They were correcting my initial "1+"
Shouldn't we programmers be just typing "++"?
Readit Newstenthirtyam commented on Graphene OS: a security-enhanced Android build lwn.net/SubscriberLink/10... · Posted by u/madars
GrapheneOS community manager here. Google's devices are currently the only ones that meet our requirements (https://grapheneos.org/faq#future-devices).
However, we're currently working with another OEM and are hoping to have a device of theirs meet our requirements that can be launched in 2026 or 2027. Nothing set in stone, but we're optimistic thus far.
I can understand the GOS' rationale in choosing only the most secure phones. However, I'm more concerned about privacy, and not so much about security. It'd be great to have something like a "GOS-Lite" which accepts some security compromises in order to bring privacy to more people. (And yes, I understand that lower security means less privacy from targeted attacks but even GOS depends on OEM blobs, right?)
tenthirtyam commented on What happens when housing prices go down? clmarohn.substack.com/p/w... · Posted by u/chmaynard
"If “build more” was going to bring prices down and stabilize the system, we wouldn’t be seeing these mixed signals."
Where have we seen anything close to 'build more'? Regulations in many major cities have prevented building more for decades and I haven't seen any loosening of these regulations (they were only increased during the Biden administration).
"Prices are softening. Delinquencies are rising. Builders are walking. And instead of asking what this reveals about the fragility of our system, we’re preparing to paper over it—again—with liquidity, leverage, and euphemisms. "
This is the plan from the potential future mayor of New York: Builders and investors will flee as a result of price controls and home value will plummet.
Detroit is a good example of what happens in the long term when investors and businesses flee the city. I lived there for 20+ years and it still has never really recovered.
In Ireland, politicians (make appearances of) are making a lot of noise about building more houses to address the severe shortage of housing supply (and consequent runaway house price inflation). However, my take is that the root of the problem is exactly what the author here describes, to wit, the minimum housing a person can buy is (for the most part) a semi-detached two- or two-and-a-half-bedroom* house on two floors. There are precious few one-bedroom apartments or anything similar on the market, meaning that single persons entering the market are competing with couples or young families.
I don't understand the details but I'm told the origin of this is that regulations have rendered apartments of any size unprofitable to build (anyone with more insight here?). Pretty much the only housing Ireland gets are sprawling suburban housing estates. I'm reminded of this graphic, 100 houses Vs 100 apartments [1].
* By 2½ bedrooms I mean two bedrooms plus a very small "box room" barely big enough for a single bed and a small wardrobe. Frequently used as either a storage room or small home office.
[1] https://i.pinimg.com/originals/78/f5/94/78f594ebb9216e50e396...
I purchased a book the other day, and when I turn the pages, it automatically shows me the text that I want to read. It must be powered by AI.
Ah, you've discovered the Built-in Orderly Organised Knowledge device [1].
Juse wait until you dicover PENCILS!
[1] https://cool.culturalheritage.org/byorg/abbey/an/an21/an21-8...
tenthirtyam commented on Problems the AI industry is not addressing adequately thealgorithmicbridge.com/... · Posted by u/baylearn
Also, AGI is not just around the corner. We need artificial comprehension for that, and we don't even have a theory how comprehension works. Comprehension is the fusing of separate elements into new functional wholes, dynamically abstracting observations, evaluating them for plausibility, and reconstituting the whole - and all instantaneously, for security purposes, of every sense constantly. We have no technology that approaches that.
You'd need to define "comprehension" - it's a bit like the Chinese room / Turing test.
If an AI or AGI can look at a picture and see an apple, or (say) with an artificial nose smell an apple, or likewise feel or taste or hear* an apple, and at the same identify that it is an apple and maybe even suggest baking an apple pie, then what else is there to be comprehended?
Maybe humans are just the same - far far ahead of the state of the tech, but still just the same really.
*when someone bites into it :-)
For me, what AI is missing is genuine out-of-the-box revolutionary thinking. They're trained on existing material, so perhaps it's fundamentally impossible for AIs to think up a breakthrough in any field - barring circumstances where all the component parts of a breakthrough already exist and the AI is the first to connect the dots ("standing on the shoulders of giants" etc).
I'm not sure how llms count as fair use.
It's just that we can't show HOW they've been encoded in the model, means it's fair use? Or that statistical representations are fair use? Or is it the generation aspect? I can't sell you a Harry potter book, but I can sell you some service that let's you generate it yourself?
I feel like this has really blown a hole in copyright.
I'm inclined to agree here. LLMs do not use just a paragraph here and there in accordance with fair use, but rather uses the entire body of work to train itself.
Or am I misunderstanding something about LLMs?
tenthirtyam commented on Interstellar Flight: Perspectives and Patience centauri-dreams.org/2025/... · Posted by u/JPLeRouzic
This is predicated on it being worthwhile to colonize the moon or Mars, no?
