shirro
Population booms in good times hence the boomers during the post-war economic expansion. It isn’t a Children of Men scenario. Parenting is one of if not the biggest economic decision people face in their lives.
No single issue like free child care will change things. Unless we see real wage growth again and better affordability of housing and utilities we won’t see higher birth rates. It is a huge sacrifice for many people and turns very stressful in a bad economy.
I have been watching system76 from afar for a long time and everytime I upgrade I look at their systems but I was never confident of local support. I bought an equivalent to one of their early laptops from a local company once. I think it is great that they are bringing more design in-house as rebadging generic systems limited their documentation and repairability.
While competition is good I can’t look past Framework at the moment. They shipped to me direct from Taiwan as fast as a local delivery and I know I can repair the system so it removes all the concerns I had about dealing with a niche foreign company. I see no value in PopOS or the other user space stuff from system76. Open firmware is an advantage but I think framework will get there eventually. As much as I respect system76s mission I think their business model is dubious. They should have gone in-house open hardware earlier and I think the userspace stuff is a pointless distraction.
My kids have been gaming all day on Steam. They have zero intellectual curiosity about the system they are using. They have been using Arch for years but it might as well be a console or Mac. They log in and launch a web browser, Steam or a Minecraft launcher and that is it. It makes me a bit sad.
It could be bunnies
I don’t really see the link to communism though I can see the parallels to social democracy.
Private ownership of computer code should lead us to a hellscape where all code is owned by a handful of huge companies and wealthy elites. But instead of doing away with private ownership and making all code public domain we added regulation in the form of free and open source licensing that democratized private ownership and made it serve our community. Perhaps that is the real lesson, not communism.
Most of these platforms make no money but have taken huge amounts of VC funding which they have burned through. For the VCs to unload it and cash out they need to show the product can be monetised and them try and shift it before the users leave the platform. Idiot users want all the features of a product developed by lots of talented full time paid staff but don’t want to pay for it themselves so they leap from startup to startup then complain when the inevitable happens while dismissing open source alternatives as inadequate for their needs. Why should we care? I don’t.
The first Polaris mission is on an existing proven vehicle and the suits look to be in the final stages. It seems to have taken a lot longer than anticipated but I don’t know if cancellation is likely. If aspects look too difficult they can alter the mission. The risk for the later Polaris Starship program is that Starship gets stuck in development hell which is still very possible.
There have been a number of tech companies that produced very successful and innovative products only to run into a brick wall with a successor product that was too ambitious or made wrong choices and either never made it to market or arrived too late.
The booster, raptor engines and launch infrastructure have been impressive and a lot of fun to watch but now we get to re-entry, full and rapid re-use, orbital refueling etc and the risks of a serious roadblock that eats all the cash and time increases in my opinion. I think it is great that companies are literally pursuing moonshot projects but we have to manage expectations.
It makes no economic sense. Fucking idiot.
This policy is not genuine. The intention is to delay or destroy fossil fuel alternatives to protect fossil fuel investments. If it creates political division and an impression of leadership then it is icing on the cake. I would expect the coalition to become increasingly divided if this was ever realistically pursued. Coalition voters do not want to foot the bill for this idiocy. The market has already voted. Renewables won on time to market and ROI.
For context I am not opposed to nuclear power generation at all. There has been a lot of misinformation about safety and waste for generations that has poisoned debate and I would like to see a more rational debate. I think it irresponsible for countries like Germany to turn away from nuclear and create huge energy security issues as well as increased emissions.
Carbon emissions are a global problem and each country has a responsibility to address it as effectively as they can. We can support nuclear power by supplying uranium and it doesn’t matter for carbon reduction if the reactors are in Australia or overseas.
Our construction costs are very high and we don’t have local expertise. Our research reactor was designed by Argentina. As much as some of us would like to see nuclear power come to Australia it is fantasy economics.