Annoyingly, I can't find any information online about such a simple guidance system. The earliest homing missile fielded by the Soviets was the K-13[1], which used technology reversed-engineered from the AIM-9 Sidewinder[2]. Later systems seem to be improvements upon that technology, not simplifications.

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K-13_(missile)

2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AIM-9_Sidewinder

It's hard for me to come up with a standard that encourages trade with China but discourages trade with North Korea. I'm not saying that trade with the US is therefore a good idea. There are many reasonable moral standards that would forbid trade with both the US & China.

Waymo's problem is obvious in hindsight, and quite embarrassing for them, but it can be solved with software improvements. Tesla's FSD already treats dark traffic lights as stop signs, so I would bet on Waymo fixing this as soon as they can.

But transportation that depends on infrastructure along the whole route (such as trains and busses powered by overhead lines) are always going to fail in these situations. I think that's acceptable considering how rare these events are.

Even if every software update was perfect, you would see individual stories like the one you linked to. There are millions of Teslas in the world, and they all get updates frequently, so a hardware failure will sometimes coincide with a software update. If a bad update were shipped to customers, it would be a story similar to this Jeep issue: thousands of cars affected at once, lots of furious customers, and news articles about the failure.

The incentive structure is the same as larger discussions. If anything, a smaller community makes it easier to create echo chambers, as you need to block fewer people before reaching epistemic closure.

This behavior is common enough that it creates a chilling effect for anyone who disagrees. Why take the time to craft a reply correcting the poster if it will likely be hidden from everyone? And so you end up with echo chambers.

The effect is quite stunning on some topics. For example: Quite a few people on Bluesky believe the Trump assassination attempt in Pennsylvania was staged[1], that the Charlie Kirk assassin's text messages are fake[2][3], and that the recent ICE shooter was a false flag.[4][5][6] Notice the amount of engagement these posts have. Thousands of likes, with little to no disagreement in the replies. The lack of feuding is what allows people to believe these falsehoods.

1. https://bsky.app/profile/jlyncochran.bsky.social/post/3ldy2f...

2. https://bsky.app/profile/cwebbonline.com/post/3lyzvxijtmc2f

3. https://bsky.app/profile/cwebbonline.com/post/3lyz22btupk2k

4. https://bsky.app/profile/junlper.beer/post/3lzlxfrqguc2k

5. https://bsky.app/profile/realtexaspaul.com/post/3lzlwg2ueic2...

6. https://bsky.app/profile/gilmored85.bsky.social/post/3lzm53d...

> Court records show that Lind shot two of his attackers, injuring one person and killing 31-year-old Emma Borhanian.

Back in 2019, Borhanian was arrested and charged with felony child endangerment and false imprisonment in a protest against a rationalist group.[2]

1. https://openvallejo.org/2025/01/27/man-killed-in-vallejo-was...

2. https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/Mystery-in-Sonom...

If there's any sort of marginalization by Lind in that story, I'm having a hard time finding it.

One big difference the Zizians have with the LessWrong community is that LW people believe that human minds cannot be rational enough to be absolute utilitarians, and therefore a certain kind of deontology is needed.[1] In contrast, the Zizians are absolutely convinced of the correctness of their views, which leads them to justify atrocities. In that way it seems similar to the psychology of jihadists.

1. https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/K9ZaZXDnL3SEmYZqB/ends-don-t...

Synthesizing fuels from CO2, water, and electricity seems like a better solution. It works with existing infrastructure and doesn’t have the storage or safety issues of hydrogen.

Currently, each launch of 23 Starlink satellites costs SpaceX around $50 million. To get 1,000 direct to cell satellites in orbit, they'll need to launch 44 times, costing them $2.2 billion. Due to the low orbits, air resistance causes the satellites to reenter within 5-10 years, so to maintain the constellation they'll need to spend $220-440 million per year. These costs will be much lower when they switch from Falcon 9 to Starship.

Now let's say only 1% of the population wants Starlink direct to cell. That's still 80 million people. If SpaceX charges cell companies $10/month per user for the service, that's almost $10 billion per year. And that's not counting the money they make from selling Starlink Internet, which currently has over 4 million subscribers. At $100/month, that's $4.8 billion per year in revenue.

So Starlink is profitable without direct to cell technology, but since they're launching the satellites anyway, they might as well collect more revenue by adding cell capability. DTC only becomes unprofitable if the cost of the extra hardware and mass is less than DTC subscriber revenue.

First, Musk has been talking about Mars since before he founded SpaceX. Other people such as Adeo Ressi, Robert Zubrin, and Reid Hoffman have reported Musk talking about colonizing Mars as early as 2001. It was only after that that he went to Russia to try and buy old rockets, thinking that landing a greenhouse on Mars would excite people about space again.

Second, Falcon 1 was named 18 months before the DARPA FALCON project existed. And the contract that SpaceX was awarded was less than half a million dollars. Nine other companies got similar contracts, including AirLaunch and Orbital Sciences Corp. Only Andrews Space, Lockheed Martin, and Northrup Grumman got phase two contracts.

Third, the Starshield program is almost entirely a product of the Biden administration, and its capabilities are nothing like SDI. Current Starshield satellites are similar to that of Starlink, but owned and operated by the US government. They have better encryption and probably some observational capabilities, but they are incapable of intercepting ICBMs. An SDI program would require technologies very different from what SpaceX has been developing. For example: SpaceX uses liquid fuels, while interceptors would have to be solid boosters.

And finally, SDI is unworkable for several reasons. It takes time to launch a satellite constellation, and during that time an adversary would be incentivized to launch their nukes (since it becomes a use it or lose it situation). Or they would build more anti-satellite weapons and ground based lasers, allowing them to take out enough interceptors to launch a devastating nuclear exchange. And even if the system remained intact, it would do nothing to stop hypersonics, bombers, submarine launched ballistic missiles, and nukes being smuggled into the country. People realized this long ago, which is why (in addition to cost) SDI was cancelled.

The only way your model of the world could be correct is if Musk was a brilliant con man who has spent the past quarter century risking his fortune to develop reusable rockets for the sole purpose of building a system that everyone knows would not protect the US in a global thermonuclear war. And he's somehow kept this secret from the public this entire time, even though he's leaked many other embarrassing secrets. Musk is far from the sanest person around, but such a claim stretches credulity to the breaking point.

Also, reusable spacecraft such as Starship actually reduce the amount of debris created per launch, as most space debris comes from spent upper stages. Of the 25 recent debris producing events listed on Wikipedia[1], 16 were caused by debris that would not be created by a reusable spacecraft (either an upper stage, a payload adapter, or a fairing).

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_space_debris_producing...

1. https://ntrs.nasa.gov/api/citations/19690007944/downloads/19...