These repurposed jet engines sound a lot like the turbines used in gas peaker plants. It is expensive power that may be used for only a few hours a year.

https://www.enelnorthamerica.c...

IBM transitioned most of their workforce to "low cost geographies", mainly India. As of last year IBM employed about 270,300 people globally. Only about 50,000 were working in the United States.

>> Most of software development isn't writing code

I have about 4 decades of professional software development experience, and I get things done. I took a look at my AI dashboard just now. It generated 31,840 lines of working, tested, and documented code for me over the past 30 days as a result of hundreds of carefully thought out prompts. The previous month it was only about 11,000 lines. This is far beyond what anyone can do with no AI assistance.

>> That's not how that works.

Oh yes that is how it works, buddy. I've been a juror in a large civil lawsuit, anyone can sue you over anything. It may go nowhere, but if it stays in court both parties get full discovery. Depositions and document dumps for example. And if they defamed you, breached a contract, broke laws, or filed a "frivolous" or malicious suit you can counterclaim which puts them on the hot seat too.

Hey, people who are opposed to AI on principle are welcome to stand on that but as an active software developer I can tell you that it sure does do a lot of tedious work for me. I do have to look at the work product and make corrections at times, no problem. You don't want to use it for some reason? Who cares? But if you won't you will be completely outclassed by the people who do.

Even in the most trivial use cases you can get comprehensive documentation of existing code which is often worth a fortune. You can get a suite of unit and integration tests of your existing code with just a few prompts. Bug reports? Paste them into the chat window and it will thoroughly investigate and write debugging code if necessary. You can tell it to look for security vulnerabilities, unapplied patches, design flaws, performance sinks. A huge timesaver.

The great thing about lawsuits is that you can easily countersue, and then both sides get full discovery of everything the other side has.

>> can you name a mechanism or structural feature ..aside from the rocket engine and turbopumps

I expect that with enough time all aspects of the Starship could potentially be duplicated just from a general description. But it sure won't happen in less than a year like this Zhuque rocket.

"On 19 January 2024, Landspace conducted a successful vertical takeoff and vertical landing (VTVL) test using the Zhuque-3 VTVL-1 test vehicle"

And gosh, where did this come from?
"the company had previously announced plans to develop a 200-tonne class full-flow staged combustion engine BF-20, which is expected to be ready by 2028 for a future version of Zhuque-3"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

Yeah that's what they keep saying in order to justify the rampant theft, but in no way does that excuse it.

There are zillions of proprietary design features of the Starship rocket beyond just the engines and the shell. China has a long history of copying and/or outright theft of western IP.

https://saisreview.sais.jhu.ed...

>> stainless steel is only required for methanol handling parts

Nope, the entire body of the rocket is stainless steel just like the SpaceX rocket. Clearly it is a copy, and it wouldn't surprise me if China has hacked the entire design.

Maybe you didn't read it closely. "While all three bills passed the state Senate over the last month, leadership in the House declined to put them on a crucial calendar" where they might very well have passed. What did happen though, is that oil and gas are now getting subsidies that wind and solar are not.

"After decades of support for renewable energy made Texas able to produce more wind power than any other state, its political leaders have turned against wind and solar."
"renewable energy got so big that it threatened coal- and gas-fueled power in the country’s biggest oil and gas state"

https://www.texastribune.org/2...

>> because why else would the Texas legislature and governor do this?

The Texas legislature and governor are rabidly anti-renewables, mainly because they have been eating the lunch of their dirty energy donors.

https://thehill.com/policy/ene...

The silicone wristbands capture "volatile and semi-volatile compounds that are in the air and also compounds that adhere to the skin or are dermally excreted". This sounds like what's in your ambient environment, not what you are eating.

"Glyphosate and AMPA were not included because of their high polarity. They are not expected to be well absorbed in wrist bands", also interesting to know.

Farmers and neighbors of farms apparently get exposed much more than others, so city dwellers may have much less exposure people in or near agriculture.

"Overall average concentrations varied between 1.5 and 267 ng/g" but I am wondering if these concentrations, particularly on the low end, are enough to be harmful to humans. I also wonder if these pervasive pesticides are responsible for the massive decline in global insect populations.

"Previously, the White House had said the fee would apply to all new visa applicants", maybe they should have thought things through a little better before slapping on this arbitrary fee. But that isn't how the trump administration rolls, it's everything on a whim. I'll presume that Big Tech paid some hefty bribes to get this modified, plus a sizeable donation to the obscene white house ballroom.

I use it frequently, but not exclusively. It's great for answering any kind of question, and it supplies links to websites it scraped in order to get you the answer. Interfacing with it feels a lot like working with AI coding assistants.