stevenjgarner

Paywall : https://archive.ph/rUAGa

Actual cited paper:

Lorentz Violation in Emergent Gravity and Its Cosmological Consequences

https://journals.aps.org/prl/abstract/10.1103/tvmx-qk3k

When you send USD to an AUD account via Wise, no money actually travels between the US and Australia. Wise maintains massive pools of local currency in bank accounts all over the world. When you deposit USD, it goes into Wise’s US bank account. Wise's software detects the deposit and instantly triggers an internal payout from Wise's Australian bank account to the recipient's AUD account. Because Wise is using local banking networks on both ends (like FedNow or RTP in the US, SEPA Instant in Europe, and NPP/Osko in Australia), the transfer can settle in seconds. It’s essentially a matching engine, not an international wire.

Credit risk and identity dictate the speed of the funding step. If you stripped KYC out of the equation entirely, the bottleneck wouldn't just be speed — the legacy banking system would refuse to route the transaction at all.

It is important to distinguish that you are fundamentally involved in a credit network, pulling funds not pushing funds, that just gives the illusion of speed. For verified users, the sub-minute speed is a mix of local real-time banking rails and Wise extending short-term trust that the incoming funds won't bounce. For an unverified or high-risk user, Wise forces a holding period until the money physically clears, dragging the process back down to standard banking speeds.

I think this is a well thought out understanding of your specific snapshot in time. However these are indeed exponential times. It may be more realistic to do your calculus on time shifting assumptions, especially given how clear you are about the development time and life cycle of the product.

That's rough. Same symptoms of low testosterone, which a blood test can measure. This can be caused (even in younger men) through daily exposure to endocrine-disrupting chemicals (EDCs) like BPA and phthalates, heavy metals, and pesticides. Poor lifestyle exposures such as chronic stress, lack of sleep, and high ambient air pollution also significantly suppress hormone production.

Yes it does - the ROI is replacing the global labor market => the replaced workers stop earning income. They cut spending. The businesses they used to patronize see revenue decline => the company that fired its workers to save money discovers that its customers were, in aggregate, other companies’ workers. Revenue growth stalls => dead economy [1]

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48324712

No paywall : https://archive.ph/fLR71

So all these top universities using Canvas as a core part of their infrastructure somewhat begs the question : why would a technology degree from them have any real value if they can't even have their infrastructure built and maintained by students themselves? If their education is really worth that much money, why can't they build their own infrastructure?

Original paper:

Prohormone cleavage prediction uncovers a non-incretin anti-obesity peptide

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-025-08683-y

Press:

Stanford scientists discover “natural Ozempic” without side effects

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2026/04/260412221946.h...

Ummm ... the "Victoria University of Wellington in Australia"? Please. Victoria University is located in Wellington, New Zealand [1]. Nothing to do with Australia. Dr. Morgan Cable is a Senior Lecturer in Space Science at Te Herenga Waka, Victoria University of Wellington in New Zealand [2]. Can't believe that phys.org would publish such an error.

[1] https://www.wgtn.ac.nz/

[2] https://www.psi.edu/staff/profile/morgan-cable/

Actual paper: https://news.oregonstate.edu/news/new-cancer-killing-materia...

Paywall : https://archive.ph/M6Ywb

It is a fair question. The short answer is that the nature of the machine has fundamentally changed from mechanical machines (where parts break) to cyber-physical systems (where code controls physics):

1) Safety. In the 20th century, safety was mostly passive. Today safety is active. For example, vehicles now use ADAS (Advanced Driver Assistance Systems). If an independent shop replaces a windshield but doesn't have the proprietary software to recalibrate the cameras behind the glass, the car's Automatic Emergency Braking (AEB) might see a phantom obstacle at 70 mph and slam on the brakes. Manufacturers argue (correctly in my view) that they cannot be held liable for a car that decides to crash because a third party misaligned its digital vision.

2) Cybersecurity. There was no backdoor to a 1950s tractor because it wasn't connected to anything. Most modern vehicles are telemetric, where they are connected to the internet via cellular 5G. Manufacturers argue that if they provide open diagnostic ports to everyone, they are effectively creating a standardized digital doorway that a bad actor could use to remotely disable a fleet of tractors across the entire farming sector. In their view, right to repair creates a national security vulnerability that didn't exist when machines were dumb.

3) Environmental. If John Deere is forced to provide software tools to access the engine, a farmer might buy a "delete kit" online that uses software to bypass the Diesel Particulate Filter (DPF). This allows the tractor to run more powerfully and skip expensive emissions fluid (DEF). Deere is understandably legally terrified that the EPA will fine them as the manufacturer for facilitating emissions tampering. They are using this regulatory shield to argue that the only way to save the planet is to keep the software under lock and key.

4) The 1975 Magnuson-Moss Warranty Act. This gets interesting. Back in the day manufacturers tried to say, "If you don't use our oil/parts, your warranty is void." The Act legally protected the owner's right to use aftermarket parts. That law was written for physical parts. It doesn't say anything about digital handshakes. Today, a manufacturer can't void your warranty for using a 3rd party air filter, but they can make the engine refuse to start unless a certified digital code is entered by a dealer-authorized laptop.

