atlasunshrugged

Looks like Nvidia, Eric Schmidt, Sequoia, and a host of others https://techcrunch.com/2025/10/09/reflection-raises-2b-to-be...

I'm reading Purge (not to be confused with the film franchise), by a Finnish-Estonian writer about two women with dark pasts during the waning days of the Soviet Occupation of Estonia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Purge_(novel)

Oh got it, neat!

What does an image recognition drone mean? Like it recognizes other drones when it sees them?

Very interesting YC startup that just launched, from a thread on X it seems like they want to sell to businesses (and maybe for people's houses but can't tell if they're joking about that), however my understanding is that its currently not legal for a private business (or even some gov agencies) to intercept and take down drones in the U.S. Am I missing something?

https://x.com/bscholl/status/2085041303457296750

Yes, I would echo that -- it's not something that I think is helpful to just drop into and offer specific technical expertise, but it is very much wanted if you're willing to build longer term relationships to understand the politics, office, and interests that all come wrapped up in a bill and the legislative process

For technical minded US folks who read about this and are outraged and/or interested in how they can do more politically, I highly recommend checking out fellowship programs like TechCongress and Horizon which place technical experts in Congress for a year (disclosure, I'm an alum) and have become critical sources of expertise in a world dominated by nontechnical folks. TechCongress applications for next year closed, but I believe Horizon's are still open.

https://techcongress.io/ https://horizonpublicservice.org/

Yeah for some reason when you submit it eliminates words like "How" as I guess the system thinks they're filler?

Okay awesome, a friend recommended Slamdance too so I'm glad to hear some confirmation there!

Do you have any recommendations on which screenwriting contests are worth submitting to for a first-time historical fiction screenwriter? I've previously published a nonfiction book and am familiar with that side of things but am brand new to the screenwriting world and there are far more film festivals and competitions than I expected (and almost all seem to charge a submission fee)

This is the most interesting bit to me

>Non golf-cart LSVs are not a new concept. GEM has been making them for years. Moke has taken a crack at it with retro-inspired open-air buggies. But none of those offer Chip’s standout promise: a remote-driving feature called Chip Go!

The pitch is that owners will be able to tap a remote driver to take over for the boring parts of driving, namely parking. It means you can drive to to the beach, unload, then dispatch the car to go park in some far-away lot. The feature will start with remote human drivers based in the U.S., Detweiler said, and at first it will only be available when people aren’t in the car. He makes it a point to note that Chip is liable for anything that happens in the vehicle when the teleoperator is in control.

Fun side project I whipped up (thanks Claude), for those who want something a little more tactile there's a great coffee table book by Taschen https://www.taschen.com/en/books/film/44895/the-james-bond-a...

Maybe "quite"?

Right? Just straight up documentation with no shame: From an Axios article on this

> Liu celebrated the exploit, according to the filing. "LOL, I found out I can access the [network storage], so funny," he said in a message to a former colleague who was still employed by Apple.

https://www.axios.com/2026/07/10/apple-sues-openai-trade-sec...

I have to admit I assumed this was going to be about Jony Ive but sounds like he's not part of the suit. Axios article talks about some specific claims:

> The lawsuit alleges that Chang Liu, a former senior electrical engineer at Apple kept a work-issued Apple laptop and discovered a bug that allowed him to access Apple's cloud file storage after leaving and while employed by OpenAI. Liu celebrated the exploit, according to the filing. "LOL, I found out I can access the [network storage], so funny," he said in a message to a former colleague who was still employed by Apple.

Having lived in Estonia some years ago when the debate over whether Russian should be taught in schools was raging (only changing after Russia's full scale invasion of Ukraine) it seems to me that the grey passport holders who refused to acknowledge and assimilate into the independent country that returned to its rightful state after fifty years of brutal occupation are the ones holding most of the blame here. Estonia is an exemplar in upholding human rights since regaining independence.

https://freedomhouse.org/country/estonia/freedom-world/2025

I don't think anyone would disagree there weren't people who committed terrible crimes in those days but I don't think its fair to paint all who fled into the forests in such broad strokes.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guerrilla_war_in_the_Baltic_st...

No, they were occupied by the Nazis too, but then the Soviets came back, hence "re-occupied"

I previously wrote a book (Rebooting a Nation) on how the country of Estonia modernized post re-independence from the Soviet Union. As part of my research I also learned about the Forest Brother movement where tens of thousands of men, women, and children in the Baltics fled to the forests as the Soviets pushed the Nazi's back and re-occupied those countries. Most of the stories are equal mixes of heroic and tragic, but I found the resistance movement fascinating and had an idea for a turn-based strategy game that mixed in historical elements (and thought it was a good use case to test Fable). This is my first game, so I'd very much welcome feedback on ways to improve it!

Not from China? One country has a recent track record of massive amounts of industrial espionage and one doesn't.

Ha, thank you!

I saw this a lot when I ran BD for the program (I'm also an American) and its good you know there will be US tax complications but I would say that unless you expect to 1) have many EU customers and 2) working remotely globally and redomicile elsewhere so you are not considered US tax resident that it probably doesn't make more sense than using something like Stripe Atlas to just set up an LLC or C-Corp

I think the main reason is to have a business incorporated within the EU if that's relevant for the person. Delaware is great, and UK filled this role until Brexit but after that if you needed an EU incorporated company it was a massive pain basically everywhere except Estonia which was relatively cheap and everyone in the industry speaks English

Yes, it was stable for a long time but has been changing mainly due to factors associated with the war in Ukraine (spikes in inflation, especially related to energy prices as well as a need for increased defense spending)

Its been a few years but I ran BD for the program in '19-'20 -- I would say that people underestimate the difficulty in shutting down the company if that needs to happen, sometimes getting access to a proper bank account can be annoying, and don't always understand the tax implications (ex. if I was resident in Germany, all my customers were in Germany, but I tried to run everything through this Estonian biz and pay taxes only there, that could very well cause you lots of issues/complications).

Also, shameless plug for people broadly interested in the country of Estonia and how it became a leader in e-gov/tech only a generation after independence from the Soviet Union, I wrote a book about it after being curious myself! https://www.rebootinganation.com/

From the abstract: We estimate that data centers caused average retail electricity rates to fall modestly in the United States from 2015 to 2024 using an instrumental variables approach. Despite prevailing sentiment, the finding is consistent with economic reasoning: existing large power system fixed costs, economies of scale in transmission and distribution, and declining unit costs for generation imply that durable demand growth lowers average prices. We find patterns of economies of scale for transmission, distribution, and generation costs as well as within and across retail customer classes. We caution that future supply constraints could reverse the effect.

As someone who only speaks English but listens to songs in other languages pretty often (Angele does truly sound angelic!) I found this quite interesting

I'm working on a mobile game that is something of a homage to the Forest Brother movement in the Baltic states post Soviet occupation where tens of thousands of men, women, and children fled to the woods and then waged guerrilla warfare for years (most were systematically killed, captured, or lured out with offers of amnesty within a few decades). The mechanics are going to be similar to Rebel Inc but I try to mix in historic details in the events that happen!

I strongly second this -- this was also one of my main takeaways from my research on how Estonia modernized and became quite prosperous (especially relative to where it started post re-independence from the Soviet Union).