Author: Geek Planet

Earlier today, the Bitcoin Policy Institute (BPI), a Washington, D.C.-based think tank, hosted the “Bitcoin For America” summit. The event occurred in the wake of President Trump’s signing an executive order (EO) to establish a Strategic Bitcoin Reserve (SBR) and the White House’s hosting its first-ever Crypto Summit. One might have expected jingoistic overtones from an event with such a title. However, many of the speakers acknowledged that Bitcoin is something that will benefit the whole world, and that, partially because of this, the U.S. should lead the way in adoption. David Zell, Director of BPI, set the tone for…

All encyclopedias have their biases but Wikipedia, consulted by many millions who deserve better — some of whom should know better — is surely legendary. Here’s a traditional Wikipedia entry on the intelligent design controversy, first paragraph: Intelligent design (ID) is a pseudoscientific argument for the existence of God, presented by its proponents as “an evidence-based scientific theory about life’s origins”.[1][2][3][4][5] Proponents claim that “certain features of the universe and of living things are best explained by an intelligent cause, not an undirected process such as natural selection.”[6] ID is a form of creationism that lacks empirical support and offers…

California Legislators have endorsed bitcoin nonprofit founder Dom Bei in his campaign for a seat on the board of the California Public Employees’ Retirement System (CalPERS). CalPERS oversees a massive $500 billion pension fund serving over 2 million public sector retirees. If elected, Bei would be the first openly pro-bitcoin voice on the 13-member board. Bei is a 16-year veteran firefighter who founded Proof of Workforce, a nonprofit providing bitcoin education to workers, unions and pension funds. He previously served on Santa Monica’s pension advisory board and played a key role in the city’s firefighters union, becoming one of the…

HP’s OMEN 15 2026 might be headed to CES 2026, based on information Windows Latest says it got from sources. If that’s accurate, it’s a return for a line that launched in 2020, got a refresh in 2021, then was phased out in 2022 as HP pushed the OMEN 16 instead. HP OMEN 15 2026 is supposed to bring newer silicon, an OLED screen, and a few latency focused upgrades, without turning into a totally different laptop. If you’re shopping right now, the real question isn’t whether the specs sound good. It’s whether they’re worth waiting for when prices, power…

Stony Brook University neurosurgeon Michael Egnor and I argue—from modern neuroscience evidence—that the human mind is not merely what the brain does; it is immaterial and immortal… We steadied ourselves for pushback from atheists, whether they were Oxford dons or bloggers. But that’s not what has happened. I was surprised by the polite reception that the book has received from unexpected quarters. For example, when Dr. Egnor discussed our approach with well-known skeptic Michael Shermer and leading neuroscientist Christof Koch on Shermer’s podcast in June, the conversation was notably polite and productive. And when he discussed it—again with Michael Shermer—on Piers Morgan’s show in…

The data shows us that young men in America are struggling. Bereft of life purpose, they are gaming, binging on porn, isolating themselves from society, and overall, are giving up on life. Social scientists and authors like Scott Galloway have argued vehemently that the “war on men” isn’t helping anyone of either sex. And the situation for men is worse than many people think. A new essay from Harper’s by Daniel Kolitz tells the tragic story of a movement of young men essentially organizing their entire lives around pornography consumption. After COVID, male isolation and unhealthy tech dependency has only…

Virtually every business has an IT asset of some kind. From the smallest “mom and pop” grocery store to the biggest multinational conglomerates, you will find all types of digital devices, cloud-based tools, on-prem software, and more. In short, information technology has become an inseparable part of life for businesses of all sizes. However, another common theme for many businesses (even very large and successful ones) is the complete lack of an IT asset management strategy. What is IT asset management? How does managing IT assets help companies protect themselves? Why should your own company care about IT asset management? What…

A groundbreaking discussion is coming up at COSM 2025 between Eric Schmidt, former chairman and CEO of Google, and George Gilder on today’s burgeoning space industry. Earlier this year, Schmidt acquired a controlling interest in Relativity Space, which is “on a mission to better connect humanity to space and the universe beyond our planet.” Sounds far out? You’re right. But the remarkable fact is that routine commercial space travel is also really starting to happen. With what implications? At Ars Technica, senior space editor Eric Berger commented earlier this year, It is not immediately clear why Schmidt is taking a…

Rumble (NASDAQ: RUM), the video-sharing platform and cloud services provider, has announced the purchase of approximately 188 Bitcoin, valued at around $17.1 million, as part of its previously disclosed Bitcoin treasury strategy. Acquired at an average price of approximately $91,000 per coin, this purchase is a part of the company’s plan to allocate up to $20 million into Bitcoin. “We are excited to announce these purchases and allocation of Bitcoin as part of our treasury strategy as well as a larger strategic move as we further expand our ties to the crypto industry,” said Rumble Chairman and CEO Chris Pavlovski.…

Large language models (LLMs) create an illusion of intelligence by generating glib, confident responses to almost any user prompt. The reality behind the illusion is that LLMs do not understand how the text they input and output relate to the real world; thus, they are consequently prone to factual and logical errors (for example, here and here). True believers note that LLMs have improved over time and argue that they will become more intelligent as they continue to scale up by increasing the amount of data they train on, the size of the model (number of parameters), and the computational…