I feel like you’re underestimating the power of SV moving fast and breaking things to learn quickly. Your attitude is why we’ve stopped hiring SMEs and PhDs in my underwater space launch / space elevator bio startup.
I would definitely buy an iPad Pro that had regular MacOS on it like a MacBook. Otherwise I have had an iPad for about ten years and it’s been collecting dust for about 9.5 (will sell a cheap iPad 1, DM me!).
18f was self funded by billing agencies for cost savings, basically. It was basically free for the gov, and made up of highly technical people, many of whom came from top flight Silicon Valley or SV-adjacent companies. That is to say, neither cost nor technical skill nor efficiency were issues for 18f, which means that this wasn’t axed because of their cost…
For the most part you have exactly the same levers to pull at people in the United States, sans voting in elections, but most Americans don’t even do that, and some specific things that require a physical presence, like protesting at the White House specifically.
Setting aside that you can do things about this and effect change, caring about something isn’t the same as being able to affect that thing, so your reasoning “people outside the US don’t care because they can’t do anything about it” is a bit off.
If the article was compellingly written I guess I would have gotten to it. But the author is a bad writer and uses tricks reminiscent of “read this list, item #9 will shock you!”
No thanks.
I opened another article someone posted by the same author and now that I know they write like this, u couldn’t make it through the first paragraph. Absolute trash.
Maybe, but I disengaged partway through (right after “I’m not going to bury the lede” and seeing there was a bunch more engagement filler immediately after, burying the lede). I will not read prose written like this.
Texas is just a much better and cheaper option. It retains the upsides of sea launches (being able to select location, being far from people) without the downsides (being out in the water vs landlocked). They can also take advantage of US infrastructure and legal stability, which are downsides noted in the article about equatorial locations, while retaining the upsides of those areas in the form of not needing to worry about pollution, and very malleable state laws. Basically Texas is as good as it gets if you’re amoral and running a company with large externalities.
Are you a child between the ages of 3 and 5? Because that's the typical age of a participant in the marshmallow test. This is like scoffing a kid not finding something on Dora the Explorer.