rdl

I think they're the enemies of e/acc, and their EA background (due to FTX, SBF, etc.) taints them a bit when it comes to fundraising.

I was amazed we spend $38B/yr on kidney failure.

I'm intrigued by similar state-level laws being passed in the US; a lot of those seem unconstitutional (1A/free speech) in the US, unless incredibly narrowly tailored and banning publishing or other harms from use.

More reinforcement that the UK lacks a lot of protections of basic human rights, though.

Just ordered, although the low price buckets it into "probably not worth it". I'd price it ~$10 and do a discount instead.

Also, do you know of startups taking advantage of TEA status (e.g. 99% of Puerto Rico) to lower the EB-5 investment requirement back down to $800k? (I didn't realize it had gotten up to $1.050mm; that's high!)

Curious if you've seen any E-2 visas granted to people from Grenada, etc. to people not born in those countries (i.e. naturalized) after the 2021 (?) NDAA/Portugal friendship/etc. legal change. to E-2.

I use them and none of this stuff really matters; they basically have deep pockets available to them and in the current operating model can continue indefinitely.

I'd love to see more focus on their own search engine/results, as well as technical means of ensuring anonymity/unlinkability within their infrastructure, but they're well worth the $250/yr for a pro subscription today.

There are a bunch of scenarios where the US becomes an unpleasant place to be (eg 1860s, 1930s, 1970s) without collapsing, and where specific other places will have problems but probably won't be terrible, and for a given bundle of preferences, resources, etc. might be better. Global thermonuclear war isn't the only risk. Even if you just took the covid situation and scaled it up to 10 years duration and 10x more lethality, I'd pick Argentina over most of the US (although rural WY, MT would be fine too).

It's a (virtually) necessary but not sufficient step in the process. The big blockers are exit tax over $2mm (basically, unrealized capital gains get taxed), and doing the actual appointment with an embassy overseas to document loss of nationality (if relinquished) or renounce (if renouncing; same effect, but much worse option IMO).

If your assets are under 2mm, or if super liquid and thus easy to pay the exit tax, you have a pretty decent option.

Otherwise, the exit tax can be addressed on a scale of multiple years (Puerto Rico has 0% capital gains under act 60, exemption from federal under irc 933, so move to PR first, realize capital gains, have no unrealized capital gains subject to exit tax when relinquishing...)

I'm not a lawyer; not legal advice, or financial advice, entertainment purposes only.

The cheap way to do this is (if you're from any kind of immigrant background over the past few generations, or in some cases far longer, especially if Jewish) -- "ancestry/descent based". Doing the research to find parents/grandparents who were citizens of e.g. Poland, then applying on the basis of descent, is relatively inexpensive (thousands of dollars in research). Ireland is super popular for this; lots of European-Americans are part Irish.

Caribbean Citizenship-by-Investment is about $100-250k but can include spouse/children.

Various permanent residency on the path to citizenships are also relatively expensive (thousands of dollars, some paperwork); if you move there and establish presence, you go through the naturalization process, in some cases fast-tracked.

Spain has some great programs if you're from a Spanish colonial country (including Puerto Rico, apparently...); the citizenship process gets fast-tracked.

Netherlands has a special deal dating from WW2 for US citizens to get fast-tracked to NL.

Turkey has a really cheap (in fees) program -- $5k or so on top of buying real estate at market prices. I personally am not super excited about owning $400k in Turkish real estate, but it has been a good investment in even USD terms (2-3x) over the past few years, from friends who did it. The program used to be $250K buy-in; now it's $400K and potentially moving up.

It's about $100-150k to get, you don't need to be super rich.

This is very sad (although a lot better than if she'd been suffering from some undisclosed illness for years or something, but dying at 30 is bad no matter what).

We need self driving cars. They don't need to be better than the best possible human drivers; they just need to be a viable replacement for "normal" drivers, including and especially normal drivers at their own worst.

Once we have stuff like that, increased penalties for harms caused from manual driving make sense.

Worse than useless -- net negative -- everything related to Iraq/Afghanistan. I didn't go over there because I thought it was a good idea (nation building in either place is dumb, and any conflict at all in Iraq was dumb), and while individual projects sometimes made things locally better (like, speeding up network connectivity on a specific base), it was overall a dumb project which made things worse because it was done. Got paid pretty well, met interesting people, learned a lot, did stuff I'd never have gotten a chance to do otherwise, but yeah, net-negative.

Perfect for preboot botnets :)

I just bought it -- will be interesting to watch the progress (I love Early Access games like that).

There are a LOT of very small/deep/etc quakes in some places.

True Names, particularly because it is short.

Yeah, I just mean "the gun I have on my waist", not a special car gun. And especially for the police in Texas at the ranch, they would almost certainly be armed, and I'd assume ranch staff would also have access to firearms within some period of time less than total flooding/drowning of car.

In a class "Bullets and Vehicles" at Sig Sauer Academy. (https://sigsaueracademy.com/courses/bullets-and-vehicles). Truly amazing. Also some classes at Thunder Ranch (https://thunderranchinc.com/handgun-vehicle-trauma) but those were using own own rental cars (lol, I had an Infinity QX80 with full coverage) and the goal was to avoid putting any damage on the car, so it was just firing from seat/getting out/etc. drills. The Sig class has good law enforcement support (many of the students are LE/agency) so they had a repo'd car: in my class most of the work was done with Audi 2003 (B6 model) A4 sedan, which was cool as I was driving a 2006 (B7 model) A4 at the time. Lots of cool pictures somewhere.

