> I was really hoping Portal was going to catch on, I really liked it and found it to be a great home VC platform.
I worked on Portal and it came down to:
1. Cambridge Analytica. It is difficult to persuade people - and the media - you can be trusted to put a camera in their homes while you’re fighting a massive privacy scandal.
2. A leadership coup resulted in the project moving under Reality Labs, which never really wanted to be in the smart device business in the first place.
There were a bunch of other issues, but these two basically doomed the project from the start, which is a shame as it was well received by those who actually bought it.
> They do this on earth every time they fuel the rocket. I understand it will be more difficult in space, but I don’t see why specifically this problem is the real engineering target over say, reuse.
The article goes into this in some detail. In particular:
* You have to get the propellant into space. This is going to take a large number of flights (~15) at a pace that has not been done before for a vehicle of that size (a launch every six days)
* You need to launch at pace because otherwise the propellant will boil off, which is another issue - you need to shade or insulate the propellant for a much longer period of time in much harsher conditions
* There is no gravity: whereas on earth the propellant separates relatively cleanly into liquid and gas this isn't the case in space
Yes, the article lists a few reasons, none of them convincing. Specifically:
> You have to get the propellant into space. This is going to take a large number of flights (~15) at a pace that has not been done before for a vehicle of that size (a launch every six days)
SpaceX has done 2 Falcon 9 launches in 1 day, and they would have done 3 if the third one had not have been scrubbed [1]. I really don't think that launching Starship is going to be any different, especially as it was specifically designed for reuse, unlike Falcon 9.
> You need to launch at pace because otherwise the propellant will boil off, which is another issue - you need to shade or insulate the propellant for a much longer period of time in much harsher conditions
First part is same argument as above. Second part (shading) - again, I don't see why it is harder than other hard things. Just add more insulation. Possibly do some passive or active cooling.
> There is no gravity: whereas on earth the propellant separates relatively cleanly into liquid and gas this isn't the case in space
Very similar problem to how you feed liquid propellant into a rocket engine when it relights in zero gravity. You use a small ullage thruster for this.
Yeah, a 9 meter diameter one, which adds mass and volume and complexity and detracts from the payload.
Instead what they do is use thrust to accelerate the whole vehicle a little, which presses all the liquid into one end of its tank where it can be pumped out. Instead of carrying special settling thrusters, they originally planned to use ullage gas for this but it's not clear that can work.
pretty much everything, including and especially plastic, becomes a fuel when it comes into contact with liquid oxygen. With liquid oxygen in contact with a fuel you're virtually guaranteed a fire at some point as it takes very little heat to start the combustion. This is why when rockets tip over it's an explosion and not just a broken airframe with fuel/oxidizer leaking out.
Most plastics are very brittle at the cryogenic temperatures. Also if you are using that method for a liquid oxygen tank, you need to make sure that the plastic you choose doesn't spontaneously combust on contact with LOX.
Cryogenic temperatures make most materials more brittle, hard to get a material that works at a wide enough range of temperatures to make a balloon to work correctly.
If you go for a narrower range of temperatures (ie. not structurally stable above 0C), it would need to be manufactured, transported, stored, tested and installed at seriously low temps which probably negates the possible advantage with the added technical complexity.
> this is why crypto never took off as a replacement for credit cards
If this were true you would expect crypto to have taken off in countries with low interchange rates. Europe, for example, has far less of a rewards and points culture for payment, and (compared to the US) much lower interchange.
Crypto never took off as a replacement for credit cards for many reasons - the biggest coins out there are simply too volatile to be usable as a currency, they lack the consumer protections you get paying with a credit card, and they’re simply too complex for an average person to understand.
Interchange is regulated in Europe. You would likely run into legal issues if you tried to jack up merchant fees via a novel payment method.
However, even if it were legal, I don’t think this would counter my claim. I’m merely saying that you’d need to match existing rewards schemes in markets where they are established. Introducing them into a new market is an entirely different matter. The system we have today evolved through many decades of negotiation and deal making among merchants, issuers and card networks.
You’re right about consumer protections —- it would be very expensive for a crypto-based system to provide those without an intermediary that can adjudicate and reverse transactions (chargebacks).
> a lot of transaction data is already leaked to wallet providers (Google, Apple, Samsung) […] Note that these wallets get access to ALL card transactions, including physical card swipes, and not just those conducted via their platform.
