Forget Dragon, the Falcon 9 rocket is the secret sauce of SpaceX’s success

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From Eric Berger at Ars Technica:

Over the course of the decade, she said, SpaceX has used the Falcon 9 rocket to not only capture the commercial satellite launch market, but NASA’s cargo and crew programs, some of its science missions, and, increasingly, military contracts. The Falcon 9 rocket first stage also is the foundation of the Falcon Heavy rocket, the most powerful booster in the world. “SpaceX has really demonstrated that vehicle as being very adaptable,” she said. “It has quite a record.”

Around the world, companies and countries are struggling to compete. In America, United Launch Alliance is retiring its Atlas and Delta rockets in favor of the more competitive Vulcan booster. Japan’s H3 rocket was inspired by a need to reduce prices. Russia is phasing out its storied Proton rocket. Arianespace is retiring the venerable Ariane 5 rocket in favor of a lower cost Ariane 6. It remains to be seen whether any of these boosters can catch up to the Falcon 9, because SpaceX is always moving, Christensen said.

A great story of the Falcon 9 rocket, which has pretty much single-handedly turned around the USA’s space fortunes in the past 10-15 years.

Biden Is the Politician America Needs Right Now

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From Franklin Foer at The Atlantic:

But in Philadelphia yesterday, Biden delivered perhaps the most thorough-going and hard-hitting critique of American racial inequities ever uttered by a major presidential nominee. Certainly, no nominee has ever proposed such a robust agenda for curbing the abusiveness of police, and with such little rhetorical hedging.

What makes Biden unique (and maddening if you are far left or far right) is he lack of hyper-partisan politics and desire to make a “deal”. More often than not, that means he’s open to working with both parties and all people to push the country in the right direction. It’s likely you’ll disagree with some of his positions, but you’ll feel heard and understood. Biden will attempt to represent and govern all Americans, not just one party or race or interest group.

Black Lives Matter

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It’s easy to feel powerless living through the current state of affairs. Our leaders are trying to quiet the voices of those who want justice for yet another black man murdered by threatening more police violence. Continued bluster and threats from our president have only pushed things closer to the brink. Everything I feared about Trump being elected has come to fruition, and in some ways even worse. While he isn’t responsible for all of what ails us right now, his promise of to deliver a “law and order” presidency was obviously a lie. And he’s making things worse nearly every time he wades into an issue.

That said, there is work to be done and we can get involved today even if you aren’t marching in the streets.

I think it’s important to make our voices heard, even if it’s via blogs or social media. We can also make our impact felt by donating to causes who think about these issues all day, every day. A few causes you can donate to:

  • ACLU – The ACLU believes in civil liberties, freedom of speech and voting rights amongst other things. I’ve been happily donating to them monthly for years now.
  • Color of Change – Fighting against injustice and racial discrimination.
  • Campaign Zero – We can live in a world where the police don’t kill people by limiting police interventions, improving community interactions, and ensuring accountability.

You can also get involved in your community. I found this article helpful, as it highlights a lot of local and national causes you can get involved with as well as behavioral changes you can be mindful of:

  • Put pressure on your local police departments to reduce deaths due to excessive force by adopting common-sense de-escalation procedures, using body cameras and opt out of buying used military hardware.
  • Contact state and national officials to work on reducing minimum sentences. Attend town halls, talk about important this is to you.
  • Talk to your children about how slavery, the Civil War, and the Jim Crow era are being taught in your local school.
  • Seek out a diverse group of friends for your kids.
  • Vote for competent leaders who are interested in governing the entire nation, not just the ~45% that voted for them.

I’ll never be able to fully understand what it must be like to live as a black person in America – but I know we all have a job to do to make it better. It will take time – 400 years of racism can’t be changed overnight – but I’m hopeful this generation is the one that turns the tide.

Killer Mike speaks about Atlanta protests

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I’m so tired of seeing police officers murder black people.

Glad to hear Mike give a measured breakdown of how angry he is, but how we can change things without trashing Atlanta. I will say though, if we don’t give folks hope that we can change things by voting, we leave them with no other option but to burn things down.

SpaceX’s 1st Crew Dragon with astronauts docks at space station in historic rendezvous

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From Space.com:

SpaceX launched Behnken and Hurley into space Saturday on a test flight, dubbed Demo-2, that lifted off from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Their Crew Dragon docked itself at the station 10:16 a.m. EDT (14216 GMT) as both spacecraft sailed 262 miles (422 kilometers) above the border of China and Mongolia. 

“Dragon, arriving,” NASA astronaut Chris Cassidy said from inside the station as he range a traditional ship’s bell. “Bob and Doug, we’re glad to have you as part of the crew.”

