ptero

Sorry, I do not understand your comment. Can you clarify. What does "a lot more centralized in practice" mean?

> What's the point of it all in this case?

Lightning is an L2 protocol, highly scalable and used for low cost payment in Bitcoin. Level 1 networks are almost never used for user transactions: your credit card payments do not go over fedwire, etc. Bitcoin protocol is not scalable to serve worldwide money transfer needs; Lightning is. And with the cost of a penny per transaction or so.

> Why not just use regular currency?

There are a lot of frictions in the current banking systems, because money laundering, because drugs, because whatever. Getting $5-$10k in regular currency while on an overseas trip can be a major quest. With Lightning I can transfer that much (or more) in a few mouse clicks.

As a side note, I think the federales are already way too nosy regarding my use of my own money, so I want to give alternative options as much business as I can. My 2c.

> that seems like the exact same usage as here: tying a pseudonym to an IRL for purposes of law enforcement.

I disagree. Tying a pseudonym to an IRL persona for purposes of law enforcement is a part of an official investigation.

Doxxing is specifically non-government unmasking and dissemination of that tie for extrajudicial purposes, almost always for harassment. There is a world of difference between them and we should not fudge them together with terminology. My 2c.

Virtually everyone everywhere can find free 30 minutes. And turn their devices off. Those who think they cannot would do well getting to a state where they can do this, at least 6, preferably 7 days a week.

Skipping screen time between waking up and getting up will might solve this problem for a significant fraction of the first world population. My 2c.

I agree with your "sensationalism is bad" take; especially as meaningful, non-incendiary comments now often get quickly downvoted for viewpoint, not tone (IMO downvoting should cost 0.1-0.3 karma). But not with "nothing to see in CB gold holdings fluctuations" view:

R1. But central bank gold holdings are rising organically, and partially at the expense of US treasuries. CB gold holdings have been dropping for 35 years, until about 2015. The price rise of gold from 2005 to 2015 did not reverse this trend. From 2015 to 2019 gold price did not rise, but reported holdings did. The recent doubling of the gold price muddies things a little, but the trend is clear.

R3. Reported gold purchases have trended down in 2025 and 2026, probably due to price doubling. But they are still positive. Emerging markets did not sell into this strength to build up more liquid holdings (UST) as more effective tools to support their economies against future malaise. Even "trending down" part is muddy, too, because some countries CB do not report it. China, an elephant in the room, started better obfuscating its holdings, including gold, since COVID.

R4. Yes. Gold owned by CB strognly trended down since 1980. That trend stopped in 2005 and reversed somewhere between 2005 and 2015. And likely accelerated in the last few years.

As a side note, I personally see USTs losing dominance as a reserve asset as a good thing. USG needs some checks on its spending, and world being willing to buy long dated treasuries at below inflation rates incentivizes the "we do not need to solve real problems, we can just print more money" mindset. My 2c.

I do not think so. The Windows - OS/2 war was a big fight that Microsoft won on merits. Windows 95 was revolutionary at the time, folks queued at the malls on the release day to get it, bugs and all.

They fought the compiler wars with real engineering, giving Borland a run for the money. Different people have different opinions about Visual Studio. As a Linux user since 0.9 I did not like its architecture and focus on GUI at the expense of everything else, but I still saw it as a consistent framework done by excellent engineers. And so on.

Microsoft lost its way much earlier than 4 years ago. It abused users at the time of Netscape wars and forcing Internet Explorer down people's throats.

But they hit an infinite gold mine with government adoption and for the last 30 years no amount of bad engineering was able to shake off government use.

Windows 11 is bad? Yes, but did you try Microsoft Teams? The only way to force Microsoft into "users matter" engineering is to get govvies off it. My 2c.

PhD programs are very different. The environment Karpathy describes is fairly similar to what I saw as a math PhD in a good school, but not an ivy. My theoretical physics PhD friends had the same setup as I had, but experimentals lived in a different world, long hours in the lab every day, including weekends.

My advisor was well established, tenured prof with a number of students. I had to teach, but the effort was light. We taught large, basic courses that are boring for tenured profs. We usually requested the same 1-2 classes to teach and after the first round had all the materials (homework, quizzes, etc.) and could teach on autopilot. University gave us undergrad graders to grade assignments but I never used them since I wanted to see what my students wrote. Which is a testament that the load was light; if I was drowning I would use all free help I could.

