Russia is in no position to support anyone. See their support of their friend Assad where they actually had military presence. They'll provide intelligence and targeting info like they've been doing.
China doesn't seem that interested to help the regime. They'll get their oil from any regime. They'll sell them stuff but I don't see them paying the salaries of the IRGC.
There are not 50 vessels passing per day and also the US is now threatening a blockade. If Iran's oil terminal is bombed as is the threat then it's unlikely Iran will allow other vessels through. Likely most of the few vessels that are passing today are carrying Iranian oil.
To figure out the leverage just imagine 50 fighter jets over your head each with 6 heavy bombs where their goal is to blow you up. Now argue that those controlling those jets have no leverage.
Bombing has limits but can also do a lot of damage. It's true not every single IRGC member or leader can be bombed out of existence. But many can. It's also true that some infrastucture is buried. But a lot isn't. Specifically all the energy infrastructure that accounts for half of the country's revenue and about 25% of GDP is easily bombed.
There is leverage. That said your leverage over someone who is willing to die and not give anything up is always somewhat limited.
Iran also has leverage due to its control of the Strait of Hormuz and its remaining ability to fire missiles and drones across the region.
The GCC and their allies has no problem flying drinking water in if that's really needed. But it's true that Iran can hurt them some more. They are sitting on some extraordinarily large cash reserves and other investments so they may be willing to take some pain. Supposedly some of them were asking the US to keep attacking Iran. Also keep in mind none of these countries have actively joined the war yet and that may change if Iran keeps attacking. They have small but very well equipped armies.
Curious if you've patented this? Very cool. The physics is way beyond me but I understand that each atom in the crystal can be in two states? And those are stable? There is no cross talk or decay at all?
You're comparing to current memory technologies but there are also some optical technologies like AIE-DDPR which presumably is (a lot?) less dense but has layers (I noticed you're also discussing a volumetric implementation), would devices based on your technology be simpler/faster? (I guess optical disks don't intend to replace high speed memory). What about access times?
Curious where you are. I am in Canada and it's certainly mixed feelings but I think there are plenty of Canadians that understand that despite the current craziness we're in this together for the long term. Similarly in the US there are plenty that understand this.
In relation to Europe vs. the US. Even before the current administration Europe has been at odds with American companies:
"The European Union Renews Its Offensive Against US Technology Firms" (2022) - https://www.piie.com/sites/default/files/documents/pb22-2.pd...
The framing that this started now with the current administration is not correct. The current administration certainly heated things up so to speak and brought things to the surface but the tension has been there for a long while. Europe is not capable of competing with US tech in general for various structural reasons. Europeans tend to argue this is because of US power but we see countries like China and India succeeding where Europe fails.
The more interesting question is whether there is a large enough lasting change in the US that takes away its structural advantages. I don't think this is the case. If you look at AI the hub of world economic activity and innovation is still in the US including startups and incumbents. s/AI/anything/ . China is certainly trying, and arguably succeeding, in taking some of that but it's still not at the same level. Europe is not even a player.
Interestingly, China is succeeding because it isolated itself partially from US big tech. That enabled them to build their domestic companies.
If you give free reign to US companies, they‘re going to swoop up any competition early on.
The US relies on being attractive for smart people. There are still smart people going to the US, but the general mood seems to be that it‘s increasingly less attractive. Mid term, little will change, long term the cultural hegemony of the US will be replaced by multipolar influences.
Top 3 CS programs still seem to be in the US. MIT, Stanford, CMU.
The US has its geography, weather, etc. which are not going away.
China has massive scale industrial espionage and learnt a lot by being the cheap place where things are made and stealing western companies processes. They also invested a lot in education and naturally they have a lot of smart people. I still think that as long as they have an oppressive regime the really smart people will prefer not to be there since the second you become successful you also become a threat to the regime. Their work culture is also pretty toxic.
It's hard to predict long term but the US has a culture of innovation going back maybe hundreds of years, it has relative freedom, it has capital to invest, land and resources, and overall it has good people (and crazy people which was always true). Most of the conditions that made the US what it is are still there and most of the conditions that made places like Europe unable to compete are also still there. The US is a lot more diverse than it used to be as well.
It's not hard at all if you can interpret charts and can observe trends. You do yourself no favors by intentionally misunderestimating an adversary, to borrow a Bushism.
Everything went South after the US listened to Merkel's phone. That happened during the Obama administration.
If the EU or France are not capable of adopting Linux instead of M$ on the desktop, how are they going to switch phones over to something else that is not US based? By something else I don't mean Huawei.
Well said on the site of Y-Combinator. A US company ran by Americans that mostly funds startups in the US. Clearly the US, the home of Apple, nVidia, Anthropic, Open AI, SpaceX, Google, Meta, Amazon, Tesla etc. is sinking while the EU the home of (? ... well, there is ASML) is going to be running the world.
