Fifty Years is VC firm that backs founders making something civilization needs. Think companies curing disease, combating the climate crisis, ending aging, accelerating science.
Amazing. Also neat that we may actually learn to treat human infections better after this discovery.
"Erik Frank. Laurent Keller also adds that these findings 'have medical implications because the primary pathogen in ant’s wounds, Pseudomonas aeruginosa, is also a leading cause of infection in humans, with several strains being resistant to antibiotics'."
Love imagining leading scientists from big pharma rushing to investigate the compound cocktails ants are using to make the next blockbuster drug.
If we could have solved the really big problems that remain with SaaS apps, we probably would have already. We're really good at building them. Most of the really big problems the world is facing require really hard solutions. Often this involves commercializing core research (like the foundation model companies) or building in atoms and not just bits. The sheer amount of talent and money going into SaaS feels like a massive misallocation of resources.
So this is a common argument against longevity -- that dictators would remain in power for even longer.
A simple counterpoint: imagine a world were we all did live until 500 years old. And there were some bad dictators in that world. If you lived in that world, would you suggest cutting everyone's lifespan to 80 years old to diminish the power of those dictators?
This is huge. Yes it's in dogs but for the first time the FDA has said lifespan extension is an acceptable endpoint for a therapeutic! This could help open the floodgates for longevity therapeutics and will be written about in the history books.
True. And you're likely to lose your team's trust to. If employees see a leader telling white lies to potential customers (or to anyone) they're likely to ask "I wonder what white lies they're telling me?"
Post author here. If a customer asked "and I'll be able to upload my own data?" and the response was "absolutely" even though that functionality didn't exist yet because we knew we could build it before they launched, that's nothing approaching fraud. I don't believe we ever once didn't have a feature like this that a customer wanted before they actually launched. The disagreement is whether it's ok to just say "absolutely" or whether it's important to say the full "just to be clear, the product can't do that today but we can build it before you launch." 10 years later I'd take the latter approach.
Post author here. We did work out a repayment plan for some taxes. Payroll taxes are generally "if you have the money in the account, you have to pay immediately" though, so we wrote a large check for those as soon as we discovered the error.
I felt like folks were getting too optimistic in the early days and now I feel folks are getting way to pessimistic. We don't know if any of these failed replication experiments actually made the same LK-99 the Korean team did. The only way of knowing for sure if LK-99 is a room temp superconductor is if outside labs test the samples the Korean team has made. It's entirely possible that the exact impurities in their material caused by their exact manufacturing process are required for superconducting properties to emerge. Seems like that will be done in the next few weeks. Still betting against it working but keeping my fingers crossed.
One of my favorite things about the Hacker News community is the unexpected popularity of things like this, about the welfare of non-human animals. As someone who cares deeply about this issue, it's heartwarming and gives me hope.
I do wonder why this community seems to disproportionately care about this. Anyone have any thoughts?
There's something indescribably magical about visiting a site that's only been visited by ~8k people max and hasn't been updated since 1998. Like landing on a secret world.
"Technology is never neutral, because it takes on the characteristics of those who devise, finance, regulate and use it."
Therefore builders "bear a particular ethical and spiritual responsibility" because "every design choice reflects a vision of humanity."
The questions shouldn't just be 'can we build it?' or 'will people want this?'
We need to also ask 'should we build it?' and 'will this make humanity better?'
The encyclical calls on us to “join forces in building up the common good.”
This is a message we need right now.