That’s not true at all for Apple Pay: “Apple Pay doesn’t collect any transaction information that can be tied back to the user. Payment transactions are between the user, the merchant and the card issuer.”[1]
The system is designed such that transactional information goes directly from the bank’s server to your device, and doesn’t pass through Apple’s servers (unless you’re using Apple Card)
Good to know that Apple does not collect and store this data. The original issue, however, is that the banks continue to share this data with wallet providers. I have seen notifications on my phone wallet when using the physical card, which I found suspicious.
From the brief research I did trying to validate your claim, it looks like there's a second feature you can opt into that tracks transactions similar to a budget app. But as far as I can tell that's a distinct thing from the payments part.
That is not what they said. If they meant that, they would say: "Apply Pay doesn't collect any transaction information." They explicitly added the clause: "that can be tied back to the user". That means they do collect transaction information.
As they are only bound to providing a interpretation of "that can be tied back to the user" that is "technically correct", like how a monkey paw only needs to technically grant your wish, all they have to do is not link the transaction to your name and they have technically fulfilled their end of the bargain. That their highly paid legal team deliberately did not disclose higher standards means we should not engage in wishful thinking. They can tighten up their legally binding language if they want some trust.
> I wonder what would happen if the US gave these assurances then broke them ?
The English courts are permitted to take into account whether assurances for previous extraditions have been complied with:
> When considering the adequacy of an assurance in any particular case, the courts should place appropriate weight on any assurance previously obtained in extradition requests from the same requesting country.
...this is of little comfort to Assange, but it does mean that there is an incentive for the country issuing the assurances to comply with them, otherwise their future extradition requests have a greatly increased chance of being denied.
> I'd go further, we've turned a celebration of ignorance around cybersecurity and dismissive attitudes into virtuous slogans.
> "Don't make me think" - Krug
That quote has nothing to do with cybersecurity, it's the title of a book by Steve Krug about web usability.
I am unfortunately old enough to have read that book when it first came out, and it's exclusively around how to design front-end UIs on websites to reduce user complexity. There is no mention of infrastructure or security at all.
You're making a quote around how we should make websites more usable and understandable to users - so they can use them without thinking - into something it isn't.
I know exactly what the book is and I read it. It's actually an
excellent book on UX and I expect Steve Krug picked the title because
it sounds cool.
No disrespect to that author intended, but it (maybe unwittingly)
expresses a sentiment that has grave implications about the position
of technology in human affairs. To understand why, please look deeper
into what we used to call Human Computer Interaction (HCI) or
"Cognitive Ergonomics".
I think I recently mentioned it in this online chat [0]
Explicit cognition is the "thinking slow" part of our brains that uses
so-called left-brain linear reasoning and logic. It sits high in the
cognitive stack. But as people use devices today, in what McLuhan [4] or
Innes [5] would call an "acoustic" (nothing much to do with actual sound)
way, we drop down a cognitive level to a faster, visual-haptic loop
that bypasses explicit reasoning.
Designing applications that bypass this has major effects on security.
The work of B J Fogg will show you more about this [1].
Tristan Harris also has lots on it [2,3].
One of the disastrous effects of this "distracted" level of HCI is
that people use more emotional cues, rote, colour, word association,
implicit trust and other models that make them easy prey for phishing
and other kinds magic and trickery.
If you're interested in a much broader understanding of cybersecurity
I give you a sincere invitation to check us out here [6].
Because I have experience in the industry. Where is anyone getting any of this info? Don’t just believe these guys they are fake accounts repeating marketing info.
I also have some 2 decades of experience in the industry, so please, share me your reasoning, how did you arrive at these numbers? Just a ballpark, no appeal to authority as I believe we are both similarly seasoned...
You realize the patent you’re referring to was a design patent, not a utility patent? They are very different, the former only covers look and feel, not method.
I worked on Portal and it came down to:
1. Cambridge Analytica. It is difficult to persuade people - and the media - you can be trusted to put a camera in their homes while you’re fighting a massive privacy scandal.
2. A leadership coup resulted in the project moving under Reality Labs, which never really wanted to be in the smart device business in the first place.
There were a bunch of other issues, but these two basically doomed the project from the start, which is a shame as it was well received by those who actually bought it.