Would I be wrong to assume that technological advances in the next 15 years would justify sending a second satellite? As in, instead of a refueling mission we'd be more likely to send a version 2 of the satellite with even better sensors/apparatus/whatnot?
It's helpful to think through what opportunities might exist.
There are a set of telescope plans which are presently in consideration, including WIRST, the wide-angle infrared telescope; HabEx, the Habitable Exoplanet Imaging Mission; Lynx, a next-generation X-ray telescope; and the Origins Space Telescope, an infra-red telescope even larger than Webb.
- The total number of devices. More 'scopes means more points of the sky which can be imaged at any one time. This permits detecting either rare or transient events.
- Wavelength specificity. Infra-red, radio, visible light, UV, and X-Ray sensitivity all permit detection of different phenomena. Devices suited to one wavelength may not be suitable for others. Specific research goals may favour specific observational methods.
- Other sensing modes. Gravity, gamma ray, and particle sensors (e.g., neutrino sensors, cosmic-ray detectors) may afford other options. There are proposals for space-based gravity-wave detectors, for example.
- Compound devices. The HabEx system in particular has two components, the telescope itself, and a sunshield used to block the light of an observed star, which would operate at a separation of 100s of thousands of km.
- Collector size. Larger mirrors permit gathering of more light. This permits shorter collection periods for brighter events, and imaging of previously undetectable phenomena. The Hubble Deep Field views are an example of the latter, and pushed the boundaries of known and and observable phenomena tremendously.
- Storage, processing, and communications capabilities. I don't know how much this contributes to observation capabilities, though I suspect it has an impact.
- Developments in phsyics, materials, and sensing, generally. Looking through lists of physics and chemistry Nobel awards since the 1970s, a surprisingly large number have concerned capabilities rather than fundamental characteristics or properties of matter or the universe. Many of these afford new capabilities in sensing and detection.
- Probes. Rather than a single instrument which views distant objects, probes get close to a specific object, or set of objects, and make close or direct observations of these. Various landers, impactors, flyby, orbiter, and similar missions, to date all to objects within the Solar System, would be examples of these. These compete with other missions (manned, long-distance sensing).
- Earth observation. Probably the largest class and most productive set of space-based observation platforms has been looking at our own planet.
It's also worth thinking through what has made JWST possible, including launch platforms, experience with complex deployments, manufacturing, sensing, and control capabilities. These will have impacts on future missions, and further development might also extend their capabilities.
Finally: most technological improvement tends to follow a sigmoidal curve: an early period of slow development, a period of rapid attainment, then a slower period of approaching theoretical maximum efficacy. New developments or combinations of technologies may restart that curve, but often 15 years doesn't deliver transformational development. Rather older technologies are refined, reliability improved, costs reduced, or flexibility increased.
The "low-end laptop" starts at $1300, is labeled a Macbook Pro, and their marketing material states:
"The 8-core CPU, when paired with the MacBook Pro’s active cooling system, is up to 2.8x faster than the previous generation, delivering game-changing performance when compiling code, transcoding video, editing high-resolution photos, and more"
> It is in a budget desktop computer, a throw-it-in-your-bag travel computer, and a low-end laptop.
I took "budget desktop computer" to be the Mac Mini, "throw-it-in-your-bag travel computer" to be the Macbook Pro, and "a low-end laptop" to be the Macbook Air.
But I agree - the 13" is billed as a workstation and used as such by a huge portion of the tech industry, to say nothing of any others.
None of those are traditional Mac workstation workloads. No mention of rendering audio/video projects, for example. These are not the workloads Apple mentions when it wants to emphasize industry-leading power. (I mean, really, color grading?)
This MBP13 is a replacement for the previous MBP13; but the previous MBP13 was not a workstation either. It was a slightly-less-thermally-constrained thin-and-light. It existed almost entirely to be “the Air, but with cooling bolted on until it achieves the performance Intel originally promised us we could achieve in the Air’s thermal envelope.”
Note that, now that Apple are mostly free of that thermal constraint, the MBA and MBP13 are near-identical. Very likely the MBP13 is going away, and this release was just to satisfy corporate-leasing upgrade paths.
But this product is literally a savings account with a lottery attached to it. Why would you not use the terminology/methods used by the lottery industry when describing the lottery aspects of the account?
Obviously not, but that doesn't prove that there isn't value to having backwards compatibility. Sometimes you just want something to run and not have to touch or change it for a long time.
A 20-year old machine that's critical to a factory can run off a serial cable plugged in to an expansion card running software written in the 90's that will still run on Windows 10. Nobody in their right mind would decide to write that same software on a Mac.
Well, given where all of the PC manufacturers are that were around in 1990 compared to the revenue and profit of just the Mac division, it seems like Apple didn’t make a bad business decision not prioritizing backwards compatibility.
If you compare where Apple is and where Microsoft is also, it doesn’t seem like chasing enterprise PC sales was as good of a long term bet as going after the consumer market....
Are you being intentionally caustic? The phrase "running on autopilot" is an established colloquialism for doing something without being mindful of it, and almost every major dictionary definition of "autopilot" states that it is a system used to navigate something without a human.
Demanding a rigorous scientific study on human understanding of a word is simply not necessary when there are multiple recorded videos of people asleep at the wheel with a fucking banana on a string dangling from the steering wheel to fool the system.
You must not be familiar with the streaming/twitch community. Even modestly popular streamers/youtubers are easily able to acquire hundreds if not thousands of $5/month subscriptions. YouTube itself offers $5/month "Channel Subscriptions" that give you access to exclusive content (of a single creator), which is exactly this product. Plenty of people like individual creators enough to throw $5 their way for ad-free higher quality videos and "behind the scenes" content.
It's not meant for random individuals to post their cat videos and make a quick buck, it's a monetization option for popular people/communities that gives them more revenue streams, which is great if it gets them out of the fist of Google/Amazon. Having 80% of your revenue tied to a mega-corp's ad rate is a big incentive to diversify...
SocialBlade is a decent place to start for engagement numbers, and yes it absolutely is a very tiny percentage of YouTubers/steamers. But the business model is there - upload your videos, maybe do some "extra content" a la patreon, and get a diversified revenue stream as well as a platform to post your non-advertiser friendly content. They also aren't running through any cloud providers (although they are using a few CDNs), competition in the video space is always good.
One thing not being mentioned much in the comments are the nuances of a subscription-only model. People who don't like the content will simply never see it, they've stated themselves that as long as it's not explicitly illegal (child pornography, weapons manufacturing, etc) they'll allow any creator onto the platform. Although we have yet to see it tested, what happens when a publicly loathed far-right community sets up shop there...
