> If the enemy does the same kind of mindless killing to the civilians, then I would have different ideas.
You mean like bombing a school and killing about 150 schoolgirls?
The USA had a lot of local support and goodwill in Afghanistan, and turned it into support for the Taliban, because they kept killing civilians in their attempts to beat the Taliban with bombs, because they wanted to limit the unpopular ground troop deloyments. The chance that the same will happen in Iran is precisely 100%
> You mean like bombing a school and killing about 150 schoolgirls?
Even Hamas knows western powers don’t do this on purpose - which is why they take up arms inside of civilian facilities. The Iranian people know the US doesn’t intentionally kill little girls.
Meanwhile the Iranian government quite literally has killed upwards of 30,000 people (maybe some were little girls even) and is hanging people in the public square for protesting.
Not to mention Iran intentionally targeting apartment complexes and other civilian targets throughout the region. Why are we even talking about the US accidentally blowing up a school? We should be talking about Iran and their revolting crimes instead.
The US attacked Iran because Israel was going to do so anyway. If they didn't attack, that missile wouldn't have killed 150 schoolgirls. Sure, the target was a mistake, but mistakes happen when you shoot thousands of missiles and drop thousands of bombs. If they had not attacked, the girls would be alive.
If Iran hadn't funded and supplied Hamas who then attacked and killed how many people (how many were little girls who were murdered and raped by Hamas?) then Israel wouldn't have had to bomb Iran.
You can go back and forth on who did what first but it ultimately accomplishes nothing in this scenario.
If Israel wants to bomb Iran, whatever, that's Israel's problem. The fact that we (the United States) continue to give unquestioning support to Israel is the problem. If Israel want's America's help, they should need to heel to America's interests, and I completely fail to see how fucking up the global oil trade benefits us.
I don't think it's quite that simple. Of course you know the isolationist point of view goes many directions. If Russia wants to bomb Ukraine, whatever, that's Ukraine and Russia's problem, &c. (I believe in engagement in both conflicts myself). Israel alone can't really stop Iran anyway besides their "mowing the grass" strategy but how long will that work?
But you have to think about the future state. What does an Iran that continues to:
- Build and supply drones and drone technology to Russia
- Build and purchase missiles and missile launchers
- Continue to pursue a nuclear weapons
- Continue to fund groups recognized as terrorist organizations by the United States, European Union, and others
.... look like?
Well, if they have 1,000 missiles today and that's giving us a problem (I'm not sure the true extent to which it is a problem really) and then they have 5,000 missiles tomorrow maybe sprinkle in some Chinese hypersonic missiles just to see if they can take out an American aircraft carrier or other sensitive military equipment, and now when Iran decides to close the Straight or tax the Gulf States or whatever other crazy idea they get in their heads we're facing a much, much bigger problem. It's like having a North Korea in the Middle East. We can't have that. We have seen that movie already and it does not turn out great.
And that's excluding nuclear weapons or an arms race in the Middle East. You can certainly see how easy it would be for the Gulf States to decide Iran is such a threat that they start loading up on missiles and maybe everyone decides they need a nuclear deterrent and now we've got maybe 2-3 countries including Iran with nuclear weapons and there's nothing we can do about it.
Folks like to paint this as an Israel problem, and yea they've done some bad stuff too but this isn't just an Israel problem nor is it just an America problem. It's just that unfortunately the United States is the one that yet again has to go be involved to try and deal with some chaos now to prevent an untenable situation later.
I think it's certainly worthwhile to debate various assumptions, capabilities, &c. but at the end of the day it's important to actually take a look at many aspects of this situation and to try peace together what's really driving this conflict. If your frame of reference is just "what are we doing there?" I'm afraid it puts you at a real disadvantage in terms of understanding the conflict and its repercussions.
I firmly believe a nuclear-armed Iran would be a net positive for world stability. It's not an ideal state of being, but with the existence of a nuclear armed Israel destabilizing the entire region, there needs to be a check against them. But that's besides the point, because by all accounts except on odd-numbered days the Whitehouse's, Iran was responsibly following the non-proliferation agreements that we had made with them under the Obama administration. Either way "Iran might make nukes" is bad reason to start a war.