Isn't open source the legitimate compromise solution to right-to-repair? If you're unhappy with buying a closed proprietary product, why not support an open source alternative? Granted current open source farm tractors pale in comparison to a John Deere Model X9 1100, often priced at over $1 million.

In 2017, Apple and John Deere famously joined forces in Nebraska to fight an early R2R bill. An Apple lobbyist told Nebraska legislators that passing the bill would make the state a "Mecca for hackers," a talking point that has since been used by various industries to argue that opening up hardware leads to security risks. [1] There is a very real need for manufacturers to lobby through shared organizations because they recognize that a Right to Repair victory for one product is legally and logically a victory for all products.

The problem is that both sides are correct. The core of the R2R argument is about ownership instead of merely "licensing" from the manufacturer. Repair monopolies create an artificial scarcity, destroying economic efficiency, market competition and planned obsolescence (defeating environmental stewardship). A centralized repair model is a single point of failure, weakening resilience and national security.

Manufacturers have a strong argument against right-to-repair from the perspective of system integrity and safety - one can imagine unintended consequences and liability cascades from imperfect repair. Protection of intellectual property isn't just about software piracy and trade secrets, as opening up firmware access creates a cybersecurity nightmare of backdoors, raising environmental and regulatory compliance issues. The authorized dealer model isn't just about a monopoly - it’s about a guaranteed standard of care.

The current compromise is a subscription-based access model Memorandum of Understanding, where for a tiered subscription the John Deere customer gets a restricted version of the dealer's software [2]. The "Gotcha" in the MOU is that many farmers feel this was a bad trade because the manufacturer can change the price or the terms of the website at any time — whereas a law would be permanent.

[1] https://www.techdirt.com/2018/02/01/apple-verizon-continue-t...

[2] https://www.deere.com/en/our-company/repair/customer-service...

If the age verification is going to mandate government issued ID, the government issuer can be the Trust Anchor issuing a Digitally Signed Credential for the zero knowledge proof - using any available open source zero-knowledge process:

1) zkcreds-rs (zk-creds) [1]

2) zkLogin (Sui Foundation) [2]

3) TLSNotary [3]

4) DECO (Chainlink/Cornell) [4]

5) Anon-Aadhaar [5]

[1] https://github.com/rozbb/zkcreds-rs

[2] https://github.com/mystenlabs/sui/tree/main/sdk/zklogin

[3] https://github.com/tlsnotary/tlsn

[4] https://chain.link/education/zero-knowledge-proof-zkp#preser...

[5] https://github.com/anon-aadhaar/anon-aadhaar

Looking at actual data regarding Australia's landmark legislation setting a minimum age of 16 for social media access with enforcement starting on December 10, 2025 indicates weakened data protection. The Australian data suggests that while the legislation has successfully cleared the decks of millions of underage accounts (4.7 million account deactivations together with increased VPN usage and "ghost" accounts to bypass restrictions), it has simultaneously forced platforms to rely on third-party identity vendors, with the following failures so far:

1) Persona (Identity Vendor) Exposure (Feb 20, 2026): researchers discovered an exposed frontend belonging to Persona, an identity verification vendor used by platforms like Discord. This system was performing over 260 distinct checks, including facial recognition and "adverse media" screening, raising massive concerns about the scope creep of age verification.

2) Victorian Department of Education (Jan 2026): a breach impacting all 1,700 government schools exposed student names and encrypted passwords. This is a primary example of how child-related data remains a high-value target.

3) Prosura Data Breach (Jan 4, 2026): this financial services firm suffered a breach of 300,000 customer records.

4) University of Sydney (Dec 2025): a code library breach affected 27,000 people right as the new legislation was rolling out.

That is EXACTLY what the post is saying:

But that progress belongs almost entirely to people 50 and over. For people under 50, both incidence and mortality have been climbing. CRC is now the #1 cancer killer in men under 50.

You need to go to the 2nd screen "Split by age group"

Reflectance Transformation Imaging (RTI) [1], a technique that involves combining many images taken with different light sources, researchers have deciphered 79 additional inscriptions. “This project highlights urban communication, especially from sections of the population that do not usually appear in literature or official inscriptions,”

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polynomial_texture_mapping

The researchers identified the DMTF1 protein as a key regulator that declines with age, and they successfully restored neural stem cell renewal by reactivating its specific genetic pathways in both human-derived cells and mouse models. However, it remains unclear if this approach is safe from cancer risks or if it can be effectively delivered as a drug to improve memory in living human brains.

I think that may be an insight to something quite profound. We used to measure the "doubling of knowledge" against number of peer-reviewed papers of scientific research etc. Now not so much. "Knowledge" has become more proprietary, and condensed into the AI models replacing the libraries of training data. We now measure "doubling of knowledge" as the next version or iteration of a model. In some kind of real sense, the prompt IS more powerful than the output.

