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I think there’s a big misperception about extraterrestrial life forms—most people seem to assume that life in the universe has to be tied to water or based on carbon, like life here on Earth. This idea makes sense given our limited experience, but I believe it’s far too narrow. If we step back and think about it, life could take so many different forms, especially considering the diversity of environments across the universe. It’s entirely possible that life elsewhere might not be organic at all. For example, there could be life forms built around silicon instead of carbon. Silicon can also form complex molecules, and while it might not work the same way under Earth-like conditions, there’s no reason it couldn’t thrive in the right environment. Taking it a step further, I think life doesn’t necessarily need to be "biological" as we define it. Imagine completely inorganic beings—self-replicating systems made of metal or some other durable material. They might operate more like advanced machines, reproducing by assembling parts rather than dividing cells. They could store and process information in ways similar to how DNA or even our computer processors do today. Life doesn’t need to rely on water or traditional metabolic processes to exist. It could gain energy from electromagnetic fields, nuclear reactions, or even phenomena we don’t fully understand yet. The key is that these systems would still fulfill the essential functions of life, such as reproducing, adapting, and processing information. When we think about the range of environments out there—icy moons like Europa, high-pressure planets, or even the vacuum of space—it seems unlikely that all life would conform to Earth-like standards. To really explore the possibility of alien life, we need to rethink what “life” means. Maybe it’s less about specific ingredients like water and carbon and more about universal principles like energy use, adaptability, and the ability to store and change information. These are the kinds of possibilities I think about when it comes to extraterrestrial life.

@uncledoomer When you include predetermined breaking points

first the toilet breaks and now their email isnt opening. going to the moon is a functionally identical experience to working from home

@lannywarwick2 @BBMagaMom Exactly.

@EGFReceptor @BBMagaMom Even worse it’s the ccp officials

🚨 BREAKING: Feds busted 20 maternity hotels in California for a birth tourism scam. Chinese women flew in illegally to give birth for U.S. citizenship. Operators charged up to $80,000 each. This is why birthright citizenship needs to END!!

@StevenCheung47 Yes, when the Democrats installed Vice President Kamala Harris as chair of the National Space Council, we all immediately knew how important space exploration was for Biden and the Left.

You killed the space program. It’s only because of President Trump this triumph is a reality.

For the "average" Chinese person, one of the most important things is food and money, and, for those who can afford it, obtaining US citizenship as a backup and insurance against the CCP. The Anglo-Saxons and Europeans are playing the long-term games. For example, Americans are currently in the process of establishing a Moon base, with plans to move on to Mars and beyond as the next step. Others are trailing far behind (100 years, perhaps). The great "BRICS strategy" by China, Russia, and other third-world nations is just being dismantled.

@EGFReceptor @BBMagaMom You don’t know Chinese. The short term game for them is 100 years

@FoxNews The guy on the left who has a permanently moving piece of chewing gum in his mouth, which is considered a practical, non-pharmacological countermeasure for mitigating motion sickness, including symptoms similar to space sickness.

ARTEMIS II CREW SPEAKS FROM SPACE: “We are definitely 100% on our way to the moon." "The lunar gravity will take over in a couple of days here and start pulling us around the far side." "At the end of our translunar injection here, about an hour and a half ago, we just really looked at each other — and I know the United States has done this 1968 through 1972 — but it's just, this is unbelievable, that we can put our minds to something and pull it off." "This is an unbelievable technical accomplishment.”

@LoomerUnleashed @JamesCarville I don't like this talk from the gentleman who looks like an advanced-stage prostate cancer patient either. However, it should be admitted that the other side is also constantly talking about similar plans regarding their opponents, but without any consequences.

James Carville openly lays out the House and Senate Democrats’ “Get Trump” strategy: “Listen to me, Trump. I’m going to tell your fat f-a***something. You’re getting ready to get the living crap kicked out of you. Then they’re (House and Senate Dems) gonna start going after you.” The most powerful people on the left are consumed by Trump Derangement Syndrome. That’s why “Getting Trump” remains the Democrats’ number one policy.

@christopherrufo One of the most 💯 descriptions I can think of

The State of California is one giant Learing Center

@dannyevospyder @bennyjohnson That the iconic scene is from the 1979 James Bond film, Moonraker, you NOOB!

@bennyjohnson Benny don’t be a dumb ass. You think this was real as well in 1966 aired on CBS wake up Benny.

Artemis II astronauts emerge in their space suits at Kennedy Space Center as they prepare for blast off in hours. They pause for photos, give thanks, then receive thunderous applause for their contribution to this historic mission for NASA and humanity.

@bennyjohnson An almost "woke" probability distribution of genders and races to see here. But they all look very competent, IMHO.

The majority of wealthy and successful people attended school for a long time. They are fully aware of what matters and what doesn't in life. They are fully aware that teaching kids at home with private instructors is far more successful than attending most institutions where you have to worry about other students lowering the standard of instruction.

@flowidealism Just because they’re good at building businesses (or whatever else they’ve achieved) doesn’t mean they know anything about education. People tend to over-respect the opinions of the successful on subjects outside of their expertise, and sometimes they do that to themselves.

