If it’s not open source, it’s fraud in disguise
Even if it's open source but a single entity/foundation has full control of the blockchain, it's a fraud in disguise.
Readit Newslordofgibbons commented on US to put economic data on 9 blockchains bloomberg.com/news/articl... · Posted by u/imaginaryunit01
OpenRouter: eliminating Single Points of Failure… by introducing a beautifully centralized one.
Their uptime is still infinitely better than any single provider though.
Starship is like AI/LLMs in that success would revolutionize the world, but technological failure is very possible. And despite the confident predictions on the internets, we don't know which it's going to be.
After the Shuttle program ended in failure, work on reusable launch systems stopped for decades. A similar thing would happen if Starship fails. Space would remain the province of the military and large governments.
Today it costs ~$3,000 per kilogram to put something in orbit (on a SpaceX Falcon 9). Starship aims to lower that to $10 per kg. That's totally crazy, but even if it could get it down to $300 per kg, that would revolutionize access to space.
Data centers in space, biotech manufacturing, and maybe even asteroid mining and energy generation become practical at those prices. To say nothing of telecommunications, remote sensing, and global navigation--all become much cheaper.
And, of course, that drops the price on all the cool science/exploration goals that we always talk about: massive space telescopes, regular probes to all the planets, and crewed exploration.
We're literally at an inflexion point between two possible futures and we don't know which it's going to be. If I were younger I would absolutely try to work at SpaceX to help tilt the chances.
But as it is, all I can do is root for them.
> After the Shuttle program ended in failure, work on reusable launch systems stopped for decades
Did it really stop for decades? I think SpaceX and Blue Origin were both already working on re-usable launch systems around that time
lordofgibbons commented on Zedless: Zed fork focused on privacy and being local-first github.com/zedless-editor... · Posted by u/homebrewer
Zed makes it incredibly easy to both turn of telemetry and to use your own LLM inference endpoints. So why is this needed?
lordofgibbons commented on Ask HN: Why does the US Visa application website do a port-scan of my network? · Posted by u/mbix77
How and why do browsers allow this? Why wouldn't the browser ask for permission in the same way that it does for Microphone access?
It's insane to allow any random website to port scan my LAN. If this wasn't a "feature", I would have considered this a high severity vulnerability
lordofgibbons commented on Lab-grown salmon hits the menu smithsonianmag.com/smart-... · Posted by u/bookmtn
> But I have yet to see a healthy looking vegan person.
This anecdata is so wrong and only serves to degrade the conversation. I can only imagine you have some sort of bias that convinced you this was worth sharing.
There are a wide range of people who are vegan with various aesthetics, just as with any diet. There is also a selection bias as veganism can attract people who have health issues that they are treating with diet. Your judgement of the efficacy and impact of a lifestyle being based on some people you've met tells me your way of thinking about the world is deeply flawed and shallow.
Wow tell me how you really feel. Who am I going to believe angry people on HN or my own lying eyes?
lordofgibbons commented on Lab-grown salmon hits the menu smithsonianmag.com/smart-... · Posted by u/bookmtn
I think the world would be a better place if everyone went vegan.
However, I’m not convinced that vegan activism via pointing out that many people’s behaviours are at odds with their stated ethical preferences is particularly effective.
I suspect this is because many vegan activists make the assumption that people have ethical preferences which then drive their behaviour. For many (most?) people, though, I think they act the way that feels good to them and then come up with justifications for it post-hoc, even if those justifications are illogical.
As such, I live in hope that lab-grown meat will be tasty and cheap enough that people switch across and stop consuming animal products, which will give humanity the space to look back and see the abhorrent nature of animal agriculture for what it is and ban it outright.
With any luck, we’ll view our current generation’s treatment of animals with the same confusion we feel when we consider our forebears’ tolerance of slavery.
Bring on the cultured salmon!
> I think the world would be a better place if everyone went vegan.
Strongly disagree. I absolutely hate that animals have to be killed for us to eat meat. And the industrial scale cruelty of factory farming gives me existential dread. But I have yet to see a healthy looking vegan person.
I've lived in a couple of very liberal cities with vegans, and every single one I met looked... just sick and unhealthy.
But I think we're on the same page w.r.t the best end-goal. I can't wait for cultured meats so we can stop inflicting so much cruelty on farm animals.
lordofgibbons commented on Streaming services are driving viewers back to piracy theguardian.com/film/2025... · Posted by u/nemoniac
I've always chosen piracy for the privacy. I don't need a bunch of services building a profile on my viewing habits and tastes, then sharing that data with other businesses and governments. If I want a recommendation, I'll ask a friend, not an algorithm.
I'm fine with recommendation algorithms if it was truly anonymous. The problem is that when you're paying for these streaming services, they have your identity, and most likely also sell your watching preference and habit data to data brokers.
lordofgibbons commented on Time travel is self-suppressing arxiv.org/abs/2508.09157... · Posted by u/warrenm
time travel backwards is impossible. but there are undoubtedly time travelers from the past going forward in time
I've already been doing this for a while now ;)
lordofgibbons commented on New treatment eliminates bladder cancer in 82% of patients news.keckmedicine.org/new... · Posted by u/geox
Unfortunately the recurrence rate after 1 year here is still quite high. Good progress, but not a cure yet.
Do cancers have a tendency to come back with better drug resistance if it's not fully eliminated? at least a resistance to the drug that got rid of it the previous time?