Kovaч retweeted
Two ant colonies have been fighting a war outside San Diego for decades.
~30M die a year. The front line is miles long.
Kovaч retweeted
An extremely relevant paper, given the renewed concern that wealth taxes lead to massive out-migration:
The Norwegian wealth tax "exodus", discussed in global media, never happened. At most 100 individuals left. Tax revenue increased by +71.5%. No changes in business activity.
Norway's controversial 2021–2024 reforms nearly doubled the tax on business wealth. Firms of affected owners did not invest less, and outmigration was limited to the very top, from @Mariusring nber.org/papers/w35854
Kovaч retweeted
The Video US Military Want To Ban: Abby Martin Exposes All @AbbyMartin
Kovaч retweeted
Не знам кој го интересира ова но тазе македонска игра од дечките од Workbench
We are so excited to share that Olga - Episode 1 is OUT NOW! 💛🍂 😍
-Play as Olga as she visits her grandparents
-Slow paced, there’s no need to rush
-Set in a Quiet Slavic-inspired village
#IndieGameDev #gamedev #indiedev #indiegame #cozygames
Kovaч retweeted
Telling people to avoid sun to prevent skin cancer makes as much sense as telling people to avoid exercising to prevent injuries.
Dermatology is wrong about the sun.
And it's killing people.
I'm a dermatologist. 226 publications. I should know.
Avoiding the sun increases the risk of dying as much as being a smoker.
We can fix it.
For decades, dermatology's message has been simple: avoid the sun. Wear sunscreen. Seek shade. UV causes skin cancer. End of discussion.
That message is incomplete and outdated.
People are dying because of it. Lots of people.
The evidence has gotten strong enough that the field needs to update it.🧵
Kovaч retweeted
This was always going to happen to age verification systems. It wasn’t even so much of a prediction as it was an inevitability. The second half of this is tying actual web usage to real-world ID, and breaches will give us that too, soon.
Kovaч retweeted
Routine vaccines may cut dementia risk—experts have startling hypothesis on how arstechnica.com/health/2026/…
Kovaч retweeted
If governments were actually doing their job, this Palantir document 👇 wouldn't be a manifesto they proudly boast about, but a clear sign of the urgent need to purge its software from the public institutions it has infiltrated.
What are they saying, essentially?
They basically promote a clash of civilization worldview in which there exists a "they" - the supposed enemies of Western civilization, whose cultures the document codes as inferior - and a "we" who must stop indulging in decadent restraint and invest massively in AI weapons and defense software (which conveniently makes Palantir's product catalog the civilizational cure).
Look at point 4 for instance. They write that "the limits of soft power, of soaring rhetoric alone, have been exposed. The ability of free and democratic societies to prevail requires something more than moral appeal. It requires hard power, and hard power in this century will be built on software."
It all rests on a pretty massive assumption: that coexistence is impossible. Why would "free and democratic societies" (by which they obviously mean Western-style liberal-democracies) need to "prevail"? Why can't they simply coexist with other civilizations or political systems out there?
Nowhere in the document do they defend this assumption: it's simply asserted as the starting condition of the argument.
But it's the entire ballgame: if civilizations and political systems can coexist - as they largely have, imperfectly but recognizably, throughout history - then the entire case they make in the document evaporates.
In fact one can argue that, studying history, the big problem was not that civilizations couldn't coexist: it was that, from time to time, one of them decided that others were inferior, threatening, or standing in the way of its rightful expansion - and acted accordingly.
So many catastrophes and so much human suffering in history trace back not to the fact of plural civilizations, but to one of them deciding it could no longer tolerate the others.
The problem, in other words, has almost always been exactly the worldview Palantir is now selling. Their manifesto isn't warning against the cause of some of the worst periods in history: it's arguing for reviving them!
Or take point 15: they explicitly call for the re-armament of Germany and Japan, and an end to "Japanese pacifism". Basically undoing one of the foundational settlements of the post-WW2 order.
I mean, think about the insanity of this for a second: a private company - unelected, answerable only to its shareholders - is casually proposing to overturn the security architecture of two continents. A settlement that took a world war, and tens of millions of dead to establish.
Why do they propose this? There is obviously a commercial motivation: a remilitarized Germany and Japan are massive new defense-software markets.
But the more troubling answer is that point 15 fits into the ideological project the rest of the manifesto lays out - a civilizational contest requires a consolidated Western bloc, and pacifist members are a liability in such a contest.
