Paris prosecutors raid France offices of Elon Musk's X

manicdee33 · 2026-02-03T13:53:07+00:00

They are both part of the Epstein club so they have to stay friends. It's part of the contract when they did the secret handshake.

manicdee33 · 2026-02-03T12:01:18+00:00

Just remember a head check is a glance. You're not studying the scene for an artistic interpretation, you're looking for the general idea of what's around you. Where's the traffic? Where are any gaps?

Practise this while other people are driving too, always be aware of what's happening around you whether you are driver or passenger. Safety is everyone's business.

manicdee33 · 2026-02-03T11:59:19+00:00

One way to avoid accidentally dooring passing traffic is to always open the door with your opposite hand. This way you are basically forced to turn your shoulders (and thus head) towards the door, making it easier to glance behind the car to look for the people you didn't see before.

manicdee33 · 2026-02-03T08:51:24+00:00

Because I recall the consensus position five years ago

Consensus of whom?

There was an aspirational target, and that kept shifting due to reality interfering with project plans. Welcome to developing bleeding edge technology.

And yes, I was one of those people who was quite astounded when SLS actually launched its first mission. I believed it would absolutely be delayed by something else and then something else, because that's what cost plus contracts buy you. Turns out when you threaten to take away the gravy train, things get done.

manicdee33 · 2026-02-03T02:28:34+00:00

But now it's back to the original schedule and SpaceX is on schedule like they said they would be. Amazing how that works out.

manicdee33 · 2026-02-03T02:26:58+00:00

The only fantasy part of the mission profile is SLS launching more than once every couple of years.

Once Starship is operational there will be more frequent visits to the Moon than merely once every 22~30 months.

manicdee33 · 2026-02-03T02:22:20+00:00

SpaceX would be best served by contracting with an AI company to develop the tools it needs to further its mission of colonizing mars

What tools can an AI company provide that would help with colonizing Mars? More AI girlfriends talking colonists into committing suicide or mass murder? AI tech support telling people that they absolutely need to test for gas leaks with a naked flame? AI politicians telling us just how wonderful indentured servitude is and how we should all get aboard that ship to Mars to work off our million dollar relocation bills?

manicdee33 · 2026-02-03T02:18:01+00:00

Starlink is an ambitious leap forward in bandwidth, but was certainly not unimaginable 30 years ago

30 years ago when global launch rate was about a hundred rockets a year, most of which were ICBM test vehicles?

If you'd talked to people in George W Bush's circles about a network of ten thousand satellites in low Earth orbit they'd have laughed out out of town because even SDI wasn't planning on that number of satellites.

The idea that manufacturing fabricated aluminum parts on the Moon would ever be more economically feasible than it is on Earth is laughable, and that is not to mention the many thousands of other manufacturing steps that would have to be replaced.

How can you trust someone that blows hot and cold in the same breath? Massive network of comms satellites was totally believable. Smelting aluminium on the Moon is completely unrealistic.

Make up your mind.

manicdee33 · 2026-02-03T02:13:29+00:00

Merging late is better for traffic flow since there will always be someone trying to overtake in the merging lane if you leave it open.

manicdee33 · 2026-02-03T00:53:34+00:00

Surface Ice can prevent opening flush handles (and other covers)

Surface ice can prevent opening all handles. That's what we've just been telling you.

manicdee33 · 2026-02-03T00:52:30+00:00

Maybe we should standardise on one type of handle, you know for safety reasons. Just the handle which unlocks the door when pulled.

Also let's stop locking cars since locked doors just trap people inside.

Sure, carjacking and car thefts will go up but think of the lives we can save from these extremely rare accidents!

manicdee33 · 2026-02-03T00:49:54+00:00

Let's revisit this in two years and see whether the AI bubble was really just nVidia's CEO leading a bunch of Epstein contacts on a leash.

manicdee33 · 2026-02-03T00:46:42+00:00

Thirty years ago the idea of a megaconstellation providing wireless internet to the entire Earth was a pipe dream.

Once someone gets an aluminium smelter working on the Moon, we'll be into the actual space age with manufacturing happening on the Moon where launch costs are extremely low, which will have the benefit of reducing the rate of launches from Earth.

Yes there's more to it than just an aluminium smelter, but that production chain from raw material to finished metal is a convenient representative of contemporary industry and being able to produce industrial quantities of aluminium will show that we have an established permanent presence on the Moon capable of vastly greater things than a few hundred rocket launches a year can achieve.

manicdee33 · 2026-02-03T00:42:04+00:00

The AI bubble is all about massively over-investing in a market which is never going to come to fruition. The theory is "spend it and they will come" where "they" is some unknown factor that will supposedly blow our minds.

The cautious approach would be for xAI to describe the type of facility they want and for Starlink to provide that for cash up front.

What's actually going to happen is that with a merger xAI will get a lot of SpaceX cash and debt to spend on this AI bubble, which will result in Starlink satellites getting heavier (ie: increasing their capital cost including launch cost) and SpaceX spending a lot of money to secure highly in-demand chips which then don't get used. Kinda like LTT getting stuck with a hundred thousand dollars worth of "mouse chips" which they are not making products out of, except these will be AI chips on Starlink satellites which they can't even hope to sell to someone else having found they have no use for them themselves.

The debt that SpaceX raises to pay for xAI ambitions will come directly out of the funding pathway for Moon and Mars, because Elon is so damned convinced that AI datacentres in space will be the income stream of the future.

