Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The Dire Wolf Is Back

newyorker.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

151–160 of 208 posts

Re: The Dire Wolf Is Back

#151

Post by LordDragonfang »

Ericson2314 wrote: post #121
Ericson2314 wrote: post #119

I think it's ethical, but I hate that it's fake https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dire_wolf#DNA_evidence Look at this caldogram and text > The sequences indicate the dire wolf to be a highly divergent lineage which last shared a most recent common ancestor with the wolf-like canines 5.7 million years ago. The study also measured numerous dire wolf and gray wolf skeletal samples that showed their morphologies to be highly…

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/07/science/colossal-dire-wol... This however disagreed with Wikipedia, and said there was some inbreeding. That helps make this less fake.

Do you mean "interbreeding?" If so, I'd like to see the actual source for that claim.

Re: The Dire Wolf Is Back

#152

Post by codingdave »

MrBuddyCasino wrote: post #45
silexia wrote: post #36

Farmer here. The return of the regular wolf has been a tragedy of historic proportions. Wolves slaughter tons of livestock for fun. Farmers are not allowed to protect their herds at all. What will a dire wolf do to livestock if we bring them back? So dumb.

Don't farmers get reimbursed for livestock lost to natural predators?

Yep, they are in my state, and at least a few others I know of.

Re: The Dire Wolf Is Back

#153

Post by bell-cot »

whyenot wrote: post #137

I wish people would focus more on increasing dog lifespans instead of stuff like this. How about a Bernese Mountain Dog that lives 15+ years instead of 7 years.

Yes - but put the emphasis on healthy, productive lifespans. NOT on "prolong the suffering, for the benefit of the private-equity-owned veterinary clinic" crap.

Re: The Dire Wolf Is Back

#154

Post by indoordin0saur »

ianburrell wrote: post #99
rcxdude wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Meanings shift with time. The original meant that (doled out as a very harsh collective punishment by the Romans: groups of 10 would draw straws and be forced to kill the one who draw the short straw). Now it's meanining is more along the lines of 'severely reduced', where how much is 'severely' depends on the context.

Meanings shift quickly. Decimate was first introduced circa 1600 from Latin to mean "destroy every tenth". By 1660, it started to mean "destroy large number".

The word is from 'decimatio' which appears in original Roman histories written well before 1600.

Re: The Dire Wolf Is Back

#155

Post by srik »

echelon wrote: post #143
Ericson2314 wrote: post #119

I think it's ethical, but I hate that it's fake https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dire_wolf#DNA_evidence Look at this caldogram and text > The sequences indicate the dire wolf to be a highly divergent lineage which last shared a most recent common ancestor with the wolf-like canines 5.7 million years ago. The study also measured numerous dire wolf and gray wolf skeletal samples that showed their morphologies to be highly…

The first robots were toys and wishful thinking. But look at the path that's set us down. Be it a pale shadow or not, this is a first milestone down a path I hope we continue on.

At some point far in the future, humanity will populate an entire planet with custom designed species, something like the engineers from prometheus. If only there were a way to live long enough to see all that.

Re: The Dire Wolf Is Back

#156

Post by echelon »

srik wrote: post #155
echelon wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The first robots were toys and wishful thinking. But look at the path that's set us down. Be it a pale shadow or not, this is a first milestone down a path I hope we continue on.

At some point far in the future, humanity will populate an entire planet with custom designed species, something like the engineers from prometheus. If only there were a way to live long enough to see all that.

Maybe the future lightcone denizens are of masters of physics. Perhaps one day they get bored of building Dyson spheres and decide to tap into the past for amusement.

Maybe they have unimaginable access to such vast energies that they can capture every photon that ever left earth and effectively reverse the lightcone.

Maybe they can sample the neural state of every lived human with exacting precision and wholly create the history of life on earth down to every single human thought and experience. Every neurotransmitter flux. If you've conquered galaxies and bent physics, perhaps this unimaginable resolution of observation is quite trivial.

Maybe they'll resurrect us. Hopefully into a world palatable for us, not some hellscale dystopia horror/torture simulator the quadrillionaires of the future enjoy putting us through.

Maybe that's you now. Being resimulated.

This is all ludicrous, implausible, science fiction fantasy. But maybe your next waking moment will be meeting the future. Hopefully they have something good in store.

Re: The Dire Wolf Is Back

#157

Post by kakapo1988 »

naravara wrote: post #133
lolinder wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every project I've seen of theirs has been like this one: take an existing animal and tweak its genome very slightly to make it look kinda like the extinct one, then declare that they've brought back the extinct species. Never mind that it's still just a wolf with 14 very specific genes tweaked. That could be just a limitation of the current technology and one that they're working on fixing—maybe some day they plan t…

I really don’t even see the point in “deextincting” animals that went extinct due to climate or geological changes. They’re not even fit for the present ecology anymore. De-extinction of species that died due to industrialization or human stress on the environment makes a lot more sense since there is, presumably, a vacant ecological niche they could be filling. Like bringing back the passenger pigeon or dodo bird, o…

Because humans wiped out the mammoths, giant sloths, and a host of other megafauna. All those species survived millions of year, and numerous previous ice ages, but had no defense against human hunters. So as each area on earth was colonized by our species, the megafuana were quickly wiped out in that area.

I'm from NZ, and we had that event in our recent history. The islands had numerous species of giant birds, but these were wiped out quickly by the first humans who came here, just a few centuries ago. Same everywhere. We've been driving species to extinction for a long time.

Re: The Dire Wolf Is Back

#159

Post by renewiltord »

johnecheck wrote: post #118
renewiltord wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh I see. When you meant "very expensive" you meant "easily accessible for the median American" and when that guy said "wealthy people" you interpreted that to be "the median American". It's true that Europeans and so on are quite poor but the company is in the US. Yep, factually most Africans can't go to Disneyland either.

Spot on. If Disneyland claimed to be helping fix world problems like biodiversity loss and climate change, that would be worth criticizing as well.

Well, fortunately, the US won't be involved in fixing world problems any more now that USAID is out. Our dirty dollars shan't taint the virtuous poor any longer.

Re: The Dire Wolf Is Back

#160

Post by mulmen »

fragmede wrote: post #134
lolinder wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every project I've seen of theirs has been like this one: take an existing animal and tweak its genome very slightly to make it look kinda like the extinct one, then declare that they've brought back the extinct species. Never mind that it's still just a wolf with 14 very specific genes tweaked. That could be just a limitation of the current technology and one that they're working on fixing—maybe some day they plan t…

14 isn't enough for you, though it is enough to influence looks to the point that it does look different enough, but how many genes need to be changed for it to count, for you? There's some 40 million differences between humans and chimpanzees, but only about 700 that are unique to humans.

Humans aren’t chimpanzees. For this to be a direwolf there would need to be zero differences.
Post reply on HN