thejohnconway

Because it’s on track to become expensive than other sources of energy. There are plenty energy sources we don’t use because they are comparatively expensive.

To my ears “Molten” would imply that the sand is currently in liquid form. The sense ”melted” is used here, as having been melted, seems right. You melt sand to get molten sand, right?

Apes are a subset of monkeys.

Trump’s talking about a “joint venture” with Iran for charging tolls, weird that he feels that might have to make this concession, right?

https://x.com/jonkarl/status/2041839012097229086?s=20

He’s mentioned this possibility before, by the way.

Iran does not “control” the strait any more than neighbor controls my front door because he threatened to stop me from using it. If the US or other naval power tried to pass it would have no issue

If your neighbour threatened to shoot anyone attempting to use your front door, and followed through on their threat a few times, and now no one uses your front door, I would say they control it.

Al Jazeera are reporting that Iran is planning to continue with the toll: https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2026/4/8/us-iran-ceasefire-de...

Your assessment of the military situation in the strait doesn’t align with any expert analysis I’ve come across.

Real world events are conditional. Would you prefer I talk in absolutes?

Defacto Iran still controls the strait, as they have since the start of the war. If they start letting the ships through with no toll, I think that would indicate a tactical loss but strategic draw for Iran (well, the IRGC). If they don’t, it’s a strategic win. We’ll find out I guess.

The small gulf states are incredibly fragile because of their water supply. Major disruption to their power or desalinisation directly renders them largely uninhabitable.

You’re misquoting me on the 10 point plan. He accepted it as the _basis for negotiation_. Here’s direct quote from him on Truth Social:

“We received a 10 point proposal from Iran, and believe it is a workable basis on which to negotiate”

As a cyclist in London, I’ve hit one pedestrian: they stepped backward(!) into a cycle lane. I had nowhere to go, as there was a curb on the other side. Pedestrian behaviour is just totally wild with respect to cycle lanes, a lot of them are just totally oblivious. If you cycle, you will come across people walking along or stepping into dedicated cycle lanes several times during the average commute.

None of those things matter if they survive and control the straight, which seems to be the situation. The toll revenue will be enough to rebuild several times over. They have proven that they can absolutely crush the gulf states with missiles and drones.

I think the fact that Trump accepted their 10-point plan as the basis for negotiation, instead of them accepting the American 15-point plan, makes it obvious this is America taking the loss.

I can't see Trump or anyone else willingly misusing that trust

Is this sarcasm? It’s hard to tell these days.

If we look at the stated goals (as inconsistent as they have been):

Unconditional surrender -> nope Regime change via popular uprising -> nope Destruction or removal of enriched uranium -> nope Destruction of drones and ballistic missile capability -> nope

Final goal of getting back to the pre-war state (which is admitting loss in itself):

Reopen in the straight of Hormuz -> nope

So no objectives have been achieved, and although you could argue they will be in the future, this seems increasingly unlikely in the short timeline the Trump admin has given themselves. It any of them were possible at all, which seems doubtful.

That’s not what people are worried about, it’s the rigging of real world events (including wars!) that has people worried.

I don’t see how it relates very well to what I said. I think you’re trying to say the that the Chagos island lease disagreement is as big a deal as threatening to invade a NATO ally.

I disagree.

I don't understand your comment.

Maybe Americans don't really get this, but the Greenland stuff was a very, very big deal. The rest of NATO was staring down the barrel of the unthinkable: war with the United States. For what? Some lib owning? A bit of fun? A real estate deal? The sense of betrayal is very strong, more than the politicians are letting on.

I'm using it Infomaniak, including their KDrive as a Dropbox replacement (with 2TB of data). I've even used their video conferencing app. No complaints so far. All seems to work just fine.

Honestly, the instability of the political environment in US feels so extreme, that it seems like something could bite you that you didn't even see coming.

Just on the Gmail front: maybe Trump decides to trade embargo you country and pressures Google to cut off email access. Maybe he decides Google needs to be broken up and sold for parts, and Gmail's data goes to Truth Social. Maybe he thinks illegal immigrants or "radical left wing lunatics" shouldn't have access to American email providers and gets Google to start suspending accounts based on a some criteria. Maybe some of this seems far fetched, but we are talking about a president who threatened to to go to war with one of America's closest allies.

