SegfaultSeagull

Time to get a second job buddy.

"Claude in the cloud" has a nice ring to it.

Social security and Medicare account for 36% of the Federal budget and are absolutely understood as a cost to run the government. Calling them transfer payments doesn't obviate the fact that they are costs to American taxpayers. Social security and Medicare are also the two Federal outlays that economists fear will bankrupt the United States.

https://fiscaldata.treasury.gov/americas-finance-guide/feder...

The cost to operate the Federal government for one day is about $18 billion.

$400 billion

This comment is savage and I’m here for it.

It’s a bit ironic that the author includes an AI generated audio version of the article, you know, so we don’t have to read it.

Can someone ELI5 how it is one side of the moon is never seen on Earth? The moon orbits and also rotates, does it not?

This is fantastic! Excellent share. Though I object vigorously to its exclusion of any beach in California. Scandalous!

Starring GitHub repos considered harmful.

Or perhaps they will learn they are outmatched, lack the resources and technological capabilities to compete, and deterrence will have been established.

This is great and congrats on the success. Many years ago I tried starting a cybersecurity reading group in my city since the startup I was working at was small and people there weren’t interested in that topic. I got a lot of very green, aspiring and non-professionals to show up. We couldn’t really agree on where to start and people had different ideas of where to focus or even how much they wanted to contribute. Mostly people wanted to hear a summary and didn’t really put in the kind of effort that I had hoped. It didn’t last long. Congrats again on making it 5 years and covering so much ground.

What if, stay with me here, AI is actually a communist plot to ensorcell corporations into believing they are accelerating value creation when really they are wasting billions more in unproductive chatting which will finally destroy the billionaire capital elite class and bring about the long-awaited workers’ paradise—delivered not by revolution in the streets, but by millions of chats asking an LLM to “implement it.” Wake up sheeple!

This comment should be flagged for casting aspersions on a minority group.

I don't think we have to worry about cute animal pictures taking over HN.

Challenge accepted.

"Estimated US military spending since April 20, 2024, the day Congress passed $26.38B in emergency security assistance for Israel. "

In April 2024, Congress passed a $95.3 billion national-security supplemental package that included funding for Ukraine, Israel, and Indo-Pacific security. The Israel portion totaled about $26.38 billion.

Key points about that money:

Total Israel-related funding: about $26.38B. Humanitarian aid: roughly $9.15B (for civilians affected by conflicts, including Gaza). Missile defense: about $5.2B for systems like Iron Dome and David’s Sling. Weapons procurement: about $3.5B for new weapons. Other military supplies/services: about $4.4B.

https://www.reuters.com/world/us/whats-us-houses-foreign-aid... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_Law_118-50

That only works if you treat Iran’s proxies as unrelated actors.

Hamas (Oct 7), Hezbollah on the northern border, the Houthis in the Red Sea, Iraqi militias hitting U.S. bases — that’s been Iran’s strategy for decades.

April 2024 may have been the first direct exchange, but the war with Iran’s proxy system was already underway.

"The Iranians presented the Americans with a seven-page plan with proposed levels of future nuclear enrichment, numbers that alarmed Mr. Witkoff and Mr. Kushner.

The Americans still wanted the Iranians to commit to zero enrichment, and proposed giving them free nuclear fuel for a civil nuclear program, but the Iranians refused, a U.S. official said. After the talks ended, Mr. Witkoff and Mr. Kushner told Mr. Trump they did not think a deal could be reached."

That NYT detail is the key piece for me.

If Iran was presented with an offer of zero enrichment plus guaranteed civil nuclear fuel — meaning energy without weapons capability — and still refused, that tells you something.

Enrichment isn’t symbolic. It’s the hard technical pathway to weapons-grade material. You don’t insist on retaining it unless you want the option to cross the threshold.

The Tehran regime has funded proxies and asymmetric violence for decades. A nuclear-armed version of that regime isn’t just a regional problem — it fundamentally changes deterrence math across the Middle East and likely triggers proliferation.

If intervention now prevents a regime with that track record from getting nuclear weapons, that’s not escalation for its own sake. It’s preemption of a much more dangerous equilibrium.

You can debate costs and risks — but pretending the enrichment fight was benign ignores what enrichment is for.