Elon Musk built his own school for his children because he rejected all existing options. I know four or five other billionaires here in Austin doing the same thing. These are not fringe people. These are the highest-achieving, most successful humans in the economy. And they refuse to use conventional schools. If you have billions and a genuine choice, why would you use a system that fails two-thirds of adolescents? You wouldn't. The billionaires know. The system works for a narrow band of kids who happen to be good at school. Everyone else is collateral damage that the rich avoid.

@HudsonInstitute You are correct. Such "systems," like China, and mainly, it is about the CCP, are not capable of change from within. That's impossible. It is like a negative feedback loop.

Every major leap in Chinese weapons development has been triggered by decisive demonstrations of US military superiority. When China's military shortcomings are exposed, especially under the pressure of comparison with US military performance, the response is to assign blame to individuals rather than address institutional flaws. This creates a cycle in which political purges replace technical reform and the system undermines its own capacity for learning and improvement. As long as this dynamic persists, each new demonstration of US military superiority will not only challenge China externally but also destabilize it internally, reinforcing the very gap it seeks to close, @milesyu10 writes for @WashTimes. Read: hudson.org/national-secur…

@RonDeSantis They are most likely now working for NGOs, different charities, and protesting against Trump. Also, they work as counselors for organizations related to sex change procedures and similar entities.

Was it necessary to do a study to figure out that advanced degrees in social work and psychology have zero or negative ROI?

@UjoIvo @robkhenderson Both could be true.

@robkhenderson No, it was the other way around. People had higher education because they were loyal to the Communist Party. Non-loyal people were not allowed to study at universities.

The people most committed to communism in the Soviet Union weren’t the workers—it was the educated elite. A retrospective study conducted in the 1990s titled "Work Ethics and the Collapse of the Soviet System," examined which groups were most supportive of the Soviet system. The researchers found that, compared to factory workers and semi-skilled laborers, individuals in white-collar positions—especially those with higher levels of education—were significantly more likely to express loyalty to the Communist Party. In some cases, support was two to three times higher among elites. In other words, the strongest support for the system came not from those at the bottom, but from those in relatively advantaged positions within it. This runs counter to the common assumption that egalitarian or redistributive ideologies are primarily driven by the least well-off. In practice, they are often most strongly endorsed by people closer to the top of the social hierarchy—those who benefit from the system’s institutional structure, or who are positioned to navigate it successfully.

@robkhenderson It reminds me somehow of their approval of the lockdown and climate measures.

Good luck if you have to coordinate the BTC core developers, nodes, and miners. I still remember the discussions about BTC Segwit and other changes to the protocol, especially with Luke Dashjr. Usually that ends with philosophical disputes about what BTC should be or shouldn't be.

This is only the tip of the iceberg for Bitcoin. There has been virtually no R&D into a post-quantum upgrade, no plan, community divided on an upgrade and no track record of successfully deploying a change of this scale. This is just the beginning, as Bitcoin miners are losing power, infrastructure, and hardware contracts to AI, or exiting mining altogether. They are going to get hammered to death from every side. Ethereum is already ahead of the game with years of R&D into post-quantum, roadmap laid out and years of experience rolling out upgrades of this magnitude. $ETH is the future pq.ethereum.org

@SadiesMopingBed @bennyjohnson They seem to crash more often than human planes.

@bennyjohnson I hate this BS. Just stop. There are advanced species capable of interstellar travel, but they haven't figured out how to prevent their craft from crashing? Nonsense.

I asked Matt Gaetz What Is the Most Disturbing Alien Finding He Learned In Congress: Alien 'Breeding Programs' and 'Non-Human Biologics' "I had someone come and brief me who was in a military uniform, worked for the United States Army, that was briefing me on the locations of hybrid breeding programs where captured aliens were breeding with humans to create some hybrid race that could engage in intergalactic communication. An actual uniformed member of the United States Army briefed me on that." "In crashes of craft that had been recovered by the CIA... it wasn't just the hard materials, it was also biologics, but that they couldn't identify a human source of those biologics."

Perhaps a solution might be to provide a transition period for holders of old addresses to move their coins to quantum-secure ones, after which all old addresses are blacklisted. After that grace period, only those old addresses for which users provide proof of ownership will be whitelisted.

No warning. You wake up, check your portfolio. Bitcoin is at zero, Ethereum at $100,000. You jump onto X trying to figure out what happened. Satosh's 1M BTC wallet just moved and started selling. Russian & Chinese quantum algorithms cracked encryption while you were asleep.

It is very likely that the first usable quantum computers will not be produced in large quantities. Apart from that, there are likely more important problems to address initially than transferring BTCs from old addresses. For example, there will be countless pieces of encrypted data in the world that are much more important, both from a military and political perspective. These will likely be the first targets for decryption at the beginning.