If "Iran is aiding Russia against Ukraine" was a good reason to start this war, then we should be a lot less wishy-washy about our support of Ukraine themselves. The fact that we keep playing "will they won't they" with ongoing support to Ukraine is in no small part why that war is still ongoing.
And Israel is, absolutely, unequivocally, America's problem. They exist because we decided they should exist, we armed them to keep them existing, and we get involved in absolute quagmires in the Middle East every time that they do something stupid. Every time Israel does some fucked up shit, the UN goes "wow, we should acknowledge that was some fucked up shit", and the only country that consistently backs Israel is the United States.
I am not an isolationist. I fully recognize, and appreciate, the US's (potentially soon to be former) place as global hegemon. But we achieved that position by leveraging soft power, while maintaining the capability to absolute smite parties that won't play ball. And that worked. It worked great. It's why backing Ukraine was a great play: No American lives at risk, we pay a few bucks, Ukraine damages Russia, we remind our allies just how great it is to be under America's umbrella.
But Israel bombing Iran is not the same thing. Israel and the United States are the aggressors in this conflict, plain and simple. We had half-normal relations with Iran, then because Israel decided they weren't content being one of two regional powers, we decided to kick off another damn war in the Middle East.
> Either way "Iran might make nukes" is bad reason to start a war.
I think we disagree here, but that's because I believe in nuclear non-proliferation. More countries have them, more likely they are to be used. If Iran gets them, well maybe South Korea, Japan, Germany, Saudi Arabia, Brazil... the list goes on. Is that a better and safer world? I doubt it. Not only are arms races probably bad, they take up resources that could be used for making the lives of everyone better.
> If "Iran is aiding Russia against Ukraine" was a good reason to start this war, then we should be a lot less wishy-washy about our support of Ukraine themselves.
I think it's a contributing factor, but not the sole reason to start (or depending on your perspective, continue) a war here.
> And Israel is, absolutely, unequivocally, America's problem. They exist because we decided they should exist, we armed them to keep them existing, and we get involved in absolute quagmires in the Middle East every time that they do something stupid.
I don't follow this line of reasoning. Israel has existed long before the United States. Admittedly the modern state of Israel as we know it today was carved out in the last century, but the fault there lies primarily with European countries who created empires and then failed to maintain them. But you sort of seem to be justifying things like October 7th or other aggressive actions perpetrated by Iran and its proxies as though Israel existing is just somehow a problem. Last I checked Iran is its own country. What justification does it have to bomb Israel in any way?
> But Israel bombing Iran is not the same thing. Israel and the United States are the aggressors in this conflict, plain and simple. We had half-normal relations with Iran, then because Israel decided they weren't content being one of two regional powers, we decided to kick off another damn war in the Middle East.
Don't recall the US being in a state of war prior to October 7th. Iran overplayed their hand, Israel absolutely fucked up Hamas and Hezbollah with little effort, and then we found out Iran was pretty weak and so we did something about it before they accumulate so much military power that stopping them from effectively taking over the Middle East is untenable. I'm not sure your cause-effect reasoning here makes a lot of sense. We haven't had half-normal or normal relations with Iran for a long time - like 50 years.
> I am not an isolationist. I fully recognize, and appreciate, the US's (potentially soon to be former) place as global hegemon. But we achieved that position by leveraging soft power, while maintaining the capability to absolute smite parties that won't play ball. And that worked. It worked great.
It seems that you're cherry-picking here. The US attacking Iran can just be another case of smiting parties that won't play ball. Same with Iraq, or Vietnam, or Korea.
> It's why backing Ukraine was a great play: No American lives at risk, we pay a few bucks, Ukraine damages Russia, we remind our allies just how great it is to be under America's umbrella.
I generally agree and watching Russia's military be absolutely humiliated was exhilarating, but providing money alone isn't enough to win or stop that war it seems.