That’s fair — Feb 24, 2022 was a massive rupture in the European security order.

The argument for this being as important (or more) is different though.

Russia launched a conventional invasion to redraw borders.

The regime in Tehran has spent nearly five decades exporting violence through proxies — Hezbollah, Hamas, militias in Iraq, Syria, Yemen — destabilizing multiple regions simultaneously while avoiding direct accountability. It’s been a long-running asymmetric war, not a single event.

If this moment marks a direct confrontation with that system, it’s not a regional flare-up. It’s potentially the first real attempt to confront a state that’s institutionalized proxy terrorism as a core strategy.

Different kind of challenge. Possibly broader consequences.

I get why people are nervous about AI in the military. Autonomous weapons are a scary concept. But I think the framing sometimes skips a step.

Modern militaries are already software-driven. Targeting, logistics, satellite analysis, cyber defense — it’s all code. Machine learning is just the next layer on top of systems that already exist. It’s not like we’re going from swords to Terminators overnight.

Also, opting out doesn’t mean the technology goes away. If the U.S. or other democratic countries decide “we won’t touch this,” that doesn’t slow down China, Russia, Iran, etc. It just shifts the balance toward actors who are less constrained.

There’s a real argument that better AI could reduce civilian harm. If a system can process more sensor data than a human and flag inconsistencies or uncertainty, that can make strikes more discriminate, not less. Humans under stress make mistakes too. A lot of them.

I’m much more worried about governance than the raw tech. Keep humans in the loop. Make systems auditable. Make decision chains reviewable after the fact. That’s a policy problem, not a “ban the math” problem.

The military isn’t going to stop using advanced software. The real question is whether it’s built inside systems that answer to law and oversight, or outside of them.

First, the Islamic Republic was not “the only power fighting for Islam.” It was fighting to expand Iranian state power under a religious banner. There’s a difference. The regime’s foreign policy has consistently followed geopolitical logic: expanding influence through proxies in Lebanon (Hezbollah), Gaza (Hamas and PIJ), Iraq (Shi’a militias), Syria (Assad), and Yemen (Houthis). That’s empire-building through asymmetric warfare, not some abstract defense of the global ummah.

Second, Islam itself is not a single centralized political bloc. The idea that “millions of Muslims” saw Tehran as their champion ignores deep sectarian and national divides. Sunni-majority states like Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan, the UAE, and Turkey have spent decades actively countering Iranian influence. Many Arabs view Persian expansionism with suspicion for historical reasons that predate modern geopolitics by centuries. Even within Shi’a communities outside Iran, loyalty to Tehran is far from universal.

Third, the Islamic Republic’s model is explicitly totalitarian: clerical rule, suppression of dissent, morality police, imprisonment of reformers, execution of protesters. Calling that “fighting for Islam” collapses a complex global religion into one revolutionary state ideology. Many Muslims—Sunni and Shi’a—despise the regime precisely because it fuses religion with authoritarian control.

As for retaliation risk: yes, whenever a regime that funds proxy groups is hit, the risk of attempted attacks rises. That’s true by definition. But that risk has existed for decades already because of the regime’s own strategy of exporting violence. The question isn’t whether risk increases from zero. It’s whether removing a state sponsor that systematically arms, trains, and finances militant networks reduces long-term capacity for global destabilization.

Iran was not some neutral spiritual defender of the faith. It was a regional power using religion as a mobilizing ideology while building a cross-border militia network.

That distinction matters.

The fall of the Iranian regime would be a strategic turning point not just for the Middle East, but globally.

For more than four decades, the Islamic Republic has been one of the primary state sponsors of terror. Hezbollah is not an organic Lebanese movement — it is an Iranian creation. Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad are sustained by Iranian money and weapons. The Houthis’ missile and drone capabilities exist because Tehran supplied and trained them. Shi’a militias in Iraq killed hundreds of Americans with Iranian-provided EFPs. Today, Iranian Shahed drones are striking Ukrainian apartment buildings.

This is not passive instability. It is deliberate, systematic export of violence as state policy.

At the same time, the regime has consistently pursued a nuclear capability while publicly calling for the destruction of Israel and “death to America.” Even if one assumes deterrence logic would hold, a nuclear umbrella for Iran would dramatically increase its freedom to escalate proxy warfare across the region.

