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Cake day: February 27th, 2024

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  • Lets, for a moment, presume Iran has Nuclear weapons - and uses them. Lets just remind that Israel is known to have at LEAST 90 nuclear warheads, and several of those missiles are likely prepped ready pointed at Iran.

    To put it simply: That move DOES NOT end well. If anything, it ends strictly worse then simply accepting that Israel crippled Iran’s infrastructure. And any hope for normalization and opening trade up on the global market outside of China, Russia, and North Korea becomes basically zero until the regime is overthrown. Even worse - if Israel opts for nuclear strikes to follow up their conventional ones after being attacked with nuclear weapons,there is a good chance it’s not just several years of repair work, but decades of set back that could easily lead to mass scale discontentment and open revolt against the regime by several factions simultaneously.

    The reality is: Israel is not a force capable of sustained occupation of an entity like Iran. But they are a force capable of a decapitating strike. And the entire reason is, Israel has VERY LIMITED force projection capabilities - and, because of a lack of land boarder with Iran, would need cooperation with other states that may not be thrilled with opening themselves up to direct conflict in the short to mid term. The only real reason Israel has room to do a strike is 1. It’s retaliatory, and 2. entities like Saudi Arabia are liable to be just fine with their regional rivals basically offing each other, as Saudi Arabia is in a MUCH better position to take advantage in the event of Iran’s regime collapsing.

    Which brings us to: Just because you have nuclear weapons, does not mean you use them. The reality is, nuclear weapons are a weapon of last resort - unless you are France, and then it’s a nuclear warning shot… Because France is just different.


  • Ok: PeerTube is interesting. But: in terms of replacement? No. non-viable.

    The problem you have is multifold - and one of them is constant content availability, and total bandwidth. The value of Youtube is on demand streaming - you click a video, it plays, basically anywhere in the world. The other value is… copyright: Because of the way youtube is set up, you don’t have the same kind of copyright problems as you would without the back end negotiating and systems youtube as put in place. You can think copyright as it stands is oppresive and sucks -and I agree; but with the law the way it is - youtube is the best work around that is feasibly possible.

    Mirroring all of youtube needs piles of terrabytes of new storage DAILY. and it’s in the hundreds of thousands as a low end estimate. You need the computational power to do the transcoding. You need the distribution of servers to load balance and avoid over saturating and d-dossing any given server cluster.

    The reality is the Torrent protocol has been around forever - and there is a reason it never really took off, despite live watching while streaming was feasible: It has too many pitfalls.

    And then, there is the content creator side: If you want to make money - youutube is kind of the place to put your content up with youtube premium sharing, ad revenue sharing and so on once you can monetize your channel. And while there are all kinds of BS in regards to what can and can’t be monetized - there really isn’t a replacement, not for the average person just getting started - and not if you are trying to build your following.


  • I don’t think you understand the capabilities difference - Israel has the nuclear option if they are threatened existentially. But lets take that off the table a moment.

    Iran’s capabilities are their missiles, manufacturing capabilities. Their Refineries, and strategic energy reserves are in known locations and are the lynch pin of Iran’s economy. And finally, the Nuclear R&D facilities are in known places. All of those are the targets - and Israel absolutely has the capacity to take it out- just not the strong justification.

    If Iran continues striking Israel, Israel is going to feel the pressure to decapitate Iran as a threat to them.

    The fall out of this is more interesting:

    1. China loses access to Iranian Oil for the short to mid term - it will take time to restore capabilities.

    2. Russia loses access to Iranian missiles - without production capabilities, and depleted stocks, Iran will not be able to sell missiles to Russia let alone drones.

    3. Iran’s economy will be in shambles - that could very well open the door to coup or revolt.

    4. Iran would unload as many missiles as it possibly could - which could be devastating. But that would come down to just how many interceptor missiles Israel would have available, along with other air defence options.

    If you want a “Why would trump support this” - there you have it. It reaffirms US obligation to support it’s allies, It puts economic pressure on china, and denies Russia access to weapons - which should help push them to the negotiating table.

    In reality, I would more expect Iran to back off. Then again - With Israel obliterating Iran proxies, Iran may feel the pressure to complete a nuclear deterrent and Israel may end up wanting to decapitate Iran as a threat BEFORE they gain that capability… what a bloody mess.


  • What KIND of liberal? There are several “liberal” variants and the two main defined variants are:

    • Classic Liberalism - functionally the idea’s of the french revolution.

    • Modern Liberalism - tack social justice into the mix, requiring government intervention to enforce it.

    reality is, since about 1965-1970 left wing parties have been defined by the social justice bent. They have more or less been governed by an idea that they alone have the moral authority to define correct from wrong, that it is they that must define what is right wing - and over the years, a tremendous number of things, have been defined as right wing; we have seen a shift from Representatives defining laws and regulations - to regulatory agencies having the power to define the details devolved to them. We have seen the growth and bloat of bureaucracy, funded through increased taxes -and inflationary spending practices.

    So the reason “liberal” is defined differently - is functionally that the definition of “liberal” has been redefined. And this reuse of terms - well: That has a storied history in a particular soviet nation. Political correctness has a very soviet history to it.

    If you want to debate, and discredit a candidate based on their political stance/views and policies - ok: Do so. But maybe stop trying to define it as “nazi” - the term is ever more losing it’s weight in discussions, and that fact makes it very difficult to legitimately call out problematic entities. Because lets be clear: Trump is NOT A National Socialist - and that is a defining feature of the Nazi party.


  • Once upon a time, stoves had a dial you set, and it was basically a resistor and some wires. Today, a stove has a computer built in it that operates the entire thing.

    While the computer in a modern oven is simple - it is an illustration that more, and more of what we have is computerized. When you add in reinforcement learning algorithms to adjust factors like say, If the fridge is aware of what time you generally open the fridge it can opt to kick on the heat pump a little before that to bring the temperature down and avoid running while it is open. This could save pennies of electricity in a year. But more importantly - could lead to less duty cycles on the condesor that could cause a fridge to say instead of lasting 10 years, last 12 years.

    If you are starting a car company today, what you have to be thinking about is a reality where we move to “Humans don’t drive, the cars drive you” - I mean even a manual control situation could have the AI actually being a watcher in effect we “Let” people drive, but if the AI detects an unobserved obstacle etc it immediately takes over and adjusts. Well: You need to build that - and that, is AI.

    If a company isn’t thinking about AI, and makes anything but basic appliances - they are likely on a limited time window because at some point Autonomous cars WILL be good enough, and the safety consideration will make both people, and governments, along with insurance companies to eliminate human driven vehicles.

    Apple isn’t looking next year, or a year after. They are looking 5 to 10 years out and they don’t see a path where they can effectively compete in the car industry and make the profits they are after. However, if they can solve the AI driving problem - they don’t NEED to make a car, they can sell the brains and system that drives the car.