rdl

Even better "please give us all the things which could be used by a foreign power to blackmail you, or apply pressure to relatives or other close contacts" and then poorly secure that database.

I preordered one for $20k (so I'd get it earlier), but it's going to live in only public areas of house, outdoors, etc., due to privacy concerns. I think it will probably be sufficiently useful to be worthwhile, but I'll probably wait a few weeks from public launch to be more sure.

Seemed weird to me that they turned it into a secondary site; we were fighting relatively incapable-of-force-projection people in the mountains and deserts at the time, but even if Russia wasn't a clear threat in 2008, it seems like it should have been obvious EMP, conventional infiltration attacks, etc. would be reasonable threats in the future. Unless you're willing to go to fully dispersed command (and thus risk a commander at theater or below level launching on his own authority...), or run 24x7 airborne looking glass (which ended in 1990, and presumably was even more costly than modernizing Cheyenne Mountain Complex), what we had from 2008-2015 was clearly less survivable.

I don't understand why this suddenly happened (except if asked by the USG in response to the recent scare/reality over rare earths).

The 50% ownership by a sanctioned entity was a reality for a while, and was an issue as soon as the purchase. This didn't change recently. So, this action should have been part of the pre-purchase review (CFIUS in the US...I assume there is an equivalent in China). On the face of it, this all could have been avoided by having a non-sanctioned entity (including another random Chinese company) own enough of the company to get sanctioned entity ownership below 50%.

There are a few other downsides to borosilicate vs soda lime in a home kitchen (I still have euro and vintage only); if borosilicate breaks it is somewhat more dangerous.

I am in awe. Their cookie banners were consistently annoying but probably didn’t hurt any individual this much. If I were an EU resident I would probably learn about “you can just do things” from this.

A one way plane ticket, a rifle, or a drone swarm. (What I’d use if my country blocked VPNs)

Also curious if it was legit, misconfigured, or attack traffic.

Puerto Rico (I've lived here since 2018...) is basically awash in guns for criminals. Since 2020, it's gotten a lot easier to buy/carry guns as a normal person (previously you had to appear before a judge for a ccw, now it's a 1h class and $100 for 5 years). It's the only non-warzone I've lived in where the default criminal gun is fully automatic (usually glocks with switches, but a few other things too). Absolute guns per capita isn't really what matters, it's gun accessibility to criminals.

(And the bigger crime issues in PR are due to dysfunctional/bankrupt government, specific kinds of poverty/culture, drugs (both local and transshipment), gangs, etc. Also really high domestic violence rate. The crime is largely contained to housing projects, inter-gang fighting, etc., and it feels like less petty property crime (at least in the areas where I go) than I remember of SF 2016+, but I'd rather have someone break my car's window than have to shoot people breaking into my home at night.)

If the NG (or ideally another federal LE agency) demonstrably reduces crime in DC, without engaging in particularly political actions, will raise some interesting questions about why things have been so bad for for long.

Aside from street protests and rallies (which NG should scrupulously facilitate for 1A reasons; DC itself has been fairly bad about this in the past, too), I don't think most local policing is highly political. Yes, DC residents are losing some democratic control over their local policing, which is bad, but DC has also done a bad job with local policing for a long time.

(I'm broadly in favor of shrinking DC to the federal areas themselves; the parts where people live generally should be returned to the States.)

Mostly the best market is intelligence agency vendors. As a US citizen, I would only be comfortable selling to US contractors. There are a bunch; if you go to conferences you probably meet the people there (look at the sponsors...).

It won't be tax-free, though; you'd probably get a 1099, but if you're smart could set it up as corp to corp and deduct a bunch of other expenses from it. Part of the sale is signing a bunch of NDAs, etc so you can't then release it to others.

The durable reservoirs are in South America, not Central America. We actually eradicated it (at least essentially) all the way down to the Darien Gap.

And the Panama border (Darien Gap, specifically) used to be a stronger natural barrier; humans have been crossing it for years, are starting to graze cows within the exclusion zone, etc.

I am mostly a P365 carrier/shooter now, but for a couple years a P320 Compact was my primary handgun (with an X5 P226 SAO for competition); I put probably 15-20k rounds through the P320 (1k round classes, etc, back when ammo was $150-180/case) (and never got the drop-safe mod done), and no problems. So it's some combination of QC, specific units, and bad luck -- but even a 0.001% risk of something happening is a big deal.

The quick P250 -> P320 without really designing it properly does seem to have been a mistake, though.

Always bet against Intel whenever it's something software?

They are devices that don't do USB PD. Usually it is a USB-A to USB-C cord, and just provides 5V 500mA or higher.

