What the hell are you talking about? What?!? This entire issue was a solved problem with a simple carbon tax (which is a conservative leaning policy) and then one party decided their strategy was going to be deny, then delay, then pose it as a fait accompli.

I was pretty damn conservative on a lot of issues when I started college... as it became more and more clear to me -- from taking earth science classes -- that climate change was very obviously happening and that we've known about it since the 1960s and that no serious person trying to suggest that it's not being made worse by human activity, that's when I started to thing that the Republicans were not going to take this issue seriously, ever.

Any centrist or conservative person who takes the issues seriously has no idea what to do because on party just decided to just say "lol, who cares." How in the hell is that environmental movement's fault!?! You look at the UK and environmentalism is not a partisan issue. Here, we have idiots holding snowballs in congress trying to score cheap political points.

Obviously, they did not, however. The question is what could we (people who care about climate change) have done differently to get broader political support? The problem wasn't getting liberals to support action, it was getting conservatives to support it. Therefore, we needed to do something to appeal to conservatives.

Literally nothing. Environmentalists can have done literally nothing different. If an entire party is going to take it upon themselves to make "climate change is a hoax" and their constituents are going to go along with it, you just have a large section of the electorate making terrible decision that will make us all poorer.

This isn't something that's a negotiation. The leftist solutions were rejected, the liberal solutions were rejected, the conservative solutions were rejected, and even the right-wing "end our dependency on foreign powers" was rejected. This was a deliberate policy choice by the right, and it was an asinine one.

https://youtu.be/KtQ9nt2ZeGM?si=XwOG5FQ8qZ1AUBi5

My point is about how to accomplish the goal. If we care about climate change, how do we get political agreement? The only way is to find a deal that persuadable liberals and persuadable conservatives can agree on.

I still believe that if the West had built proportionally as many nuclear power plants as France, we would be in much better shape. But environmental activists fought them and here we are.

I think Elon going to the Trump side was another tragedy, mostly because of what it did to EV adoption, but also because it empowered the Republicans who deny climate change and reject solutions. I don't think you can claim that Elon's turn was good for liberals or for climate action.

These are two examples of climate action advocates pushing for policies that made the climate worse.

Saying this is our fault for not being "nicer" is an absurdity. This is being done intentionally.

If blaming Elon or Trump or conservatives in general could solve climate change, then it would have been solved. That's why I'm not interested in blame--not because they don't deserve it but because it's not going to help.

You can't. Liberals aren't going to kowtow to the American right (I don't even want to use small "c" conservative here because fighting climate change is a conservative position). At every point along the way it's made sense -- long term -- to fight climate change, and at every point the right has veto power

Look, I've always defended Elon Musk, even after he aligned himself with the hard right. By making EV's "acceptable" to the right, he changed the political alignment on the carbon issue, and he deserves credit there.

Even in blue states, with people assert that they are concerned about climate change we have much of the left states doubling down on sprawl as housing policy. We have people doing everything they can to signal that they care about climate, without being willing to give up their gas stove when given subsidies.

We're not even winning the argument very well with our allies. Politics is hard, even when people are open to being reasonable.

It's not the few green militant's fault if one side is denying and attacking science, the same way it's not a few crazy leftists' fault if one side is trying to undermine the rule of law and the constitutional order in order to cling to power.

See what I am doing ? I admitting that there are a few nutcases on my side. You ? You are just issuing a blanket defense of everyone on your side (in another comment) including the most egregious (Musk) while pretending to be in the center.

I am tired of all those fake centrists. "Sure he led a conspiracy to overturn the result of an election but on the other hand remember when Hillary called us deplorables ?"

Can't wait for accountability to make a come back

My argument is simple:

1. Not enough people support climate action.

2. We've tried demonizing people who don't support climate action and that hasn't worked--it only made them support it less.

3. Therefore, try the opposite: give people an incentive for supporting climate action. That means allying with political opponents, such as Elon or supporters of natural gas, or rich corporations. The broader the base of support for climate action, the easier it is to pass climate action legislation.

But in this post, I'm criticizing people who demonize Tesla to stick it to Elon. That's going to hurt efforts to combat climate change. If you think billionaires getting richer is a bigger problem than climate change, I understand. But that's why global warming is getting worse--because even climate activists would rather fight different battles.

