Futurism points us to what happens happens when tech bro "engineers" run into actual engineers:
A scathing takedown video — a collaboration between Irish aeronautical engineer Brian McManus from the YouTube channel Real Engineering and tech publication IEEE Spectrum — discusses the many pain points of Starcloud, a Y combinator company that raised $170 million earlier this year to develop data center spacecraft with the help of SpaceX, and how the white paper outlining the project feels far more like it was dreamed up by an AI than a team of human experts.
“It really seems like anyone with some renders and a white paper written by someone being gassed up by an overly agreeable AI can get VC funding these days,” McManus argued. “Billionaires will attempt to pull the rug over your eyes and convince you that this technology makes total sense, but reality is, this technology is dumb.”
My favorite part occurs around the 7-minute, 40-second mark when the narrator points out that, while it makes sense to have solar panels perpendicular to the sun, having the radiators catch as much sunlight as possible is the opposite of what you want.
It's a small point, but it really brings home just how little thought you have to put into something before you get the Y Combinator stamp of approval and almost $200 million in funding.
For a deeper IEEE dive.