TBH there's enough of a "planespotting" hobbyist community who would love to have good quality camera footage of takeoffs/landings to probably finance great quality cameras at all major airfields covering all the runways/ramp areas/etc. just from ads from streaming. Also insurers (I actually work with a bunch of the guys at Lloyd's syndicates who do hull insurance for aircraft; I can ask them in a few weeks how much this data would be worth to them. For ramps, it would be "who backed into my aircraft while it was parked" issues. I worked on an airbase where someone drove a pickup truck into a super high end "one of two" high altitude long endurance drone, destroying 50% of the US Government surveillance capability in theater for about 4 months...)

I love that museum; try to visit whenever I'm nearby.

During Covid, the new director of the museum changed policy substantially -- primarily focusing on original artifacts, rather than the "displays" which had been built before to illustrate concepts (when something wasn't available, or where the original artifacts weren't impressive or illustrative enough). As someone fairly familiar with the field, seeing the actual objects is much more worth a trip than seeing a museum display illustrating a concept which I could see better in a wikipedia article or a book.

Both approaches work for museums, but I'm glad his one changed. The most striking thing for me was seeing the actual computers used in SIOP and nuclear war initiation a couple decades earlier (fairly run of the mill high end DEC Alpha boxes).

Fentanyl contamination/adulteration seems like a sufficient reason to not use any street drug active in greater than microgram quantities. (If I were a parent, I'd probably prefer to give "good" drugs to a kid who was unavoidably going to do them vs. trust their friends/etc. to find safe ones, although there's obviously horrible moral hazard there. I have no idea what the right answer is.)

Obvious archive link: https://archive.is/jmaXN

I know both of them somewhat (I was in Ilya's YC batch!) and I'm completely inclined to believe this article/statement to be accurate -- especially since it matches what the federal courts accept as true.

Crime is bad. Don't do crime. I wouldn't put an ex-massive-thief in charge of discretionary defensive security for something, but the computer security has a long history of using the knowledge and expertise of former thieves/etc. to improve security, so I'm hopeful there will be a way he can contribute positively to society once he gets out of prison.

The requirement in the contract is nowhere near that specific. Contact info validation is sufficient for almost all registrars. It's possible a given registry has higher standards, or maybe one registrar got some order to be more thorough, but great reason to avoid given this is a commodity and there are actually good alternatives. (I broadly like Tucows and Cloudflare)

Namecheap is on my NO NO NO list, along with GoDaddy (and a bunch of others). Google Domains was also on this OH GOD NO list, but thankfully Google did the Google thing and killed the product.

I would use it for flights where the best flight is pretty obvious, or in cases where satisficing is fine. I'd tbh mostly use it when OTHER PEOPLE ask me to find a flight for them.

I'd also use it to quickly book flights on my preferred airlines because I have free changes/cancellations on those, so the value of getting something booked immediate and then refined later (and possibly rebook) is fine.

Wow.I book a lot of flights, often waste a huge amount of time find the best flight, and would use this for a lot of the easier bookings. I was amazed at how well it works (in the simulator).

Google Flights is really the last Google product I routinely use -- happy to have an alternative!

For a long time they were the leader in confidential computing and a few other specific things.

Definitely a lot of value in a drone/balloon/etc. fleet to 1) restore communications using satellite + mesh 2) overhead imagery for direct support of rescue/recovery/rebuilding 3) supporting rescue (and later recovery) operations by finding phones and sending messages in broadcast, etc. Augments what can be done from satellites or manned aircraft already.

Curious what the specific connection between ultra-pure quartz and nuclear weapons is.

If the recommissioning requires 20% of the work of new-build (in time and money), I'd rather have the "normal" 50-100% overrun in costs and time happen on recommissioning vs new-build.

The delay is usually heavily on the permitting/legal challenges/etc. stage, not actual concrete-pouring and equipment installation, so an already-once-permitted site will probably do better relatively, too.

Extra reactors at exising operating sites would make even more sense, though. Putting 2-4 extra AP-1000 at ~1GW/ea at each of the 54 facilities operating today would be huge and minimal incremental risk, and if there were a shortcut one time permitting process for it...

Solving the political problems behind nuclear power (getting TMI restarted being one of the more difficult politically but easier technically), and generally bringing the "build more nuclear" to forefront.

(Although to be fair there's been a fair bit of wind and solar subsidized heavily by crypto, as well as flare gas power generation, and a bit of PV solar)

Wow. AI has already accomplished more positive in a few years of big commercial stuff (admittedly as a side effect) than cryptocurrency has since, say 2009. :(