But there was a cult of academia. "Get an academic job or you are a loser" mentality was prevalent. My advisor was disappointed, but OK when I decided to go into industry after PhD, but a friend's (Physics PhD from Harvard, CEO of a profitable startup now) advisor does not talk to him anymore because he did not stay in academia.

And I only realized long after finishing my PhD how incredibly lonely PhD path is. You live in your bubble for years, with minimal interactions outside a few other folks at the same grad school. Stipend was enough for basic living, but not much else. No good vacations, ski trips with friends, etc. And a few somewhat creepy characters that grow in this lifestyle. This is all surmountable, but the mental toughness required is certainly something to keep in mind. I did not have that mental toughness, but was an introvert, which helped a lot. But looking back I see that I also could have gone off the rails. My 2c.

Wherever it starts, it requires both sides willingness to go beyond the level of "quite a weather, huh". Without which the right approach is a quick and graceful exit. My 2c.

In some age groups/environments, sure; but not in general. And if folks crave interaction they want it to be deeper than a surface level.

That's not saying you should not try, but learn to recognize early signs of folks not being interested and don't push it.

I cannot agree with that. Do not be shy about trying, but do not be a pest either. There are many times when interruptions are not good for both sides. My 2c.

Register your own domain, use a third-party provider to handle actual sending and receiving (I use proton, which makes the setup very easy), forward your Gmail to your personal domain address and as renewals and reminders come in switch your email on services to your personal domain.

After a year or two losing Gmail becomes an inconvenience; after a few more years it is nothing. As everything is now on your own domain name you can switch providers without affecting anything.

That's what I did about 5 years ago and my only regret is not doing it earlier.

> N1 failure is attributed mostly to Korolev - Glushko rivalry that resulted in N1 lacking engines in time.

That is a viable version. But I think this was one of the problems and there were plenty of others. While Chertok does point to the engines as a major problem, he also admits that the whole system became way too complex to succeed.

His description of electrical components (for which IIRC he was the chief engineer) and checkouts is telling. He also describes the feeling of "good envy" as the Russian engineers were listening in on comms between the Earth and the Apollo 13 during its mission. Which drove home the point of how much advantage US had, at least in electronic, and how powerful it was for its successful lunar program.

> It's all a sad story of unchecked emotions leading to monumental waste.

I have a softer view. Both Korolev and Glushko wanted their own leadership, which is normal. Korolev ran his shop in a dictatorial fashion, as that was the only way he could operate efficiently. Which is also fine and can produce spectacular results (and it did early on). But it comes with its own risks, including motivating strong leaders to branch out. I would not call it unchecked emotions that Glushko, after many years at OKB-1 went to run his own projects.

Living in a someone's shadow while under his dictatorial control is not for everyone. I can see the arguments for both sides. My 2c.

> inexact quote: "You know, we're throwing towns into the sky" related to the early mishaps of R-7 program development

I have not looked at the source (in Russian) for several years; now that I am curious I will check at home tonight. But as far as I remember "we are shooting towns into the sky" remark was not in reference to the R-7, but in reference to N1-L3, a hellishly expensive competitor to the Apollo manned Moon mission rocket. The meaning of the phrase was that each and every test should be taken extremely seriously as the cost of each flight is comparable to the cost of building a new city.

R-7 was developed much earlier when Korolev and his team at OKB-1 were iterating rapidly on much cheaper models that were primarily funded as rockets for strategic thermonuclear strike warheads. The civilian (Sputnik and later Gagarin) flights were an offshoot of that and were small enough that it happened as a side project. R-7 was a comparatively simple and cheap design, which may be why that family became a workhorse from the late 50s to carrying crews to the ISS. And the super expensive N1-L3 was a stillborn.

That's my recollection, need to recheck the sources.

Not an expert, but main challenges with laser coherency are present when shaping the output using multiple transmitters.

For lidar you transmit a pulse from a single source and receive its reflection at multiple points. Mentioning phased array with lidar almost always means receiving.

This, as written, is just an idea. Lots of forward looking statements on how the EU must do this and that and no explicit promise to offer funding to all affected US scientists. Not even many details on the funding. Is it the same funding? Equivalent funding? Some funding (how much? what are the conditions? etc.).

Not claiming that this will not entice anyone over, but it is far, far different from the original claim. Sorry.

> German universities are now telling any US researcher who looses their funding that they will be funded at a Germany university

Is this true? Is there a link to the policy? Anything is possible, but this sounds fishy. German research funding isn't known for either generosity or particularly wide reach.

Humans are social animals and good social skills is a major benefit almost everywhere, including at work. This does not make most people juliuses.

