StephenHerlihyy

I had heard of that but it wasn’t until you posted the link that I actually read through it.

My question after actually reading it though is simple - how does it prevent fraud? Like you just need GPS and a selfie to verify. No bank account required! Since the nominal case is undocumented you don’t have ground truth to check against. What is stopping someone from using an eSIM, OpenClaw, and an emulator from self-deporting thousands of virtual persona at $2600 profit

It just seems poorly considered. I don’t know if they really thought this through.

Honestly understanding and applying 3d transformations should be a new LLM benchmark. Three.js, OpenSCAD, even Nano Banano prompts. The moment you add that extra dimension any semblance of ‘intelligence’ goes right out the window. Every model out there seems to spin themselves in circles trying to logic through it with no success.

At what point does the cost of reimplementation shrink below the benefits of obfuscation? Consider a new CVE in Linux. Well maybe my Linux is not the same as the public one. Maybe I just set a swarm of AI agents on making me a drop in replacement that is different but with an identical interface. Same-same but different. Right now writing your own OS to replace the entirety of Linux would be costly and error prone. Foolish. But will it always? What happens when Claude Code Infinute Opus can 1-shot a perfect reimagining in 24 hours? Or 30 minutes? Do all my servers have the same copy or are they all slightly different implementations of the same thing? I dunno.

This is sort of where I think he is going with it. Run the compute part super cold (-60C) in a dielectric fluid. Maybe even at a low pressure. It boils off, gets collected, and is then condensed into something way hotter. Like boiling water hot. This is sent through a high temperature radiator for heat dispersion (because Stefan-Boltzmann has a damned 4), and then pumped back into the common storage area. Cycle indefinitely. Beyond the simple space whatever non-sense, there is a nugget of a good idea in there. Cold things are going to have less internal resistance - so they will produce less waste heat. If you can keep them at a constant temperature via submerged cooling they are also going to suffer less thermal stress due to heat fluctuations. So the vacuum of space becomes the perfect insulator. You can’t have humans getting into them anyways because then you have to reheat and recool, causing stress on the system. Just have to accept your slow component losses. Microsoft and IBM have been working the same basic concept for a while (decade plus), Elon is just throwing ‘Space!!’ into the equation because of who he is. I think it’s 50% hype and 50% this is where the industry is going regardless. I always assumed they would just find an abandoned mine or something. But the always-cold, thermally-stable, no-humans-allowed data center is coming. We are hitting the point where the upfront cost of doing it is overshadowed by the tail cost savings.

What amazes me the most is the speed at which things are advancing. Go back a year or even a year before that and all these incremental improvements have compounded. Things that used to require real effort to consistently solve, either with RAGs, context/prompt engineering, have become… trivial. I totally agree with your point that each step along the way doesn’t necessarily change that much. But in the aggregate it’s sort of insane how fast everything is moving.

I don’t use OpenAI too much, but I follow a similar work flow. Use Opus for design/architecture work. Move it to Sonnet for implementation and build out. Then finally over to Gemini for review, QC and standards check. There is an absolute gain in using different models. Each has their own style and way of solving the problem just like a human team. It’s kind of awesome and crazy and a bit scary all at once.

That’s fair enough. Part of it is the Trump effect. I tend to dive pretty deep into things when they catch my interest. A lot of time we write things off as crazy simply because we don’t understand the context behind the presumption of insanity. So I try to look under the surface so to speak. I want to know why someone feels the way they do, even if their thesis is a little confused. Almost like: “I see you are very passionate about this, let me figure out why.”

I try to make the world make sense. Communication is a skill and many otherwise smart people simply fail to invest in it. Curiousity I suppose.

The lack of public awareness is honestly the biggest issue. I’ve got nothing personally against Canada or the Canadian people. And I certainly don’t think Trump’s approach has benefitted the situation. But I also recognize that his grievance have a level of merit. I can critique a government without blaming a people, right? I disagree with how the Canadian government has been handling itself. I think there is a way to resolve these issues, but I think first Canada has to at least acknowledge they exist. Whenever there is discussion like this people love to flood in, eager to defend our neighbor to the north and stick it to Trump. These issues have persisted through many administrations. You ask why Congress doesn’t stop Trump from his actions? It’s because the political consensus in Washington is that they are needed. I have no doubt whoever comes next will blame Trump and declare a new era of friendship and peace. But these issues will be at the core of any new agreement between the countries. People disagree, countries argue. It’s temporary. America wants Canada to succeed and Canada benefits from America’s success. They are just renorming the relationship a bit, which team dynamics tells us takes us back to the storming phase. Give it time and we’ll be rolling along again.

And then waiting 4 years to actually ban his company from operating in Canada.

I have many complaints about Trump's handling of foreign policy. Don't mistake my tone for approval of his approach. He is needlessly aggressive and domineering. We have tried the carrot approach though. Coalition of the willing. By and large I would say our allies are spiritually willing but physically unable to. If we use Canada for example, I don't think they need to jump at every demand, but things like stopping counterfeit sales (Pacific Mall), taking meaningful steps to stop cartel money laundering (Vancouver), actually meeting military commitments (Ukraine promises). A lot of it doesn't get reported because people don't really want to hear it. Like I said, Trump is not right in his handling of these issues, but Canada allows them to fester because its in their interest.

Honestly I would have done 20 years if I had been so lucky. My body had other plans however. I'm trying to get back into the embedded/defense space though. I was a low-level C/C++ programmer back in my early tech days and so it's been pretty neat coming back to it. Absolutely insane that these tiny little chips have so much raw compute power. I used to view under a millisecond as "good enough" but get to tinker with microseconds now.

Over the past 15 years the European economy has grown from 16.25 to 18.50 trillion per World Bank. In 2008 the combined economic strength of the EU was 110% of the United State's. Today it's ~65%. By and large the European economy completely missed the mark on the Internet/Web3.0 technology revolution. You certainly have bright spots like ASML, but those are the exception and not the rule. It's reindustrialization efforts are facing massive head wins from energy costs and China is absolutely wrecking their neo-colonial African holdings.

I hope the EU moves to a more Federalized model of governance - it would certainly benefit them. And I agree that it won't be easy. I am not sure California and Texas would agree to the model the United States has today. I can't even imagine what it would be like for Germany and France. But they have some serious issues to address. These are some foundational changes that are unlikely to happen in the next year or two.

I left technology about a decade ago to join the Military. It was an adjustment, but honestly was the greatest job I've ever had. Compared to tech where everything seemed high stress and had terrible work life balance, my military career was like playing on easy mode. Failure was impossible, no one wanted to stay a minute longer than they had to and everything was already on fire so putting it out was never really that urgent. It sounds crazy but I loved it. Now I am refreshed and pivoting back to tech with a fully funded Master's degree.