So taking a step back we now have what's the most influential defense-software company in the world, with its code deeply embedded in all the machinery of Western states - intelligence agencies, militaries, police forces, welfare systems, border controls - openly outing itself as an ideological project.
They're effectively saying "our tools aren't meant to serve your foreign policy. They're meant to enforce ours."
Because, worryingly, that's what they CAN do. Palantir software is all about basically telling states: "these are your threats, these are the people and groups to watch, these are the patterns that matter, these are the targets that warrant action."
For instance the DGSI - the French intelligence services - use Palantir (see: nitter.gq/RnaudBertrand/status/2…): do you honestly think the software is warning them about, say, the NSA tapping the phones of French government officials? About the weaponization of US extraterritorial law against French companies? Did it warn them about the AUKUS ambush that cost France a sixty-billion-euro submarine contract? Obviously not.
And that's exactly what the manifesto is saying. They've positioned themselves as advocates of Western civilizational unity, so their software can't undermine it. The ideological position and the product roadmap have to align, or the whole project falls apart.
This makes their software not only deeply dangerous for the world as a whole but also, almost by definition, for any country using it. When it comes to your security as a state, it is primordial you base yourself on truth as opposed to ideology. The entire point of an intelligence agency is to tell its government what is true, not what your so-called "allies'" defense contractors would like you to see.
A state that outsources its threat assessment to a company with an explicit ideological agenda is not gathering intelligence, it is essentially subscribing to propaganda.
The conclusion couldn't be more obvious. Every government still running Palantir software in its intelligence, security, or public-service infrastructure needs to start ripping it out, now! Lest they want to be embarked on the delusional and deeply destructive clash-of-civilizations crusade Palantir has now openly committed itself to.
Because we get asked a lot.
The Technological Republic, in brief.
1. Silicon Valley owes a moral debt to the country that made its rise possible. The engineering elite of Silicon Valley has an affirmative obligation to participate in the defense of the nation.
2. We must rebel against the tyranny of the apps. Is the iPhone our greatest creative if not crowning achievement as a civilization? The object has changed our lives, but it may also now be limiting and constraining our sense of the possible.
3. Free email is not enough. The decadence of a culture or civilization, and indeed its ruling class, will be forgiven only if that culture is capable of delivering economic growth and security for the public.
4. The limits of soft power, of soaring rhetoric alone, have been exposed. The ability of free and democratic societies to prevail requires something more than moral appeal. It requires hard power, and hard power in this century will be built on software.
5. The question is not whether A.I. weapons will be built; it is who will build them and for what purpose. Our adversaries will not pause to indulge in theatrical debates about the merits of developing technologies with critical military and national security applications. They will proceed.
6. National service should be a universal duty. We should, as a society, seriously consider moving away from an all-volunteer force and only fight the next war if everyone shares in the risk and the cost.
7. If a U.S. Marine asks for a better rifle, we should build it; and the same goes for software. We should as a country be capable of continuing a debate about the appropriateness of military action abroad while remaining unflinching in our commitment to those we have asked to step into harm’s way.
8. Public servants need not be our priests. Any business that compensated its employees in the way that the federal government compensates public servants would struggle to survive.
9. We should show far more grace towards those who have subjected themselves to public life. The eradication of any space for forgiveness—a jettisoning of any tolerance for the complexities and contradictions of the human psyche—may leave us with a cast of characters at the helm we will grow to regret.
10. The psychologization of modern politics is leading us astray. Those who look to the political arena to nourish their soul and sense of self, who rely too heavily on their internal life finding expression in people they may never meet, will be left disappointed.
11. Our society has grown too eager to hasten, and is often gleeful at, the demise of its enemies. The vanquishing of an opponent is a moment to pause, not rejoice.
12. The atomic age is ending. One age of deterrence, the atomic age, is ending, and a new era of deterrence built on A.I. is set to begin.
13. No other country in the history of the world has advanced progressive values more than this one. The United States is far from perfect. But it is easy to forget how much more opportunity exists in this country for those who are not hereditary elites than in any other nation on the planet.
14. American power has made possible an extraordinarily long peace. Too many have forgotten or perhaps take for granted that nearly a century of some version of peace has prevailed in the world without a great power military conflict. At least three generations — billions of people and their children and now grandchildren — have never known a world war.
15. The postwar neutering of Germany and Japan must be undone. The defanging of Germany was an overcorrection for which Europe is now paying a heavy price. A similar and highly theatrical commitment to Japanese pacifism will, if maintained, also threaten to shift the balance of power in Asia.
