stevenjgarner

It is often argued that the US will grow its economy such that the debt is less significant. There is much confusion between the US debt being cited as a ratio of GDP (common among economists) vs net tangible assets (common among businesses and people). For example, after WWII, the U.S. faced its previous record debt-to-GDP ratio—roughly 106% in 1946. By 1974, that ratio had plummeted to just 23% largely through:

a) massive GDP growth with real consumption rising 22% between 1944 and 1947.

b) fiscal discipline where the U.S. actually ran primary budget surpluses in the late 1940s

c) financial repression with the Federal Reserve capping interest rates at around 2.5% while inflation averaged 6.5%. This meant the government was paying back debt with "cheaper" dollars, effectively "inflating away" the debt at the expense of bondholders.

Fast forward to today, there is an often stated belief that the US will grow the economy again, this time with a dramatic expansion into a space economy including orbiting data centers, solar power plants, asteroid mining, space manufacture - all leveraged with robotics and AI. Let's be generous and assume this actual happens and that it happens soon - what mandate is there that this massive space economy will be denominated in US dollars or even be part of the US economy? SpaceX has already launched numerous satellites for foreign countries. What is to stop them launching a space economy that will be owned under a "Flag of Convenience" from an offshore tax-free zone, perhaps even denominated in crypto? Will we then confront this massive off-planet economy with "space-tariffs" in order to import the value-added component back into the US? The U.S. debt can only be "grown away" if the value-added activities (mining, manufacturing, computing) remain registered in the U.S..

Agreed. However, the 2020 Census had a reported "net coverage error" of only about -0.24%, which I seriously question in the case of SD.

Even in the USA, the census is not as accurate as it thinks (without even getting into the homeless situation). South Dakota is the capital of the "Nomad" phenomenon because of its favorable residency and tax laws for full-time travelers (RVers and truckers) - such that residency is legal from a PO Box.

The US Census is "de jure" (based on where you live and sleep most of the time), not where your mail goes, so the SD nomad population can go uncounted. The Census Bureau generally does not mail forms to PO Boxes. They use a Master Address File (MAF) based on physical residential structures. If you are an RV'er and you were at a campsite in Arizona on Census Day (April 1st), you were technically supposed to be counted there, not in South Dakota. Many truckers are "transient" and difficult for the Bureau's "Non-Response Follow-Up" (the people who knock on doors) to catch.

Many are not counted. This creates a fascinating paradox: South Dakota has a high number of legal residents (on paper/licenses) but a lower enumerated population (on the Census). South Dakota might have enough "licensed residents" to clog their DMV and insurance systems, but because those people weren't "counted" in the physical state during the Census, the state doesn't get the federal highway or healthcare dollars to support the infrastructure they use when they do pass through.

It’s a bizarre irony: In PNG, the government "invents" people (overcounting) to get more aid; in South Dakota, the system "loses" people (undercounting) because the administrative tools (physical addresses) don't match the modern lifestyle.

> Here’s my favorite fact: Papua New Guinea, with about 0.1 percent of the world’s population, hosts more than 10 percent of the world’s languages. Two villages, separated perhaps only by a few miles, will speak languages that are not mutually intelligible.

In the author's example of PNG, dare I ask "why does it matter what the population is"? If the bulk of the people are living their own lives beyond "civilization", speaking unknown languages, without the government providing any kind of infrastructure or services, then why is it important how many people there are?

Yes current EVs are heavy. It's not at all clear that this will prevail as solid state batteries evolve to become standard. It is highly possible that EVs will soon be lighter than comparable ICE vehicles [1]

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46505975

The assertion that 'I just hope "dumb" EV's become a thing soon' led me to a different assumption. The ultimate aspiration of a "smart" EV is self-driving, which incorporates Internet connectivity features (e.g. digital mapping, over the air updates, etc).

That is not the argument being made. We are discussing how "dumb" vehicles (e.g. vehicles that contribute to 50,000+ fatalities annually) provide independence, privacy and freedom that "smart" vehicles (e.g. vehicles with self-driving that can be bricked at will) do not ensure.

So liberty then. I don't disagree with you, but this modern flashpoint in the classic debate between individual liberty and collective safety does bring up the question what is saving 50,000+ lives annually actually worth in terms of loss of personal freedoms? I am personally struggling with this debate having lost loved ones in this manner.

