dlisboa

C is great when you need to do manual memory management.

Is it still, today? There are other manual memory languages today with better safety records and ergonomics. Plus a host of new and better features.

I think C is really great if you need C. For libraries, for knowledge, for size, for compatibility, for "simplicity", for fun, for whatever.

But other than having a strong reason to want C, on a purely language feature comparison, it's not great.

It's not "prohibitively" expensive if they managed to pay for flights to the US, hotels and then buy several pieces of hardware. They definitely had more than enough money to buy whatever they wanted in Brazil. It is, however, much more expensive than it should be, which leaves a bad taste in our mouths and means people will find other ways of acquiring some items.

Bought something online and didn't receive your product? With PIX you're SOL, with Visa/Mastercard you get a chargeback.

Visa/Mastercard aren't handling chargebacks, the banks are. With PIX the way to get a chargeback is the same: if you've been victim of fraud you open a claim with the bank, they'll review it, then possibly give you a charge back within a week. This review process might take longer or be denied, which requires a lawsuit.

But it's only less risky for banks to chargeback immediately on Visa/Mastercard because they make so much money from credit card fees that they can afford it.

A "Pay with PIX" button is just a QR code. You reach the payment page, the merchant website generates a QR code, you open up your bank app, scan the QR code, confirm the merchant and the purchase, the merchant website runs a spinner for like 10 seconds while it confirms it in the background, and then you get a confirmation of your purchase with an order number.

External battery banks are a better reducer of e-waste as they'll work for all devices and not just the one cell phone.

That's not cynical. Trump has done the world a great benefit by transparently saying out loud what was hidden US policy for decades.

In the matter of drone production, which was my point, it doesn’t change the calculus. It is evident that short of regime change or popular upheaval Iran can produce or import drones indefinitely and the only thing that can stop it is a ground invasion.

The US Navy or any navy can’t destroy that production from the air.

The evidence is pretty clear on that. We see that is already the case in Ukraine or with Hezbollah and Ansar Allah.

Some of them. These were the stated objectives as per general Tommy Franks:

* Depose's Saddam government

Accomplished.

* Identify, isolate, and eliminate Iraqi WMDs

Failed. They were never there.

* Find, capture, and drive out terrorists from Iraq

Failed. Iraqi-based terrorism increased in the aftermath.

* Collect intelligence related to terrorist networks, and to "the global network" of WMDs

Failed. North Korea tested its first nuclear weapon in 2006, years after the invasion. The US accuses Iran of trying for them to this day. Chemical weapons were used by ISIS.

* End sanctions

Accomplished.

* Deliver humanitarian support to the Iraqi people, including the displaced

Failed. There were more displaced people due to the war than before and a higher need for humanitarian support which took years to complete.

* Secure Iraq's oil fields and resources, "which belong to the Iraqi people"

Accomplished. Somewhat, US and UK based companies, plus China, now runs a lot of their oil fields. Iraqi GDP per capita is one of the lowest in the region.

* Help the Iraqi people "create conditions for a transition to a representative self-government"

Arguable. Parts of the country want to secede and have armed groups. Representation and turnout is not amazing, but I guess not even in Western countries it is.

That'll never happen.

A US CSG could simply sit in the Hormuz strait shoot down any incoming missiles and keep it open.

They can't even do that in their own bases. Most of US defenses have been severely overestimated due to propaganda. They hadn't been tested and when they were they've shown themselves lacking.

A blanket comparison of Russia's attempts to eliminate Ukraine's industry with US Navy's ability to eliminate Iran's is ... questionable. We've flown 1000s of uncontested sorties over Ukraine, and Russia has been relegated to knocking down apartment buildings with Iran's own drones.

Russia has literally taken over the industrial heart of Ukraine in the east and southeast regions. With boots on the ground, tanks, everything. They claim it as their land. And yet they can't stop Ukraine from building drones.

That's far more than the US/Israel have done or are willing to do. It's extremely realistic that they do not have the capacity to destroy Iran's drone making capabilities, ever.

Production is not a hard problem. Iran, a heavily sanctioned country, already has drone production in other countries. That's assuming no other country would want to sell them their own drones to boost their domestic industry, like Turkiye has been doing for Ukraine.

Most of the Iranian drones are quite sophisticated for what they need to do. On a pinch they could replace many of the non-critical components for cheaper parts. They don't need composite materials if they were simply trying to outproduce. Meaning their production facilities could be much simpler than they are currently and still sustain enough output to matter.

You're making the same argument I am. If Iran had a small increase in accuracy they could hit targets that'd disable a lot of Israel military and civilian infrastructure. A lot of stuff is getting through. To counter that Israel has to achieve a perfect interception record. The balance is throughly on the side of offensive drone/missile warfare.

that could be 100 billion USD in deferred revenue, if we assume that LNG is not going anywhere from wherever it's sitting underground, and will be simply extracted and sold later

That's not how revenue works at all.

A trillion seems large but it's not that absurd. The drone that shut down 17% of Qatar's LNG capacity is said to have caused 20 billion USD worth of annual lost revenue. They said it'll take up to 5 years to rebuild so that could be 100 billion USD in lost revenue, plus whatever it costs to do the rebuild.