Elon Musk is a half-closeted white supremacist, he was always going to side with Trump. I don't mean that as an insult, this is just what I could gather from his tweets, preoccupations and "roman" salutes.

> If we had created a broad-based constituency for climate action, say, working with industry to build nuclear power or supporting natural gas to displace coal or even funding more conservative think tanks, then we'd be in better shape.

Or those conservatives could have come up with their own version of tackling the issue: nuclear and gas displacing coal. Some of them did I believe, it's just not the version who won in the end. It seems strange to blame the other side for their own "aesthetic" preferences (i.e renewables)

I really don't mean to start a flamewar but your comment gives me the vibe of "I became a nazi because my daughter wanted me to sort my trash" meme or something of the genre where there is no accountability and you are always just reacting to the wrongs of the other side.

Unless, of course, the goal isn't to solve climate change but to demonize Elon. In that case, well done!

I would like to agree with you but saying "the people who care about that issue are irrational and should be doing X instead of Y" should not be used in defense of "I will deny the issue even exists and attack anyone who tries to alert about the issue"

That was my whole point and you missed it apparently. You just reformulated yours.

But this reminds me of the Israeli leader who was asked, "How can you sign a treaty with [the PLO, I think], they are your enemy!" And he replied, "You don't sign treaties with friends. You only need them with enemies."

If the political constituency for climate action were large enough, then we would have done something already. So we have to start pulling other people into the coalition.

People who oppose climate action are on a continuum. Some are climate change deniers and cannot be persuaded. But many would absolutely support climate action if the costs to them were low enough. Many more would stop opposing climate action if they got something that they wanted in exchange.

I started programming in 1980, and I having just as much fun now as I did then. I literally cannot wait to sit down at my IDE and start writing.

But that was not always true. When I worked for a larger company, even some startups, it was not always fun. There's something about having full control over my environment that makes the work feel like play.

If you feel like programming isn't fun anymore, maybe switching to a consulting gig will help. It will give you the independence and control that you might be craving.

I’ve seen the code current tools produce if you’re not careful, or if you’re in a domain where training data is scarce. I could see a world where a couple of years from now companies need to bring outside people to fix vibe coded software that managed to gain traction. Hard to tell.

Right now I'm creating clinical trial visualizations for biotech firms. There's some degree of complexity because I have to understand the data schema, the specifics of the clinical trial, and the goals of the scientists. But I firmly believe that AI will be able to handle most of that within 5 years (it may be slower in biotech because of the regulatory requirements).

But I also firmly believe that there is more demand for (good) software today than there are programmers to satisfy it. If programmers become 10x more efficient with AI, that might mean that there will be 10x more programs that need writing.

"The analysis has been optimized using neural networks to achieve the smallest expected fractional uncertainty on the t¯t production cross section"

I remember I used a library (THE library) from a German university which was all the rage at that time.

What is more interesting currently is things like anomaly detection using ML/NN and foundational models..etc.

2. I would be more receptive to this argument if they had listed some famous examples of successful, large systems that were built like this. On the other hand, I can easily list many failures: FAA Advanced Automation System (1980s), IRS Tax Systems Modernization (1990s), UK NHS National Programme for IT (2000s).

3. Waterfall vs. agile is a continuum. Nobody plans everything, down to each if-statement, and nobody wings it without some kind of planned architecture (even if just inside one person's head). Where you are on the continuum depends on the nature of the problem (are all requirements known?), the nature of the team (have they done this before?), and the criteria for success (are there lives depending on this?).

4. The analogy to building a building is flawed. At large enough scale, software is like a city, and all successful cities have gradually evolved in complexity. Come back to me when someone builds a 1-million person arcology on some island in the Pacific.

5. Just as some PhDs are sensitive about being called "Doctor", some software engineers are sensitive about being "real engineers". Stop thinking about that. What we do as software engineers is immensely valuable and literally changing the world (usually, but not always, for the better). Let's stop worrying about whether or not what we do is "engineering" and focus on what we do best: building complex systems that have never before existed on earth.

Lanyue, which masses 26 metric tons, can land two (maybe four?) astronauts on the moon plus a 200 kg rover. Space X's Starship is designed to land 100 tons on the moon--that's 100 tons of payload.

Let's say you want to build a small moon base, one that's maybe 100 tons (ISS is 400 tons). How many Lanyue launches would be necessary? Maybe 10? Now remember that each launch is expendable. It will cost China between $500 and $1 billion per launch. That's $5 to $10 billion for a moon base, not counting the cost of the base itself!

