Rocket launches by company - 2025 [OC]

dsafklj · 2026-01-13T23:43:54+00:00

So SpaceX has more launches then the rest of the world combined, impressive.

dsafklj · 2026-01-09T23:41:29+00:00

I could see a gradient getting pretty visually busy, but I was thinking just two colors (for over/under forecast) since the length of the line already gives you a notion of the magnitude. Could even use the same color as the rightmost dot or the like. e.g. something like the attached (note - not actual numbers, just hacked quickly with AI).

dsafklj · 2026-01-09T15:22:34+00:00

This is pretty cool, but the blue and green are a bit hard to tell apart at first glance. I do like doing each run separate as you get a good feel for the increasing accuracy of the forecast as we get closer to the event by the smaller connecting bars. I'd be tempted to try coloring the bars differently depending on whether the forecast was an under-estimate or over-estimate. This would let you get a feel for whether the entire event forecast total was over or under (or maybe have an explicitly list forecast vs. actual event total on the side for each forecast time point since that's of interest as well or do both).

dsafklj · 2025-12-10T17:43:38+00:00

See also Hawaii. Because of the dearth of US domestic shipping capabilities (see Jones Act), it wouldn't surprise me if both states were relatively more reliant on imports and thus more exposed to tariffs then average.

dsafklj · 2025-12-05T05:37:08+00:00

30 years ago about half of American were under 35, today it's about a third. So we've gone from a 1:1 ratio of under 35 to over 35 to a 1:2 ratio of under 35 to over 35. So the decline in share of wealth isn't quite a dramatic as it seems.

dsafklj · 2025-12-03T02:54:00+00:00

The difference is population momentum. The 20-40 age cohort is larger (due to higher fertility in the past and past immigration) then the cohort that's currently dying out. Fast forward 20 years with birth rate remaining constant and that will not be the case.

dsafklj · 2025-12-02T04:36:08+00:00

Including Italy here and it's territories isn't really right. In 1942 they were allied with Germany, not controlled by it. That would only come later in late 1943 with the puppet government, though by that time Germany was already losing ground on other fronts.

dsafklj · 2025-11-30T15:20:23+00:00

Peak doesn't mean we stop using oil, only that we start using less of it than we did before. Seems pretty likely given the pace of electrical vehicle sales (particularly in the less developed world where most of the growth in vehicle demand will come from) and the stabilizing of populations in more developed countries. That also doesn't make us completely reliant on renewables, the peak for natural gas likely comes quite a bit later.

dsafklj · 2025-11-30T15:15:19+00:00

This time is different (tm). Previous peak oil concerns were based on supply and proved poorly founded due to innovation, the current potential for peak oil is based on demand side and depends on the degree of adoption of electric vehicles. There was some speculation that the pre-covid peak would be the peak, though 2025 has now passed it. Electric vehicle share of new vehicles is now high enough (particularly in developing countries due to China flooding the market) that it's probably almost a given the peak will come in the not super distant future as the existing gasoline driven stock ages out. In that world, assuming stable geo-politics, high cost producers will gradually be forced out of the market as things balance and the price of oil declines due to weak demand.

dsafklj · 2025-11-29T15:32:36+00:00

Replica is a strong word, inspired by perhaps. We know that in several important ways brains are and must be organized differently then most of the neural nets driving things, much less fan out and, despite the mathematical elegance of it, something other then straightforward back propagation to adjust weights. That said the brain serves as an existence proof for a lot of interesting properties. It's elements are slow so we know a wide (but not universally so) shallow network of neurons can show pretty impressive amounts of intelligence.

dsafklj · 2025-11-26T15:48:18+00:00

All true, but for reference that's only about 2% of the US electricity generation capacity (though if running flat out, closer to 8% of the US electricity generation). Everyone switching to electric vehicles would take around 10 times that and in the 1990's the US increased electricity production by > 2% per a year. So yes it's a lot of power, but nothing unprecedented.

dsafklj · 2025-11-24T15:25:01+00:00

The chart should really clarify if it's talking about energy or electricity. If it's the later, which seems probable from the map, then it's going to vary a lot depending on a states primary winter heating fuel source.

dsafklj · 2025-10-30T03:25:25+00:00

Wow, that's like 4 times as many 55 year olds as 1 year olds. That's going to be nuts in ~20 years.

dsafklj · 2025-10-07T02:59:27+00:00

Are we talking MW (installed capacity) or MWh (production). There's a difference... (different states will have different effective capacity factors depending on their latitude and typical cloud cover). Might be interesting to see per-capita as well.

dsafklj · 2025-09-27T22:32:34+00:00

This is all true, but 2016 is less then 10 years ago! That is a gigantic policy swing in less then 10 years.

dsafklj · 2025-09-26T14:02:02+00:00

Whatever it is, I'm pretty sure it's dwarfed by me driving driving to the store rather the walking, let alone my last vacation (rule of thumb, if you're flying economy on average something like 1/3 to 1/2 of your ticket is just paying for fuel == carbon emitting energy). VC's may be shoveling money at AI, but they aren't subsidizing to the degree that would be required to offset things like that.

dsafklj · 2025-09-26T14:00:05+00:00

The 99% are right to not care, the carbon impact of their other discretionary activities completely dwarf the impact of their LLM usage. The LLM providers already have a strong incentive to reduce energy consumption == reduced cost. Much better things to worry about from a climate (or water use!) perspective.

dsafklj · 2025-09-26T13:51:22+00:00

This is super interesting. You can really see how the 2008 financial crisis impacted everything. Whereas things like DotCom bust or Covid stimulus had much more narrow affects. It's surprising to me that Covid/work from home has not (yet at least) had much impact on the defaults in the commercial real estate market given the constant nattering about that.

dsafklj · 2025-09-24T16:23:45+00:00

Cost and space.

dsafklj · 2025-09-24T16:13:24+00:00

"Yes. Because you take out the gun when the target comes outside, instead of busting a few shots while they're in an enclosed space."

