What is the chance the president will order a nuclear strike on Iran as this war proceeds?

We would hope the odds are vanishingly small, because doing so would be profoundly disadvantageous. But the same was true for initiating this war in the first place. The logic -- such as it is -- of some people in power may lead them to conclude once more that shock and awe can succeed. We've already struck the country with powerful conventional weapons at scale and it has not led to a weakening of Iranian resolve.

All the above said, my personal hope of course is this will never happen. I'm curious what other folks think however.

Incredible technological innovation is on the horizon. That's why we are not doomed this century. We can make it.

*hits 'reply', knowing there will be nitpicky comments because of course on HN these days, no positive point shall be left standing.

So much advanced equipment is just sitting there in labs, waiting for humans to finally go and make experiments. Which they eventually get round to, sort of, when they can secure funding and when the grad student isn't ill or making mistakes or framing the problem the wrong way.

AI-driven labs can iterate 'good enough' hypotheses way faster than human R&D systems. Automated labs are going to be a major source of discovery.

Imagine a Linux distro largely displaced Windows and Mac simply due to usability, security, reliability, and the fact that there's no monstrous corporation pulling the strings. That would be awesome.

Reports seem to be of system crashes and degraded performance. I imagine there are lots of 'it works for me' stories, but think: for Linux to eat into Windows user market share (which I would greatly support), critical things like Zoom have to work at least as reliably as on Windows. For nontechnical users who would never figure out which incantations to type into the terminal to fix it -- because they have their next meeting in 15 minutes.

Wired headphones could be one part of the solution. They're just far more reliable (if they don't break, which they will). But if the reliability of video calls can be improved so that it's literally as reliable as talking to someone next to you in a quiet room, I bet lots of people would pay for it. There is so much latent frustration about unreliable calls, even with the best setup, even in NASA, in DoD, corporations, zoom and other platforms fail to perform reliably in so many cases.

Intelligence is simply not well-understood at a mathematical level. Like medieval engineers, we rely so heavily on experimentation in AI. We have no idea how far away from the human level we actually are. Or how far above the human level we can get. Or what, if anything, the limits of intelligence are.

https://timdettmers.com/2025/12/10/why-agi-will-not-happen/

I think if we obtain relevant-scale quantum computers, and/or other compute paradigms, we might get a limited intelligence explosion -- for a while. Because computation is physical, with all the limits thereof. The physics of pushing electrons through wires is not as nonlinear in gain as it used to be. Getting this across to people who only think in terms of the abstract digital world and not the non-digital world of actual physics is always challenging, however.

I also don't agree with the general dystopian or cynical view quite prevalent here on HN these days, frankly. It's always been so, but it seems to have gotten darker, such that I think a lot of old-timers like me pretty much avoid HN these days. It's not all bleak, especially when you get away from these screens and out into the real world. Looking outward, rather than inward, can lead to the kind of desire for discovery and progress which underpinned the Apollo era. The world out there is in extreme disarray too -- but to an optimist, it presents opportunity to do good.

If we beat the Chinese somehow, I don't think they'll just dismantle their space program and focus on Earth. They'll keep going, and they have the economic base to expand their program.

I think we're seeing the beginning of a new kind of space race. It's likely to be much longer term and grander in scale over time, as we compete for the best spots on the Moon and the first human landing on Mars in the decades to come.

The reason? I can give you the full source for Sam Altman:

while(alive) { RaiseCapital() }

That is the full extent of Altman. :)

Often, when the gods bring great prosperity as a gift for men

They do so not out of goodwill towards them

But so that their ruin may be more conspicuous.

Developers who get excited by agentic development put out posts like this. (I get excited too.)

Other developers tend to point out objections in terms of maintainability, scalability, overly complicated solutions, and so on. All of which are valid.

However, this part of AI evolves very quickly. So given these are known problems, why shouldn't we expect rapid improvements in agentic AI systems for software development, to the point where software developers who stick with the old paradigm will indeed be eroded in time? I'm genuinely curious because clearly the speed of advancement is significant.

The ambient vibe of our time, and here on HN, is often really pessimistic. I don't believe such pessimism is realistic. Commercial grade fusion power will come, and we should push very hard to make it happen. It will change the equations at the core of the economy and open up whole new paths for technology -- far beyond the pure digital.

To everyone else: I've worked with Peter before and he's the real deal, and a pleasure to work with.

Asking for someone else: is the NIW category still backlogged? If the goal is to get a green card within the STEM-OPT extension timeline of 2 years, for someone who has very high achievements that fit either NIW or EB1A categories, which of these is likely a better option? I'm hearing some rumors that NIW can happen faster these days.

Thanks!