The US is still helping, but for some reason when it comes to Iran actually selling and supplying drones that kill Ukrainians it's all of a sudden well that's not a good reason to go to war, Iran isn't the aggressor, Trump is bad, how dare the US stop Venezuela from evading US and EU sanctions, blah blah blah. You're twisting yourself into circles trying to defend Iran for some reason when they're murdering their own population for protesting, helping Russia bomb Ukrainians, and starting wars and destabilizing Yemen, Lebanon, and more. Speaking of the UN, weren't they supposed to stop Hezbollah from indiscriminately launching rockets into Israel? Now Israel is there cleaning house and all of a sudden well that's Americans problem, Israel is America's problem, how can Israel do this? Who cares about the UN in today's world?
Are you unfamiliar with the October 7th attack? This alone proves the point, never mind we can get into details of the Middle East slave trade, general violence perpetrated by Hamas, and well, of course Hezbollah, Iran, &c.
On October 7, 2023, Hamas launched the largest-ever terrorist attack on Israeli soil. The Palestinian organisation, considered a terrorist group by the EU and the US, stormed through the security fence separating Gaza and Israel in the early morning, killing 1,189 people, including 815 civilians, wounding 7,500 and taking 251 hostage.
Not an embellishment, though you are right that the tragedy alone proves my point.
Anyway back to Iran - those are the bad guys.
Their regime killed by many estimates 30,000 of their own people for peacefully protesting already. They're conscripting child soldiers [1], attacking apartment buildings in neighboring Gulf States, and are hanging people as young as 19 for protesting [2]. They're actively helping Russia prosecute their war against Ukraine by selling drones and other technology. They're responsible for funding and inciting terrorist groups as recognized by the United States and European Union (Hezbollah, Hamas, and more) which have indiscriminately attacked civilians in many countries and continue to threaten international shipping even prior to American attacks on their military infrastructure. They're doing all of this while pursuing a nuclear weapon, which will of course be a catastrophe for nuclear non-proliferation as the Gulf States will certainly work to acquire their own, and they've been ramping up and deploying extensive missile capabilities so that they can force Gulf States to acquiesce to any of their demands, else they attack and shut down oil shipments. Tehran ran out of water because the money the regime has was spent on military forces and funding destabilizing proxy military groups for no good reason.
Ok I'm "spreading debunked Israeli lies" - they were only murdered, not raped and murdered. At least what the US did was an accident, unlike what Hamas did.
What point are you trying to make here? We're talking about the atrocities that Iran has committed and how it is responsible for so much death and destruction.
You're blindly believing the propaganda from two truly evil governments (Israel, USA) about a country that they absolutely want to destroy. Why don't you question the legitimacy of what they tell us.
> Not to mention Iran intentionally targeting apartment complexes and other civilian targets throughout the region. Why are we even talking about the US accidentally blowing up a school? We should be talking about Iran and their revolting crimes instead.
My family are in the GCC, and my parents live near the coast. Iran has not once targeted a civilian infrastructure there directly, except for specific landmarks (Burj al Arab, the Palm, etc.). Whenever Iran prepares a barrage, they usually announce it on state TV, which is then picked up by local authorities or by social media channels. All the attacks that have resulted in deaths in civilian settings are due to intercepted debris falling on civilians. If Iran wanted to destroy Dubai and kill civilians, they could've easily done that by just swarming the skies with drones and exact maximum damage - but they haven't done that. It also doesn't help their case either - most civilians in the GCC are foreign expats, and the backlash against Iran from most countries like Russia, India, China and Pakistan would be severe. Iran isn't stupid, as much as you'd want to believe that.
Civilian life in the GCC is still pretty normal, except for the downturn in business and the lack of tourists during the season. People are losing jobs and Airbnbs are turning into long-term stays. But otherwise civilian life is still pedestrian - heck, my younger brother is going to the Atlantis water park tomorrow because they offered him free tickets.
Israel is obviously a different story, being directly responsible for attacking civilian targets in Iran.
> My family are in the GCC, and my parents live near the coast. Iran has not once targeted a civilian infrastructure there directly, except for specific landmarks (Burj al Arab, the Palm, etc.).
