Probably the billions that governments have paid for their place in the queue

India alone has 759k millionaires. Assuming each has a family of four, and they’re willing to pay just $500 for a two shot course on an exclusive basis (say). That alone will be make pfizer about 1.58 billion dollars.

There are 13555k millionaires outside of Europe and US. The 1.9 billion paid by the US government for 100million viles pales in front of what pfizer could earn by catering to the rich.

So, again, my question stands, why wouldn’t pfizer sell directly to customers? What binds them to just deal with governments alone? I ask this as a humble non-millionaire (just to clarify that I wouldn’t benefit from such a scheme in any way) :)

Do you honestly think Pfizer would come off well (PR wise) if they put millionaires in the front of the queue for cash? At a time when vulnerable people are dying? The $1.58bn wouldn’t be worth sinking their entire brand, not even close.

Pfizer doesn't have to do anything. The vaccines will be sent all over the world, all destined for reputable hospitals where they're intended to be used for elderly transgender orphans with pre-existing conditions working in COVID ICUs. However, some shipments will mysteriously fall off the truck on the way there, and will resurface at private hospitals for the elite who can and will pay large quantities for them.

They are already sold out. There’s no spare. And yes they can sell to millionaire but states purchases millions of doses at a Time, not 5.

If that's your conditions I'll quit because I'm not desperate for the job... because of UBI

So now we’re stuck again - who repairs the robots?

It's mostly impossible - try buying bitcoin with a card that isn't in your name and see if you can manage it

Try buying Bitcoin even with a card that is in your name.

I've never tried it, but I'm almost certain my bank would block the transaction -- either for authorization by SMS (if the Bitcoin-selling site supports this), or by denying it until I phone the bank myself.

I think this would be normal for most European cards. I was surprised not to see a separate price for EMV / no-EMV cards in the table.

Not the OP but I count integration testing as testing integrations /between/ systems - wherever your code depends on something outside your codebase. You can mock this for unit testing.

Don't mock things that are already in your codebase. Use the actual object.

Common argument against this I've heard is "But then when something goes wrong it is harder to figure out where the problem is" - I have never actually experienced this myself, but I have, very often, experienced being reluctant to do any refactoring because I'd have to rip up all the unit tests because they are testing only implementation details

> There is no formal definition of what a unit is or how small it should be, but it’s mostly accepted that it corresponds to an individual function of a module (or method of an object).

And there-in lies the problem. Remove the idea that the unit is a single method/function.

I subscribe to the idea that a unit is a unit of functionality. Nothing to do with the code implementation.

Only mock where you're reaching out outside of your codebase (filesystem, network, operating system (time, for ex.))

You can still do unit tests for individual functions when you need to work on a complicated algorithm, but those functions should have no dependencies or side effects - pass in all the data you need

This is a really impressive demo and points to a very interesting future of programming where requirements can be automatically converted to code and the developer is primarily determining and phrasing unambiguous requirements and checking the resulting code.

I don't know if that's a future of software development that I would wish to see, but it's definitely interesting!

Since January 1st 2020 the requirement is for ADS-B out. So they will be reporting their GPS position also, now.

If you click the "camera" option a few times you get to satellite view - and you are correct, it seems we are driving in a big loop

I feel like there's a huge amount of delayed demand. A lot of people I know are pretty desperate to travel as soon as it's safe to do so (without quarantine after each leg).

I don't think demand will take such a huge hit. It just depends on whether the airline industry can ramp up supply again quickly or if it will take a long time.

But I could just be in a bubble of people who still have jobs and I suppose that might all change as the true economic effects settle in

That's a cool idea. Though I see no need to make it VTOL. A simple tug plane, like a glider tug but for passenger aircraft. Really nice thought!

The issue is that if you cannot take off yourself, you cannot abort a landing.

So if you have to keep it, you're trading a bit of efficiency for a lot of complexity.

The tug could be more like a powerbank. It would not physically pull the aircraft up but assist by providing power. The aircraft could launch on its own but it is advantageous to use a tug because this increases the range or energy reserves that the aircraft itself has.

(outline of a launch: aircraft and tug are connected by cable before launch, both lift-off, gain altitude, cable is detached, aircraft moves on and tug returns to launch site)

Except you probably have another aircraft already landing, the slots are tight. Maybe you could have another shorter landing strip just for the tug, but again, that seems like a lot of complexity (i.e risk) for maybe a 20% increase in efficiency at best.

Like in the other comment in this subthread, I had vertical take-off and landing vehicles in mind.

You can even ground tow to altitude then go flying.. Glider have been doing that for ages..