I toured at MIT when I was applying to colleges, and the student narrating the walking tour trash-talked the Stata Center pretty brutally as we went by it, mentioning the leaks, the lawsuit, how nobody liked it, etc.

I never knew if those were her actual feelings or if this was part of a script approved by the admissions office, or even which of those possibilities would be crazier.

By now crypto-in-practice has violated so many of its supposed founding principles that it's tired and cliche to point it out.

It was supposed to be limited in supply unlike fiat, and yet Tether underpins the whole thing and they print that out of thin air all the time. It was supposed to be decentralized, but in practice a few big exchanges control all the transactions and a few big mining pools control all the minting. It was supposed to be "code is law", and yet if you find a big exploit on smart contracts it'll be unwound later on and the cops will still show up for you. And as you say, it was supposed to be trustless, but counterparty risk is everywhere.

And it turns out nobody cares, because to a first approximation nobody is in crypto for the libertarian principles. It is all about number go up; always has been, always will be. It's not even worth pointing out anymore.

> It was supposed to be limited in supply unlike fiat, and yet Tether underpins the whole thing and they print that out of thin air all the time.

This is a joke right? Tether (USDT) is pegged to the dollar... and there is not really a limit to the USD printing machine, nobody ever claimed a stablecoin would have a limited supply. It's literally the main critique of the fiat system levied by crypto proponents.

The only asset which has made and still hold promises of not increasing its supply over its limit set through its consensus code is Bitcoin. And it is nowhere close to ever change... as a matter of fact if it changed, most people wouldn't call that fork Bitcoin.

The problem with Tether is that they are tight-lipped about their backing assets. No one knows if the peg is real, it's just "trust me bro"

Well they publish attestations from third-parties, but no full audits, so sure they could be much more transparent.

But the claim about USDT ever claiming that its supply wouldn't increase is pure fantasy. It literally makes no sense if you understand how the peg is maintained (technically by minting and burning tokens).

I took their comment to mean that tokens valuations are tied to stablecoins. Sufficiently tied enough as to be de facto properties of tokens themselves.

Yes. Cryptocurrencies operate within the larger econo-political system we live in, and as long as cryptocurrencies replace only a part of that system, the rest of the system will continue to operate as it does otherwise. Its quite clear that the way capitalism operates in practice is that most markets end up being oligopolish, and that people with guns are needed to keep the system stable. So not at all surprising.

> And it turns out nobody cares, because to a first approximation nobody is in crypto for the libertarian principles. It is all about number go up; always has been, always will be. It's not even worth pointing out anymore.

I agree 100% - Meme stocks go brrrrrrrr

The idea that it's a currency that lives beyond the reach of governments is laughable (as soon as something goes bang a lot of the owners call for... regulators and government oversight)

People putting their self-interests before maintaining support for more general principles is par for the course.

Even the vast majority of free-market maximalists will support a government bailout of large banks or the auto industry if it will save their investment portfolio.

This "what if it gets truncated in the middle of the download, and the half-run script does something really bad" objection gets brought up every time "curl | bash" is mentioned, and it always feels like "what if a cosmic ray flips a bit in your memory which makes the kernel erase your hard drive". Like, yes, it could happen in the same way getting killed by a falling asteroid could happen, but I'm not losing sleep over it.

BMW has been the worst of the worst for a long time though. [0] is a representative example, but pretty much any "car brands ordered by upkeep cost" list will have BMW out on their own planet.

Before Teslas really took over the "high income tech worker" market, in Seattle you used to be able to get a used BMW for quite cheap, because all the Microsoft and Amazon workers would lease them and then they'd go on the used market when the lease was up. I actually considered doing this, but multiple mechanics said very bluntly, "don't, this is a trap, the maintenance costs will eat you alive".

[0]: https://www.crsautomotive.com/what-are-the-total-costs-of-ve...

It was practically a stereotype that all of the young male H1Bs had a BMW desktop background on their work computer. I knew one guy who practically bankrupted himself by buying one the moment he thought he could afford it. The mandatory insurance got him. And then we found out he’s a terrible driver. Thing was in the shop all the time.

Why do you need the entire integrated setup to be outdoor-rated? That just adds tons of cost. If the antennas and modem need to be outside for signal strength reasons, so be it, but as much of your networking gear as possible should be indoors.

Construction projects, festivals, etc. Bad cellular reception is more likely to be an issue far from other infrastructure.

It's LTE only, not 5G but this might be what you're looking for

https://store.ui.com/us/en/category/internet-solutions/colle...

There are plenty of outdoor plastic enclosures, mostly RF-transparent, that are intended to hold network equipment.

I would think if you are doing projects that big, you would in fact want dedicated devices instead of all-in-ones.

Those are just categories. For every major project or festival there’s a long tail of tiny projects on a shoestring budget out there.

Put it in a wooden box with a generator outside of it and you are good to go.

That’s got its own set of issues, but more importantly would you call that working effortlessly?

Not just Micron, SK Hynix has made similar statements (unfortunately I can only find sources in Korean).

DRAM manufacturers got burned multiple times in the past scaling up production during a price bubble, and it appears they've learned their lesson (to the detriment of the rest of us).

The rumors say Apple is shipping their folding phone next year, I'm crossing my fingers that one might have stylus support and then it'll meander its way back to the regular phones.

I'm not enough of an expert in PL theory and compilers to say for sure, but I suspect that because Typescript's syntax and semantics are all designed with total type erasure in mind, there's no advantage you could get to executing it natively versus compiling to JavaScript and taking advantage of all the optimizations JS engines already have.

Because it indicates dishonesty and/or innumeracy which calls the accuracy of the rest of the piece into question. "Checking if the author can actually count" is basic media literary stuff, not some sinister agenda.

There was a time when Bill Gates wrote code for Microsoft, and he was actually quite good at it.

Not sure why this was voted down. He was very technical, especially for the time: https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2025/6/7/bill-gates-reuni...

He also wrote and published a paper on pancake sorting.