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The giant problem leaping out at me is, what evidence do we have that mammoths could even survive in the wild today, let alone thrive to the extent necessary to change the ecology? They went extinct, after all.

If we knew the answer ahead of time, there would be no point in doing the experiment.

One can easily argue that Mammoths ought to be able to survive - they survived periods with climates similar to our current one and there are a lot fewer paleolithic hunters running about now. But we won't really know unless we try.


>a lot fewer paleolithic hunters

Modern poachers with modern technology beat paleolithic hunters, hands down.

Technology works, as it turns out... :D


Poachers aren't part of the natural environment. When people say "survive in the wild" they are typically referring to the case where the species' and its natural habitat are largely left alone by modern civilization. Any species could be wiped out if humans tried to do so, even humans.

Anyways, in this scenario we have the means of producing mammoths at will, so why would there be a market for mammoth poaching? If people do kill a mammoth, just add another mammoth. Technology works.


I wish semantics worked against actual poachers. :-(

  >why would there be a market for mammoth poaching?
You haven't met humans, I see.

I don't think you understood what I was saying. Why would there be a market for poaching an animal that is mass-bred in captivity?

I doubt we see the same isolationism w.r.t. China, who remain Trump's main bogeyman (other than immigrants). The policy will probably make less sense, since as you mentioned his tariffs and transactional diplomacy may confound US efforts to build an anti-China alliance in the Pacific.

It would probably be a poor move for China to blockade Taiwan (an act of war). If the US decides to intervene, it would be very painful for China without a pre-emptive strike on US bases in the region. For all the talk of Trump as an anti-war candidate, he didn't seem to say no to many military strikes as POTUS, and this hypothetical would represent the US' best possible entry into a war over Taiwan.


China has repeatedly demonstrated 2 things WRT Taiwan. They're patient and they're serious about their red lines.

I can't recall a single instance where China announced anything about Taiwan that wasn't reactive. They just keep repeating the "one China" policy.

Their official stance is that there's no need to invade Taiwan because Taiwan is already part of China and they reserve the right to use force to enforce their territorial integrity.

The practical manifestation of that policy has been that China and the US both get to pretend that their view on Taiwan is the reality and nobody will do anything if the other side doesn't rock the boat.

Their red line is a formal declaration of independence by Taiwan. As near as I can tell, all but one of their "military exercises" has been in response to actions that get close to that line in diplomatic terms https://globaltaiwan.org/2024/10/chinas-military-exercises-a...

During many of those exercises effectively blockaded Taiwan. They did that for a week after Pelosi's visit and they experienced no pain in response.

I draw 3 conclusions from these observations:

  1) China will not invade Taiwan without some external stimulus  
  2) China is prepared to blockade Taiwan in the event of any attempts at secession  
  3) China has established that secessionist behavior is casus belli for a blockade in the eyes of the international community

Well, what do you propose? We're obviously far past the point of diplomacy. The sanctions are not designed to change hearts and minds. They're designed to make Russia's war efforts more difficult. The sorry state of affairs is that Russia's government has made itself a huge problem and there are no good solutions.


I doubt this particular move will complicate Russia's war efforts in any appreciable way. There is no non-fanciful way in which the named, well-established and closely watched kernel maintainers could have leveraged their status for it, and the tech scene has been one of the remaining bastions of pro-Western sentiment in Russian society. How many young programmers will be disenchanted with the West after hearing of this, and finally relent and answer their government's call to go write software for military drones or whatever?


Well, this comment (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41932923) seems to indicate that Russian military industrial companies seem to get some use out of contributing to the kernel. As to your question, I cannot answer it to any degree of accuracy and I believe you cannot either.


The majority of damage to shuttle's TPS apparently came from foam strikes from the external fuel tank. Superheavy's optimized profile certainly helps here, since there are no large cryogenic tanks hanging ominously over the TPS while being shaken violently by solid rocket boosters.


