Someone tried to recruit me back in 2000 for a startup that would sell a box you connect to your computer allowing you to smell things over the internet. I'll let you guess what industry he was targeting.

That was some time ago. Musk himself tweeted about getting a volcano lair in 2015.

It's actually more'n a little bit scary how much of modern "politics" seems as if it could be driven by having watched any of a number of movies and thinking "We should do that!" When I hear people talk about politicians bein' like spoiled brat children in adult bodies, I tend to think that sounds like exactly the type of mentality that could see something all messed up and scary in a movie and want to try to do it in the real world. What makes it even more scary in my mind is that we've allowed those type of people to gather entirely too much money and power such that they have the option available to them to seriously consider trying such horrible ideas.

Nah. Should have been named after the Two Trees of Valinor, Telperion and Laurelin.

I initially quite liked it, particularly when the references are a bit more obscure, generally from classic scifi/fantasy. You can end with a nice sounding name and a small wink to fellow nerds.

But it is such a shame that it has started to become the brand of dark-side (militaristic/authoritarian) Silicon Valley: Palantir, Anduril, this… Tolkien would be so very sad.

PS: Palantir is at least rather fitting and honest, it’s literally an evil crystal ball (at least the one shown in the movies).

Annoyingly and predictably, reads like AI slop. You can practically guess the prompt goes something along the lines of 'write a press release explaining why this bad idea is a good idea'.