A trillion dollars worth of damage seems possible if spread over some years for some countries in the Gulf where shutting down a desalination plant would cause depopulation.

Israel is similiarly lucky that it is surrounded by neighbors with US bases that can intercept missiles and drones before they get to it. All of its more competent enemies are very far away. In a different scenario there'd be no motivation for a country like Iraq or Jordan to help.

They can afford to try to destroy Iran's offensive capabilities because in-between countries allow their airspace to be used.

Wars are usually between neighbors. If a neighbor has a huge stockpile of drones they can launch a first salvo that'll overwhelm whatever defensive capabilities the other country has before they even get to the point of destroying launchers/manufacturing.

Threats of massive drones strikes are the closest deterrent a country can get to nuclear weapons without developing nuclear weapons. If Iran had 5 million drones instead of 50 thousand this war wouldn't even be happening.

Very few countries lack the technological capabilities to produce these kinds of drones.

What most countries don't have is, for lack of a better term, the resolve Iran has shown. Venezuela could have built drones and resisted just the same, but it's internally divided enough that it was possible to strike a deal with an inside faction and have a coup from within.

There is an assumption here that the value in improving defenses is the same as improving offensive weapons. That is not the case in the assymetry that drones provide and Russia is the first example.

Russia has not been able to improve AA capabilities to the point where it's "safe", for any definition of the word, neither has Israel. Israel and Gulf states often tout over 90% interception rate yet it's really at the mercy of Iran to not target their most vulnerable sites. If Iran was routinely targeting desalination plants and refineries it wouldn't matter if it was 99%: one hit is all it takes. Similarly Russia cannot keep Ukraine from targeting their oil infrastructure.

Air defenses need to be 100% to prevent physical, economic and moral damage. That is an impossibility.

Humans today perhaps. People tend to underestimate our abilities in nature because we’ve evolved to be able to shape it. In reality humans had generationally transmitted oral knowledge of food, plus are the only animals that can transform food at will, including from “toxic” to consumable.

It was $999 back then. They could be made cheaper today. Those were Intel chips.

A solution to a problem that doesn't change the current state of affairs, which by your definition makes it a simple solution, is not an actual solution.

There are plenty of simple solutions to real problems whose only blocker is upsetting the status quo. "We have no housing...let's build more housing" is, in fact, a very simple solution. That it doesn't happen has nothing to do with it the solution itself.

I wish more would be done on weight. The 12 inch Macbook was very lightweight, just 2 pounds. Today there's no Apple product that gets close to that: an iPad with the added accessories weighs more and it's still an iPad. The Macbook "Air" is not airy, this Macbook Neo weighs the same as an Air.

You have to see there's a hefty dose of hypocrisy in this, right? American might has been used, quite extensively, to impose unfavorable conditions to local companies in their own soil in favor of American companies. Multiple American multi national corporations have used exploitative labor conditions in underdeveloped countries to prop up their own margins. The American government has used multiple coercive tools to de-industrialize many nations and has, in the 21st century, an explicitly paternalistic attitude towards the Western Hemisphere with literal stealing of their resources.

I understand and even respect when someone says "I'm American so I wish to maintain the status quo where the US can undercut other nations but they can't undercut us". But if there's some rose tinted view of how the US is actually the morally aggrieved one, I just can't bear it.

I don't see it as misleading at all. You're leaving out half the world and implying it's doing fine. Regular Facebook usage in Brazil is also non-existent and it's the 5th or so biggest Internet market. China doesn't have it. I'm not sure about India usage. So if FB isn't popular in the US, EU, China, Brazil, etc, that's an extreme amount of market loss.

A great example of what seems to be the current ethos for the generation (I realize Handey isn't of this generation). Very much "nothing matters as we'll all die anyway, who cares about what comes after". I don't fault the sentiment, to be clear, it's just an indication of the socio-economic situation that fostered it.

Same for Keynes.

Obviously not a macroeconomic analysis but if you watch YouTube channels like Caleb Hammer it seems people are literally spending their life away. No planning, no asset building, just hedonistic stuff. The kind of people you see there have the mentality of: "I'll never pay this debt down anyway so I'll max out my loans to do what I want before I die". Not very optimistic, even if it inflates the consumer market.

I agree. From the outside looking in the US seems to be in a very nihilistic mood, sort of "nothing I do matters anyway so I'll gamble away in the hopes of maybe hitting the only winning ticket out". People trying all sorts of moonshot ideas in crypto, day trading, live streaming, etc. The idea of slowly chipping away and climbing the social leader seems very distant from what I see.

Emotional intelligence is what allows you to actually raise kids. Having it at midlife is a benefit, not a downside.

It either is the "second leading cause of disability and mortality" or it isn't, there's nothing to believe. I very much agree with GP that the claim is completely unsupported.

I found the study that the article bases this on[1]. It doesn't make this claim and instead associates a higher mortality rate to sufferers of all mental disorders, 67% of which are deaths by natural causes. That these natural causes are directly associated with the mental disorder isn't even something the study says. Anxiety is just one of the many disorders analyzed.

This is similar to attributing a lower life expectancy to all people with endocrine diseases (e.g. diabetes) and later saying hyperthyroidism (another endocrine disease) is the sole cause of death in that group.

- [1]: https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamapsychiatry/fullarticle/...