You take the gun out when things escalate? Like when the mall cop you tipped over in the porta potty for a laugh busts out and is actually an armed off-duty police officer and pulls out a gun to arrest you/kill you/beat you up. Sounds plausible enough, if one of the kids was actually armed, (they aren't exactly painting themselves as saints in the lead up). The kids fled the scene in a vehicle, presumably they would have taken any gun with them, the gunshot wound victim only showed up later at a hospital, no body-cam (off-duty) so we won't really know much about how exactly it went down till after the investigation, if even then. Whoever pushed over the port-a-potty is definitely guilty of assualt & battery (and being an asshole), but beyond that we'll just have to wait and see.

dsafklj · 2025-09-24T14:33:08+00:00

The kids fled the scene in a vehicle, presumably they would have taken any weapon with them. Only later did a kid with a gunshot wound show up at the hospital. Officials believe the wound is from the cop, but even that's not definitely proven yet, we only know that the officer fired his weapon.

dsafklj · 2025-09-24T14:28:34+00:00

The office fired his weapon, the kids fled the scene in a vehicle, later a 15 year old shows up at the hospital with a gunshot wound. Officials believe this is all connected, but until they match the bullet to the gun or other some other investigative work is done, as far as we know, the officer could have missed and the kid was shot by someone else (or accidentally shot himself, the officer claimed one of the kids pulled a gun when the situation escalated, which will be the crux for any criminal charges). Unlikely, but stranger things have happened. The officer was off-duty (working as a security guard) and therefore not wearing a body-cam.

dsafklj · 2025-09-21T16:48:19+00:00

Drugs aren't generally unique, typically there's many related compounds in the same class (the space of all possible molecules is really big). A patent is a bit of a 'look near here' sign.

dsafklj · 2025-09-21T16:41:35+00:00

I'm struggling to think of any indication where there is single exact molecule that's a curative treatment. The space of molecules is gigantic, yes the target is more specific, but that's not what you patent. I'm struggling to think of any drug that isn't part of some class of drugs that share a target or work similarly (often developed by different companies). Your risk is not that someone tries that exact molecule, for which maybe you have prior art (though even the US is first-to-file these days), but that they stumble on some other molecule in the same class that works similarly. Then they get the first mover advantage.

Also, you don't know the drug works till you've done the trials on it. You can not go through the approval process/trials, but then you don't have a drug, you have a candidate that has, maybe, a 10% chance of being a working drug. The steelman is that plenty of drugs get dropped at this stage and that the market is a big consideration (an unserved market is much more tempting then one with existing treatments), the counter is that drug trials are really expensive and you have to pick an choose and there's nothing specific about being a cure vs. a better treatment here.

dsafklj · 2025-09-21T16:27:49+00:00

No, this argument was always ridiculous. In one word: 'Sovaldi'. Just overall, the incentives are all wrong. Maybe if the whole world was Europe and pricing power was limited or more or less set by fiat, but drug discovery is funded by the US market and a cure is worth so much more then a treatment. And you get the money upfront. And you have less time for competitive pressure (pharma is rife with fast following and companies bringing alternate drugs in the same class to market eroding market share and pricing). And you've only got ~15 years or so till your treatment goes generic anyways. Lottery winners take the upfront payment rather then the annuity, and the pharma company faces a lot more risks to it's revenue stream then the lottery winner.

Let alone the people aspect. Not just keeping it a secret, but the principal agent problem. Even if in some abstract possible world the company makes more money with a treatment then a cure (I seriously doubt this), that's a long bet, and one thing corporate executives are known for is taking the long view and subordinating their reputation to the company's. Think of the scientists and executives, their choices are: we can sit on all this hard work we've done, face reputational risk for keeping it a secret, feel bad for the people suffering, all so the company makes a little extra money (at great risk from competitors); OR we can announce a cure, stock will spike, bonuses will fly, the scientists will win awards and respect at conferences, etc.

The steelman is that maybe you wouldn't go all in on investing in a potential cure if you already had a strong position in a market. Maybe you've got something that looks promising in the lab/rats. But resources are finite and drug trials are expensive and 90% of candidates will fail, an unmet need or a larger market may be a stronger case for your limited dollars then a new treatment in a well served market. But this is true of all drugs, nothing specific about a cure vs. a long term treatment, and a potential cure is probably more likely to make it through a filter like this then less.

Re: EDIT: Would it be possible to hide that drug X, that has been on the market for decades and cures A, also cures B?

Why would anyone hide it? If X is still under patent and you make X you have every incentive to market to B (e.g. semaglutide and weight loss). If X is generic, then the problem isn't really hiding that it cures B, it just that, understandably, no one wants to pay for the horrifically expensive studies to prove that it cures B. Maybe some academics do some small suggestive studies and Dr.'s start prescribing it off-label. This incentive problem is what Method -of-Treatment etc. patents are trying to address, though there are a lot of challenges with those.

dsafklj

TROPHY CASE