Why? Are you worried from a liberty/privacy standpoint? "Smart" EV's are demonstrated to be significantly safer than "dumb" EVs. Waymo’s 2025/2026 data shows an 80–90% reduction in injury-causing crashes compared to human drivers in the same cities. [1, 2, 3, 4]

[1] https://www.reinsurancene.ws/waymo-shows-90-fewer-claims-tha...

[2] https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11305169/

[3] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/39485678/

[4] https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Comparison-of-Swiss-Re-h...

It wasn't an absence of a market. Those of us that had to manage OSX Server soon found out the software was marked by several high-profile bugs, technical debt, and a perceived decline in reliability. I migrated a large number of Macs to Ubuntu Server software. The hardware was great.

I fear the quality of macOS is deteriorating today in the same manner than befell OSX Server.

https://www.darkreading.com/cyber-risk/apple-blasts-mac-os-x...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Year_2038_problem

https://www.letemsvetemapplem.eu/en/2024/10/19/chyby-v-macos...

Alternative to paywall: https://archive.ph/8xF1w

Michael Levin’s research fundamentally challenges the traditional biological view that intelligence is exclusive to the brain, proposing instead that "mind" and agency are distributed throughout all levels of biological organization. By studying how cellular collectives communicate via bioelectric networks, Levin demonstrates that cells cooperate toward a specific "target morphology," or anatomical goal, independent of a fixed genetic blueprint. This is most vividly illustrated by the creation of Xenobots—synthetic lifeforms made from frog skin cells that spontaneously reorganize into new organisms with novel behaviors, such as kinematic self-replication. This "scale-free cognition" suggests that evolution provides a versatile toolkit rather than a rigid instruction manual, allowing biological systems to solve problems and adapt their forms in ways that transcend their natural evolutionary history.

The implications of this work extend into a "new frontier" of regenerative medicine and philosophy, shifting focus from genomic editing to cracking the bioelectric code that governs complex growth. Levin envisions a future where we can "reprogram" cellular collectives to trigger organ repair, limb regeneration, or the reversal of birth defects by communicating with the system’s inherent intelligence. As the boundaries between biological, synthetic, and mechanical life continue to blur through the creation of hybrids and cyborgs, his research forces a re-evaluation of what it means to be an individual. Ultimately, Levin argues for moving past historical philosophical taboos to embrace a science focused on outcomes, potentially transforming our approach to aging, disease, and the very definition of human agency.

See also his interviews with Lex Fridman:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p3lsYlod5OU (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33049043)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qp0rCU49lMs

Long-duration spaceflight causes a significant physical shift of the human brain within the skull, moving it backward, upward, and rotating it in pitch. By analyzing MRI scans of 26 astronauts, researchers found that these displacements—reaching over 2 millimeters in long-duration flyers—are widespread across nearly 130 brain regions and correlate with post-flight balance issues, particularly when shifts occur in sensory-related areas. While most of these anatomical changes recover within six months of returning to Earth, some deformations persist, suggesting that current ground-based microgravity simulations (like head-down tilt bed rest) do not fully capture the complexities of how actual space travel alters neuroanatomy. Despite these detailed findings, the most pivotal unanswered question remains: what are the long-term clinical and cognitive consequences of these physical brain shifts, and do they pose a permanent risk to the health and longevity of astronauts embarking on multi-year missions to Mars?

This video provides an overview of how the brain physically repositions itself during spaceflight and the potential implications for future missions to the Moon and Mars. [1]

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=90EQEor52hs

This study reveals that 18 of Earth’s largest river deltas, including the Nile and Amazon, are sinking at rates significantly faster than global sea levels are rising, driven primarily by localized human activities like groundwater extraction and sediment starvation from dams. This research answers the pivotal question of whether global climate change or local intervention is the dominant threat to these regions; it concludes that for many deltas, human-induced land subsidence is the primary driver of "relative sea-level rise." This finding is critical because it suggests that while global warming remains a threat, the immediate survival of these deltas and their 236 million inhabitants depends on local management of water and sediment resources.

I wonder how much the 2026 SNAP food stamp item rule changes will move this needle further, with several states using new federal waivers to restrict "junk food" items like soda, candy, energy drinks, or prepared desserts?

See also : https://bostondynamics.com/products/atlas/

LEGO announced the Smart Brick at CES Media Day. It contains a tiny chip and speakers that allow the bricks to "know" what you’re building and respond with sound effects and lights based on the specific set (starting with a Star Wars collaboration).