Linus works on Linux from ... Portland, Oregon. And oh, look at where Linux contributions are coming from:
Yes exactly, just like the.. uhm.. the British Empire could not have possibly declined? Your point is that, because the U.S. has big companies and wealth, it can't be a sinking ship? Because to me this seems like a straw-man.
What I'm saying is that the U.S. is currently in decline, and many will agree with me. Where this leads your (I'm assuming) country, nobody knows. But to me, it doesn't look great.
I'm not American. But I guess I feel part of the US led western world order.
The US has big companies and wealth because it has the right ecosystem to create those.
The US is in decline is a meme. Decline can't be measured over short intervals. Maybe it is maybe it isn't. We'll see in 5 decades.
One thing I'm pretty sure about is that this decline of the US that many seem to be excited for and wishing here, if or when it happens, is not going to end well for most of those people. Another way of saying this is that most of the people commenting here have benefited and still benefit from the dominance of the US and the technology and innovation coming out of it, including Y Combinator. What is the long term strategic thinking behind "let's attack the US and make it fail" -> the answer is none. It should be in the interest of most of us to see more US success. We whine as everything around us is an outcome of that success.
Warren Buffet's "Never bet against America" still very much holds in my opinion.
> I'm not American. But I guess I feel part of the US led western world order.
Thanks to the diligent efforts of Hollywood.
> The US has big companies and wealth because it has the right ecosystem to create those.
It also has giant homeless camps stretching on for miles, abandoned and collapsing old houses, factories, etc as far as the eye can see.
The so-called "wealth" of this country is highly concentrated and is so far beyond the reach of most people we might as well be living in a different country.
As we speak we are headed to a giant market collapse as the last dollars are shaken out of everyone's pocket, and we continue into a hard Depression. This will be followed by a World War. The outcome of that one will be much different than the last one.
> The US is in decline is a meme.
Wrong. The United States is in fact in decline, and has been for decades. It is the end of the American Empire.
Source: I am an actual American, who has eyes and ears and most importantly, has a deep understanding of history, both ancient and "modern." This ship is sinking. The only people who haven't figured it out are people brainwashed by the media. It's easier for that to happen when you don't have a front row seat to the circus.
> It should be in the interest of most of us to see more US success.
Nope. It isn't. If it were, then it would not be failing. Think about it.
It's said there are three types of people in the world:
1) Those who make things happen.
2) Those who watch things happen.
3) Those who look around in confusion asking, "What happened?"
How do you measure decline and what in your opinion is rising vs. this decline.
There have certainly been some trends like globalization, climate change, social media, the pandemic, immigration etc.
Can you elaborate on how it's in the interest of a hypothetical French person commenting on Hacker News, typing on their MBP laptop, tuning in to NetFlix, asking ChatGPT for recipes, to see the US fail and what you mean by fail. Fail as in break up? chaos? become a third world country? Total collapse of US tech? What does fail look like.
This is not a zero sum game.
EDIT: you edited while I was replying which makes this a moving target.
EDIT2: The US has already survived depressions and world wars.
I'm not saying everything is great but I'm certainly not brainwashed by the media. Will there be economic trouble ahead- sure. There always are. Are there other places in the world with structural advantages over the USA? I'm not seeing them. Can the US lose its advantages - everything is possible.
> and what in your opinion is rising vs. this decline.
Poverty, destitution, illiteracy, and ignorance are all rising trends in the USA.
> Can you elaborate on how it's in the interest of a hypothetical French person [...]
Completely irrelevant. You don't get to wish for the world that you want. The FACT is, it is the end of the American Empire. And the end of France too in a lot of ways, based on what I can see from here. Especially if there's a lot of folks like you in the population.
How big is your farmstead and how much food can you produce? What skilled trades do you have that are of use in a World War type situation, besides holding a machine gun? Those are facts that will be of importance to you in the coming years.
> EDIT: you edited while I was replying which makes this a moving target.
It's OK if you sit back and wait for my thought to be completed before rushing to reply with your ignorant opinion.
Familiarize yourself with the essay "The Fate of Empires and the Search for Survival" by Sir John Glubb. Then I would recommend America's Secret Establishment by Antony Cyril Sutton.
There are many, many more books you will need to read before you understand anything about the present day, let alone what tomorrow holds.
It is relevant because you seem very young. I'm not young and I've seen processes as they happen.
Eyes and ears are not good enough. You might be seeing some local effects that are biasing your opinion.
I'm interested in your political views because they seem extremely left. Your political views are relevant because they shape your perception of reality and they also tell us what narratives you've exposed to.
I have pretty decent skills in various areas from mechanical, electronics, to woodworking, to music, to martial arts. not to mention software that's my day job. I can grow food. But from your predictions sounds like I need a nuclear bunker on a remote island.