Today is a monumentous day for quantum computing and cryptography. Two breakthrough papers just landed (links in next tweet). Both papers improve Shor's algorithm, infamous for cracking RSA and elliptic curve cryptography. The two results compound, optimising separate layers of the quantum stack. The results are shocking. I expect a narrative shift and a further R&D boost toward post-quantum cryptography. The first paper is by Google Quantum AI. They tackle the (logical) Shor algorithm, tailoring it to crack Bitcoin and Ethereum signatures. The algorithm runs on ~1K logical qubits for the 256-bit elliptic curve secp256k1. Due to the low circuit depth, a fast superconducting computer would recover private keys in minutes. I'm grateful to have joined as a late paper co-author, in large part for the chance to interact with experts and the alpha gleaned from internal discussions. The second paper is by a stealthy startup called Oratomic, with ex-Google and prominent Caltech faculty. Their starting point is Google's improvements to the logical quantum circuit. They then apply improvements at the physical layer, with tricks specific to neutral atom quantum computers. The result estimates that 26,000 atomic qubits are sufficient to break 256-bit elliptic curve signatures. This would be roughly a 40x improvement in physical qubit count over previous state-of-the-art. On the flip side, a single Shor run would take ~10 days due to the relatively slow speed of neutral atoms. Below are my key takeaways. As a disclaimer, I am not a quantum expert. Time is needed for the results to be properly vetted. Based on my interactions with the team, I have faith the Google Quantum AI results are conservative. The Oratomic paper is much harder for me to assess, especially because of the use of more exotic qLDPC codes. I will take it with a grain of salt until the dust settles. → q-day: My confidence in q-day by 2032 has shot up significantly. IMO there's at least a 10% chance that by 2032 a quantum computer recovers a secp256k1 ECDSA private key from an exposed public key. While a cryptographically-relevant quantum computer (CRQC) before 2030 still feels unlikely, now is undoubtedly the time to start preparing. → censorship: The Google paper uses a zero-knowledge (ZK) proof to demonstrate the algorithm's existence without leaking actual optimisations. From now on, assume state-of-the-art algorithms will be censored. There may be self-censorship for moral or commercial reasons, or because of government pressure. A blackout in academic publications would be a tell-tale sign. → cracking time: A superconducting quantum computer, the type Google is building, could crack keys in minutes. This is because the optimised quantum circuit is just 100M Toffoli gates, which is surprisingly shallow. (Toffoli gates are hard because they require production of so-called "magic states".) Toffoli gates would consume ~10 microseconds on a superconducting platform, totalling ~1,000 sec of Shor runtime. → latency optimisations: Two latency optimisations bring key cracking time to single-digit minutes. The first parallelises computation across quantum devices. The second involves feeding the pubkey to the quantum computer mid-flight, after a generic setup phase. → fast- and slow-clock: At first approximation there are two families of quantum computers. The fast-clock flavour, which includes superconducting and photonic architectures, runs at roughly 100 kHz. The slow-clock flavour, which includes trapped ion and neutral atom architectures, runs roughly 1,000x slower (~100 Hz, or ~1 week to crack a single key). → qubit count: The size-optimised variant of the algorithm runs on 1,200 logical qubits. On a superconducting computer with surface code error correction that's roughly 500K physical qubits, a 400:1 physical-to-logical ratio. The surface code is conservative, assuming only four-way nearest-neighbour grid connectivity. It was demonstrated last year by Google on a real quantum computer. → future gains: Low-hanging fruit is still being picked, with at least one of the Google optimisations resulting from a surprisingly simple observation. Interestingly, AI was not (yet!) tasked to find optimisations. This was also the first time authors such as Craig Gidney attacked elliptic curves (as opposed to RSA). Shor logical qubit count could plausibly go under 1K soonish. → error correction: The physical-to-logical ratio for superconducting computers could go under 100:1. For superconducting computers that would be mean ~100K physical qubits for a CRQC, two orders of magnitude away from state of the art. Neutral atoms quantum computers are amenable to error correcting codes other than the surface code. While much slower to run, they can bring down the physical to logical qubit ratio closer to 10:1. → Bitcoin PoW: Commercially-viable Bitcoin PoW via Grover's algorithm is not happening any time soon. We're talking decades, possibly centuries away. This observation should help focus the discussion on ECDSA and Schnorr. (Side note: as unofficial Bitcoin security researcher, I still believe Bitcoin PoW is cooked due to the dwindling security budget.) → team quality: The folks at Google Quantum AI are the real deal. Craig Gidney (@CraigGidney) is arguably the world's top quantum circuit optimisooor. Just last year he squeezed 10x out of Shor for RSA, bringing the physical qubit count down from 10M to 1M. Special thanks to the Google team for patiently answering all my newb questions with detailed, fact-based answers. I was expecting some hype, but found none.

@marilyn100x @alieneliane First, you must be able to explain what you want, and secondly, you must be able to understand the correctness of the answer. The vast majority of the benefits of AI will benefit the upper 1% of the experts.

@alieneliane if you can’t tell it to an AI, you probably can’t tell it to a human either.

founders who can’t clearly express what they want are struggling to get ai agents to deliver and might be realizing the problem wasn’t the humans after all