty much impossible (for any rideshare) but I suspect human drivers would choose, for example, fire-lanes, rather than double-parking/blocking traffic.