Vitalik

Tech, marathons and Capoeira

[Larry Sanger @lsanger]

Good catch of obvious bias: an article documenting the mass rapes on October 7 in NYT is undermined by a Wikipedia article in a totally one-sided way.

The opening paragraph has all of one sentence summarizing the piece, all of 44 words. The rest of the opening section has 144 of criticism, overwhelmingly negative.

There is also a table of testimonial evidence in the article, which has red (or pink) background color-coding, suggesting which items of testimony are credible and which are not. The mealy-mouthed authors left out anything like a legend explaining what the background color even means.

This illustrates very well how activists (of various kinds—here, pro-Hamas) have taken over Wikipedia and essentially bully everyone else into acceding. If you do not, they get their allies to block your account. That's how it works.

[IsraelTech @IsraelTech]

🌐🇮🇱 Today in IsraelTech:
Israel Launches World-First Project, Pumping Desalinated Seawater Into the Sea of Galilee

Israel has officially begun transferring desalinated Mediterranean seawater into the Sea of Galilee, using advanced water-tech engineering to revive dried streambeds and stabilize the Kinneret for the long term.

This marks a major milestone for Israel’s water-innovation ecosystem and the teams of engineers, hydrologists, and planners behind this historic national project.

The initiative is powered by Israel’s large-scale desalination network, routing treated water through the Tsalmon Stream and Ein Ravid spring, restoring natural flow and helping raise lake levels by several centimeters each month. This breakthrough also strengthens Israel’s broader vision for future regional water sustainability, including long-term initiatives connected to refilling the Dead Sea.
🌊

[Human Progress @HumanProgress]

"The Water Authority has started channeling desalinated water to the Sea of Galilee, marking the first ever attempt anywhere in the world to top up a freshwater lake with processed seawater."
https://t.co/52BnxXn7bt

[Maral Salmassi @MaralSalmassi]

🧵[1/11] This is the most important piece I’ve ever written — I’ve put it into a thread on X.

@guardiannews' latest ‘documentary’ isn’t journalism. It’s propaganda: the Der Stürmer playbook, recycled to agitate, manipulate, and turn people against Jews.

If you want to understand how Neo-Nazism and Islamist antisemitism are being mainstreamed today, you need to read this. Please share — the danger is real.

The Substack link for the full article is in the last post of the thread.

[Vitalik @vitalik]

the best geeky post I read in 2024

[v @iavins]

Collection of insane and fun facts about SQLite. Let's go!

SQLite is the most deployed and most used database. There are over one trillion (1000000000000 or a million million) SQLite databases in active use.

It is maintained by three people. They don't allow outside contributions.

[Mark Zlochin - מארק זלוצ'ין༝ @MarkZlochin]

¹ A few days ago I wrote about the UN’s embarrassing attempt to revive the long-debunked “70% of fatalities in Gaza are women and children” lie.

But what is the ACTUAL percentage of women and children among the fatalities in Gaza? 🧵

[Tim Skellett @Gurdur]

1/n Let's deal with a few *facts* here. On 10/6 2023, 06. October, the Gaza Strip was self-governing. It had a higher standard of living than the Egyptians bordering the southern Gazan border. Its rulers were billionaires. Hamas *owned* ≈10% of all land.
https://t.co/57iS6OckIu

[Vitalik @vitalik]

Jared is really inspiring with his energy, laser focus on the goal and the love of adventure

[Jared Isaacman @rookisaacman]

Apologies for another long one... I clearly haven’t found the TLDR edit button yet.

We are nearing the end of our immediate post-flight Polaris Dawn obligations. We have reviewed a lot of data, debriefed on all the major phases of flight and systems, celebrated with the @PolarisProgram & @SpaceX teams at a futuristic splashdown party, and visited several facilities to express our appreciation to the SpaceXers who made our mission possible. Our work isn’t completely done—we still have a few final visits—but we have had a great time over the past few weeks and I wanted to share a bit about that experience.

As a crew, we spent the most time with the teams in Hawthorne and KSC, so it was a real privilege to get on the road and meet so many of the 14,000+ people it took to make a mission like Polaris Dawn possible. We enjoyed meeting with many of them, answering questions and congratulating them on such a successful mission—not to mention all the other recent accomplishments. In the month since we returned from space, SpaceX has made history many times over—launching Crew-9, returning Crew-8, the Starship booster chopstick catch (probably the greatest engineering accomplishment in the last half-century), and the next day’s launch of Europa Clipper on Falcon Heavy.

I wish more people could see what goes on behind the scenes at SpaceX. The McGregor team relentlessly tests motors, stages and hardware with the goal of making rockets and spaceships more reliable. The sense of individual ownership is intense and there is a real hunger for data to improve rapidly. For example, we spent time with the teams that conducted O2 flammability and ESD testing to ensure we were safe in Dragon and EVA suits when exposed to elevated oxygen levels. They even showed us subscale testing footage of Super Heavy to assess what would happen if the tower didn’t successfully catch the booster. They’ve since shared that data across the industry so others can learn from it. And of course, the chopsticks did their job and caught the booster perfectly... before we know it, Starships will be launched and recovered as routinely as Falcon.

