There's never just one reason, obviously. Maybe phones are a big reason we're not socializing as much and it cascades from there. But as a young parent, I'm gonna tell you flat out - the core necessities, not the best of the best, are insanely expensive today than ever before as a share of our monthly take home.
I'm a huge fan of public schools, letting kids play and be out on their own till 10-11pm a night with other kids, etc, etc. But just the first 3 years until publicly funded pre-school kicks in is going to cost us over 100k. It doesn't become free after that of course, but definitely not 30k+ per annum.
We'll see how quickly we can potty train, I'd like to avoid using diapers after a while, but that's not the major expense for us since we're your run of the mill dual income couple. Just standard day care is 2500 a month in Chicago. Unlike the bay or NY, there isn't a wait-list or competition to get in but it's definitely priced at the high end. We're delaying using that until both our parental leaves finish up, which not everyone gets to have in the US. We also have my parents moving close to us to help with the kiddo. Most of the things that made a village what it was without professional services (except day care which is a big one) we're gonna do, and it still is going to be stupid expensive. My parents are in shock compared to what their expectations were based on how I grew up vs today's reality.
i'm noticing this across even startups and mid-market companies too!
i don't think its going to be a silver bullet, but it doesn't need to be. niche, well understood problems with simple tooling needs are the best ones to start with.
Agreed! I have had an IKEA Slitbar Santoku since 2014, it's been abused (even tossed in the dishwasher a couple of time because I didn't value it at the time) and it has outlasted most of my other knives. Not to mention, it's my preferred knife when I pull out my drawer.
So much so, that I went out of my way to get the longer chef knife/gyuto version of it off eBay last year! It's freaking fantastic! They're both well maintained now, honed often and my two go-to knives over a wusthof and bunch of Misen knives
I don't even know where to begin here. Of course we have the land to spread people out, but it's insanely expensive on everyone (especially those who are spread out) over time to sustain it. [1]
You have a lot of straw man arguments that but the one that I'll focus on the most is "Our leaders just FORCE us to flock to cities cpz it's cheaper on infrastructure" - prove it.
Tl;Dr: it's tricky. and because it's not that simple.
I don't know your background and maybe you're from a first nation or tribe, but there isn't a common agreement between the populations of existing tribes and nations on what is offensive or incorrect. This isn't to say that any term is acceptable, but Indians, however incorrectly labeled by a colonizing group a few hundred years ago, is literally how some choose to identify themselves here in North America.
I say this as someone from India and event there, there isn't a common agreement or knowledge to arrive at an "inoffensive" term for folks who live here. Most just use the descriptor left by the British and say "Red Indians" with no malice implied.
Granted...this particular situation was unique as the development was market-rate units, not low-income, in a communal living layout. There were other concerns on part of neighbors (some real, some silly, and others just simply obstructive). This, along with CEQA in California have been constantly used by existing members of a town/city/neighborhood/etc to reduce additional development of any kind, not just low-income.
This is at a point where NIMBY isn't even the only acronym anymore, BANANAs is the new one the kids use these days - Build Absolutely Nothing Anywhere Near Anything.
Whoa! Fancy seeing you here, Pat. Always cool to see a fellow Planeteer in the wild :)
also, ditto what he said. This news was certainly an interesting conversation that happened at Planet HQ today, but a couple of folks knew the people doing this work in Amazon before it was announced today. There are a lot of regulatory, licensing, and construction hurdles. Not the mention, the placement of the ground stations is going to be crucial, but otherwise...I can see upstarts in the smallsat industry totally taking advantage of this should their orbits compliment the deployment sites of the ground stations.
We build and operate our own ground stations for the most part and I can understand/sympathize that we're fortunate enough to do so since much of our business depends on it. It's a costly exercise for sure...
While I am enjoying the Jetsons-like future that is envisioned in your post, I'm quite curious how we can maybe do simpler solutions. For example, we used to have a milkman who just dropped off milk on our front door. I can easily imagine dairies owning their own regional distribution networks with autonomous vehicles performing milk deliveries for much cheaper. No domestic robot really needed to sign for the order.
Same goes for groceries, I suppose. A co-op of farms operate an automated warehouse together whose responsibility is to consolidate the various fruits and vegetables and distribute via autonomous vehicles to homes. It gives a competitive advantage to regional farms so they can actually still do things at a reasonable economy of scale.
Just my two cents. Also, yes, video games all day. :)
Materials Science. Tinkering with off the shelf hardware (even start with RaspberryPis). Systems Integration (legit systems integration, not the shitty title Accenture/Deloitte/Generic Consulting Company gives you for working at an Enterprise client). FPGAs. Electrical Engineering. Thermal Engineering is huge. or the usual: Software Engineering. (because satellites need software too)
The other comments that are replying to you have it fairly accurate. It's not widely known but it isn't a secret either: the point of the doves is to be deployed en masse and with more capability with every subsequent build. A quick refresh in the constellation means there is fresh hardware in space every so often.
This means the intention is indeed for re-entry into the atmosphere after the operational lifespan of the dove has lapsed. (They physically stay in space only a few years depending on altitude, orbit, exposed atmospheric drag and a couple of other things)
The last two flocks alone have put close to 130 sats in space so the debris issue is something that is taken quite seriously at the company.
Source: I work at planet. I generally lurk on HN but I created an account just now to reply to this :)
https://culturecompiled.com/p/strong-state-capacity-is-a-pro...