The non-American west's exposure to the instability is too high, and already affecting people. Switching software providers where possible is something that can be done quickly, and relatively easily by individuals in the short term.

Lol, I’ve had cutting edge models suggest I make an inflexible hole bigger by putting shim in it, and argue their case stubbornly. I don’t know what you’re using to suggest they are anywhere near solving your problem there!

Indeed, “defence” so obviously an Orwellian term for these departments, I’m very much in favour of the change.

Yes, but it doesn’t have to be error-free. The friendly fire rates in symmetrical hot wars is pretty high, it’s considered a cost of going to war.

If autonomous weapons lead to a net battlefield advantage, I agree with the GP, they will be used. It is the endgame.

If you think literally everything I'm saying is wrong, you haven't done much of a job of explaining why.

I realise that the watch was probably under development for years before Jobs died. It was, however, released in a half baked state – do you remember what the the original use of the lozenge shaped button was, for example? Things being "hits" is not what's under discussion here, Apple has sold a lot of stuff in the Cook era, no doubt about that. Microsoft has had a lot of hits too, doesn't make their products Old-Apple-like!

I don't know how good Ive is without Jobs. His post-Jobs efforts have been pretty mixed. I'd argue Apple's hardware has improved since he left (although, admittedly through playing it safe, especially with the Mac).

Do you think Apple is in decline when it comes to the quality of their products? Because if you don't we're just talking past each-other.

At what point did the old Apple cross the threshold to "modern" Apple?

This hardly an original sentiment, but when Steve Jobs died. Jobs was not perfect, but he believed they were there to make great products, had good taste with obsessive attention to detail, and was pretty much omnipotent in the company. I'm sure there are people with many of these traits in Apple, but not all of them together.

Their first new hardware release was the Apple Watch, which is a confused product, with too many functions on launch, and a poorly thought out two button + scroll wheel + touch screen interface (I still don't really know which button does which). And don't get me started on that ridiculous solid gold version.

You can still see the old Apple in there (look at their hardware!), but it's fragmented and not all pulling in the same direction.

No the original was 16:9, you can see they have been digitally removed in the shots from the Blu-ray.

Property isn’t real either.

Mastodon is a fairly finicky beast, has a few dependencies that you also have to manage (redis, sidekiq, Postgres), and is surprisingly resource intensive.

So you can do it, but it’s not really designed for that use case.

I would be great if there were a full-featured single user ActivityPub server, but last time I looked, there wasn’t really.

Species is a concept that isn't particularly well defined, and certainly not in palaeontology. One can see, however, diverging body plans (disparity), distinct lineages (diversity). If we take our extinction further, it will probably be tens of millions of years before we see the kind of diversity and disparity we had until the last couple of centuries. Its the period of imbalance that causes the problem.

Anyway, congrats on not caring about nature. It's must feel very free.

That is just a mathematical truism.

No it isn’t. Diversity rates have risen and fallen over the history of life, and it can take many millions of years for life to re-diversify after a mass extinction event (like the one we are causing now). Evolution by natural selection is not rapid when it comes to larger organisms.

Billions of people have died in the past, but it would obviously be a catastrophic tragedy if billions of people died this year.

Species usually go extinct at a rate at which new diversity can take their place. The current rate of extinction is hundreds of times higher than that, and leads to ecosystem collapse.

But Lisa Su can’t bring herself to compete. Which is very strange because she brutally competed with and destroyed Intel.

Maybe making cutting-edge GPUs is actually quite an engineering challenge, and not entirely down to the competitive will of the CEO?

They run hot, and don’t stick to the phone as well as I’d like. No, MagSafe batteries aren’t the solution for me, and I too would buy a thicker phone with more battery life.

In fact, it turned out that Darth Vader was Lukes father.

Contextual fictional facts are really common in language. I remember doing it in philosophy first year. It conundrum-y philosophically, but usually understood effortlessly in normal discourse.