HenryKissinger
HenryKissinger on Hacker News
It seems like viruses always tread a spectrum between infectivity and lethality. Does or could a virus exist which:
- has a 100% fatality rate, like rabies
- can keep the host alive long enough to spread and
- cannot be defeated by any prospective vaccine or can evolve fast enough to evade them?
Basically, airborne and human-to-human rabies, with no vaccine. Or vaccine resistant ebola, but even more lethal, infectious, and a longer incubation period.
Put more concisely, could a virus exist with the potential to wipe us out.
Maybe, just maybe, if we stopped building telescopes like fragile porcelain dolls with glass heads that can't take a scratch and started building them like tanks that can take a beating..
China’s hypersonic weapon test in July included a technological advance that enabled it to fire a missile as it approached its target travelling at least five times the speed of sound — a capability no country has previously demonstrated.
Pentagon scientists were caught off guard by the advance, which allowed the hypersonic glide vehicle, a manoeuvrable spacecraft that can carry a nuclear warhead, to fire a separate missile mid-flight over the South China Sea, according to people familiar with the intelligence.
Experts at Darpa, the Pentagon’s advanced research agency, remain unsure how China overcame the constraints of physics by firing countermeasures from a vehicle travelling at hypersonic speeds, said the people familiar with details of the demonstration.
Military experts have been poring over data related to the test to understand how China mastered the technology. They are also debating the purpose of the projectile, which was fired by the hypersonic vehicle with no obvious target of its own, before plunging into the water.
Some Pentagon experts believe the projectile was an air-to-air missile. Others think it was a countermeasure to destroy missile defence systems so that they could not shoot down the hypersonic weapon during wartime.
Russia and the US have also pursued hypersonic weapons for years, but experts say the firing of countermeasures is the latest evidence that China’s efforts are significantly more advanced than either the Kremlin or the Pentagon.
The White House declined to comment on the countermeasure, but said it remained concerned about the July 27 test, which was first reported by the Financial Times last month.
“This development is concerning to us as it should be to all who seek peace and stability in the region and beyond,” said a spokesperson for the National Security Council. “This also builds on our concern about many military capabilities that the People’s Republic of China continues to pursue.”
The NSC added that the US would “continue to maintain the capabilities to defend and deter against a range of threats” from China.
This looks great. I can't wait to read it.
The Party couldn't care less, unfortunately.
Throw the whole thing at Reddit or 4Chan... it'll be finished in under a day.
Insufficient memory to perform operation. Your brain will go to sleep in 5...4...3...2...1...
If Planet 9 contains rare earth metals, mining and manufacturing facilities could be built there. This should help alleviate the chip shortage.
This guy sounds full of himself.
Cars are also apprecating in value.
What other economic oddities are happening at the moment?
> Russian astronauts took refuge in the Soyuz MS-18 capsule, while American astronauts went to the Space Crew Dragon capsule.
Each national crew going into their own pod.
Could it be that women in tech are often partnered with men who also work in tech and, because of the above average total compensation packages offered at tech companies compared to other skilled industries, more dual tech households are considering transitioning to single income households?
Am I the only one who feels like words have lost all their power in the political realm? There once was a time when speeches could be grand and alter the nation's consciousness. Words used to matter more. JFK's inaugural address is remembered as one of the greatest speeches in American history. That wasn't such a long time ago. Can the same be said of Joe Biden, Donald Trump, Barack Obama, or George W. Bush? Ironically enough, Trump's inaugural address, despite the fact that Trump is a terrible public speaker, will be more famous than those of his immediate successor and predecessor, because of the "American carnage" line. No one remembers what Joe Biden said in his inaugural address.
Everyone is so fazed, cynical, tired, and disillusioned these days that they wouldn't care if the president made the greatest speech ever. On the opposite side of the coin, Trump broke about every single rule in the book about what politicians shouldn't say, and he won 74 million votes.
Americans don't care about words anymore. No one can change anyone else's mind anymore.
> The National Ulema Council, or MUI, has deemed cryptocurrency as haram, or banned, as it has elements of uncertainty, wagering and harm, Asrorun Niam Sholeh, head of religious decrees, said on Thursday after the council held an expert hearing. If cryptocurrency as a commodity or digital asset can abide by Shariah tenets and can show a clear benefit, then it can be traded, he added.
I sense a business opportunity for a cryptocurrency that abides by Shariah tenets.
Google's stock is higher than when Google Plus launched. The same will be true of FB.
My point of view, as a non-techie: Facebook.com is running fine. Instagram.com is running fine. WhatsApp is running fine. Facebook doesn't need more storage space. Facebook active users aren't growing anymore (if you exclude bots, scammers, fake profiles, and double accounts), youngsters are fleeing Instagram for TikTok, and WhatsApp is at peak market saturation. Global human population is peaking and will start declining within a couple of decades, anti-Facebook views are more popular than ever, and deservedly so. The MetaVerse will be a flop, and Facebook won't get into the cloud business, because it's too late to disrupt Microsoft and Amazon. Ergo, Facebook doesn't need anywhere near 47 new data centers. If the Facebook app was experiencing regular outages I would understand. Am I missing something?
> Still way too many libraries and programs can't handle spaces in filenames.
"It's nothing."
"What do you mean?"
"It's nothing... It's empty space. I never taught the computer how to read empty space!"
"I never taught Virgil how to fly."
How far can we go back in history to find examples of advanced civilizations that collapsed, how can we make the case that the collapse was caused by [economic policy I don't like], and how does it prove that [economic policy I don't like] would equally fail today?
The U.S. shouldn't protect investors from the free market? That's the free market at work. Investors are not entitled to be paid. All investments carry risk.
It wouldn't be any different from trying to force a confession through torture. You need to control your thoughts during the interrogation.
No. Stop trying to always change everything.
Stick to the basics. English, math, science, US history, world geography, PE, and the arts. Sex ed, maybe.
Critical race theory, crypto, or whatever is the latest hip trend, has no place in the classroom.
Opt out anonymity > opt in anonymity imo.
Can a player with a pirated version of a game with a multiplayer mode on his console enter multiplayer lobbies? Could a player in theory pirate their game to give their units unfair advantages and then hop in a lobby with other players?
I don't really care what people do in single player.
It wouldn't be particularly hard for a trained person to block their thoughts to a brain implant, if the police were trying to read their mind.
And so Apple's anti-consumer, anti-freedom products continue.
Maybe they use Maybelline.
Queens hate this one weird trick.
There will never exist a technology that can read human thought, or even approximate it.
Such a technology does not exist, and is impossible.
By adjusting pay to local cost of living Google is effectively saying that they will provide their employees with the same standard of living regardless of their location. In lower cost of living areas this means an accordingly lower salary, because a Bay Area salary would otherwise afford an employee a better standard of living.
As for losing talent, Google is sufficiently established that the majority of freshly minted computer science and software engineering graduates are still desperate to work for Google if they can get in. And Google doesn't need to hire all the top talent to grow or run with the same profit margins.
I suspect software engineering salaries for new hires will start declining in nominal terms within the next decade or so, as (1) automation lowers demand for engineers on the business side (2) the labor supply keeps growing (3) non engineers in tech companies demand adjustments to their own pay to match engineers or start leaving for other companies that do, leaving less money to pay engineers (4) MBAs keep moving into management and start cutting labor costs for their most expensive individual contributors to increase profits and satisfy shareholders.
When new graduates make as much as doctors, with only a fraction of the education, while every other profession, with the exception of junior investment bankers, including technical ones and non-software engineering professions, are lucky to crack $75k, I don't see how the current job market is sustainable.