That's still not ok, still targeting civilian settlements and infrastructure which is of no military value. Stop making excuses.
> But otherwise civilian life is still pedestrian - heck, my younger brother is going to the Atlantis water park tomorrow because they offered him free tickets.
That's really cool. Life is pretty normal here in the US too. In Israel from what I understand most folks just have to go to the air raid shelters once in a while but life is otherwise pretty normal.
> Israel is obviously a different story, being directly responsible for attacking civilian targets in Iran.
Likewise Iran is directly responsible for attacking civilian targets in Israel and other gulf states. I'm not sure life in Iran is really all that normal though. Tehran ran out of water in part because Iran instead spent money on offensive war capabilities and funding terrorist groups, and then they murdered around 30k of their own people. Sounds like most everyone else is living normal lives (Israel, Gulf states, US) but things are not great in Iran under the current leadership and their mismanagement of the country.
1.) Iran warns civilians days in advance with the exact date and time - establishments are warned beforehand. Pray tell, when did the US or Israel warn Iranian civilians in Tehran about the same? This is about equivalence, not whataboutism.
2.) Unlike for the privileged West, this is Iran's last stand for survival. What started as a "regime change" operation has turned into a "send Iran to the Stone Ages" operation. While I don't condone their regime's actions, I can understand them applying pressure on the GCC countries, especially the ones that goaded the US into the war. More importantly, it's telling when citizens of said GCC countries are on the Iranian side in spite of being attacked. Just check Al Jazeera (the most popular Arabic media outlet) and their coverage in spite of being an Iranian target. Check all the open criticism coming from business circles of the wealthy magnates in the GCC.
3.) Unlike Israel, the GCC countries don't have air raid shelters, but because of the above, casualties have been much lower. Again, that's because of Iran's early warnings and the respective countries' countermeasures. Iran has a vested interest in preventing civilian deaths in the GCC, unlike the US and Israel have in Iran.
4.) Iran's attack on Al Minhad airbase (which is close to where some family live), showed that they can inflict casualties and turn any GCC country to glass if they wanted to, just by concentrating force.
5.) Life in Iran isn't normal, precisely because Israel and USA are intent on bombing it to smithereens. Your arguments otherwise about water in Tehran and protests are pre-war tangential arguments. As mentioned above, Iran could make life in the GCC "abnormal" if they wanted to - they just haven't yet because they haven't been pushed to the brink.
> Not to mention Iran intentionally targeting apartment complexes and other civilian targets throughout the region.
You realize that Iran provided 24h notice about attacks that were upcoming today advising people to evacuate and Israel bombs hospitals without warning, right?
What does that have to do with Iran indiscriminately bombing apartment complexes and high rises and civilian infrastructure in countries like the United Arab Emirates? What does that have to do with Iran massacring 30,000 of its own citizens and hanging 19 years old kids for protesting as recently as yesterday?
If Israel or the United States bomb a working hospital (and even then it depends) I stand against that. Though of course even your premise is generally questionable because terrorist groups like Hamas, Hezbollah, and others (as recognized by the European Union and United States) know that Western forces do not on purpose bomb or attack civilians or civilian infrastructure and have a difficult time when Hamas/Hezbollah fighters lodge themselves in mosques, elementary schools, hospitals, which is why they do it - they understand we are culturally against such practices.
But if they bombed a hospital they'll have to bomb a lot of hospitals before they approach the death totals that the Iranian government has already inflicted on its own people.
> What does that have to do with Iran indiscriminately bombing apartment complexes and high rises and civilian infrastructure in countries like the United Arab Emirates?
USA soldiers were in those buildings because they'd been moved off-base. But at this point, you're not arguing in good faith. You wouldn't know about that without the part about our people being the targets so I don't trust you to be forthcoming at all.
> USA soldiers were in those buildings because they'd been moved off-base.
Source please.
> You wouldn't know about that without the part about our people being the targets so I don't trust you to be forthcoming at all.
