DennisP

15 ms·

301.
by DennisP 11mo ago
If crypto were the reason for the orbital data centers, then an easier path would be to use crypto that doesn't require huge data centers. That's pretty much any proof-of-stake blockchain, especially the more decentralized ones.
302.
by DennisP 11mo ago
Possibly even better would be Zubrin's recent book The New World on Mars: What We Can Create on the Red Planet , which goes into quite a bit of detail on how we could build a self-sustaining settlement.
303.
by DennisP 11mo ago
I think a prerequisite to doing any really big stuff in space would be fully and rapidly reusable launch rockets, which could get costs down by a couple orders of magnitude. And geostationary isn't necessary for this. You could go a bi
304.
by DennisP 11mo ago
True, but as of this month 30% of zcash transactions are shielded, and 20-25% of addresses are private. That's a fairly large anonymity set. The percentage of shielded transactions is also increasing, at a rate that will make them a ma
305.
by DennisP 11mo ago
Use it for interstellar spacecraft, as far away from Earth as possible.
306.
by DennisP 11mo ago
Not mentioned in the article is that the truck isn't built as originally promised. The exoskeleton was supposed to do away with the need for an internal frame, giving it weight and cost advantages. Turned out they couldn't make it
307.
by DennisP 11mo ago
Depends. Do we know how to obtain a miniature black hole?
308.
by DennisP 11mo ago
Sam Bankman-Fried tried it, and now he's rotting in jail wishing the police had laughed off his victims.
309.
by DennisP 11mo ago
Legally no, at least in the US and NZ, but technically yes. On any stock exchange I know of, you'd sell your TSLA for cash, then use the cash to buy MSFT. On crypto exchanges there tend to be a lot of trading pairs with tokens on both
310.
by DennisP 11mo ago
In the US, you can offset the gain, if the loss happens in the same year. If it happens later, then you're supposed to have paid the taxes in the year with the gain. The later loss can be used to offset gains after that. It seems to be
311.
by DennisP 11mo ago
A lot of fun new technology gets shouted down by reactionaries who think everything's a scam. Here on "hacker news" we get articles like this, meanwhile my brother is having a blast vibe-coding all sorts of stuff. He's b
312.
by DennisP 11mo ago
To wit: my brother has never worked as a developer and has just a limited knowledge of python. In the past few days, he's designed, vibe-coded, and deployed a four-player online chess game, in about four hours of actual work, using Goo
313.
by DennisP 11mo ago
Regarding reproduction, I'm willing to write that off to advanced medical technology doing DNA repair. Most of the plot wouldn't be that different with slower space drives, so I wasn't too bothered by that either. But fwiw, i
314.
by DennisP 11mo ago
And PG didn't deny that. He just said the dynamic is very different when the group is larger, doing things that matter, and needs people who can get the right answers.
315.
by DennisP 11mo ago
Assuming that's a negative experience for you, that's worth trying to fix. I'm pushing 60 and most of my career has not been like that. You don't need to put up with it. A big part of that for me was fixing my own social
316.
by DennisP 11mo ago
And I've always felt that most of my social anxiety came from public school. Maybe we were both just prone to it. (I unlearned it too, but it took quite a while.)
317.
by DennisP 11mo ago
Paul Graham pointed out that public school is a weird and degenerate microcosm that isn't much like the real social world at all. > I think the important thing about the real world is not that it's populated by adults, but that
318.
by DennisP 11mo ago
I'm just comparing specs, not dissing anybody. SpaceX of course also has Starship, which may well be fully operational by then.
319.
by DennisP 11mo ago
Yep, 70 tons to LEO is more than the Falcon Heavy.
320.
by DennisP 11mo ago
Software engineers been automating our own work since we built the first assembler. So far it's just made us more productive and valuable, because the demand for software has been effectively unlimited. Maybe that will continue with AI
321.
by DennisP 11mo ago
Because it's not that simple. If you want 100% availability year-round then you need about 2X overproduction and quite a lot of storage, not just the four hours normally paired with solar today. That could end up being more expensive t
322.
by DennisP 11mo ago
One option is to build enough nuclear to cover your minimum demand, and enough wind/solar/storage to cover the rest.
323.
by DennisP 11mo ago
Another advantage is that it burns clean. That doesn't matter for expendables, but it's a big help if you want to reuse your rocket a bunch of times.
324.
by DennisP 11mo ago
Yes, but it's also a harder problem, aiming to reuse everything instead of just the first stage. And they have at least reached orbital velocity on several occasions, so they could have physically orbited. They just purposely chose a t
325.
by DennisP 11mo ago
Sadly, Bezos already turned over the job to a new CEO.
326.
by DennisP 11mo ago
Not to mention burning coal after we have nuclear fission.
327.
by DennisP 1y ago
What's possible depends on where you are. But for example: > Pontzer, an evolutionary anthropologist who studies modern-day hunter-gatherers, says traditional diets vary widely, and the vast majority of them include a high percentag
328.
by DennisP 1y ago
Not that hard in this case. Just give them a pill.
329.
by DennisP 1y ago
Yes, but for myself I'd rather eat things that aren't as smart as octopuses. And as long as the sun keeps shining, the pie stays pretty constant on Earth. The pie is shrinking for everybody else only because humans keep taking mor
330.
by DennisP 1y ago
I've taken courses in primitive wilderness survival, and one of the staple foods was grass seed. Also lots of roots are edible with cooking, and it looks like we've been cooking for about a million years. Then there's wild ri

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