EDIT: "The Fate of Empires and the Search for Survival" -> yeah I've read this a long time ago. This is a common argument about how the US done.
When your theories are consistently wrong, it's time to pause and reflect.
> I'm not young and I've seen processes as they happen.
You're wrong, but you've got your opinions though. Which you are sure are better than mine. The guy whose ancestors literally founded this country.
Please, Mr. Frenchman, tell me more about my own country.
> Eyes and ears are not good enough.
Wrong. They are the foundation of knowledge.
> You might be seeing some local effects that are biasing your opinion.
Wrong.
> I'm interested in your political views because they seem extremely left.
Wrong.
> Your political views are relevant because they shape your perception of reality and they also tell us what narratives you've exposed to.
Wrong. Not a word I can utter regarding my "political views" would help you in any way.
You're nowhere near the level of understanding necessary to have an intelligent conversation on this subject. Worse, you arrogantly believe that your knowledge is better than mine.
Read the essay I took the time to recommend. Read the book I recommended. When you are ready to learn more, then we may have a conversation. Until then, you have nothing to add to this thread that is of any value to anyone.
It is admittedly pretty goofy to get exactly what you want—an army of people making rules for everything under the sun—and come on here and complain about what we’re doing.
Even TFA, which is about yet another rule, has a goofy quote from the Minister of something or other about breaking free from American tools. Linux seems pretty American to me [1]. Maybe they’ll fork. Would be cool.
I would love for nobody to bomb or kill anyone. Did Ukraine bomb Russia? Is Taiwan bombing China that declares it is going to take Taiwan by force?
There isn't a single conflict in the world today where I can see that someone can just say "we're going to stop" and they'll be safe. There is always something more to it. If Ukraine says we'll just stop attacking Russian soldiers is that war over? If Russia says we'll just stop attacking Ukraine and stay where we are is that war over? Is there any other conflict where the answer is simply stop and it'll be fine?
The US are also the major enabler of Israel's colonial expansion and ethnic cleansing of Palestinians. This was clearly expressed by Bin Laden himself as one of the motives behind the 9/11 attacks.
> Were you thinking the US was just minding its own business and some bad guys came and attacked it
As I remember, this was exactly the way the US explained 9/11: "they hate us for our freedom".
No, he didn't. His "letter to America" starts with the question:
"As for the first question: Why are we fighting and opposing you? The answer is very simple:
Because you attacked us and continue to attack us."
And proceeds to list all the ways the US are militarily attacking and oppressing Muslims in the Middle East. It's a long list.
Homosexuality is mentioned only once in the letter, in the next section, where he criticises American society and morals in general and calls it to embrace Islam. This is explicitly an exhortation and not part of the reasons for the attacks (so probably intended as a diagnosis of the symptoms of a moral disease and the proposal of a cure - note that I'm not endorsing it, just explaining its function in the letter).
No, there is no "or else", you are plainly making it up. As I've said, this is the exhortation part of the letter and it's not listed among the reasons for the attacks. Regressive, certainly. Brought as a justification for terrorism, no.
You asked "who did the US bomb before 9/11" and you got the answer. Now you're arguing that they shouldn't have reacted even if the US bombed them before (calling it "an excuse")?
As for the peace process with Palestinians, it was always a sham. The US (as it's evident now to many) are entirely unable to apply any sort of pressure on their "ally". What they've done is just buying time for Israel to expand its colonisation under the temporary pretense of some ongoing "peace process".
"excuse" is a funny way of wording it -- "motivation" or "explanation" might be more appropriate here. is the expectation that the US can and should be able to kill and destroy and the victims just turn the other cheek?
West bank and Gaza were never under full Palestinian control since 1967 both were under brutal occupation or blockade + contant Israeli meddling into internal affairs.
> If a company tells you that it has a special pool of coders who add tests, separate from the ones that write the actual code, that is a bad sign that they know how to do testing.
I disagree this is necessarily a bad sign. The people writing the code have blind spots and they may also not necessarily be experts at testing. Probably the highest quality software I ever worked on was in a setup where we had a combination of the developers writing tests plus dedicated people who wrote only tests. That said, I think this setup is secondary to the quality and experience of the teams and the individuals.
> A huge chunk of the value is forcing the person who makes the front line decisions to think about what they are doing.
I would look at this differently and say a huge chunk of the value is coming from making sure you have the right person in the front line. The wrong person being "forced" to make decisions they're not good at is not going to help you a lot. The right person doesn't need forcing to make the right decisions. People and culture drive outcomes and not process.
Oil is a globally traded commodity so the US definitely does care. The US also does consume oil from the gulf.
That said this term is not going to be acceptable to anyone so it's likely not going to happen. It remains to be seen where we'll be after the two week ceasefire that Iran declared it would never accept (no ceasefire, only end of war). Iran certainly has some leverage but so does the US.
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