Indeed. It's a certainty that Mars is far far less hospitable than Earth even in the worst of the climate change outcomes. I suppose the most useful thing about colonizing Mars would be for species survival - e.g. the Giant-Asteroid-Strikes-the-Earth-but-luckily-not-Mars scenario.
In any case, a nearby planet or its orbit would seem to be the most logical place to start for any supervillain species seeking to colonize its galaxy. :-)
tenthirtyam commented on Interstellar Flight: Perspectives and Patience centauri-dreams.org/2025/... · Posted by u/JPLeRouzic
So this is another reason why I see Dyson Swarms as being the inevitable evolution of human civilization. Let me explain why.
First, to clarify, a Dyson Swarm is a cloud of orbitals around a star to use most or all of its energy via solar collectors. This was originally called a Dyson Sphere but was renamed because of confusion: people thought a Dyson Swarm was a rigid shell. It never was.
Anyway, the classic orbital is an O'Neil Cylinder, which would be 3-4 miles in diameter and 10-20 miles long. You spin it to get earthlike gravity. With this diameter the rotation isn't likely disconcerting and the centrifugal forces aren't so large as to tear it apart.
This kind of structure could be built with a material no stronger than stainless steel and using solar panels for power. It's relatively low tech. There aren't any exotic physics or exotic static states of matter required. It's basically an engineering problem and can be built incrementally.
Why do I mention this? Because fo rthe distances involved, an interstellar starshhip is basically just an O'Neil Cylinder. You need to support people for centuries. Such a cylinder could get 10s of thousands of people, possibly 100k+ to another system in relative comfort.
So how do you get to another star? The tyranny of the rocket equation means any form of propulsion where you need to carry to propellant just won't work with the possible exception of nuclear fusion.
But what if you didn't have to carry propellant at all? To accelerate or decelerate. That makes it way easier. But how would yo udo that? Easy, at least in theory: solar sails. The solar wind carries pretty significant momentum. A sufficiently large solar sail (and it would have to be large for such a ship) would absolutely be capable of accelerating a ship to at least 0.01c. And you can decelerate with the same solar sail.
You can do even better by collecting energy from the Sun and concentrating it on the sails, which is yet another reason to build a Dyson Swarm.
The energy budget to travel to even our closest star is so vast that we would need to do things like collect most of the Sun's output energy. I personally don't believe FTL is possible. Time dilation only really kicks in meaningfully at >0.99c and I just don't think that's parctical and, if it were, the energy required is even more vast.
In fact, at 0.99c you would suffer drag from the interstellar medium (gas and dust)..
So any intersteallar ship is going to be a generation ship, a habitat.
Like "Rendezvous with Rama" by Arthur C Clarke: A mysterious cylindrical spaceship arrives at planet Earth from outer space.
tenthirtyam commented on Interstellar Flight: Perspectives and Patience centauri-dreams.org/2025/... · Posted by u/JPLeRouzic
If it's a bogus argument then mount a counterargument. The question is simple: what is worth mining in space?
So far we have... "maybe platinum." Maybe!
Aside from the conspicuous absence of math, "maybe platinum" isn't remotely important enough a factor in earthbound mining to justify asteroid mining on the basis of preserving earth, obviously.
I recently read "Delta-v" and the sequel "Critical Mass: A Novel" by Daniel Suarez. They're very much fiction but there is a certain amount of science underpinning the arguments and I enjoyed that aspect. And the author even states that he's trying to get across, with solid arguments, why humanity should begin planning asteroid mining ASAP. In brief, the arguments are:
Firstly we're now at a point where we have lots of cheap energy available, principally chemical. Depending on many factors it's conceivable that we are in fact at or near peak human energy output (e.g. WW3 or civilization collapse - the next iteration of civilization won't have so much cheap oil to exploit).
Secondly LEO is not yet full of junk, meaning that it's trivial to find launch windows to LEO and beyond. That could easily change very much for the worse in a relatively short time (I infer decades from the books).
Finally it's unrealistic to expect us to colonize the Moon or Mars using only Earth-mined materials. You can launch a spacecraft to Mars easily, but to launch a small city's amount of construction equipment and raw materials is beyond our capabilities.
Conclusion: now is the best time to mine asteroids. We can do all of the processing and much of the construction in LEO (or even better at Earth-Moon or Earth-Sun lagrange points) and then, with relatively low delta-v, we'd actually have a chance of becoming an interplanetary species!
But, the novels warn, the window of opportunity will eventually ("soon") close. Well worth the read.
Maybe someone else more familiar with the arguments, who has also read these novels, can offer a critique?
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosmic_Horseshoe
So... how long before we see the shape change? How fast do galaxies move anyway?