16. We should applaud those who attempt to build where the market has failed to act. The culture almost snickers at Musk’s interest in grand narrative, as if billionaires ought to simply stay in their lane of enriching themselves . . . . Any curiosity or genuine interest in the value of what he has created is essentially dismissed, or perhaps lurks from beneath a thinly veiled scorn.
17. Silicon Valley must play a role in addressing violent crime. Many politicians across the United States have essentially shrugged when it comes to violent crime, abandoning any serious efforts to address the problem or take on any risk with their constituencies or donors in coming up with solutions and experiments in what should be a desperate bid to save lives.
18. The ruthless exposure of the private lives of public figures drives far too much talent away from government service. The public arena—and the shallow and petty assaults against those who dare to do something other than enrich themselves—has become so unforgiving that the republic is left with a significant roster of ineffectual, empty vessels whose ambition one would forgive if there were any genuine belief structure lurking within.
19. The caution in public life that we unwittingly encourage is corrosive. Those who say nothing wrong often say nothing much at all.
20. The pervasive intolerance of religious belief in certain circles must be resisted. The elite’s intolerance of religious belief is perhaps one of the most telling signs that its political project constitutes a less open intellectual movement than many within it would claim.
21. Some cultures have produced vital advances; others remain dysfunctional and regressive. All cultures are now equal. Criticism and value judgments are forbidden. Yet this new dogma glosses over the fact that certain cultures and indeed subcultures . . . have produced wonders. Others have proven middling, and worse, regressive and harmful.
22. We must resist the shallow temptation of a vacant and hollow pluralism. We, in America and more broadly the West, have for the past half century resisted defining national cultures in the name of inclusivity. But inclusion into what?
Excerpts from the #1 New York Times Bestseller The Technological Republic: Hard Power, Soft Belief, and the Future of the West, by Alexander C. Karp & Nicholas W. Zamiska
techrepublicbook.com
Kovaч retweeted
I’ve wanted to do this for a decade.
But I never did - I refuse to give any company my DNA.
It is me.
So this week I sequenced my genome entirely at home. Literally on my kitchen table.
I never exposed my DNA sequence to the internet. Not at any point.
I used a MinION to do the sequencing (it’s smaller + weighs less than an iPhone).
I used open-source DNA models for the analysis (Evo2 and AlphaGenome) running locally on a DGX Spark and Mac Studio.
I traced mechanisms behind my family’s multigenerational autoimmune conditions that no clinician has been able to understand.
When I set out to do this I didn’t know if it would actually work. It does.
Your genome is the most private data you will ever have. You probably shouldn’t let it leave your house.
I'm lucky enough to have a great doctor and access to excellent Bay Area medical care. I've taken lots of standard screening tests over the years and have tried lots of "health tech" devices and tools.
With all this said, by far the most useful preventative medical advice that I've ever received has come from unleashing coding agents on my genome, having them investigate my specific mutations, and having them recommend specific follow-on tests and treatments.
Population averages are population averages, but we ourselves are not averages. For example, it turns out that I probably have a 30x(!) higher-than-average predisposition to melanoma. Fortunately, there are both specific supplements that help counteract the particular mutations I have, and of course I can significantly dial up my screening frequency. So, this is very useful to know.
I don't know exactly how much the analysis cost, but probably less than $100. Sequencing my genome cost a few hundred dollars.
(One often sees papers and articles claiming that models aren't very good at medical reasoning. These analyses are usually based on employing several-year-old models, which is a kind of ludicrous malpractice. It is true that you still have to carefully monitor the agents' reasoning, and they do on occasion jump to conclusions or skip steps, requiring some nudging and re-steering. But, overall, they are almost literally infinitely better for this kind of work than what one can otherwise obtain today.)
There are still lots of questions about how this will diffuse and get adopted, but it seems very clear that medical practice is about to improve enormously. Exciting times!
Kovaч retweeted
1/2 Како се манипулира правдата и се штитат моќни лица од кривичен прогон?
Во центарот на оваа приказна е еден извештај од надзор врз работата на Вишото јавно обвинителство Скопје, кој со месеци бил сокриен од јавноста.
Kovaч retweeted
China: "We have met every target of the 14th Five-Year Plan. Our renewable output alone now exceeds electricity consumption for the entire EU"
USA: "We are killing little girls in Iran for Israel. $779M/day. Can't protect Dubai or Kuwait. Life expectancy: behind Cuba."
