I always thought network states were just online communities

Perhaps for some, but the idea of making them physical territories has always been there too, and arguably is the idea in the ascendant now.

From Galileo to Newton to Einstein, we’ve so many times had our ideas of the Universe completely and utterly upended. It seems to me when people talk about dark matter and dark energy, they’re just tinkering with current ideas. When we really find the explanation, our ideas of what reality is will be completely shaken once again.

Rock From Mars has reached Earth so many times via asteroid ejecta, I assume the opposite has happened. In which case if there is life there surely the probability is it comes from Earth?

I wonder how long before the AI investor bubble bursts? OpenAI are still talking about raising hundreds of billions of dollars.

Exactly, At best, it’s a stay of execution.

According to the scientists, knowledge about the role of NEAT1 methylation in the recognition and repair of DNA damage could open up new therapeutic options for tumors with high NEAT1 expression. However, it must first be clarified whether these results, which were obtained in simple cell systems, can also be transferred to complex tumor models.

I wonder is AI developments can speed up this process of going from lab to (hopefully) a therapeutic treatment that is available.

How are we supposed to police this? A vast global Orwellian monitoring system seems even worse.

Indeed, Israel, for one, already uses Made-in-America AI models in war.

Indiscriminately murdering dozens of children a day has been a real advertisement of how brilliant these are.

I’m guessing if you were going to be able to travel at Mach 16, an entirely new type of airplane architecture, built with new types of material is going to be needed.

Yes, I think that is what the problem is here. Some people used to have the idea that more scaling would be enough for reasoning to appear, but that hasn’t happened.

More bad news for investors pouring hundreds of billions into AI companies like OpenAI, and wishing and hoping for moats.

Global banks will cut as many as 200,000 jobs in the next three to five years as artificial intelligence encroaches on tasks currently carried out by human workers, according to Bloomberg Intelligence.

I wonder when all this will become a major issue for voters in developed countries?

30% of global electricity was from renewables in 2024. It’s already cheaper than most other sources, and keeps getting cheaper.

I’ve always wondered, if decades in the future, a terrorist attack might occur by somebody nudging an asteroid towards Earth. I’m not the only person thinking this, it was a major plot point in the TV show ‘The Expanse’.

I wonder if fusion powers true usefulness will be when humans are in space? Because you are correct in saying renewables will probably be enough to supply all our needs and more by the 2030s.

We are used to the idea of drugs being recreationally misused, I wonder will that ever happen to tech like this?

That behavior among “advanced” species has always been forward as one solution to the Fermi Paradox.

I am no expert in any of this, but why do you think it couldn’t work at scale? This company says their tech has advantages in cheapness and efficiency over existing solutions. What is it about what they are doing that will not scale?

The ‘Dark Enlightenment’ is a popular concept among some of America’s technology elite, such as Peter Thiel and Elon Musk. It thinks democracy is a failure, and should be replaced by right-wing authoritarianism, preferably led by a dictator or monarch. For obvious reasons, it’s enjoying an ascendancy.

A key idea in Dark Enlightenment thinking is the establishment of hundreds or even thousands of city-state enclaves, the equal of sovereign nations, that could then outnumber the old countries and predominate in a new world order of governance.

Prospera in Honduras is one of the first attempts at making this dream/nightmare (pick according to your political persuasion) come true. Now that the people behind Dark Enlightenment thinking have their hands on the levers of power in the US, it won’t be surprising if there are expanded attempts to set up new libertarian city-states around the world.

Reminds me of Westworld too.