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The group that gets rid of the rich will become the new rich.

But laws are just encodes morality.

Absolutely not.

It was illegal to harbour escaped slaves. Or hide Jews from the Gestapo.

Laws have nothing to do with morality. Or justice.


Well this goes into the debate of "is morality absolute or relative" which gets religious fast and there's more books on the subject than we have time to read.

I actually think that's a separate debate.

The question of "are laws there to enforce morality, or enforce public order?" is the key one. And, I think, very easily settled by looking at the laws we choose to implement. Almost none of them enforce moral behaviour (e.g. you must give 10% of your income to charity), they're all about enforcing how we interact and how we're ruled.


It's not really that "absolute". Laws are not all made the same. Some start as a reflection of what society considers "right" at the time. Then the laws fall behind as society's morality reaches a tipping point. So the society pulls that part of the legal system behind it. Other laws are progressive, and they pull society's morality behind them. Some are driven by/for the majority, and some by/for the elites.

But they all reflect the morality of society to a degree, whether the democratic majority, or the powerful minority.


That was the morality at the time.

Yes they do, but not with a philosophical concept of morality, but merely those of the ruling class/majority.

>It was illegal to harbour escaped slaves. Or hide Jews from the Gestapo.

Yes, of course. Morality is relative. In a slave-owning society, harbouring escaped slaves is immoral.


It is somewhat interesting that the version of morality an individual possesses always feels to that individual as an absolute.

"Of course it's wrong to beat your wife!" says the person who beats their children in a society that has only recently ceased infantilizing their women (USA circa 1900 +/- 30 years).

"Of course it's wrong to own slaves!" says the person whose society only recently began protesting against and/or illegalizing slavery (USA circa 1866 +/- 10 years)

They say this not knowing that had the event of their births been moved a few decades in the wrong direction their morality would have shifted with it.

Those same people might have said "Of course its wrong to beat your wife with a rod thicker than your thumb!" or "Of course its ok to own slaves as long as you treat them well!" at the same point in their lives had they been born maybe 30-50 years earlier.


The one I find fascinating is eating animals.

We currently eat animals as a normal part of our diet (for most of us, including me, anyway). To do this we treat the animals horribly. Incredibly badly. And we know it.

It's very easy to see how society's morals will probably change on this, in fact are changing on this, and how in 50 years' time our current stance on eating animals could be seen as monstrously immoral and indefensible.


Animals eat each other. Often in ways more "horrible" than what we do to them (in quotes because nothing in nature is horrible. Horror is a human notion).

Animals are not moral agents, and eating them is not different from eating plants. Both are part of the biosphere that we manage to our benefit.


Animals don't have a choice about eating each other. We do.

And there are plenty of people who would vehemently argue that eating their pet puppy is very, very, very, different from eating a plant.


And to complete a particularly cultural PoV, there are many people eating "pet" chickens, "pet" guinea pigs, goats, et al about the world.

Good arguments, particularly in Australia, for eating wild pigs, clean skin bulls, camels, donkeys (mainly for pet meat IMHO), etc. Kangaroos, unculled, explode in number past the sustainability of their landscape and litter the ground with bones - humans estimate a cull target and shoot to reduce populations, only eating a few themselves (leaving many on the ground for "nature").


I'm native, and my ancestors were called "dog soldiers" because we would bring dogs with us to war, and when rations got a little tight we would throw fido into the pot. Eating dog is generally considered abominable when you love them as pets but it's a common thing in many societies and not wrong.

I will say though, I would only ever consider eating a dog in a life or death situation.

If there was no absolute need for me to eat a dog then I would not do it, and even if there were it would be a difficult moral dilemma for me that should I survive could possibly haunt me for life, but for my ancestors it was a common occurrence.


Funny how morality so often benefits incumbents and the powerful.

Many of them are, but they're focused on big picture issues and preventing harm. Most of morality has no legal force.

That's genuinely hilarious.

Nah, someone imagined this before you. Be more original.

Starlink can be uses as GPS. Good luck jamming 20 thousand satellites.

First of all, starlink has been jammed in conflict zones.

Secondly, the number of satellites doesn’t really matter, the jamming happens at the end user level not at the satellite.

Finally, where are you getting that 20k number from? It’s not like there’s 20k starlink satellites in LOS to your station at all times. The earth will be obscuring many of those, they are below your feet on the other side of the planet.


Do they have atomic clocks on board?

I was under the impression that Starlink needs GPS for initial acquisition.


They don't need atomic clocks on board. NTP is close enough for most purposes. Sure your error goes up, but often within 100 meters is good enough. The exceptions though do need accurate clocks and are a problem.

For the aviation use case the article talks about 100m is unacceptable. Even for more mundane uses like car navigation 100m accuracy isn’t great.

That's near orders of magnitude more than reality. The only number that matters is the number of satellites that are in communication line of site. A satellite on the other side of the world doesn't help you.

I wonder how many are in view?

gps is 31 total satellites 12,000 miles up

starlink is 10,000 satellites at ~ 300 miles. (and what orbit?)

EDIT: I found this:

-- starlink:

"In any given place there are 3-4 Starlink satellites visible at a time"

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42445512 :)

in december 2024, there were 4,000 starlink satellites in orbit

so starlink is ~ 8 at all times?

-- GPS:

This 24-slot arrangement ensures users can view at least four satellites from virtually any point on the planet.

- https://www.gps.gov/space-segment


Remember there's also BeiDou, Galileo, and GLONASS as well.

Our RTK base station (a Ublox ZED-F9P receiver, with a cheap patch antenna on the roof) can currently see 45 GNSS satellites.


You also need to know where the satellites are meant to be at any one time. That means a stable orbit. Starlink isn't really designed for that.

It then also needs to be signed/secure so that its not spoofed.

Then your signal that your measuring time from needs to be transmitted often enough and robust enough. Plus your time source on the transmitter needs to be accurate enough.

It might be possible with starlink, but you'd also have to trust musk....


They've removed the in-built PNT service

Climate change requires building more nuclear power. Which we absolutely can do.

Nuclear is too slow. Not only are you running fossil plants for decades while you build nuclear reactors, you are also emitting additional CO2 during the construction process!

Renewables reduce CO2 emissions today. Building a solar farm takes months, building a wind farm takes single-digit years. They'll have recouped their construction emissions well before the first nuclear reactor comes online.

It is important to remember that the challenge we are facing is not *how do we build a fully-renewable grid", but "how do we reduce CO2 emissions the fastest". Having a 95% solar-and-wind grid with 5% fossil backup 10 years from now is significantly better than having a 100% nuclear grid 20 years from now!


Building enough nuclear to replace fossil electricity generation is both insanely expensive and not enough to fix the problem because plenty of emissions don't come from electricity generation.

Ah yea, let's start that and reap the benefits 2050 when it's already in the shitter.

My favorite Ikea product name.


Then maybe you'll enjoy the swedish joke ”It’s not the fart that kills, it’s the smäll”

Fart means speed, smäll (smell) means impact or bang.


Double wordplay, not bad. Gives “Descartes before the horse” triple entendre vibes


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