Hacker Newsnew | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submit | izzydata's commentslogin

But infinite population growth is unsustainable so it had to come to an equilibrium eventually. Maybe we overshot the maximum comfortable population by a bit and we are going to rebound for awhile.

Also an economy that requires an infinitely growing population feels like a pyramid scheme which is also an unsustainable system.


> But infinite population growth is unsustainable so it had to come to an equilibrium eventually.

Or not. It could be oscillatory and humanity could cyclically reverse-decimate itself while the descendants of the survivors get to enjoy millennia of the fun part of the pyramid scheme.

The big losers are whoever is part of the "perish in a holocaust" generations, and probably the first couple bootstrapper generations afterwards.


> But infinite population growth is unsustainable

Only if we don't explore and colonize the stars. From what we know, the universe is infinite.


How many years/generations are you willing to spend on a ship in the middle of space? Remember, Biodome didn't work. Are you going to join that prison for the off chance of your progeny occupying a land that we haven't even discovered yet?

And, before you suggest it, no, there will never be faster-than-light travel, and even relativistic travel is super unlikely.


The generation ship genre of science fiction is very interesting to me, but I've never read one that didn't seem absolutely horrifying. I don't think it is a realistic option. Especially if we aren't even capable of stabilizing our "closed system" known as Earth. A generation ship would be the same problem but 100 times more difficult.

Crypto should have stayed a silly tech demo that nerds used to trade with eachother for pizza.

The how would Epstein-esque pedo's and bad state actors transact?

It doesn't seem fundamentally different from a PC having multiple logins that are accessed from different passwords. Hasn't this been a solved problem for decades?

Apple's hardware business model incentivizes only supporting one user per device.

Android has supported multiple users per device for years now.


You can have a multiuser system but that doesn't solve this particular issue. If they log in to what you claim to be your primary account and see browser history that shows you went to msn.com 3 months ago, they aren't going to believe it's the primary account.

My browser history is cleared every time I close it.

It's actually annoying because every site wants to "remember" the browser information, and so I end up with hundreds of browsers "logged in". Or maybe my account was hacked and that's why there's hundreds of browsers logged in.


Multi-user has been solved for decades.

Multi-user that plausibly looks like single-user to three letter agencies?

Not even close.


Doesn't having standard multi-user functionality automatically create the plausible deniability? If they tried so hard to create an artificial plausible deniability that would be more suspicious than normal functionality that just gets used sometimes.

What needs to be plausibly denied is the existence of a second user account, because you're not going to be able to plausibly deny that the account belongs to you when it resides on the phone found in your pocket.

How about we just make a giant heatsink that reaches into space instead. Then we can cool the whole planet. Coming up with crazy ideas is cheap, but the logistics are obviously impractical.

Look into radiative cooling. Basically this, but more practical. Several companies working on it: https://www.skycoolsystems.com/

I don't quite believe this.

Is it really better than just using solar panels to run a heat pump?


> Our core innovation is a radiative cooling material that we’ve combined with a panel system to improve the efficiency of any vapor-compression based cooling system

A heat pump is a “ vapor-compression based cooling system” so that tech is an addition-to not an instead-of.

Whether it’s better probably depends on how expensive the additional efficiency is in practice.

> SkyCool’s Panels save 2x – 3x as much energy as a solar panel generates given the same area.

So if you’re area constrained maybe.


That's very hard to believe. Radiative cooling is really bad compared to any kind of fan in front of aluminum fins.

Air itself is an isolator, there is a reason you need to shove in fresh air to take on more energy from the heat source.


This looks like it depends on the outside air to cool the coolant. "Radiative" can mean that too, not just IR radiation.

We had one. It was that sulphur used in shipping fuel.

It feels more like a really optimistic take on AI. I won't say it is impossible, but I haven't seen anything that suggests AI is going to do what OpenAI and Nvidia claims it will.


I want to see a movement of people using dumbphones or no phones at all. Anything you do on a smartphone can be done later on a desktop computer and a landline phone.


I left the Apple ecosystem three years ago and have been daily driving a Linux-based phone ever since.

I’m still dealing with the fallout even today. There are tons of things in 2026 that you can no longer conveniently do without an Apple or Google mobile OS. For example, you’re out of all the group chats. No more WhatsApp, Telegram, or Signal. You can’t have those on a computer unless you have the account tethered to a phone.


At least in the US people still only use SMS or a program that can be installed on a computer. I've never used WhatsApp, Telegram or Signal.

The only thing right now that I need my Android phone for is Duo Mobile authentication to log into my work computer.


In Europe, where SMS used to be ridiculously expensive until the early 2010s, WhatsApp usage is absolutely endemic to the point that many businesses use it as their primary means of communication. It also has a quasi-monopoly on group messaging among friends and relatives.


It's not really American politics when Elon decides to turn off your countries internet for personal gain. Having such critical infrastructure in the hands of someone unstable wouldn't be a choice I ever make for something so important.


You are probably referring to ukraine and you should know that this was entirely fake news. It was never disabled. It had never been enabled in Crimea in the first place, in accordance with US gov policy.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starlink_in_the_Russian-Ukrain...

    In 2022, Elon Musk denied a Ukrainian request to extend Starlink's coverage up to Russian-occupied Crimea during a counterattack on a Crimean port, from which Russia had been launching attacks against Ukrainian civilians; doing so would have violated US sanctions on Russia.[18] This event was widely reported in 2023, erroneously characterizing it as Musk "turning off" Starlink coverage in Crimea.
But you’re right of course that it might be in a sovereign country’s interest to build out their wired infrastructure instead of relying on external actors.


The vast majority of the international community, including the United Nations, the United States, and the European Union, recognizes Crimea as a sovereign part of Ukraine. :)


Sanctions were in place because russia controlled crimea regardless of international recognition, so what's your point


Oh damn, you’re right. The US should provide a portion of the Ukraine aid to the government in Crimea.

Perhaps we can drop off some Abrams for the Donbas region next time. It’s part of Ukraine after all.


Nice to see what the colonizer imperialist state actors that love Zionism and unequal exchange side with.


If my options are upload a picture of myself for Google to monetize through ads or not use Google / Youtube then I will be moving on regardless of the inconvenience to myself.


My only camera is a Sony a6000 and I bought it partially because I thought it looked great. If it causes some issue I wouldn't even know it because I've never tried something else.


rolls eyes

I unfortunately have to upvote this.


Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: