I was early at Planet (and fresh out of college) and the transition internally towards govt money was very painful for the bright eyed save-the-world hackers internally.
The initial technical architecture was aligned with broad good (low res, global, daily, openly available), but the shift towards selling high res satellite capabilities directly to governments has been tough to see.
Their role of providing a public ledger is still a net good thing IMO, and i doubt Planet is adding much increased capability to the US war fighter (they have way better stuff). Harder to say for their deals with other governments that have fewer native space capabilities.
this is very difficult to address with intellectual honesty.
It seems obvious to me that people of conscience and standing have built plenty of the most cutting edge tech of this age. Yet those people are structurally embedded within business and government. Far-reaching technology is one thing, but satellite networks are especially impactful in many ways for both real time intelligence gathering and also building a record of analytic data over time.
So, PlanetLabs.. without a doubt, completely sincere in Doves reading save-the-whales data over the entire Earth. And also, connected "at the hip" to the US Federal Government. Does the US Federal Government work diligently to save-the-whales? You be the judge.
PlanetLabs is business, with investors. That is the horse that brought the endeavor to its current state. Larry Ellison seems to run a very stable business, in the same locales, and that seems to be just fine with investors. Is there any way that PlanetLabs would not be subject to the same investor pressures and direction, lawsuits and governance letters, that Oracle is subject to? seems likely that lots of the same actors are close at hand, from the beginning.
SO there is tragedy and comedy, stock price and hiring practices, technical capacity and brilliance. The mission is the message ? feedback here seems likely to escalate, so let's set a tone of informed debate, and recall that after the typing, almost nothing will actually change in practice.. just an educated guess.
The current administration is openly extractive without the fig leaves of old.
I don’t think we can look forward to nature - whether it’s national parks or marine parks or just being a non polluting neighbor - getting any priority or protection from now onwards.
apologies for the quick reply -- but, did you not understand that this was implemented on a very large scale for a half-dozen massive US corps with large turnover, for example Hilton and Delta Air, THREE years ago ? to Americans in the USA ? Did no one here catch that ? AFAIK it was one of the first large use cases for corporate AI.
yeah - skeptical here. Among certain departments, at large schools, under certain leaders.. The combination of "my marriage almost crumbled" for motivated reasoning, and "I have never seen any of this before" total inexperience with actual process.. the post shows itself to be biased and unreliable.
However, among certain departments, at large schools, under certain leaders.. yes, and growing
"... take climate change seriously" is such shallow terminology. Economically this points to a tip of the proverbial iceberg. Economics in a modern State may be compared to gravity itself. Whatever the changes to the players and the playing field, economics adds to the calculus. WHO pays WHAT price is the start of the conversation.
people give books away here in California with "tiny house" library stands. In a major college town, previously full of specialty and trade bookstores, now very empty.
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