It was so amazing to watch this with my family this weekend. It’s been over 9 years since the USA could launch our astronauts into orbit and the entire SpaceX portfolio is so fascinating to me. It’s nice to have some good news these days.

100,000

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From BBC News:

No country has had more deaths, more infections. Anywhere else, so far, is not even close.

Heartbreaking, embarrassing and infuriating. We deserve better.

Donald Trump’s move against Twitter factchecking could backfire 

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From The Guardian:

But the regulation could backfire, at least in terms of creating the internet Trump desires. By barring social media companies from using the nuanced forms of moderation they currently employ, the executive order could force them to resort to heavy-handed actions: deleting posts, or blocking users, rather than simply factchecking or reducing the reach of the worst material.

Similarly, removing section 230 protections entirely from a technology firm would be unlikely to force it to act as a politically neutral “mere conduit”, since any moderation at all – even simply deleting the vast quantities of automated spam that hit platforms such as Facebook and Twitter each day – would then open them up to lawsuits about the content they had left up.

I feel like this kind of sums up Trump’s presidency. He’s been flailing from one self-induced blunder to the next with no real strategy in mind. Rather than, you know, acting presidential and posting ideas that are truthful, he’s getting emotional yet again and will potentially create a situation that compels social media to disallow or fully censor the sort of hate, lies and misinformation he’s so well known for.

To be clear, I don’t think that a more tightly regulated social media landscape is an overall good thing. However the irony of the President issuing an order that makes it more likely to have his posts outright deleted does bring me some joy.

Apple’s butterfly keyboard failed by prioritizing form over function

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From Chaim Gartenberg at The Verge:

But the deeper issue isn’t that the butterfly switches often break; it’s the flawed design goals that led Apple to make a bad button in the first place. Apple chose to make an entire keyboard full of buttons that resulted in a more aesthetically pleasing design with shorter travel and a thinner overall laptop, rather than making ones that are mechanically functional. And it nearly wrecked an entire generation of Apple’s laptops.

Apple is a massive company that has a ton of stakeholders but I honestly believe that one of the biggest mistakes Tim Cook made was to give the reigns to Jony Ive with no real counterweight. With a lot of the other voices in the room silenced or gone (such as Scott Forstall), Apple leaned way too hard into form over function, and many of their products have suffered as a result. iOS 7 was a mess and many of the hardware products from 2015-2020 were also way too focused on how something looked rather than how people used them.

Ive was a visionary in a ton of ways and he’s not completely to blame for many of the issues Apple have had with their hardware and software design in the last half decade. But with strong leadership at the top, a team of rivals approach tends to get better results. Let’s hope the next 5 years are more focused on users and their needs as opposed to just making things as thin as possible.

Spotify Finally Removes 10k Song Limit

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From Felipe Carvalho on Twitter:

After today, you can add as many songs as you like to your Liked Songs on @Spotify I’ve been working with a small team on the refactoring necessary to pull this off for a while now. Very happy to see this finally out.

This definitely falls into the Finally™ territory, as I’ve been complaining about this for years now. Really happy they finally listened to users who hit the cap a long time ago and have had to come up with creative ways to get around it.

A little too late for me though as I recently moved back to Apple Music and have been very happy there.

Thoughts on Spotify’s podcast push

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Joe Rogan, one of biggest podcasters out there, is going to be exclusively on Spotify starting next year. This is a huge get for Spotify, who is trying to become a bigger player in the podcast space.

Spotify is making a move to be more like Netflix in a lot of ways. With music licensing costs rising proportionate to their user growth, Spotify is still bleeding cash despite being a leader in the streaming music space. However, if they can start pushing users toward original content, insert their own ads into those podcasts and skim some off of that, they have another revenue stream that isn’t tied to licensing content. Additionally, it might give them an even larger user base to sell ads against. Good for Spotify! However, I worry about what it means for the future of podcasting.

If Spotify is successful, what does this mean for a further splintering of the market? Is the podcast world moving to a place where you’ll need 3-5 different apps just to listen to the shows you want? Even if they remain ad-supported and won’t require yet another monthly subscription, that’s just a lot for most people to deal with.

Not to be melodramatic about it, but this feels like we’re entering a new phase where “independent” podcasting is at risk. I think that the good news for me personally is that most of the shows I listen to aren’t candidates to get tempted by Spotify’s siren song any time soon and seem to take pride in being niche, indie shows. That said, once the ad money starts to dry up and all go to one place, it will indirectly affect the shows I listen to as well. Will some of the larger sponsors pour their money into Spotify’s ad platform or continue to pay for ad reads by the hosts? It’s yet to be seen, but marketing folks love their metrics.

The best thing you can do right now? Be sure to support the open, decentralized podcasting world by using apps like Overcast, Pocket Casts, Castro and even Apple’s Podcast app.