Iran launched 2500 missiles at the UAE alone, and those missiles hit obvious civilian infrastructure including where US soldiers weren't, airports, &c. and has threatened unprovoked to blow up desalination plants to cause mass famine and destruction. No excuse for that. Sorry, Iran is the bad guy here and their actions prove that without question.
> Even Hamas knows western powers don’t do this on purpose - which is why they take up arms inside of civilian facilities. The Iranian people know the US doesn’t intentionally kill little girls.
You really think someone who just had to bury the mangled, burned corpse of their daughter cares whether it was intentional, or because the US military couldn't be arsed to update the data their targeting system operates on?
And it's not going to end with that one "accident". The war hasn't even really started, and the US military is led by a vaguely human-shaped lump of feces who absolutely will start ordering the intentional bombing of civilian targets and gleefully boast about it once he's starting to feel personally offended by the continued failure of "the Iranians" to submit to his will.
> Why are we even talking about the US accidentally blowing up a school?
Asking that question puts you outside the boundaries of polite conversation, so I'll end with a hearty "may you get what you deserve".
Do you really think someone who just had to bury the mangled, broken-necked corpse of their son cares whether it was intention.... oh right it was intentional by their own government.
> Asking that question puts you outside the boundaries of polite conversation, so I'll end with a hearty "may you get what you deserve".
Please stop the pearl-clutching.
If you don't want to talk about intentional Iranian atrocities because you're fixated on the United States making a mistake, then I don't think there's much for either of us to talk about.
Not sure what you're referring to. If you're talking about inference cost for frontier models, that's going up because researchers keep pushing those frontiers, often without considering cost. And while they're subsidized (to gain market share), users have no reason NOT to use the crazy expensive frontier models.
Once the market consolidates, and users get used to the idea of using models that are "good enough" because frontier models are too expensive, there's no reason AI cannot be profitable.
There's not much profit in inference, it's heavily commoditized. There is an illusion of potential profitability because the closed-weight models are currently a step ahead of the open-weight models. However, if you ignore the closed-weight models, then the open-weight models are also getting better every year. In the limit, the open-weight models will end up just as good as the closed-weight models.
AI is an inverse gold rush, the people who are getting rich off it are the people using it. The shovel-sellers are screwed.
> Not sure what you're referring to. If you're talking about inference cost for frontier models, that's going up because researchers keep pushing those frontiers, often without considering cost. And while they're subsidized (to gain market share), users have no reason NOT to use the crazy expensive frontier models.
The price of GPUs and the price of RAM to put in the servers.
That is just a gigantic failure to provide exactly the information that is needed for such diagrams to helpful.
Basically you're leaving it vague because you can't be arsed to actually work out what it means, and every reader is invited to come up with their own individual wrong assumptions and misunderstandings.
The De Beers cartel was able to avoid anti trust scrutiny because the best reserves are outside (Africa/Canada/Russia) of the most lucrative markets (US/Europe/Asia).
Corporations control only a small faction of housing supply.
The question is if you could actually handle that many lines concurrently, with available software and the hardware resources of a single PC. Rachel's article as well as other comments here indicate that you could not.
From memory, it very much mattered on your choice of serial card/controller. High quality, high speed, (and high price) cards had their own buffers and better drivers resulting in fewer interrupts and more efficient use of host resources when supporting multiple concurrent file transfers at line speed. Being able to drive the modem-to-host connection faster than the modem connect speed was also helpful for modem protocols with compression.
You certainly could with later 386 and 486 systems. The multiport cards take care of the interrupt issues. 16 lines, all running at 115200 bps (to allow for better compression!), isn't even 2 megabits/sec. That is worst case. I had a 386 with ethernet and it could push 10 megabits no problem.
Telephone line modems were always slow compared to the microcomputers of their day. A 14400Baud modem will just send less than some 1.5KB/s. Even a Z80 could handle a few streams of that. I rather suspect this BBS offered fancier services than just chat and file up/download.
It has almost 4 times the number of pieces, but is only about 50% longer and wider - there's just way more smaller pieces. Price per piece is very misleading when comparing older and newer sets. The newer ones have more details, look slicker, but have a lot less "meat". Which is not that great for creative play.