The downstream geopolitical effects are not hypothetical. Without Iranian drone and missile transfers, Russia’s ability to sustain certain strike campaigns in Ukraine would be materially degraded. Without heavily discounted Iranian oil shipments, China’s energy calculus shifts, particularly under sanctions pressure. Without Tehran’s funding pipelines, Hezbollah, Hamas, and the Houthis become far more constrained actors rather than semi-state militaries.

There is also precedent for preventive action against nuclear programs. Israel’s 1981 strike on Iraq’s Osirak reactor (Operation Opera) was widely condemned at the time; decades later, most analysts agree it delayed Saddam Hussein’s nuclear ambitions. Likewise, Israel’s 2007 strike on Syria’s Al-Kibar reactor (Operation Orchard) prevented the Assad regime from developing a covert nuclear capability. Both operations were controversial in the moment and regarded as stabilizing in retrospect.

Preventing a hostile regime from acquiring nuclear capability has historically proven wiser than managing it after the fact.

Yes, regime change carries risk. So does allowing the world’s most aggressive revolutionary theocracy to entrench itself indefinitely while arming proxies from Beirut to Sana’a to Moscow. The status quo is not stable. It is violent by design.

If a regime that funds terrorism on three continents, arms Russia during a European war, and openly seeks nuclear weapons is dismantled, history is unlikely to judge that harshly.

It will likely judge it as overdue.

The fall of the Iranian regime would be a strategic turning point not just for the Middle East, but globally.

For more than four decades, the Islamic Republic has been one of the primary state sponsors of terror. Hezbollah is not an organic Lebanese movement — it is an Iranian creation. Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad are sustained by Iranian money and weapons. The Houthis’ missile and drone capabilities exist because Tehran supplied and trained them. Shi’a militias in Iraq killed hundreds of Americans with Iranian-provided EFPs. Today, Iranian Shahed drones are striking Ukrainian apartment buildings.

This is not passive instability. It is deliberate, systematic export of violence as state policy.

At the same time, the regime has consistently pursued a nuclear capability while publicly calling for the destruction of Israel and “death to America.” Even if one assumes deterrence logic would hold, a nuclear umbrella for Iran would dramatically increase its freedom to escalate proxy warfare across the region.

The downstream geopolitical effects are not hypothetical. Without Iranian drone and missile transfers, Russia’s ability to sustain certain strike campaigns in Ukraine would be materially degraded. Without heavily discounted Iranian oil shipments, China’s energy calculus shifts, particularly under sanctions pressure. Without Tehran’s funding pipelines, Hezbollah, Hamas, and the Houthis become far more constrained actors rather than semi-state militaries.

There is also precedent for preventive action against nuclear programs. Israel’s 1981 strike on Iraq’s Osirak reactor (Operation Opera) was widely condemned at the time; decades later, most analysts agree it delayed Saddam Hussein’s nuclear ambitions. Likewise, Israel’s 2007 strike on Syria’s Al-Kibar reactor (Operation Orchard) prevented the Assad regime from developing a covert nuclear capability. Both operations were controversial in the moment and regarded as stabilizing in retrospect.

Preventing a hostile regime from acquiring nuclear capability has historically proven wiser than managing it after the fact.

Yes, regime change carries risk. So does allowing the world’s most aggressive revolutionary theocracy to entrench itself indefinitely while arming proxies from Beirut to Sana’a to Moscow. The status quo is not stable. It is violent by design.

If a regime that funds terrorism on three continents, arms Russia during a European war, and openly seeks nuclear weapons is dismantled, history is unlikely to judge that harshly.

It will likely judge it as overdue.

For all the outrage at Trump, RFK, and their Know-Nothing posture toward the world, we should recognize that the ground for their rise was fertilized by manure produced in academia.

In case you didn’t recognize this as an epic comment, you should know this is an epic comment.

What is wrong with paying for something that is useful?

I majored in mathematics and remember encountering this theorem in a topology course. I giggled then, and 20 years later I giggle again.

You mean that’s what happened in Israel.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sexual_and_gender-based_viol...

https://www.algemeiner.com/2025/03/11/propaganda-of-victimho...

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allegations_of_genocide_in_t...