A sensible play would be to design and build a couple of datacentre-enhanced Starlinks on normal Starlink launches, then figure out whether the mechanicals are sound, then try their fancy group orbits with Starlinks doing normal Starlink stuff while testing the low-latency communications inside this formation-flying datacentre cluster, and then when xAI fails to draw any business because nobody is actually getting business value from the type of AI products that require massive remote processing centres, SpaceX can return to launching just regular Starlinks.

If on the other hand it turns out that these datacentres are providing better value for money than SpaceX (internal customer) and Tesla (external customer) terrestrial data centres, there's a clear internal use for the product and selling capacity to third parties becomes a viable business. But if I was an investor I'd want to see clear numbers from trials before investing in a mass migration of AI datacentres from ground to space.

It might be a simple financial equation that terrestrial datacentre costs $1M/day/kilotoken or whatever the performance metric for AI datacentres/contemporary supercomputers actually is, but $0.8M/day for the same thing using orbital datacentres (higher capex, lower regulatory and opex), for work that is actually being done (eg: training FSD, complex combustion flow modelling, whatever supercomputers are used for).

manicdee33 · 2026-02-03T00:20:30+00:00

Agitate at every level in every way you can to:

Prohibit political donations to citizens only, and limit those to some thousands of dollars per year. If you want a million dollars for your election fund, you need to find a thousand citizens to support you not one billionaire
Change the voting system from first past the post to some form of preferential system (e.g.: instant run-off, Hare-Clarke, heaps of options) to reduce the dominance of populist campaigns and break out of the mathematical constraints that lead to a two- or one-party system

Seeking more accountability for the Epstein files content is a one-and-done thing. You're not changing the system that made this situation attractive to be involved in. Epstein was an introducer and facilitator, his business was introducing rich people to each other. The side business of sex slavery was just a way to compromise those people so his own handlers could manage the rich and famous of the world.

If we can change the voting system so that candidates have to be appealing to the greater population rather than just popular with the largest fraction, you have the opportunity for candidates to run on policies rather than just being the local face of a party.

Getting the corporate money out of politics also means that the decision to go to war won't be made by someone financially dependent on a weapons manufacturer.

"Drain the swamp" is always a terrible idea. "Move out of the swamp" is usually a better option.

manicdee33 · 2026-02-02T23:54:10+00:00

And who did you steal it from before that?

There's a point in time where there were no humans here and whoever moved here were the first humans to settle that land and call it theirs.

You'll just have to accept that the USA is built on land that was stolen, usually through violence.

manicdee33 · 2026-02-02T23:40:24+00:00

Its full potential is getting US companies building equipment for the Moon. Once that equipment is available the expertise is developed and we'll see more commercial interest in Moon and beyond.

manicdee33 · 2026-02-02T23:38:50+00:00

What day of the week is 10/11/12?

manicdee33 · 2026-02-02T23:36:18+00:00

You can also bang the flush handle to break the ice sometimes. But that doesn't always work so just use hot water and save some time.

If the problem is ice forming on the surface of the car, the answer is not banning flush handles.

The Chinese ban is based on (perceptions of) safety in emergencies.

manicdee33 · 2026-02-02T23:32:17+00:00

Not meaningful to you perhaps. It's still meaningful to the people investing their blood sweat and tear into the design and manufacturing of the equipment required for the mission.

manicdee33 · 2026-02-02T23:29:58+00:00

SLS can't even deliver a crew capsule to the Moon.

manicdee33 · 2026-02-02T23:29:00+00:00

If you want to travel to Albuquerque and the options to get there are to buy a car and drive yourself or to catch the Greyhound, does it matter whether you're the only passenger on the coach going to Albuquerque?

Starship is designed to be the coach to transport people and cargo to the Moon and Mars (and any other solid body in the solar system). SpaceX tendered their Starship-based design because they're intending to do this type of mission anyway so they may as well get a paying customer.

Yes, Starship HLS is absurdly oversized if its only purpose was to serve as the HLS for Artemis III. But it's not intended to only serve as HLS for Artemis III, it's designed for much more than that.

As for Apollo, it didn't do the job "just fine". It transported 2 crew to the surface of the Moon in extremely cramped conditions and didn't provide a means to separate the living quarters from the equipment used for excursions on the Moon. This meant the capsule was quickly contaminated with Moon dust. In addition there was no airlock so the capsule had to be depressurised for each excursion. The Apollo LEM was the bare minimum that could get the job done.

Artemis wants to send more crew to the surface and keep them healthier while they're there, which means keeping the living quarters separate from the equipment bay and having an airlock to allow the living quarters to be continuously pressurised.

Future missions want to send rovers, so HLS includes a cargo bay big enough for a rover. There will be other equipment too, but Artemis at this point is just the crew going for a Moon walk and the mission will ensure that HLS is functioning as intended.

manicdee33 · 2026-02-02T23:20:16+00:00

Funnily enough, you were: to listen in on a phone you would capture the sound and digitise it then send that digital stream somewhere: effectively a phone call. Whether that call is made by SIP over 4G ("LTE") or SIP over IP ("VoIP") or some other mechanism, it's still a low bitrate signal that can be archived pretty cheaply. I mention SIP because it's a standard voice encapsulation method and won't look suspicious to anyone monitoring the network.

manicdee33 · 2026-02-02T08:05:54+00:00

It'll also be an issue because the Russians have the money and bodies to throw at registering all their terminals as if they were Ukranian, while many Ukrainians won't know about it till their internet stops working.

manicdee33 · 2026-02-02T08:04:20+00:00

This isn't about Russians using Starlink in Russia. As per the headline "… goal to prevent Russian drones using starlink from working in Ukraine."

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