justaguyonline (u/justaguyonline)

justaguyonline commented on Blue Origin has emerged as the likely buyer for United Launch Alliance arstechnica.com/space/202... · Posted by u/ms512

justaguyonline · 2 years ago

They were always the most likely buyer if you were paying attention.

I admit to being pretty disappointed at the confirmation though. Blue Origin would of done just fine without this merger and 3+ companies competing for US space launches instead of 2 would of been healthier.

Maybe Tony Bruno will launch his own space company? I always thought Boeing and Lockheed were holding him back.

justaguyonline commented on Big Pharma spends billions more on executives and stockholders than on R&D arstechnica.com/science/2... · Posted by u/PaulHoule

jimmar · 2 years ago

It seems like we want for-profit pharmaceutical corporations to act like non-profit institutions. Any idea why non-profit institutions haven't risen in the world of pharmaceuticals?

justaguyonline · 2 years ago

The broad frustration against pharmaceutical corporation isn't simply because they're for-profit. It's because they're not actually taking on the risky business development that profit seeking is supposed to be good at. If we can stop the free riding happening, for-profit pharmaceutical corporations would be just fine.

justaguyonline commented on Accuracy of Commercial Sleep-Trackers Compared to Research-Grade Tools mdpi.com/1424-8220/24/2/6... · Posted by u/PaulHoule

justaguyonline · 2 years ago

The inability of wrist trackers to identify deep vs light sleep might cause frustration to some, but their automated sleep journaling is actually more than enough to help change the lives of people with insomnia.

For some reason we had to slap complicated sleep scores and sleep classification on these things to take them seriously when all you needed was simple data gathered consistently over time.

justaguyonline commented on Northrop charges on fixed price lunar Gateway module reach $100M spacenews.com/northrop-ch... · Posted by u/justaguyonline

justaguyonline · 2 years ago

I'm pretty skeptical of the given reason of “cost growth stemming from evolving Lunar Gateway architecture and mission requirements combined with macroeconomic challenges". IMO this is more indicative of Northrop not having the needed engineering talent to run their programs.

The article goes on to mention that Northrop took part in creating the design and architecture of the lunar Gateway under an earlier cost plus contract, which seems at odds with the idea that architecture cost growth was out of their control.

In the end, this is why you hire and retain skilled IC talent. So you can utilize their experience and insight to discover hidden issues and better technology paths before things leave the drawing board.

justaguyonline commented on The World Needs to Know What Happened at the Wuhan Lab wsj.com/articles/wuhan-vi... · Posted by u/jkuria

simonblack · 5 years ago

Similarly, The World Needs to Know What Happened at the Fort Detrick Lab.

justaguyonline · 5 years ago

I was confused by this post because I'd never heard of a Fort Detrick before but I found these articles explain well what's happening: [1]

Domestic propaganda push in china is leaking externally, including posts by a non-existing Swiss scienist that has the Swiss embassy protesting. [2]

With the Wuhan lab theory we at least have independent confirmation of gain of function research at the lab and knowledge that covid virus fragments were sequenced from the area before the real outbreak started.

[1] https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-58273322 [2] https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-58168588

justaguyonline commented on Fox News Is Sued by Election Technology Company for over $2.7B nytimes.com/2021/02/04/bu... · Posted by u/nwotnagrom

ibejoeb · 5 years ago

> Smartmatic accused Rupert Murdoch’s network of promoting a false narrative about the 2020 election

I can't wait to see the evidence. That'll prove that the devices are auditable. They are, right?

If anyone in government really wants to have a notable legacy, here's how: petition the USDS to create an integrated open-source election system, and get people like Matt Blaze and Harri Hursti to run a red team against it.

Enough with the foreign companies creating and operating black boxes. Enough with the smears against people who call for entirely reasonable verification while we have absolute top-tier experts regularly showing us that these systems are deeply flawed. Make elections trustworthy.

justaguyonline · 5 years ago

The most incredible factoid for me: These machines, the Smartmatic machines, weren't even really used in the election.

>Smartmatic technology was used only in Los Angeles County, California in the 2020 election. The system we provided to LA County does not count, tabulate or store votes.[1]

A single county in the whole of the United States used them. Verifiable or not, there's nothing this company could of done to change a national election outcome.

Someone somewhere started repeating that Smartmatic currently owned Dominion when their only connection was that they had sold off Sequoia Voting Systems——which Dominion currently owns, more than a decade ago.[2][3] Once that false factoid got in the system it was a convenient enough fact for some political factions that it got repeated everywhere.

[1] https://www.smartmatic.com/us/smartmatic-fact-checked/ [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smartmatic#Sale_of_Sequoia_Vot... [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dominion_Voting_Systems

justaguyonline commented on Of 18,000 backdoored servers, hackers followed up on only a few dozen arstechnica.com/informati... · Posted by u/rckoepke

fortran77 · 5 years ago

Not every server is useful, I guess. People used to use backdoored servers to send spam, but that's harder and harder to do from untrusted IP addresses.

justaguyonline · 5 years ago

Not every server is useful for gathering intelligence on a nation either it seems.

Thinking about it, if you want secret information by definition only a tiny fraction of the networks out there are going to have it— anything most of them have wouldn’t be a secret anymore. So any attackers are going to focus the majority of their energy on exfiltrating data from the most likely/productive extreme minority of their infiltrated networks.

justaguyonline commented on Elon Musk moves to Texas ktvu.com/news/tesla-ceo-e... · Posted by u/cft

justaguyonline · 5 years ago

I wonder if the wealthy leaving California to avoid state income taxes now that the federal government penalizes states collecting it will finally be the impetus it needs to reform it's terrible property tax system.

And make make no mistake, if there's a large outflow of the moderately well off and up out of Califonia in recent years, it's probably because our last Congress capped the state tax deductions they could take.[1] Effectively making Bluer states pay for the most recent nationwide tax break.

Kind of a moonshot, but it's nice to imagine states leaving income taxes to the federal government because of this and just switching to land value taxes.

Some kind of fairer sales tax like a VATS are another alternative, but I hear too much about the trouble people have with them (added bureaucracy, carousel fraud) to actually like the idea.

[1] https://taxfoundation.org/tax-basics/salt-deduction/