... when your mom is walking around.

Todd Barber should really give that engineer credit by name - dude deserves it for saving a 50 year old project with his idea. It wasn't a miracle, it was the engineer you decided not to name.

We shouldn't even have to manually file tax returns - the government should be calculating it for us and sending us a tax bill. The couple times I've messed up my taxes the government has corrected it for me and sent me a bigger return than I asked for - why did I have to waste an hour or two filling in the form wrong when they already knew what the correct amount was going to be?

There are some edge cases like self employed or people who have special situations, but those people can file amendments when the government provides them with the incorrect numbers. Better those few do it manually than making 300 million people do it manually when only a couple percent are actually unknown to the government.

Man their stock really got killed over the past few years with those losses - around $2 now, down from a peak of around $60. Can't believe they haven't figured out how to turn a profit selling luxury EVs. Those are eye-watering yearly losses, and not steadily declining either.

I've tried both and used to trust Brother more until I tried using them in dirty and constant-use environments. I ended up having to constantly replace the Brother printers while the comparable HP models just kept chugging with the same workload in the same environment. After going through a handful of Brothers I just ended up buying HP from that point on to avoid the expense and hassle of regular replacements.

Even though I understand the "unlimited copy" argument against it, I love the accessibility of having books searchable and instantly available when I need them. For instance the other day someone asked me a question about The Grinch Who Stole Christmas and when I googled it a link to the Internet Archive copy of the book came up and I was able to page through it and quickly get the info I needed. It wasn't a lost sale and it provided value for me at the same time.

Keep in mind RocketLab has done a good job at vertically integrating, so it's completely possible they're also building part or all of the satellites we're talking about, in addition to launching them, that could be another reason the customer went with them rather than SpaceX.

They already have launch contracts with their smaller non-reusable rocket, so it may be an existing customer that has confidence in their abilities. Or it could be a new customer basing their purchase off the existing track record. Launches are usually insured too so even if it fails they're out time but still get the capital back to rebuild their satellite. Obviously the customer would hope that's an unlikely scenario, but it massively mitigates the risk

It isn't that hard, if the design is a wheel/disc. The whole thing can be rotating in one axis but is "stationary" as far as docking is concerned if you're coming at it perpendicular to the wheel. Since the hub is always in the middle the orientation doesn't matter, and it should be rotating much slower than the outer ring so even if you have to time/align a locking mechanism to tie the spacecraft to it I don't see that being a wild operation.

... to the panopticon.

You could do it instantly by making the E-Verify system that already exists and is in use by US businesses a mandatory requirement to check all employees against. Unfortunately no one ever asks the politicians why they don't use this simple tool that already exists rather than trying to physically stop people. People who wouldn't come if E-Verify was mandatory because they wouldn't be able to get a job, as they do currently with fraudulent documents that are accepted by employers who intentionally turn a blind eye for cheap labor, and won't use the government database unless forced to do so.

And no that isn't a conspiracy theory, I speak from experience in the manufacturing industry. Using illegal labor is fairly common throughout the US, not just in the border states. If we need the labor then so be it, but do it properly and hand out quotas of temporary work visas for migrant workers and low paid work that can't be filled by American workers, don't just turn a blind eye and use it as a bipartisan campaign slogan that never gets fixed.

Completely wrong, given that an oil refinery has nothing to do with "wild guesses", "extraction sites", "drilling", and it isn't "a platform". It's the place they take crude oil and turn it into things like gasoline that you actually use, and are paid to do it. It's a service business, not commodity extraction business. That's why the person cited in the article didn't expect it to happen so soon, because demand hasn't fallen enough to cause the refining side of the industry to become unprofitable.

I don't think he's even looking to be on the playing field - he's probably just looking to own the field so he can rent it to Musk and other providers who actually need to use it.

I'm guessing the large fixed wing were signal relays for the smaller drones, we're seeing that a lot in Ukraine now so it wouldn't be surprised to see it deployed for surveillance by a state actor. And if the unit controlling the cluster of drones was mobile it would be hard to catch them with directional antenna triangulation as long as the flights are shorter than the time it takes you to even get near them, much less pinpoint their position. If mobile they can launch from a different area every day to reduce the likelihood your assets will be in the neighborhood.

If we threw a lot of resources at it over the course of several sessions I would imagine we could catch even a mobile unit, but it sounds like the government didn't want to put that much effort into it, or they did and are downplaying it to surveil the suspects and learn more rather than picking them up.

I'll let your AI assistant spend my money right after you give me an AI assistant that makes me money while I relax. More money than the spender AI uses. Deal?