I bought a set recently which was definitely padding its piece counts. The interior structure of a solid shape was constructed out of dozens of small 1x2s and could easily have been a handful of much larger pieces with no downside. I didn't consider the "more pieces = more perceived value" logic until this comment.
For a while the complaint was that Lego was making too many big, specialized pieces, so I'm amused that the current complaint seems to be that they're using too many small generic ones.
I had a weird build recently with the Luxo Jr model. There are a couple of cavities in the model that are partially filled in with very small parts. These parts don't connect in a way that makes then structural. I'm still puzzled why these parts are there.
I always charitably assumed that they designed models to utilize surplus pieces for the internal structures, pieces that might be hard to use elsewhere.
They may do that (designers have a "part budget" they can spend in various ways) but the real reason for weird colors inside models is to make it easier to build; especially since many of the models consist entirely of various shades of grey and black.
Various piece size also makes it easier to see if you got the wrong piece.
Definitely agree on the reduced usefulness for creative play. My kids got a lot of Lego sets as gifts when they were younger. Which is great, I love them playing with Legos. But once they're done with the instructions that's just kinda it. A Star Wars or Frozen or Minecraft themed kit ends up being all weird one-off specialty pieces. They are necessary to make an extremely detailed replica of the Millenium Falcon. But they have no place if you just want to grab a handful of bricks and start building whatever your imagination comes up with. We have a tub full of thousands of pieces and it never gets used. I think it's a bummer that they've pivoted to pushing these intricate $120 kits to adults rather than designs featuring more reusable components. You need to go out of your way to buy tranches of generic bricks if you want to have free play.
The Creator 3-in-1 sets are basically what you're looking for, they just don't get advertised much. A lot of them are more generified and rebuildable, sometimes even more refined versions of more expensive sets or parts of more expensive sets. Maybe the most obvious are the 3-in-1 dragon and dinosaur sets, which to me feel obviously like more generic reworks of D&D and Jurassic Park builds respectively, and have a lot more in the way of generic tiles and bricks than the licensed sets they're derived from.
A 50% increase in dimensions doesn't directly transform in a 50% increase in volume.
>The newer ones have more details, look slicker, but have a lot less "meat"
I presume that the 2022 model has as target audience nostalgic adults, but otherwise I agree, the new sets seem far more fragile then the ones released a decade ago. I think this is due to a recent focus towards adults from LEGO.
It's the other way around - because pieces cost roughly based on their size (amount of material) modern Lego sets are "denser" and heavier on average than similar sized sets of the past, because as piece count (and detail) goes up, piece size has been going down.
The discussion is about price, not cost. Lego is keeping the price per piece somewhat stable because they know people look at that, but as pieces get smaller (and thus cost less to make), their margins go up, and sets get smaller for the same price.
So... his takeaway after taking 7 years to realize that "blockchain ecosystems" are an empty hype machine... is to start a project that brings blockchain into LLM coding agents.
Author here. Neotoma has nothing to do with blockchain, at least for any foreseeable future. It's a structured memory layer for AI agents. Think: entity storage with relationships, provenance, and queryable state. No token, no chain, no crypto.
The whole point of the essay's ending is that I chose not to issue a token and instead shipped a developer release to collect real feedback from real testers.
The takeaway wasn't "blockchain bad," it was "feedback loops matter and token economics break them." Neotoma is built around the opposite approach: short cycles, real users, and no financial instrument that makes belief liquid.
> Albania, Cyprus, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Switzerland, Norway
I very much doubt this is true for any of those countries. In fact, I know it is untrue for Switzerland, although they did stop using it long ago (mid 20th century).
Edit: Norway actually ran a coal power plant until 2023, on Spitsbergen
You mean like bombing a school and killing about 150 schoolgirls?
The USA had a lot of local support and goodwill in Afghanistan, and turned it into support for the Taliban, because they kept killing civilians in their attempts to beat the Taliban with bombs, because they wanted to limit the unpopular ground troop deloyments. The chance that the same will happen in Iran is precisely 100%
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