The sound of air raid sirens in Poland due to yet another Russian drone visit. An extraordinarily cowardly sound. All Poland has to do is shoot down these drones and you wouldn't need the sirens. But they just can't bring themselves to take action.

HRF board member Yulia Navalnaya campaigning to get Russians allowed in the EU on tourist visas. Seriously, WTF. It's insane to allow Russians into the EU except in exceptional cases. It's an obvious security risk given the western world is effectively at war with Russia, and we know Russia is conducting sabotage and surveillance operations in western countries. Russia is also actively attacking western countries, e.g. the drone attack on Poland. And obviously, Russians don't deserve it: all Russians wealthy enough to travel are meaningfully supporting the invasion. About half of all Russian tax dollars are going to the invasion. If you are in Russia and working, you are meaningfully supporting genocide. Yulia's Twitter feed is very telling: she pays near zero attention to Ukraine. She's not actually anti-war. She's focused on helping Russians. She even goes as far as to advocate for Russia to keep occupied territory: directly advocating that war criminals keep the loot they stole through genocide. That HRF continues to work with her and rehabilitate her image is evil.

Update: tonight's attack by Russia set a new record, 800 drones, along with some missiles (I got woken up again by cruise missiles getting intercepted in the morning – hard to explain how awesome that sound is). In Kyiv, two deaths: a woman and her young child murdered by a Russian attack on an apartment building. They also hit some government buildings in Kyiv for the first time, and even killed a bunch of horses with multiple shahed drones on a horse stables just outside of Kyiv. Never underestimate Russian pettiness and evil. But, due to the amazing work of the Ukrainian military, it's still safer to be here than in Charlotte, North Carolina... Something like 90% of Russian drones get shot down. View quoted note →

Iryna Zarutska was from Kyiv. Pre-war, Ukraine's murder rate was ~4/100k/year. Charlotte is ~12/100k/year. _Including_ murders by Russian air strikes, Kyiv's murder rate is “only” 8.5/100k/year (~130 killed in the past year). She was safer in ~100% white Kyiv than in black NC. ...and yes, the reason why I'm even writing this is I'm in Kyiv and anti-aircraft fire woke me up at 5am. Hopefully no-one died tonight and made my stats out of date... But even then, if she had stayed in Kyiv and went to the shelters during air raids, she'd have been fine. The problem is the black population. If not for them the US would actually be fairly low crime. Getting US (and western) politics to the point where we accept imprisoning, for life, a significant % of the black population is what it'll take to fix this. Instead, that psychopath was arrested over and over again for violent crimes.

Better WoT implementation than PGP.... View quoted note →

Sold some Bitcoin here in Kyiv, AML/KYC free: Their windows got damaged by a Russian airstrike against the British Council and EU Delegation buildings a few days ago, ~300m away. The same day Russia also attacked apartments buildings, killing 24 people, including four children.

https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/russian-oil-refineries-terminals-burn-ukraine-hits-putins-war-economy-2025-08-25/ Some very good news: Reuters estimates that Ukraine's campaign of air strikes against Russia's economy has managed to take out 17% of oil refining capacity. Not just oil and gas either: farming has been so badly hit that Russia recently put restrictions on bankruptcies of farming companies to try to slow down the collapse. This has always been how Ukraine will win, and Russian violence will be stopped forever: accept that the "civilian" economy in Russia is a valid military target, and kill Russians and blow up their infrastructure until it collapses.

Libertarians are idiots to think market forces will solve this. Google and Apple have enormous incentives to lock down their platforms. View quoted note →

Building Ultra Cheap Energy Storage for Solar PV

Solar still needs storage cheap enough to move energy between seasons. I have been working on a startup to do this for the last two years.

Possible competition for Bitcoin mining heat reuse... If they can make this as cheap as they want it to be, mining might not be able to compete due to capital costs.