Starship is designed to be fully re-usable. Their goal is to get each launch to cost $10 to $20 million total. To land 100 tons on the moon, they will have to refuel in orbit by launching between 10 and 20 tanker flights. That means one trip to the moon costs $200 to $400 million maximum. Even assuming that Starship underperforms and can only land 50 tons on the moon, we still only need two launches for a total cost of $800 million maximum.

That is literally 10 times cheaper than Chinese capabilities; alternatively, it is 10x the payload at the same cost.

Of course, there are two major developments that Space X still needs to demonstrate: rapid re-use (to bring the cost down) and in-space refueling. And that's why it's taken so long.

But if/when they pull it off, it won't really matter if China lands first. The American program is much more ambitious.

Are we in another Cold War Space Race? What matters here? Being better at science? Engineering? Space tourism?

For the Chinese however this is their first rodeo.

This post is almost certainly wrong--as in, the existence of Big Foot is more likely.

Take an example like Haiti vs. Dominican Republic, two halves of one island. Haiti at #175 is near the bottom of the list in GDP per person, while DR is #71--above both China and Mexico. And consider that as recently as 1960, both had similar GDP per person.

And of course, there's the famous example of North Korea ($600 GDP per person) vs. South Korea ($50,000+ GDP per person).

If countries can diverge so radically, even though they share very similar land and peoples, it is much more likely that the differences between rich countries and poor countries is due entirely to external factors, like governance and history, and not the IQ of people.

Plus, it might be possible for other countries to emulate China and similarly grow.

But I'm pretty sure that neoliberal economics--particularly free trade--are what allowed China to rise so spectacularly.

[Edit] China's economy is so clearly Keynesian with Marxist characteristics that I have trouble understanding why would anyone even think they're neoliberal. China is the best live example of Friedman models being worse than Keynes (not that Keynes model was perfect, at all)

I think it's possible they turned out to be wrong on both counts. But if it had not been for neoliberals in the West pushing for free trade, China would not have developed as quickly.

For example, the PDP-11 (early 1970s), which was shared among dozens of concurrent users, had 512 kilobytes of RAM. The VAX-11 (late 1970s) might have as much as 2 megabytes.

Programmers were literally counting bytes to write programs.

Every programmer I know from that era knew how big things were in bytes, because it mattered.

Also, not all PDP-11 systems had VM. And the designers of SMTP certainly did not expect that it would only run on systems with VM.

Elon Musk has already revolutionized three industries:

1. EVs: Before Tesla, no one thought electric cars could be a mass-market product. And even today, the Model 3 and Model Y are at the top of almost all sales lists.

2. Orbital Launch: No one expected Space X to succeed. What does a software guy know about real engineering? But today, re-usable rockets are the way of the future, and Space X is at least 5 to 10 years ahead of any other company.

3. Satellite Communications: Every single major military power is trying to deploy their own version of Starlink. Before Starlink, 50 satellites was considered a big constellation. Starlink has 8,000 satellites and they are literally launching hundreds every month.

I know it's impossible to prove a counter-factual, but I'm convinced that none of these three would have happened without Elon. No other Western car company has (even now) produced a profitable EV. No other space company has prices as low as Space X. No one even has the capability to build a Starlink competitor (not yet at least). Without Elon pushing these projects, they simply would not have happened or would have happened decades later (after China or someone else beat us to it).

Even his not-yet-successful projects are far beyond most other companies:

Boring Company has actually built tunnels and passengers are actually riding it. No one else is even trying.

Neuralink has actually helped patients.

Tesla FSD actually does work (I use it all the time), and even if Waymo is ahead, Tesla is easily in second place.

I 100% get the hatred for Elon Musk. His political positions are absolutely worth criticizing and I cringe most of the time he tweets. But to deny his business and engineering ability is just motivated reasoning.

Such illusions are ultimately self-defeating. The more opposed one is to Elon Musk (in business or politics) the more important it is to see his capabilities clearly.

Boring Company bought an existing tunnel boring machine (TBM), and used it to dig a car tunnel. Their only “innovation” in terms of any cost savings is to dig smaller tunnels - which we already knew could be done (tunnel cost grows with diameter), and which we don’t do for good reasons (capacity, emergency egress).

The branding and marketing exercise was excellent though.