Five hundred million from DARPA, huh?
It seems that Tiny surely doesn't do things tiny...
And I wonder what founding principles of their grandfather Timmy is referring to...
I can see how something like "don't be bedfellows with the military-industrial complex" would be in his sentiment, even though he probably would not have worded this in exactly that way.
(BTW, over at Cryptida, around Christmas time, we will see a bit of this enigmatic man, Timmy I, founder of ToyCo.)
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Oh, and Argyle's side comic is just awesome! Totally slipped under my radar until now!
Oh, we're pulling freaking DARPA into this? Oh my dear and fuzzy lord...
The real question is, does Tiny know what she has done?
As usual, this work is a masterpiece of keeping the audience guessing whilst simultaneously dropping the literary equivalents of Fatman and Little Boy...
I am beginning to think that one of us is the more literary and one the more pulp, and the placement is not where some might suspect. Or maybe it's simply delusions of grandeur on my part. Forgive the rambling. Work has been heck of late.
Giant robots cost money, and I assure you that venture capital is hardly interested in anything that won't pay off huge in the next four quarters.
I don't know about this talk of literary and pulp. I know that most are too self-obsessed to notice that we live in interesting times; fewer still have enough steel in their spines to consistently document these strange days.
Interesting, the public numbers for DARPA's 2017 appropriations are less than three billion dollars, and the advanced technology development part of that is less than one and a quarter billion. Depending on what time period that half billion is under, that could imply a very large commitment of DARPA money to an outside contractor.
Makes sense to me, why pay to develop robotic and IT toys out of pocket when you can turn your R&D arm into a profit center and catch some rain from DC? There are risks to trying that though.
I wouldn't think so, if anything I'd expect far better value for money out of any company that wasn't previously a defense industry contractor. I also doubt that the Pentagon has any capacity for shame over wasted money: They routinely get snark and eye rolling over wasting billions on the F-35 bullshit, without flinching or giving a fraction of a maggot-infested rat's ass about politicians, journalists, commentators and comedians all complaining and mocking the waste.
I'm not nearly rich/corrupt enough to be a defense industry insider with significant knowledge about their gray and black money contracting. And now I feel dirty, dirty shame and regret both that I could use some of that cash, and that I even thought for a second about what I'd have to do to get it.
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Also: if you liked the cute kids in the previous page, check out this side comic that was gifted to me by Argyle Fox!