Author: Gregor J. Rothfuss

Join The Universe

If you spend most of your time arguing with your immediate family, then even the family members with whom you most disagree are at the center of your world, and greatly define you. you are defined more by the topics on which you argue, and the communities in which you argue, than by which side you take on such topics. The people you most hate, you hate exactly because they are close to you, and in your way, as they are in your world. These worlds I listed, even the US politics world, seem to me just too small and provincial to spend all my time there.

Here are 41 BIG questions:

  1. Did there have to be something, rather than nothing?
  2. Is the universe infinite, in spacetime or entropy?
  3. Why is entropy always lower in past directions?
  4. Are the speed of light, and forward causation, hard limits on info & influence?
  5. What is most of the universe made of, & can the other stuff make complex life & civs?
  6. Where are the universe’s largest reservoirs of extractable negentropy, and how fast can they flow?
  7. How cheaply can these reservoirs be defended & maintained, and thus how long can they last?
  8. In which of the many possible filter steps does most of the great filter usually lie?
  9. How far away is the nearest alien civilization?
  10. What % of alien civs evolve intelligence via routes other than our social conflict route?
  11. How willing are most aliens to cooperate with us, instead of competing?
  12. When will growth in tech abilities slow down due to running out of useful things to learn?
  13. When will growth of solar system economy slow down due to congestion & exhaustion?
  14. When will growth of Earth economy slow down due to congestion & exhaustion?
  15. When will artificial machines replace biology in running & doing things?
  16. Will that be late enough for genetic engineering or global warming to matter much?
  17. When will the dominant creatures around take a long view, or an abstract view?
  18. What types of competition and coordination (e.g., governance) institutions will dominate in which social areas when and where?
  19. What forms of governance will be most common in which different future eras?
  20. When will mental organization of dominant creatures deviate greatly from that of humans now?
  21. After that point, which kinds of minds will win which competitions where?
  22. After that point, what units of mental or social organization will matter most, and when or where?
  23. After that point, what will minds value, and at what levels will they most encode and coordinate values?
  24. What were the key causes and enablers of each past key growth mode (life, brains, foraging, farming, & industry)?
  25. When will the next growth mode start, what will enable it, and how will it differ?
  26. When, if ever, will all that we caused and care about end and die?
  27. What will be our deepest future collapse, short of extinction, how deep will that be, and how long to recover?
  28. When will be the next major civilization collapse, what % of world will that take down, and how different is the next civ?
  29. When will be the next big war, and will many nukes be used?
  30. When, if ever, will external genetic, econ, or military competition again drive large scale policy & governance choices?
  31. Where in space-time are most of the human like creatures who believe they are experiencing our place in space-time?
  32. What are our strongest levers of influence today over the universe?
  33. How long will how much non-human nature remain, and how wild will that be?
  34. What are the actual motivations that drive most human behavior today?
  35. What has been driving the main changes in values and attitudes over the last few centuries, and what further changes will they induce?
  36. What new practices and institutions can enable greatly increased rates of innovation?
  37. When, if ever, will more general & reliable truth-oriented institutions (e.g., prediction markets) offer estimates on a wide range of subjects?
  38. When, if ever, will average human fertility stop falling, and total human population rise?
  39. When, if ever, will human per-capita income stop rising?
  40. Will human per-capita energy usage ever start rising greatly again?
  41. When will humans become effectively immortal, and least re internal decay?

SoC Opensourcing

Beyond the NDA blocks, there is typically a deeper layer of completely unpublished documentation for disused silicon, such as peripherals that were designed-in but did not make the final cut, internal debugging facilities, and pre-boot facilities. Many of these disused features aren’t even well-known within the team that designed the chip! Thus a typical SoC mask set starts with lots of extra features, spare logic, and debug facilities that are chiseled away (disused) until the final shape of the SoC emerges. From a security standpoint, the presence of such “dark matter” in SoCs is worrisome. Forget worrying about the boot ROM or CPU microcode – the BIST (Built in Self Test) infrastructure has everything you need to do code injection, if you can just cajole it into the right mode. Furthermore, SoC integrators all buy functional blocks such as DDR, PCI, and USB from a tiny set of IP vendors. This means the same disused logic motifs are baked into 100Ms of devices, even across competing brands and dissimilar product lines. Herein lies a hazard for an unpatchable, ecosystem-shattering security break!

Japan phone rests

You placed the receiver atop the cradle, and the weight of the receiver pressed the large button in the center. That activated a wind-up music box. This was a super low-tech way to put a caller on “hold” and treat them to a little ditty while you hustled off to find Matsumoto-san or whomever they were calling for.

Lox Hasn’t Changed in 8 ka

The pronunciation in the Proto-Indo-European was probably ‘lox,’ and that’s exactly how it is pronounced in modern English. Then, it meant salmon, and now it specifically means ‘smoked salmon.’ It’s really cool that that word hasn’t changed its pronunciation at all in 8 ka and still refers to a particular fish.

Open RAN

Open RAN looks like a great alternative to all the proprietary 5G nonsense.

contrary to the information being published by legacy RAN vendors, Open RAN is real; Open RAN has been deployed in commercial networks today; the Open RAN community is thriving; the cost savings are being realized; and operational performance requirements and KPIs are being met.

Makapansgat pebble

a 260-gram, 8.3 cm long, reddish-brown jasperite cobble, ca 3M years before present with natural chipping and wear patterns that make it look like a crude rendition of a human face. it has been suggested that some australopithecine might have recognized it as a symbolic face, in possibly the earliest example of symbolic thinking or aesthetic sense in the human heritage, and brought the pebble back to the cave. This would make it a candidate for the oldest known manuport

Mink COVID-19

the situation is “very serious” and that the worst case would be a restarted pandemic spreading out of Denmark: “The Serum Institute estimates that 5% of the viral infections among people in North Jutland are of the new type of virus mutation“

Liquid-filled window

When sunlight hits the liquid-filled window, the water begins to absorb the heat, blocking it from entering the room. The hydrogel causes the liquid to turn opaque in sunlight, further reducing thermal transmission. The result is that less energy is required to cool the space. As the sun goes down, the window turns clear again and the heat is released. As a side bonus, the liquid between the panes also doubles as a sound insulator. Testing indicating that it “reduces noise 15% more effectively than double-glazed windows.”