I also worked for ~6y in Iraq/Afghanistan but we never shot through glass in our own vehicles, did shoot rifles from open doors etc. on ranges but the times I was in trucks which were actually shooting "in anger" I was a passenger in the back in armored vehicle and the guy up top did all the work (and almost always it was warning shots, and most often frozen water bottles thrown at cars first to dissuade them)

(Basic firearms training is great, and the vehicle stuff is fun, but TBH the medical parts of these classes are far more useful; I wish more people would take trauma management classes. Outside of war zones, easy to go entire life without any "security" problems, but lots of car accidents, tool accidents, etc. where knwoing this stuff can save someone.)

These are the best I've found (for compact, functional): https://resqme.com/

The problem with the hammer style is you might be injured or pinned in a position where you can't develop much force. Also hit the corner of the window, NOT the center; I've bounced a sledgehammer in class off the center of regular window glass, it's amazing.

My current plan (obviously open windows if possible, don't drive into lakes, etc.) is to use the resqme spring-loaded glass breaker (my work gives them out as branded swag at conferences, but I gave away hundreds in Iraq/Afghanistan when I worked there too) or glowrhino carbide tip I keep with me. That doesn't work very well on laminated glass (but I'm often in a rental, so I don't know which cars have/don't have it). Failing that, put some rounds into the glass and try to pry it out of the frame. Shooting a handgun in a car with closed windows (especially) is pretty disorienting, I've done it while wearing earpro but never without, but beats drowning. (I'm somewhat surprised the sheriff deputies in the Chao case didn't try this...seems very Texan solution to opening a closed thing)

The technique with laminated glass is basically to make a line of cracks/deformations to allow you to deform the entire panel and pop it out, not to make a hole to go through. Pretty hard to do with a carbide punch, but probably your best bet. Then use legs or body to push the entire window out.

Also, the smaller/accessory windows are often NOT laminated (esp on Tesla), so hitting one of those to let water in and then equalize pressure to GTFO is an option.

Once again, fuck cancer.

That's not consistent with what a lot of my friends have done (people bought two and returned one, or a lot returned their only one, including long-time apple devs/new product folks with >$200k/yr income, such that a $3500 device isn't a major purchase.

I kept mine, but I haven't found anything compelling other than watching video; I'm hoping cool apps happen over the next 6-12 mo.

Thiel's program as discussed in the article this post is about.

You can absolutely get value out of being at a good school (I'd say even a mid tier school has value) -- both academic and social. It's just...is that worth $200-300k and 4 years of your life?

There would also be value in getting a great job as a top-tier-school dropout ("intern who just loves this place and how fast everything is progressing, seems like a shame I have to go to school in September, but I'll keep in touch" "Now that I'm at school every day I miss..." "can you come back and start monday?")

I think you get an overall superior package from dropping out and doing 20 under 20, joining a top company, or doing other stuff at a top level (even if it fails) than from universities today -- particularly as universities have gotten dramatically worse over the past 30 years (and especially past 5 years), and the requirement for a degree doesn't really exist (absent immigration pathways) in cs/tech.

I'd take "my YC friends" over "my college friends" overall, too.

This all assumes a highly motivated and self directed student. I don't think university really saves "I don't know what I want to do, my parents are telling me to go to Harvard so I will"; IMO if you're 16-18 and have no idea what kind of things you enjoy you've already failed/been failed.

The top 25% of Harvard grads are impressive. The bottom 25% are not.

My experience has been that even the lower half of Waterloo grads, in CS, are solid to good. I'd probably take the 20th percentile Waterloo grad over the 20th percentile Harvard grad absent other information.

The optimal path (at least if you're not going into a regulated/gatekept profession, or not from a very poor/disadvantaged background on a full ride, or using the university program as an immigration pathway) seems to be: 1) Get accepted to a top school 2) Enroll and then drop out (figure out the minimum for your school to consider you a dropout -- I think you probably have to register and take classes for a semester, but you may be able to simply not pay the bill) 3) 20 under 20 (or just do a startup/get a job/continue with life directly)

You get >50% of the value of the school (proxy for an IQ test, basically, although with the decline of testing this is less obvious -- still, even without rigorous testing, many people, especially those far from academia, consider "accepted to top school" to be valuable.)

I basically did this (out of necessity; I couldn't afford to pay for MIT), but it's worked out well, and it's worked out pretty well for other people I know. With dropout you need to distinguish between "dropped out to do X, or for decent extenuating circumstance" vs "too much drugs", though, when looking at stats.

ASML machines can presumably be rendered largely worthless remotely through firmware (or by being forced to operate out of design spec for a while, causing physical damage), and I have to assume TSMC/Taiwan/US have that stuff pre-rigged (physically or software), too.

Competition is great, but also in this case geographical redundancy; having the entire world depend on chips produced in one of the world's most likely military hotspots is terrifying.

Still pretty amazing that there's basically one global top-tier chip supply chain, with hundreds of companies, some of which are sole-source at the scale of 6-12mo+. ASML is as much a bottleneck as TSMC.

Curious how to support Maxim despite Russia complications.