I agree the administration tariffs "wouldn't be levied on manufacturing inputs" if they really wanted to help domestic industries. I'm not saying they're doing the right thing, I'm just saying that most Americans I talk to understand the INTENTION is ancient protectionist logic, but the Fed report is evidence that this logic is currently failing to produce the administration's intended "manufacturing miracle". It is so inconsistent, being successful in very specific niches (like some domestic textile or furniture segments), but the Fed notes that nearly half of all businesses reported a decrease in their bottom lines due to the policy.

Most people here in the US that I talk to understand that the additional tariffs imposed by the Trump administration are an attempt to get domestic US industries to produce the items that are now being imported subject to the tariff. In some cases that has been successful. In many cases not. Many industries are virtually impossible to de-globalize.

https://www.google.com/maps/place/Taklamakan+Desert/@38.8709...

While Walmart has historically denied using "individualized" pricing (charging two people different prices for the exact same item based on their income), they do use behavioral targeting [1]

Members of Walmart+ often see different "final" prices due to exclusive discounts, rewards (Walmart Rewards), or waived shipping/delivery fees that aren't available to guest users. Walmart uses AI to offer personalized promotions. You might see a "Rollback" or a "Just for You" offer on an item you’ve viewed multiple times or purchased previously, effectively changing the price for you specifically via a targeted discount. Like many e-commerce giants, Walmart may also offer "first-time app user" discounts or "win-back" coupons to specific customer segments.

[1] https://goaura.com/blog/walmart-pricing-strategies

Why is knowledge doubling no longer used as a metric to converge on the limit of the singularity? If we go back to Buckminster Fuller identifying the the "Knowledge Doubling Curve", by observing that until 1900, human knowledge doubled approximately every century. By the end of World War II, it was doubling every 25 years. In his 1981 book "Critical Path", he used a conceptual metric he called the "Knowledge Unit." To make his calculations work, he set a baseline:

- He designated the total sum of all human knowledge accumulated from the beginning of recorded history up to the year 1 CE as one "unit."

- He then tracked how long it took for the world to reach two units (which he estimated took about 1,500 years, until the Renaissance).

Ray Kurzweil took Fuller’s doubling concept and applied it to computer processing power via "The Law of Accelerating Returns". The definition of the singularity in this approach is the limit in time where human knowledge doubles instantly.

Why do present day ideas of the singularity not take this approach and instead say "the singularity is a hypothetical event in which technological growth accelerates beyond human control, producing unpredictable changes in human civilization." - Wikipedia

$3.88 ? Walmart.com uses dynamically variable pricing that includes geographic and user variance - my price is $5.92

https://www.walmart.com/ip/Mainstays-Basic-Indoor-8-78-Black...

This makes a lot of sense. The commercial launch business is not large enough to support all possible Falcon launches, so Starlink was created to take advantage of the low launch cost and vertical integration and is now a major profit center for SpaceX.

Starship launches are only going to make sense every 779.94 days (the approx 2 year Mars-Earth proximity). The rest of the time, the launches could similarly be used to deploy orbiting data centers for XAi/Grok etc. Brilliant move.

Elon Musk’s AI startup, xAI (x.ai = grok), officially acquired X Corp. (the parent company of the social media platform X or x.com, formerly Twitter/x.com) in an all-stock deal. Both now operate under a unified holding entity, frequently referred to in corporate filings as X.AI Holdings Corp. (or simply xAI). Now SpaceX has moved to acquire or merge with xAI. This effectively brings the social media data from x.com, the AI development of x.ai, and the satellite infrastructure of Starlink/SpaceX under one "super-conglomerate" roof.

It is often argued that the US will grow its economy such that the debt is less significant. There is much confusion between the US debt being cited as a ratio of GDP (common among economists) vs net tangible assets (common among businesses and people). For example, after WWII, the U.S. faced its previous record debt-to-GDP ratio—roughly 106% in 1946. By 1974, that ratio had plummeted to just 23% largely through:

a) massive GDP growth with real consumption rising 22% between 1944 and 1947.

b) fiscal discipline where the U.S. actually ran primary budget surpluses in the late 1940s

c) financial repression with the Federal Reserve capping interest rates at around 2.5% while inflation averaged 6.5%. This meant the government was paying back debt with "cheaper" dollars, effectively "inflating away" the debt at the expense of bondholders.

Fast forward to today, there is an often stated belief that the US will grow the economy again, this time with a dramatic expansion into a space economy including orbiting data centers, solar power plants, asteroid mining, space manufacture - all leveraged with robotics and AI. Let's be generous and assume this actual happens and that it happens soon - what mandate is there that this massive space economy will be denominated in US dollars or even be part of the US economy? SpaceX has already launched numerous satellites for foreign countries. What is to stop them launching a space economy that will be owned under a "Flag of Convenience" from an offshore tax-free zone, perhaps even denominated in crypto? Will we then confront this massive off-planet economy with "space-tariffs" in order to import the value-added component back into the US? The U.S. debt can only be "grown away" if the value-added activities (mining, manufacturing, computing) remain registered in the U.S..