Gateway, SLS, Orion, are dead, and Artemis is on the chopping block.
SLS deserves to be cut, as Boeing clearly failed. Orion too. No big loss there.
But I have a hard time believing it's a coincidence that the budget favors Musk in a major way, with SLS/Orion to be replaced with "more cost-effective commercial systems", and $650M increase in budget for human space exploration plus $1B for Mars exploration.
And this is NOT about saving money or reducing federal spending -- it's shifting money away from science to defense and border security, which is increasing by $150+B. So short-sighted.
Many SPA websites don't need to be SPAs, and the overhead in terms of complexity vs "old-fashioned" server-side ajax calls (even using something as "ancient" as jQuery) is not worth it, and do not improve the user experience.
If the gov 1) shows that it's willing to take extreme action that is outside the bounds of the law or at the least accepted practice, and 2) makes it clear that it's not afraid of getting sued and is even willing to ignore the courts, then 3) threats of the type described in the article are very effective because you have to assume that the government will take things to the next level if you don't comply, regardless of the legality of their threats.
That is how authoritarianism works. It's been very effective in China where companies and institutions are cowed into compliance. For example, censoring by social media companies. Companies self-sensor their users' content so the government doesn't have to. Why? Because if they don't, they know they will get in trouble in some way, and it may on the surface be completely unrelated (like these veiled threats about tax status).
The freight rail network is fairly expansive[0] -- sure not as much as the Interstate road network, but has pretty good coverage.
The reason trucks are so popular and necessary is because they go beyond the interstate highways. Until self-driving trucks handle that portion safely and successfully, they're not much more useful than trains.
This wildly misunderstands the nature of modern trucking. Trucks have many different roles, they're not just trains that don't need tracks. Trucks can work as on-demand transport, they can do low-volume, infrequent trips, they can aggregate and offload containers much easier, they're universally receivable at both ends with a minimum of infrastructure, etc. These autonomous trucks are competing with long haul human-driven trucks taking stuff from one depot to another, not short haul trucks.
Yeah, sounds almost like Musk's hare-brained plan to put self-driving teslas (driving with only a couple metres separation) in paved tunnels. I guess some people really hate sharing the bus/car/train with poor people
Quite the opposite - right now (or at least in the future unless interventions are added) poor people have no option but to submit themselves to driving sandwiched amongst with 10 ton trucks driven by who knows what, vibe coded, beta tested, "AI" software.
> SCOTUS' ruling on Trump's presidential immunity blew a massive hole in the guardrails.
Not really; aside from the various limitations on it (full immunity only for a few core Constitutional functions, case-by-case immunity for other "official acts" depending on impact to function of the office, no immunity aside from that), criminal prosecution after leaving office is almost never the decisive constraint on Presidential action, and that's all the immunity applies to.
What blew a massive hole in the guardrails is the a faction fully supporting Trump being an authoritarian dictator unbound by law securing full control of the GOP, and the GOP securing a two-house Congressional majority. (It doesn't hurt that they also control a majority of state legislatures and a near majority of states both legislature and executive helps here, too.)
Yes, I agree that the Trump faction gaining control of the GOP is a huge problem and without it we'd be experiencing wannabe king Trump 1.0 instead of de-facto king 2.0.
But while technically you're correct, the implications of that ruling was that Trump could not be held accountable for the Jan6 attempted coup, giving him a huge boost to do whatever he wants with impunity. The significance was more psychological than technical. I don't believe we would see such bold power grabs by Trump if the SCOTUS had ruled against him.
Because it's clear the strategy now is 1) break all the rules; 2) let them sue; 3) if it ever makes it to SCOTUS our chances are decent, besides the fact that by the time it makes it through the courts to SCOTUS it will be too difficult to reverse what's been done. And in the meantime, use all the power of the Exec Branch to neutralize anyone who might oppose (legal firms, gov agencies, states, federal judges, etc.).
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