We also visited Starbase to meet the teams responsible for preparing Starship, the booster, and the tower for the last historic mission and saw how Booster 12 still looks practically new. The energy at Starbase—and the new Starship factory—is infectious and inspires so much confidence that SpaceX’s grand vision isn’t that far off in the future. We also visited the Starlink factories outside Austin and in Redmond. This made-in-America operation is cranking out thousands of satellites and millions of Starlink terminals. True to SpaceX fashion, the vertical integration is impressive. These SpaceX employees are building an amazing communication product—one that will help fund a vision as incredible as making life multi-planetary—but they are also the same employees working around the clock when over 150,000 Starlink kits were needed to respond to the recent storms that devastated much of the Southeastern United States.

As we have told the thousands of SpaceXers we’ve met over the past few weeks, they are part of the greatest adventure in human history. What could be more exciting than unlocking the secrets of the universe while making life better here on Earth? They continue to inspire countless new dreamers, all eager to contribute to this bold new age of exploration.

Though we are still ‘on mission’... the end is approaching. We have been incredibly lucky to witness firsthand the history SpaceX is capable of making and be inspired by the path ahead. Like millions around the world, we eagerly await what comes next.

[AP @Average_NY_Guy]

🧵𝐓𝐡𝐫𝐞𝐚𝐝: 𝐖𝐡𝐨 𝐖𝐞𝐥𝐜𝐨𝐦𝐞𝐝 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐉𝐞𝐰𝐬 𝐢𝐧 𝐈𝐬𝐫𝐚𝐞𝐥 𝐀𝐟𝐭𝐞𝐫 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐇𝐨𝐥𝐨𝐜𝐚𝐮𝐬𝐭? 𝐒𝐩𝐨𝐢𝐥𝐞𝐫 𝐀𝐥𝐞𝐫𝐭: 𝐈𝐭 𝐖𝐚𝐬𝐧’𝐭 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐀𝐫𝐚𝐛𝐬.

Enough is enough, Let’s set the record straight: the claim that Arabs welcomed Jews to Israel after the Holocaust is a false narrative and just a lie. The reality is that it's a much more complex and challenging history. Here’s a comprehensive look at the real dynamics of Jewish immigration and the reception in Israel.

[Vitalik @vitalik]

@AP_from_NY It is important to mention that even before 1880s immigration wave there were around 25,000 jews in the land of Israel that represented a significant percentage of local cities population back than.

[Aizenberg @Aizenberg55]

🧵Thread by @LeeMordechai has 3.4mm views but is filled with 100s of lies, errors, misrepresentations and importantly, omissions. It’s a mash up of every NGO, UN & media report claiming Israeli evil and absolves Hamas of wrongdoing. Let's examine the intellectual dishonesty: 1/

[Vitalik @vitalik]

@Aizenberg55 @LeeMordechai Kudos, Michael. Liars must be exposed by truth

[Vitalik @vitalik]

@geertwilderspvv Hartelijk dank meneer Wilders

[Ella Ke @EllaTravelsLove]

Noa Argamani (25), Almog Meir Jan (21), Andrey Kozlov (27), and Shlomi Ziv (40) were rescued in a special operation by the IDF, ISA and Israel Police from 2 separate locations in the heart of Nuseirat after being kidnapped by Hamas from the Nova music festival.

This is what Israel is fighting for!

Welcome home ❤️🇮🇱🙏🏼

We will not stop until all hostages are safe and sound back in Israel.

#broughtthemback

[Vitalik @vitalik]

@Alan_Couzens Im very grateful for your content. I'm working mainly with my lists on X and not with the algo. Added you to my athletics list and pinned to the top

[Vitalik @vitalik]

@Erdayastronaut Love your detailed articles. Please do the video claim by claim, it will be so usable for so many space lovers

[Rishi Sunak @RishiSunak]

Read my statement on the Iranian regime’s reckless attack against Israel.

[Vitalik @vitalik]

@alx ,l0,,pl,p00z

[The Washington Post @washingtonpost]

U.S. intelligence officials offered fresh details this week to bolster their November assessment that Hamas militants used the al-Shifa hospital complex in the northern Gaza Strip as a command center. https://t.co/lnpyqxlIMb

[Everyday Astronaut @Erdayastronaut]

I said it over and over on air, but I gotta say it again. HUGE congratulations to @ulalaunch on a PERFECT launch of their new Vulcan rocket! I would say I'm surprised it went so well, but I'm honestly not, because this is exactly what I expect from ULA! @torybruno