The quote from Duffy indicates that the SpaceX team doesn't have any real knowledge about or experience with the FAA systems. Seems like they're being brought in just because they're a Musk company.
The quote also doesn't indicate the SpaceX team is being "brought in to overhaul FAA systems", that seems like a big mistake if that tweet is all they are basing it on. The tweet says the FAA is tasked with overhauling their ATC system, and people from SpaceX are visiting to share ideas, and it seems to include an open invitation to others to do the same.
Political pettiness, and speculation about whether Musk got some special favor or advantage that would not be available to other companies aside, it doesn't seem like a bad idea to get cross-pollination and share ideas with other organizations and fields. SpaceX may not know much about ATC but they probably do know something about monitoring and control and collision avoidance in rockets and satellites.
I don't know, maybe. Maybe not if they're getting ideas for a new ATC system not applicable to day to day operations of the existing one, which is more like what the tweet sounded like. But I really don't know the inner workings of any of that so it would only be speculation. I'm sure there's lots they could be doing better.
What I wrote stands though, the article seems poorly sourced and incorrect about its interpretation of the tweet.
It's been reported that 400 new hires on probationary status were let go. None of them were involved in safety related operations. The FAA has around 45,000 total employees, so it's a rather tiny percentage, in any case.
While the team might not know much about FAA yet, they have high trust and a good working relationship with the guy who knows more about everything than everyone so maybe that's why this will work out great
Yeah, his history is basically bringing in people he can trust because he can control them and then making them do what he wants to get the outcome he needs. It's a pattern across all of his companies and endeavors.
Compared to what, just rolling the dice? SpaceX isn't the only shop that can deliver against requirements.
Procurement bids should be transparent and avoid the illusion of conflict. This is the complete opposite of that. It's hard to take Musk's campaign against "fraud and waste" serious when he's awarding the contracts to himself.
In the last 50 years, over 1600 murderers have been murdered by the state. It's a question of authority, not justification, and I think that's a much less meaningful distinction.
The fact that there's so little sympathy for the death of a CEO who, in their view, callously discards human life tells us the authority is a much smaller dealbreaker than the justification.
> It's a question of authority, not justification, and i think that's a much less meaningful distinction.
On the contrary, it's the crucial distinction. Without process and authority we have mob violence, vengeance killing, and vigilantism. Lynching, clan blood feuds, gang violence, all proceed from this same theory that "getting back" is more important than following the rules. In that world, Brian Thompson's killer should expect to be shot by one of his children for taking away their father.
I don't know who "we" is in your comment, but the question of whether capital punishment exists or not is a totally different question from whether the rule of law exists or not. It's perfectly self-consistent to support the rule of law while believing that some of the rules are wrong (e.g. that the state shouldn't kill people as a punishment). In fact that's essential to the whole thing working, since there's no way everyone will agree on the best set of rules for society.
It's animating outwards. The article highlights how they're interfering with FEMA, sending death threats to meteorologists, and generally making things harder for disaster responders.
I feel like The Atlantic has really declined. Every once in a while they'll put out something interesting, but for the most part their entire model appears to be writing for an aging population who is scared of change in the world.
There was a sudden, sharp decline in quality about a decade ago, at the time when they started putting provocative and inaccurate headlines on the front cover. I think they actually tried harder than many other magazines to adapt to the Internet era, but they bungled the transition. When my subscription ran out, I did not renew.
There's a difference between inserting bias and allowing a real-world pattern to exist in AI. There may be reasons to dislike these real-world patterns, but that doesn't mean that allowing them to exist in AI is inserting a bias.
For example, if you ask AI to write a realistic story about an NBA team, and it comes back with a team with stereotypically Asian named players, that would be unrealistic. If it came back with a team with stereotypically Black named players, that would be fine. Does it reflect a real-world pattern? Yes. But not changing the algorithm to generate diverse names isn't inserting bias. It's letting AI reflect the real world, as it exists.
True and it does bring some awareness, but this is lazy approach. I love the passion people have in cleaning up the environment but we all know (especially the engineers among us) that building a solution, or contributing to one, is far more effective than complaining about a problem.
