Favorites December 12th 2022

December 2022, Filoli Historic House and Garden

Noah Smith 🐇🇺🇦 @Noahpinion

It might seem odd to keep being a techno-optimist after tech stocks crashed and crypto blew up. But the social benefits of technology are not the same as the profits of companies.

noahpinion.substack.comTechno-optimism for 2023What you should be excited about

"the profits of tech companies are not the same as the social benefit of technology — witness how little profit solar manufacturers make, even though solar is changing the world"

Merlin Mann @hotdogsladies

Same energy

I really liked Andor, here’s a review I read recently that really resonated.

Timothy B. Lee @binarybits

It would honestly be hilarious if trump’s political career came to an end because he failed to follow proper procedures regarding the handling of classified documents.

Threads

• There's been a bunch of talk of the "Twitter Files" but the fact is, nothing in them is particularly surprising. However, if you do want something surprising, there's a thread of horrible security practices uncovered by Mudge. Not getting nearly as much coverage because it has no political aspect, but it's really astoundingly stupid stuff.

• Thread summarizing research into how often children get jobs at the same firm as one of their parents. Apparently 29% of Americans work at their parents firm by the age of 30. Amazing how many questions they could answer from the data!

• Short thread on ways in which they'll likely be able to build on the recent fusion breakthrough. TL;DR: much of the tech the NIF lab is using is actually quite old. Lasers have come a long way since 1992.