I was in the 2nd grade when that happened. From my perspective, it was a great novelty and meant we got to take (mostly unnecessary) flashlights to school that we used in the morning walking to our bus stop. It was a hit with the kids I knew. We were disappointed that the "experiment" was stopped.

Meanwhile, in the northern-most states, the kids go to school in the dark now part of the year.

U.S. Banks have managed OK opening after "business hours" start and closing before they end for pretty much the history of the U.S.

Even a few places where it doesn't actually rise in June because it didn't set in the first place and won't for another month or so.

Perhaps the EU needs to import more H1-B type talent to develop this new alternative.

We've seen how well it has worked out for us here in the US...[rolls eyes].

Maybe it is due to people who have enough money to have cars worth stealing from.....have moved OUT of the hellhole that CA is rapidly becoming, especially SF.

Less targets means less of that type of crime.

You never seem to want to differentiate between LEGAL and ILLEGAL immigration, like with your citations....I'd believe the number cited for legal migration, but the overwhelming vast majority are sick of the illegals here and happy that Trump for the most part has completely shut off the previously porous southern border.

Ask Jack Smith, but you should wait until the GOP in the senate is done embarrassing themselves trying to perjury trap him.

This is more like worrying when someone successfully brute forces a 6 bit RSA key (which has been doable for a very long time. 6 bits isn't much space to do an exhaustive search in).

The GP is correct, and you're misinterpreting the financial filing.

The industry widely acknowledges that SpaceX's economics are lucrative. Their marginal cost is an est. $15-25m/flight, vs. a typical commercial contract price of ~$65M and a NASA contract price of ~$100-150M. The small (as a percentage) GAAP operating loss on the launch segment is driven by two factors:

1) Starship development. That falls under the launch segment. Starship development is draining an insane amount of money (~$3B/yr), while earning zero revenue.

2) Internal launches. 3/4ths of Falcon launches are to launch Starlink. This books zero revenue for SpaceX launch services.

The fact that the loss is only ~$1/2B despite these massive leaches on profitability is specifically because Falcon launches are so profitable.

As for your claim that Starlink is "only making money due to free launches", no. Starlink generated $11,4B with $4,4B GAAP in 2025. Merely sum the Starlink GAAP profit and the launch GAAP loss and you'll see nearly $4B in GAAP profit, and that's including the huge drain caused by Starship development costing $3B/yr. Without Starship, the two combined would be turning nearly $7B GAAP profit.

The main leach in corporate profitability has nothing to do with space: it's xAI. They had an operating loss of $6,36B in 2025.

To be clear, it needs to get safely to orbit to be seen as reliable for launches. It doesn't need to make it back safely.

I'll take Things That Never Happened for $1000, Ken.

Meanwhile in reality:

1) It was not a case of "WorldVu approached SpaceX looking to purchase rocket launches". Musk and Wyler had been working through all of 2014 on a joint venture. They explored building a joint satellite manufacturing facility and were scouting locations in Florida and Colorado. The talks broke down (Wyler thought Musk's Starlink plan was too ambitious, Musk thought Wyler's wasn't ambitious enough (too expensive satellites, too primitive/conservative tech, too small in number); SpaceX also thought Wyler wanted too much equity ) and each went their own way - SpaceX in-house, WorldVu partnering with Virgin Group and Qualcomm. The former succeeded massively.

2) NEITHER SpaceX nor WorldVu came up with the idea; it was well known in the space industry for decades. It had already had startups try, starting with Teledesic (backed by Gates) in the 1990s. Other smaller LEO constellations like Iridium and Globalstar were already operational. The main scale and price limitations were launch costs, which weren't resolved until the Falcon in the 2010s.

3) SpaceX was already eyeing satellite communications before the JV with WorldVu.. As early as 2004, they hired Larry Williams (of Teledesic) and bought a 10% stake in Surrey Satellite Technology, specifically to explore space-based internet concepts. What WorldVu brought to the table wasn't "the idea of satellite constellations" at all: they owned priority spectrum rights. *That* is what SpaceX wanted from the JV. Not "OMG, this customer has a brilliant idea for a satellite constellation that we never thought of!!!" Wyler had bought Ku-band spectrum from the ITU that was originally allocated to a different defunct 1990s venture, SkyBridge.

except on reddit where moderation typically deletes wholesale sections of threads because wrongthink.

And that's why I specified "as practiced here," meaning on Slashdot. I don't visit Reddit or know anything about how it works, and didn't include them in my statement. Please don't assume that I meant anything other than exactly what I wrote.

If you'll take a moment or two to check the state's history, you'll learn that when Spain ruled, the name of the province was "Nuevo Mexico," or New Mexico.

** "because of its high vaccination coverage"