They never actually put a full effort into building a consumer oriented economy.

The authorities would say something about a new food program or a housing program but only as motivational goals. Main players always saw getting people less economically dependent on the state as a major threat.

Making people economically miserable was never a goal, but when building consumer economy would start showing promise the state would reestablish control (see for example Kosygin reforms).

A much better goal would be to ditch dependence on a single company and become, as much as possible, cloud provider agnostic. Not that I mind giving US big tech grief -- they earned it in spades.

But if you wrestle your technology chains from one evil master, do not willingly give it to another, even if he looks more benevolent today. My 2c.

> A reply on social media is taking a stand?

No. I only said that spreading information that there is dissent does not require taking to the street.

The counter argument to that is in the age of the social media there is no need to take to the streets to show that there is dissent. Everyone the folks on the street could reach will know about the dissent anyway.

Motivating other people to take a stand -- I do not think this is true either. A fraction of the folks who would support the issue regardless may join the protest on the street. But that would be those who support the issue already.

Change comes from the ballot box. Enough people in the street might influence the next election (sometimes for the issue they are advocating; sometimes in the opposite direction). But 6+ months from the next election the effect I suspect is small. My 2c.

The cited rationale is a perfectly reasonable take.

But most of the world is in the same boat of "large budget deficits and growing government debt". It will be "interesting" for bond issuers and most investors and "exciting fishing" for hedge fund sharks over the next 10 years or so.

That said, I do not agree that it is 100% politicians. At least in the US, that path has been virtually unavoidable after the fiscal spending by G.W. Bush on the 9/11 wars and fully set in stone after 2008 subprime crisis. For the last 15+ years politicians could slow down or speed up the transit a little, but getting off that train has not been an option. My 2c.

The reason for keeping eggs in a fridge is different (primarily washing vs not washing). This has been discussed a number of times at HN.

Here is an example: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19815155

It did not go into a hyperinflation after the WW2, when the US debt load as a share of GDP was even higher than today; and deflated in the same way US is likely to do it now (bond rates forced way below inflation with yield control).

I am not saying that the process will be pleasant for the US or its citizens. But it is not without precedent and is extremely unlikely to cause hyperinflation. My 2c.

Warnings about the deficit are spot on. It is a safe bet that the country with government that spends 50% more than it takes in as taxes will not give above inflation return on its government debt. As a side note, most of the "Western world" is in the same boat (spending way above the long-term ability to pay, so eventually will have to default-by-inflation on bondholders).

But I am sure the poster you are responding to was criticizing the take about US splintering into parts due to armed unrest within the next 5 years. Which sounds completely nonsensical to me as well.

Luck plays a big role, but it is not just luck. One can apply in a way that significantly stacks the deck in his favor.

So absolutely reach out to your network, study the current market and find your edge. It might still be poker-style games which you can still lose because of luck; but doing that gives you starting hands with two aces. My 2c.

> And why is CS not in STEM?

It sure is. If I said that it is not it was a typo.

What I was saying is that today I see a non-CS STEM major plus a CS-like minor as a better ticket for an undergrad (who will enter the job market in the next 2-4 years) than a CS major. Which was not the case for the last almost 30 years, when a pure CS major gave many folks an excellent start. My 2c.

It really depends on the person. This may be an unpopular opinion today, but I strongly believe that someone doing what he loves will statistically be both happier and better off financially than someone in only for the money. So whatever makes their ears perk up: EE, chemistry, mechanical, math, physics, biology, etc.

And, as a complement, pick up a "computer-ish" minor to learn how to make a machine do your bidding. My 2c.

Perelman is a strange character; IIRC he declined several times first without bothering to give a reason. Then, after being asked enough times, came up with a "I am not a hero and such awards are irrelevant" as a somewhat acceptable version so those pesky folks would leave him alone. Thus I would not use him as an example of the right way to deal with a prestigious award.

That said, the Nobel medal to Trump circus is beyond ridiculous.

TLDR: "previous years of boom provided 100k jobs straight out of college, 200k jobs and a guaranteed path to wealth soon after that. That time is over."

Right. And this, IMO, is not a bad thing. We had a long, multi-year bubble and bubbles are not good for anyone. Deflating bubbles can be painful, but they are less painful than bursting ones.

And the current software bubble is deflating, not bursting -- there are still plenty (say, compared to the last 50 years average) of jobs where a good engineer comfortable with programming will make a very good living. So do still learn CS or SE in college, but as a minor to another STEM field. My 2c.