Chase Million

In 2017, author and programmer Leonard Richardson wrote a zine called "Tool Safety" about what he learned from writing Beautiful Soup, one of the most impactful Python libraries ever. I think often about "the best use of the power we have as computer programmers." www.crummy.com/software/Bea...

"Just as you wouldn’t dump a pile of lumber on the ground and expect skilled carpenters to build a house out of it for free, NASA can’t just acquire commercial data and expect it to contribute to scientific knowledge." --@caseydreier.bsky.social

I had so much fun chatting with @adambecker.bsky.social this morning, it really got my Monday started right... give the VOD a watch if you missed it live! youtu.be/Od5bsEgyeJM

Keep asking questions!

"""Specific technical citations, like "machine learning," "large language models" and "chatbot," remain acceptable [...]""" I can't think of any justification to ever not use the more specific terms.

This analyst's report from Apollo about AI uses the term "S&P 493" to refer to the "S&P 500 minus the Mag 7" - because if you take out the AI companies, the S&P 500 is tanking. www.apollo.com/wealth/insig...

Robert (Rob) French is a planetary scientist at the SETI Institute who studies the rings and moons of the outer solar system. His research includes Saturn's rings, Uranus's inner moons, and the co-discovery of a moon of Neptune. 🧪 🔭 #PlanetaryScience #Space #Science #SETI #NotJustAliens

These changes are causing quite a bit of stir in the space science community, and many of us have a *lot* of questions. However, the biggest issue with NASA's missions isn't a lack of industry involvement or length of review. It's that NASA lacks the money to fly missions regularly.

By my napkin math, total Bell Labs research expenditures from 1930-1980 were on the order of $50 billion in 2026 dollars. AI companies have spent ~$1 trillion so far: The equivalent of ~20 Bell Labs histories. In its history, Bell Labs researchers discovered the transistor, the solar cell, the laser

Most of the concerns are not new, but simply unresolved from when they were first raised many years ago.

My first pass assessment is that this is probably good. It will annoy people who have spent a lot of time and resources preparing for the pre-existing AO process. It will still require some assessment of engineering approach on spec. But the current paths are indeed both expensive and slow.

As the #MarieKondo of #SurveillanceCapitalism, here are my hard-won lessons learned from 15 years of Opting Out of Big Tech -- from #GEL2026 -- to help you decide how best to throw your own well-aimed monkey wrench into the gears of #BigTech. video.infiniteloop.tv/w/dsPwV9ewKB... #optout

Fuck it. It's time. Build the Blackwall.

My first pass assessment is that this is probably good. It will annoy people who have spent a lot of time and resources preparing for the pre-existing AO process. It will still require some assessment of engineering approach on spec. But the current paths are indeed both expensive and slow.

For scale, Rhode Island is about 60km across.

We used to have nice things and dope hats.

It pains me that we have to talk about this. But to build a better world, we need to understand what we're up against. The AI doomers are useful idiots for the AI industry. We can't let them dominate the conversation about the future. We have to dream of something more, and more human.

BREAKING WSJ: Elon Musk ordered the slowdown of the military-grade version of Starlink that Ukraine relied on.

In advance of Friday's Artemis update, NASA has a new video out today with an update on VIPER and some of the cmrcl lunar rovers in development. www.nasa.gov/missions/moo...

Trump administration's cuts to next generation weather satellite program could set back forecasting by a decade, experts warn. Note the lack of the lightning mapper on the new GeoXO constellation... www.cnn.com/2026/10/19/w...

I just stumbled on this email from April 2005. "Notice of Intent to Release a Solicitation for a the Mars Telecommunication Orbiter Science Investigation" 🫠

This is incredibly well written, informative, and important. Most civil servants (who remain) are working their asses off, trying to hold the institution together. But they are also often prevented from say true (even obvious) things in public. Those of us with the freedom to do so must speak.

NASA said its space archive was down for ‘maintenance.’ Its security office shut it down. www.urgentmatter.press/nasa-said-it...

RustGIS now maps the Moon, Mars and beyond 🪐 Try it out - Launch the web app and switch to Mars: web.rustgis.app - GitHub: github.com/opengeos/Rus... The desktop apps get it in the next release. #GIS #Rust #OpenSource #PlanetaryScience #Mars #Moon #Geospatial

Registration is now OPEN for the 2027 Flight Software Workshop! The workshop will take place on the Caltech campus in Pasadena, California, from March 22–25, 2027. We are looking forward to another great year of technical presentations of relevance to all FSW engineers. flightsoftware.org

I'm excited and humbled to be giving this talk at the University of Kentucky on November 18th! Thanks to @lecagle.bsky.social for setting this up. Tickets are free but are somehow already half gone, so get them now! finearts.uky.edu/singletary-c...

There it is: www.nasa.gov/what-is-supe... Remember that, although executive branch civil servants are required to comply with this, if you are not a civil servant, you don't have to mirror the language. When you hear or read "super intelligence," you can respond with any combination of words!

`pdr-vandal`, the Planetary Data System (PDS) image browser tool (in open alpha), now includes debayer / demosaic and decorrelation stretch (DCS) capabilities. It runs 100% in your browser! m-stclair.github.io/pdr-vandal/ Here's an example of using pdr-vandal to look at an Artemis 2 raw image.

There it is: www.nasa.gov/what-is-supe... Remember that, although executive branch civil servants are required to comply with this, if you are not a civil servant, you don't have to mirror the language. When you hear or read "super intelligence," you can respond with any combination of words!

Hauling what into space, though? What new technology or industry or business is uniquely enabled by cheap(ish) heavy lift? Nobody has answered that question after 40 years of brainstorming. Heavy lift exists and is rarely used. SpaceX mostly launches its own stuff, at a loss. That's a shit business.

Planet Database xkcd.com/3311/

Hauling what into space, though? What new technology or industry or business is uniquely enabled by cheap(ish) heavy lift? Nobody has answered that question after 40 years of brainstorming. Heavy lift exists and is rarely used. SpaceX mostly launches its own stuff, at a loss. That's a shit business.

With news about the transition from ADS to SciX trending today, here's a little SciX superuser hot tip. You can make SciX one of the search engine options in your browser, which then makes it easy to initiate a literature search from your navigation bar. scixplorer.org

Starlink is a terrible business. It only appears "cashflow" "profitable" by hiding capex in other buckets and ignoring R&D. It has very little moat and fundamental design flaws, including always working worse in places with the most customers. But it was never intended to be "a good business."

sin that pays its way can travel freely, and without a passport; whereas Virtue, if a pauper, is stopped at all frontiers

Note that these were 3,203 proposals for observation time, not money. Something like ~20-50 person-years were expended applying for a ~5% chance of getting just data. [An opportunity to apply for financial support may follow, but the number and size of grants is entirely up in the air, per below.]

With news about the transition from ADS to SciX trending today, here's a little SciX superuser hot tip. You can make SciX one of the search engine options in your browser, which then makes it easy to initiate a literature search from your navigation bar. scixplorer.org