See also: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46503733

See:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45439670

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45426292

I think especially heinous is the use of Zero-Knowledge (ZK) Proof technologies where a centralized attestation authority (e.g. government agency) verifies compliance, and the verifier (e.g. business needing to prove compliance) relies on the ZK cryptographic proof of compliance without revealing the individual. This revocable privacy can unmask the real identity in the case of asserted "suspicious" activity. This is the current direction of mainstream technology, and all it serves to accomplish is a normalization of loss of privacy and anonymity.

There is a gradual chilling effect of self-censorship to mass surveillance and loss of anonymity. When you know you are being watched, you change your behavior. You don't visit the "wrong" protest, you don't meet with the "controversial" whistleblower, and you don't seek out the "unpopular" doctor. Total surveillance creates a "soft" totalitarianism where citizens police their own movements to avoid falling into a "high-risk" algorithm, even if they've done nothing illegal. At its extreme, such societies end up with no outliers, no more of "the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels." (Steve Jobs). Safety and compliance at all cost.

The peer-reviewed consensus of this in psychology describes a three-step internal process of Anticipatory Anxiety, Risk Aversion and Self-Censorship [1]. The Conforming Effect (Conformity Theory) has been measured in studies such as those by Jonathon Penney (2016/2021), where use of Wikipedia data and search traffic shows a statistical drop in "sensitive" searches (e.g., about "terrorism," "human rights," or "health") immediately following news of government surveillance. [2]

[1] Surveillance as a Socio-Technical System: Behavioral Impacts and Self-Regulation in Monitored Environments, https://www.mdpi.com/2079-8954/13/7/614

[2] Chilling Effects: Online Surveillance and Wikipedia Use, https://lawcat.berkeley.edu/record/1127413?v=pdf

Also "Full tour of Largest Organ in the World! (Boardwalk Hall)"[1], the pipe organ at Boardwalk Hall in Atlantic City.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iJyUwk6L9lA

Well we do know their consumption of energy is not insignificant and comes at great cost.

Agreed. Even xAI's (Grok's) access to live data on x.com and millions of live video inputs from Tesla is a moat not enjoyed by OpenAI.

As we enter a world of robotics, some users may also find it useful to have their robots directly access their "appliances", including with "retro" appliances that do not adhere to some future interoperability standard. I remember way back when I had a Heathkit HERO-1, it had a built-in solderless breadboard on the robot’s head. I remember the total thrill of programming it that and the Radio Frequency (RF) Remote Control to turn off my bedroom light. Kind of a "hello" program moment for me.

The dollar's share hit a historical bottom around 45-46% in the early 1990s (specifically hitting roughly 45.8% in 1991 and remaining in the high 40s/low 50s through 1994). By the end of 1994 and into 1995, the share began to rise again, eventually peaking at over 70% in 2001.

Another factor was that the 1990's was the Pre-Euro Era, the peak of the "multi-polar" reserve system. Before the Euro was launched in 1999, global reserves were split among many more national currencies (the French franc, the Dutch guilder, etc.), which naturally diluted the dollar's total share more than the current "USD vs. Euro" system.

Haha! Great catch. That specific structure ... "It’s not just a [Product], it’s a [Experience/Metaphor]!" ... is a classic trope of mid-to-late 20th-century American advertising. This style exploded during the "Creative Revolution" of advertising (1960s–1980s). Agencies like Doyle Dane Bernbach (DDB) began moving away from "reason-why" copy (which listed technical specs) toward emotional copy. So it is kind of a time capsule, like a website from the 90's. In professional copywriting, this is called Feature-to-Benefit Transformation. In classical rhetoric, this is a form of Correctio - when a speaker replaces a word or a description with a more powerful one to emphasize a point.

Yes, I love the analogy. You can think of the CMU Split-Lohmann system as a "per-pixel tilt-shift lens" or a "freeform focal surface" camera.

Human-readability is the ultimate error correction for the most expensive link in the system: the human-in-the-loop.

The information-theoretic justification is that binary's efficiency assumes a perfectly known codec, but the entropy of time destroys codecs (bit rot/obsolescence). Text sacrifices transmission efficiency for semantic recovery - it remains decodable even when the specific tooling is lost, making it the most robust encoding for long-term information survival.

From an information theory perspective, "Always bet on text" is a plea for symbolic efficiency. It argues that while binary or visual formats might have higher bandwidth, they often have lower meaning-per-bit for the complex, abstract logic that runs civilization. Text is the most entropy-resistant, highly-compressible, and universally-decodable format we have ever invented.

No the site is just having its own "fairytale-like hallucinations"