TIL: "free driver" opposite of free rider "...geoengineering’s economics are almost the exact opposite of climate change’s: While global warming is a “free rider” problem, where countries must collaborate to avoid burning cheap fossil fuels, solar geoengineering is a “free driver” problem, where one country could theoretically do it alone."

Heatmap News

Exclusive: Stardust Solutions Raises $60 Million to Build a Solar Geoengineering System by 2030

A U.S. firm led by former Israeli government physicists, Stardust seeks to patent its proprietary sunlight-scattering particle — but it won’t d...

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Lately I’ve been thinking about orphaned code. Code that’s still running, live, with no remaining developers or users. Forgotten hardware devices. Deserted VMs on cloud free tiers. Smart contracts whose DAOs disbanded years ago. Old school internet worms. Abandoned, starving Tamagotchi. Can you think of other examples? There are obvious conclusions here about maintainability, ecosystem security, etc, but I’m not here to lecture, I have no particular conclusions. Just a vibe.

The history of coffee is basically one long quest to make it taste as good as it smells.

"These two statements are both true: 'all accidents are preventable' and 'we cannot prevent all accidents.'" – Timber Stinson-Schroff, Safe New World, Summer of Protocols

Summer of Protocols

Safe New World Web - Summer of Protocols

Safe New World Timber Stinson-Schroff From 1900 to 2017, the fatality rate in the American coal mining industry fell by 97%.1 What made this ...

I'm a big fan of harm reduction. Passkeys are *better* than passwords. Nuclear power is *better* than coal or LNG. Vaping is *better* (maybe?) than smoking. Harm reduction isn't perfect. It's often not even good enough. But it's better then the status quo, and that's important. Yes, moral hazard and risk homeostasis exist. We should always work toward improving things; adopting a better solution isn't an excuse for complacency. But better is still better. Don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good. Incremental improvement is real improvement. Embrace it!