High quality, slow motion video: https://x.com/dwisecinema/status/1935552171912655045
Readit Newsjlmorton commented on SpaceX Starship 36 Anomaly twitter.com/NASASpaceflig... · Posted by u/Ankaios
I think it’s interesting that SpaceX is struggling so much with the shift to a full flow staged combustion engine using liquid methane.
We knew from the Soviet that it was going to be really hard but after the successful flights I thought they had it in the bag.
We might be touching on the limits of SpaceX constant tweaking fail fast approach.
There's a high quality slow motion video available [1] that shows the problem was almost certainly a failed pressure tank, not the engines.
jlmorton commented on Moody’s strips U.S. of triple-A credit rating ft.com/content/e456ea34-c... · Posted by u/Anon84
Why is the phrase "reduce spending" never anywhere to be seen with these awful takes?
The only solution is for the Gov to stop spending money it doesn't have. I don't know how you can insinuate that de-industrialization and taxes are a viable strategy without addressing the root of the problem. It would be like telling someone with a gambling problem that spending more time at the casino and less time at work would improve their finances.
Because the major categories are very hard to cut:
Social Security: 22% Interest on the Debt: 14% Medicaid: 14% Medicare: 14% National Defense: 13%
That's 77% of the budget in those categories.
Everything else is 23%. The Federal deficit is ~25% of receipts.
You could cut each and every function of the government other than the above and still be left with a deficit. And there isn't a lot of room to cut everything else, as they've already been squeezed for decades.
jlmorton commented on I've largely replaced Google with ChatGPT for looking things up twitter.com/paulg/status/... · Posted by u/nomilk
I hate peoples unrealistic expectations of AI but also find Bing CoPilot to be really useful.
Instead of structuring a Google query in an attempt to find a relevant page filled with ads, I just ask Copilot and it gives a fully digested answer that satisfied my question.
What surprises me is that it needs very little context.
If I ask ‘ Linux "sort" command line for sorting the third column containing integers’, it replies with “ sort -k3,3n filename” along with explanations and extensions for tab separated columns.
> If I ask ‘ Linux "sort" command line for sorting the third column containing integers’,
Wow, that's actually quite a lot. You can also just say "sort 3rd col nix."
jlmorton commented on When Oregon blew up a whale with 20 cases of dynamite (2024) katu.com/news/local/explo... · Posted by u/gscott
The blown up whale in Oregon is sort of like the SR-71 speed readout story. Reposted endlessly, but you just kind of accept it.
> no chance Starship is developed using steel without Musk
What are you basing this on? It was carbon fibre or steel. SpaceX tried carbon. The bake was too inconsistent, so they went with steel. This was the stated and obvious design path since Falcon Heavy’s design trajectory plateaued.
Steel is by no means obvious. No one else in the industry uses it. (No one else in the industry uses carbon fiber, either, except things like fairings).
The obvious choice that everyone uses is aluminum, or various alloys, like aluminum-lithium.
> He is a complex individual, and he still deserves the credit for founding SpaceX and being chief engineer
Musk founded SpaceX. He hasn't been a chief engineer in anything but title for a long time. To the extent he deserves respect, it's in giving its team the insulation he's denied Twitter and the American people.
There is absolutely no chance Starship is developed using steel without Musk. There is absolutely zero chance that Mechazilla would exist without Musk. These are massive elements of the Starship program.
Now, it's true enough that he didn't literally _build_ these things. He is the CEO. Steve Jobs didn't build the iPhone.
But these programs are very obviously shaped by Musk to a large degree.
jlmorton commented on O3-mini simulated scikit calculations emsi.me/emsi/llm-chats/o3... · Posted by u/emsi
There's a methodological flaw here—you asked the model to generate an example, and then simulate the results on that example. For all you know, that specific (very simple) example and its output are available on the internet somewhere. Try it with five strings of other random words and see how it does.
I did exactly that, and it was very close to the actual sklearn output.
jlmorton commented on O3-mini simulated scikit calculations emsi.me/emsi/llm-chats/o3... · Posted by u/emsi
Well, the code in question is also written by the same LLM, so it could just output something it knows the answers to already. On its own, this result doesn't really seem to prove anything.
I tried with alternate values and got the same result - not quite precisely exact, but extremely close values.
jlmorton commented on Caltrain's electric fleet more efficient than expected caltrain.com/news/caltrai... · Posted by u/ssuds
Wait, BART director is an elected position? Why don't I get to vote on it?
(Also, while I am biased towards Caltrain, the new trains beat traffic on 101/280 San Francisco↔San Jose during rush hour).
It shouldn't be, though. There is way too much democracy in California localities.
There should be no elected school board, transit districts, utility boards, assessors, sheriff, and so much more. No one is properly informed about candidates for these positions.
For that matter, the Board of Supervisors should have no power other than oversight and impeachment. The Mayor should basically be a local dictator, with the power to do anything the State authorizes the municipality to do, at their sole discretion, with the oversight of an elected board.