At least for the retro-propulsive landing burn, I think the modeling problem is probably aided by the high G-forces that must keep the fuel very close to the bottom of the tank. Even before re-light the booster is falling near terminal velocity (I think?), so the fuel is likely sitting at the bottom.

I think it's a huge problem when re-lighting the engines in orbit, though.


Also IIRC the massive main tanks in Super Heavy should be basically empty at landing & the landings propelants come from a set of small header tabks that are near the central axis of the vehicle & arr completely full. This should reduce or even fully remove sloshing issues at landing time.


Iirc cold gas thrusters are used before ignition to provide some acceleration to force the fuel to the bottom of the tank.


The technical term for that is 'ullage'.

See also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ullage_motor


During sentencing, SBF attempted to argue that creditors had experienced "zero harm" as even then it was apparent FTX would be able to pay them back. John Ray himself rebutted that argument: https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/66631292/415/united-sta....

> And even taking into account the potential for achieving anticipated recovery levels, which is by no means assured, customers still will never be in the same position they would have been had they not crossed paths with Mr. Bankman-Fried and his so-called brand of “altruism.”

The opportunity cost is real and cannot be ignored.


I'm not arguing that, it doesn't change the fact that a crime occured.

I'm just saying the title is not misleading.

They mentioned it is bankrupt and by definition creditor rights are curtailed.


To the common man, "made money" and "experienced economic harm" would contradict each other. In that way the title misleads.


They mentioned it is bankrupt and by definition creditor rights are curtailed.


Okay? I don't see how that makes it any less misleading. Compared to a universe where FTX did not go bankrupt, the creditors have much less money.


They have made more money than they invested. It is by definition a return on investment, not the return or timescale they envisaged but a return nonetheless i.e >100%.

Effectively they invested $100, that investment dropped to $0 (while funds were locked away during bankruptcy), and now they're worth $119.

The headline is only notable as usually creditors do not get 100% of their initial capital back during a bankruptcy, nevermind over 100%.


In an attempt to stop talking in circles, it seems we primarily disagree on the definition of "to make money" and whether it should consider opportunity cost + time value of money. The CNBC headline doesn't say return, it uses the aforementioned idiom.

IMO it absolutely should in this case, especially since the creditors demonstrated their desire to invest in the opportunity being considered, but I don't really care enough to argue about it over the Internet.


Couldn't reproduce - in fact, the second hit is a threads version of the same post - but I get no AI suggestions for this query. Humorous Google queries (or AI queries more generally) are definitely a trope, so I can never really tell if they actually happened or if it's all for karma.


Google also routinely removes AI suggestions for searches that produce embarrassing results (you don't get them for searches about keeping cheese on your pizza anymore, for example), so it's even harder to validate once a result goes viral.


Look at the bright side: "do a barrel roll" is still a fully-supported Easter egg.


I still get the second one when I search "Difference between sauce and dressing" on Google. The Oven vs Ottoman empire one I don't get an AI overview.

Edit: Similar to the second one I just did Panda Bear vs Australia which informed me "Australians value authenticity, sincerity, and modesty. Giant pandas are solitary and peaceful, but will fight back if escape is impossible. "


I'd say it matters. Life becomes so much harder if you have to justify why your seed/pre-seed startup has a unique advantage, but you're just ripping off the competition. Maybe you have unique hustle. That's a fairly incredible claim - especially in a crowded space like AI.

I think it's at least a warning klaxon. We're entering this market by copying a competitor (not just in UI/UX, but literally byte-for-byte). How are we going to beat them? How do we ensure the same does not happen to us?

AI-powered coding is such a ridiculously crowded arena. I would be pretty apprehensive. Even if I was dead-set on doing an AI startup, I would still look for a different market.


This stuff is going to get crammed through an algorithm orders of magnitude more efficient. We have living proof that it does not take 5GW to make a brain.


Naturally, a firm located in the local frame of reference has a comparative advantage when it comes to employment. Remote work just isn't viable when you can't even agree on simultaneity.


Dear sir

Your packets are too blueshifted for my receiver to decode, please slow down.


Time to deploy trusted AI managers to all reference frames.


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