Yes, same. I am now really curious for someone to culture bread tags, milk tops and fruit stickers.

...and further imagine the science that could be done if we mass manufactured probes rather than using experimental engineering for each one. We could have had dozens of Voyager probes in the outer reaches of our solar system by now.

I would have loved to see more Huygens probes dropped to the surface of Titan or more New Horizons zoom past Pluto.

I don't think human spaceflight is to blame, rather it's what connects taxpayers to space exploration as an inspirational human pursuit. But, I do agree that can be more efficient with how we spend those dollars all around.

The JWST space telescope cost $10b. I've been excoriated here by suggesting that a twin could be built probably for $1b.

Seems like we should build at least 11, if it’s 11 for the price of 2. There’s a lot of cosmos to look at.

I think it's better to take a production line approach the way musk did with spacex rockets. That would give us a recurring fixed budget, career stability, and stable pipelines for training and research. It's bound to be far more cost effective and to have more benefits for society as a whole.

There's no good reason not to have a steady stream of space telescopes and rovers being sent out at a rate of once or twice per year.

With cost of launch to space finally coming down thanks to SpaceX & reusable rockets in general I would imagine this is how things will go much more often in the future.

Not only mass production but possibly cheaper materials, more in-space prototyping & less expensive ground testing and paper studies before launch.

That's what they did with Hubble. Of course the CIA bought them to point downwards...

I'm sure it took $$$ for the software developed for the JWST, and it would cost $0 to make a copy.

Agreed. Phrases like "journalists are currently gooning over OpenAI and Anthropic" really put me off. It's a poor attempt at modern muckraking; cheeky yet offering little substance.

He's just a Brit, writing in a style we write in. Sweary, comical, red-top. The Register did it for years.

I'm not a Brit, but I do enjoy British culture, including writing. I haven't been able to read any of Ed's rants to the end despite generally being on the cautious side towards LLMs

I don't think you know what "gooning" means. It's edgy Gen Z slang and has nothing to do with being British.

I didn't say it was. I'm just observing that his muckraking style is part of a very long British pundit tradition. Americans have never liked it — Intel got very upset about The Register's coverage of "the Itanic".

(And he's not Gen Z anyway is he; he's among the older millennials. He's appropriating it for muckraking purposes.)

Sure, but does that vibe invalidate the argument? What an odd time the middle of an argument is to be clutching pearls and worrying about prose quality.

Style and vibes notwithstanding, is there anything in your view that wrong with the argument itself? Could a better or more polite writer have convinced you with the same shape of logic?

I responded to a comment about the prose. Why are you not calling out that one instead?

> Could a better or more polite writer have convinced you with the same shape of logic?

If you're writing in an attempt to convince people of something, isn't how you deliver the message of critical importance?

This is basic Sales 101. The way you sell (products, services, ideas, etc.) is directly related to how successful you are.

He is not writing his blog to convince people, his primary audience already agrees.

That doesn't make him wrong.

> He is not writing his blog to convince people, his primary audience already agrees.

He's selling a paid newsletter, so at least one of his motivations is to make money. His target subscribers are certainly people who lean towards his viewpoint but he still needs to do some convincing because the market of people who are open if not warm to his thesis is much bigger than the market of people who already share his thesis.

> That doesn't make him wrong.

I think it's way too early for anyone pontificating about AI, the economics of AI, etc. to be declared "wrong" or "right". This is going to take years, if not decades, to play out.

Subscription based writing is all about writing for audience that agrees. Yes it creates bubbles, but economic of it is "people paying to read stuff they agree with".

I think this author makes a number of good points. So I'm part of that audience "that agrees" to a large extent.

But I would never consider subscribing to this newsletter and the biggest reason is the writing style/tone. I find it unpleasant.

So even when people agree with you, you can lose them by being abrasive, unpleasant, unlikable.

It shows that the author has a strong negative emotional reaction towards AI which likely influences his opinions and impartiality.

He is preaching to the choir, if you already hate AI you will love the article, if you don't hate AI already you will find the article insufferable.

Well, we don't have to speculate as to whether there is some sort of emotional taint on Zitron's thinking; it's shot through. But again, that does nothing to damage or offset _the argument_, which is available for your inspection and consideration, and you, as a thinking person, are handily capable of vetting. :) There is no need to use a heuristic; you have the thing itself.

It absolutely damages the argument. Not sure why you think your question is a gotcha.

Think back. Has there ever been a time when you were both correct and angry?

Would an angry Pythagoras' theorem be wrong, simply by virtue of his anger?

He was a bit bonkers anyway. But maybe:

The square of the hypotenuse — you multiply it by its bleedin' self — is LITERALLY equal to the sum of the squares of the other two sides. Again. Multiply each of the other sides BY THEMSELVES, and then add them together. It's that bleedin' simple Jim Cramer could do it. That number is the same as the square of the hypotenuse, no matter what idiot CEOs think.

...and as horrible as that writing is, Pythagoras would have still been telling you a true thing.

So too, Zitron?

> He is preaching to the choir, if you already hate AI you will love the article, if you don't hate AI already you will find the article insufferable.

I'm neither (or both, if you want - I can hate the direction its taking humanity while not hating my usage of it or opportunities it brings), and I definitely did not find his writing to be either lovable or insufferable.

I enjoyed reading it in a "smells-like-BOFH-but-in-finance" type of way.

It's fully in the BOFH/The Register tradition, yeah.

Some of his manner reminds me also of Max Keiser's "The Truth About Markets" which I credit with telling me about the subprime crisis a couple of years before it happened, even though people thought he was insane… because he kind of is.

It's difficult to take articles like this seriously when they use hyperbole like "...the most evil industry the planet has ever seen [oil]", never mind things like chattel slavery.

I don't own an EV and am sympathetic to the idea that other road users are far more damaging and thus should pay more, however, I would much prefer a flat tax over some insidious Federal tracking device that monitors how much I drive.

Worse yet, you might not have a choice; the article notes that “sprinklers are already required in all new California homes built in 2011 and later.”

Well, one choice would be to simply not live in California. There's no good reason why anyone would want to.

Make rice and beans, accept founders, hire batch partners and launch founders via demo day...to take over the universe.

United sadly removed games from its in-flight entertainment so I can no longer trounce 6 year old Magnus.

One simple solution here (and for all sorts of legislated fines and thresholds) would be to tie them to inflation; it looks like the fine of $5,000 dates to the early 90s.

I'm toying around with a custom board and searching here is far better than shuffling through the old Digikey filters. Awesome!

Awesome, that was one of the top reasons we built it, tired of clicking on strings lol. What are you working on specifically? Would love to chat and see what we can do to help!

I'm playing with modifying a BitAxe design (https://github.com/bitaxeorg) by allowing for more chips on a single board. It's theoretically pretty simple, but locating a buck that can handle the current I want to support is tricky!

You should be able to drop the specs you need into the zenode search and get some options; there's always so many choices for buck converters!

Are you looking at a multiphase design? I think I've seen a few chips that control multiphase converters: You'd get a much higher current design with just one IC (and a few extra inductors).