he threw his friend under the bus rather than stand up and use the power he has

Incoming: Ed Sheeran and Jack Black duet.

Huh, interesting to know. Ninth grade me didn’t give a shit about things like that.

The Apple II was the first microcomputer that combined color graphics with internal expandability

The first computer I ever used (not counting punch cards or the VIC-20) was an Apple IIe, and I can confidently say that color was green. Later versions of the Apple II had full color, but that wasn’t “innovation” by Steve Jobs, it was just the technology for it becoming affordable.

OTOH trump may want to eliminate the competition.

In ancient times (with some exceptions) the elites preserved their monopoly on organized violence and did most of the fighting themselves. Then they helped themselves to the young women without any regard for what the poor young men thought about it.

Only things that have changed are the social control technologies and the mustaches.

I’m on .world and I see .ml stuff.

That’s modern war in a nutshell. Old men sending the young men off to die so the young women have to bang them.

Leaders killing several hundred thousand

Progress! It used to be millions.

All you really need is to see the Jovian eclipses.

it might be nice to get out of this entire industry, if only I could afford to

I got pushed out of the industry right before COVID hit, so I haven’t ever dealt with AI. I’m a school bus driver now, which is infinitely more satisfying than programming since I get to drive a big Tonka truck around and gaslight children all day. The only downside is making 1/6 of what I used to make so this is not really a viable alternative for most people. At least I get subsidized health insurance.

OK, electric planes are fucked then. No wonder they’re resorting to “$5 of electricity” clickbait bullshit.

Well, feel free to correct me on my math here, I’m no battery expert. Google says a 100 kWh battery typically weighs between 1000 and 1500 pounds. Since we’d need 6618 kWh for the hypothetical trip from Cleveland to NYC, that means we’d need 67 x 100 kWh batteries which would weigh between 67,000 and 100,000 pounds. Google also says the typical fuel load for a 737 is around 50,000 pounds, so the relative overage from batteries (since obviously you wouldn’t need to carry any fuel) would be 17,000 to 50,000 pounds. This would roughly give you a passenger capacity range between 120 and nobody. Even worse if you consider the need to have some reserves of power for unexpected circumstances. There’s also the problem mentioned elsewhere in this thread that the batteries don’t become lighter as they’re discharged, so your landing weight is the same as your takeoff weight.

So yeah, battery weight is the core problem. But if battery weight comes down by “just” 50% (and I have no idea if that’s on the horizon or not) then electric aviation becomes quite viable.

My dad died last fall and when I called the funeral home to arrange for his body to be picked up, their answering service was fucking AI. However angry you think that might make you feel, it’s worse than that.

I’m a retired programmer and I always regretted not getting into AI (like, developing it rather than making use of it) because I think I could have made significant contributions. Now I’m glad I never did because I’ll never have to deal with the guilt of having made Terminator a reality.

I’ll just have to deal with Terminator is all. :(

Microwave beams from satellites. What could go wrong?

Actually dragging (or wheeling in) a wire or having a wire car supplying the plane with electricity during takeoff would work too.

After doing more of the math, I realized that the energetic cost of takeoff is quite a small fraction of the overall cost. So the only real benefit of the catapult would be to reduce the size and weight of the propulsive machinery on the plane. So externally providing just the electricity wouldn’t be much of a benefit.

I didn’t say which type of catapult. I don’t need ICE showing up at my door.

I used to drive a '76 Rabbit that got 40 mpg (and with a carburetor no less). Unfortunately, it had no chance of passing an emissions inspection and not much chance of surviving even a low-speed collision.

You can rethink the engineering with electric motors.

One of the other limitations is that you’re stuck with propellers if you’re using electric motors, so your top speed is going to be significantly slower than jets. Unless you do the Tu-95 thing with contra-rotating props whose tips exceed the speed of sound, and then you have monstrous noise problems.