Kovaч retweeted
Amodei (CEO Anthropic) on the need for progressive taxation in the age of AI. Can't agree more - we need way more talent working on this.
This is not some socialist hobby horse, it's essential if we want to avoid a caste society, sorted by who controls the AI.
Kovaч retweeted
Според сајтов трите најголеми емитери на PM 2.5 се
-Железара
-Гасната централа Те-То
-Усје
Еден од трите а во топ 10% во свет
"Additionally 1 of these sources are super emitters meaning they are among the top 10% of emitters of PM2.5 pollution tracked by Climate TRACE worldwide"
Доста беше од нагаѓања за загадувањето во Скопје.
Фактите се јасни и поткрепени со светски достапни податоци.
Ова е прашање на јавно здравје и институционална одговорност.
👉climatetrace.org/air-polluti…
#Skopje #AirPollution #PublicHealth #RightToCleanAir #FactsMatter
Kovaч retweeted
Доста беше од нагаѓања за загадувањето во Скопје.
Фактите се јасни и поткрепени со светски достапни податоци.
Ова е прашање на јавно здравје и институционална одговорност.
👉climatetrace.org/air-polluti…
#Skopje #AirPollution #PublicHealth #RightToCleanAir #FactsMatter
Kovaч retweeted
На невидено тврдам дека во ниедна демократска, па и полудемократска држава во светов не постои закон со кој новинар мора да добие дозвола да преработува јавни податоци.
Ова е глуп обид од глупави луѓе да забранат нешто на исклучително глуп начин.
Kovaч retweeted
People often ask how did the Unitree robots get so good all of a sudden.
It wasn't all of a sudden, and it's because they ship their hardware and open source their SDKs. Arguably these robots are nearly useless out of the box, but you have full dev control of them.
Because of that, the hardware has become a very popular R&D platform with an ecosystem around it and the Unitree G1 is undoubtedly an order of magnitude better than it could ever be at this point if Unitree was instead just doing quiet internal dev of both the hardware and software.
Too many hardware companies for really cool products that seek to be community-driven (robots, AR glasses...etc) desire to make a profitable walled garden and their greed just ends up walling out developers and their product gets outpaced by the G1s of the world.
Kovaч retweeted
It's exceptionally rare for former Chinese officials to reveal the inner workings of the system, all the more so when it involves detailing the mechanics of China's famous 5-year plans.
Dong Yu, interviewed by the SCMP (link: scmp.com/economy/policy/arti…) helped draft China's 11th, 12th, and 13th five-year plans and he's now VP of the China Institute for Development Planning at Tsinghua University. In other words, the guy knows China's planning process in and out, both in theory and in practice.
I'll let you read the interview in full for yourself, but here were the parts that stood out for me:
1) What I hadn't realized, but which makes complete sense when you think about it, is the extent to which 5-year plans are not as much a mere forecasting exercise or even an economic blueprint but first and foremost a mass behavioral/psychological exercise.
Dong Yu makes 3 points around this:
- He emphasizes that "planning targets are not the same as forecasts. A target is not only based on technical calculations, but also takes into account how it shapes expectations." In other words the targets have a psychological dimension that's critical in determining actual outcomes, they have a self-fulfilling dimension.
- He says that "today, we have placed expectations in a position of unprecedented importance, and much of our work now revolves around shaping these expectations." Which basically means that to him planning is fundamentally about managing collective psychology.
- Lastly he argues that "the more uncertain the future feels, the more vital planning becomes... It is precisely in such moments that planning can provide much-needed stability and direction." In other words, the mere existence of a plan helps create psychological stability that enables economic activity.
2) The elaboration of the plan is more bottom-up than top-down.
This may come as a surprise to many people still under the impression that everything in China is decided in Beijing (or even solely by Xi Jinping himself 😅) - especially when it comes to the country's 5-year plans which are largely seen as a top-down exercise - but as Dong Yu reveals the process is surprisingly bottom-up.
For one thing the national plan is based on the targets set by China's provinces, which are often defined by the provinces themselves beforehand in the process.
The proactiveness of local governments is what Dong Yu highlights as "one of China's key strengths": he says that they "conduct extensive analyses and forecasts on industrial development" in their jurisdictions, and that this "widespread engagement and effort from top to bottom" is essential to the planning process.
3) The 5-year plan is not only about planning, but is part of a "full process, from formulation to implementation" which is intrinsically linked to China's political system, specifically its capacity to deliver "consistency and stability in carrying out long-term plans."
