Don't forget device drivers back in the day before all the chips got thrown directly into the motherboard. You might buy a nice soundcard, but the software that came with it (drivers and utilities both) were quite a mess.
I think a big part of Apple's success was getting both hardware and software right.
Because scent-languages would presumably be composed of several dozen (if not several thousand) scent components. Detection by artificial means is a hard problem, even in limited and highly lucrative domains (truffles, explosives, etc), which is why we still mostly use dogs/animals. Synthesis would require manufacturing stocks of all the various smell components, then aerosolizing them in the right combinations.
Audio, by contrast, has one variable--air pressure--to control with respect to time.
It's a two-faced ethos, praising decentralization and thumbing its nose at banks while simultaneously entrusting the bulk of its assets to entities that are strictly worse than banks.
If by "we" you mean Americans with in-demand technical skills and 6-figure salaries, then yes, we'll be okay. North America has a great setup for internal good security.
However, the rest of the world has to deal with losing 25% of cereals (from Russia and Ukraine) as well as the curtailment of rice imports from China, India, and Parisian. Similarly, the loss of Russia's and China's nitrogen, potassium, and potash exports cuts out ~20-30% of those resources, each of which is necessary to sustain post-industrial agricultural yields. This can easily cascade, for example, with Brazil and Latin American food exports drying up due to insufficient fertilizer input, or Saudi fertilizer output drying up due to regional insecurity or state collapse driven in part by high food prices.
So yes, "we" will be fine. North Africa and the Middle East... not so much.
“In retrospect it is clear that without all-up testing the first manned lunar landing could not have taken place as early as 1969,” von Braun wrote. “It sounded reckless, but George Mueller’s reasoning was impeccable.”
The window is bifurcating. The political left and right have moved so far apart that "middle ground" ideas appeal to very few and the extremes have more viability.
Just to extend this, there are a large number of plausibly legitimate reasons people might hate Musk. Maybe you're stuck in Tesla service hell, or maybe you retired to Boca Chica and now have to deal with rocket noise and road closures. Maybe you're an environmentalist who doesn't like to see a launch facilities next to a wildlife preserve. Maybe you're a Tesla employee who was injured due to company negligence. Maybe you're a Neuralink researcher who is embarrassed over Musk's absurdly fantastical claims about what your technology can do. Maybe you founded a visionary electric car company only to see it sabatoged and taken over by Musk and have him launch your vehicle into space. Maybe you're a stressed out worker at any of Musk's companies who resents his demands for a work/life imbalance. Maybe you're a market trader who lost money due to Musk's fraudulent "funding secured" tweet. Maybe you're uncomfortable with the constant stream of vaporware, dumb ideas, and bogus dates issued by a false messiah preying on the technological optimism of your fellow nerds. Or maybe you're just an American who is tired of seeing bullshit artists wag the dog, behave illegal and unethically, and never be held to account for their actions.
There are many good things one might say about Musk, but don't pretend there aren't any bad things.
For context, suppose Vogtle 3 & 4 generates 2200 MW during 16 hours of winter darkness. That's 35.2 GWh. If you had to replace that with Tesla Powerwalls you'd need 2.6 million of them or 22 copies of Moss Landing Energy Storage Facility (the world's largest). And that's back of the envelope numbers assuming a 100% duty cycle for the batteries and no degradation.
Rhetoric is an essential component of nuclear deterrence. You need to convince the enemy that you have the resolve and capability to retaliate, even if you don't/won't.
They have a romantic element to be sure. I think that's what keeps pulling entrepreneurial talent and private equity into these projects.
There's an old essay I can no longer find showing that airships are way too costly for their speed and payload capacities. There's a curve and they are simply way off it.
About the only use case that makes sense is picking up a moderately heavy payload in a remote location that severely lacks infrastructure, assuming you can (1) wait several days and (2) the weather is nice and predictable. Very niche.
Wrong metric: you're assuming the safety of a violent assailant matters. And it does, just not near as much as an innocent. You must weight by justice.
> Increasing knowledge is the only legitimate goal of science.
Should we build a super collider in Texas or a space telescope at the sun-earth L2 point?
There are many factors when considering what science to fund, but if society is footing the bill then the expected benefit to society should be a big part of the decision.
There's also the AI adage that you don't get to the moon by building successively larger ladders... all this deep learning stuff is great and will unlock amazing value (esp if we fund open data+models), but we run the risk of exhausting consumer and government patience if we keep promising the world with this single family of techniques.
You have four candidates who are all the same on paper--have the same qualifications, experience, etc--and will be serving as a critical liaison between your customers and the technical team.
Which one do you hire?
(1) The candidate with a face tattoo and ear gauges (holes) who was observed to "roll coal" when he left the interview in a lifted truck with entirely too many skulls and anarchist emblems.
(2) The one with an extremely thick accent that is near unintelligible. [HR says he has a top TOEFL score and satisfies the "speaks English" requirement.]
(3) The candidate who showed up a little late, a little underdressed, a little distracted--maybe demure--, and who just generally didn't seem to want the job.
(4) The candidate who is enthusiastic, pleasant, good at small talk, and who uses the "do you have any questions for us?" part of the interview to ask surprisingly pertinent/proactive questions about the challenges your team is facing instead of focusing on benefits/pay etc.
You might argue that many of the attributes I've mentioned are valid "professional qualifications". But remember, that term--under OPs law--will not be your notion of qualifications: it'll be a contorted mess of statue plus case law plus HR policies plus things you can clearly articulate in advance in the job criteria and prove to some jury against a plantiff with a sob story.
The person who claims they have no such beliefs is lying.
When you remove the human element (including intuition, tacit knowledge, reading of social-behavioral cues, and subjective assessments of temperament and character), you're going to get absurdities that cost society way more than any conceivable benefit.
I think a big part of Apple's success was getting both hardware and software right.