Dong Yu says that means replicating the 5-year plan process is very difficult for other countries: "Other countries are trying to learn from this model, but so far they mostly copy the form of the plans or isolated policies. The full process, from formulation to implementation, is unique and not easy to replicate."
4) He says that there is one key overarching objective behind all 5-year plan chapters: they are all fundamentally organized around improving people's living standards ("household income") rather than pure technocratic objectives around industrial targets or infrastructure.
There are of course many various ways to go about this and his personal philosophy is that "we shouldn't only focus on slicing the pie; we must also think about how to make a bigger pie. Only when the pie grows larger does dividing it become easier."
5) The are many other interesting tidbits in the article but I'll end on what Dong Yu says about both "involution" (cutthroat zero-sum competition) and "overcapacity", which are two hot topics today.
On involution, a problem Xi Jinping recently highlighted as a one of the key issues to solve for China (nitter.gq/RnaudBertrand/status/1…), Dong Yu says that it is a difficult balance to strike because "part of what we call involution is market-driven competition, and we do not need to see it as entirely negative."
As he puts it the goal isn't to eliminate competition but to ensure "the sound development of the ecosystem by preventing excessive competition from eroding the growth prospects of smaller enterprises." To him the real issue with involution is when the cutthroat competition "undermines small and medium-sized businesses, especially in sectors that are related to people's livelihoods."
On "overcapacity", it looks like Dong Yu doesn't quite believe in the narrative - which is largely driven by the West. As he puts it: "This 'overcapacity' is largely a mischaracterisation when viewed in the context of global supply and demand."
Using electric vehicles as an example, he argues that "Chinese products have already far surpassed their competitors in both quality and value for money, yet their current sales volume and market share remain below what they should achieve due to various external barriers." He asks rhetorically: "Are other companies or governments really suggesting that people should just accept higher prices and lower-quality goods?"
His basic point: overcapacity is a Western narrative to protect inferior, more expensive products from legitimate market competition.
That's it, please go read the entire interview (scmp.com/economy/policy/arti…): again it's very rare to hear a former Chinese official speak so openly about the inner workings of the system; we should have more of this!
This sounds like absolutely major changes in the Chinese model being announced by Xi.
"Rectifying disorderly low-price competition among enterprises" is probably the most important one. It sounds like something of the order of "houses are for living, not for speculation", the expression Xi used to announce the deflation of the real estate bubble.
Xi is saying he wants an end to "involution" ("内卷", Neijuan), a term he mentions several times in his text, and which is very trendy in China right now. Probably the best translation for it is not actually "involution" but more something akin to "rat race", "race to the bottom" or "destructive, zero-sum competition". It doesn't only relate to businesses, but also to social issues in China like the extreme competition for education, the 996 culture, the feeling of running faster and faster just to stay in the same place.
It's true that when you look at the current extreme competition in business, it makes everyone worse off: for instance China leads the world in solar because of this competition but when you look at it individual companies' margins are razor thin, making this quite the pyrrhic victory for individual Chinese companies.
Same thing for education for instance, where you need ever-higher degrees for the same jobs. What once required a bachelor's now needs a master's; everyone studies harder but no one is better off.
To call changing all this "major" is even an understatement given how deeply embedded these competitive dynamics are in all layers of Chinese society and economy. This isn't just tweaking policy at the margins: this is a bit like trying to transform a Formula 1 race into a marathon while the cars are still on the track. He's right that this is more and more of a problem in Chinese society but at the same time much of China's current architecture is built around this hypercompetitive model.
What Xi promotes instead is "high-quality development" which, when it comes to business, means innovation and differentiation rather than price wars, sustainable margins and market consolidation.
He doesn't touch much in his article about the social changes this implies but we got a preview about what that could mean a couple of years ago when China banned the tutoring industry - an attempt to break the education arms race where parents were outcompeting each others to give their kids every possible edge, which wasn't good for the kids and the families' wallets. A typical example of "Neijuan."
Let's see how this all materializes but the one thing is sure: the level of ambition here is staggering, even by Chinese standards.
That's the original text of the article, by the way: gov.cn/yaowen/liebiao/202509…
Kovaч retweeted
Science journalists find ChatGPT is bad at summarizing scientific papers arstechnica.com/ai/2025/09/s…
Kovaч retweeted
Murray and most of race twitter has apparently been fooled by this completely fabricated analysis purporting to show African ancestry is associated with IQ. People lie on twitter all the time, but this is both more revealing and more disturbing than usual. A 🧵
