Consultants generally don't work for one specific vendor. FDE's are just "Solutions Engineers" that are sitting on-site at the customer's offices indefinitely. I don't love the moniker, but I can't think of an existing word to describe this precisely.
The big contract shops have had customer engineering for decades, and still do.
When you'd buy a $1M+ machine, the real money is in the support contract, and it doesn't take much for the support contract to come with some dude straight out of college who's job it is to sit next to it and parrot back your actual engineering team's opinions.
Total student loans are about $1.8 trillion. SCOTUS blocked forgiveness on $400 billion of that.
Trump-led tax cut policies reduced revenues by ~$1.5 trillion in his first term, and ~$5 trillion in his second term. $800B of PPP loans were forgiven. The oft-cited ICE and CBP budget increases were about $140 billion.
I can't find many other policies championed by Trump that accounted for increases >$200B in increased spending. As a result, there's not really any good 1:1 "Trump is willing to spend $400B on $X but not student loans". Most of his national debt impact has been via tax cuts rather than spending. Where spending did increase in large amounts, it was mostly for the Pentagon, and some % of those increases likely would have occurred under any other administration - so it's hard for me to carve out what Pentagon budget increases were due to his policies vs. the base-case for how much they would have increased otherwise.
Note that it doesn't count the cost of second- or third- order effects (like the cost from the price of oil going up by 50%). Since February 28, crude oil prices increases cost $42 billion in the United States alone.
Being a net exporter is completely irrelevant when prices are set globally. Such a statement is like shining a laser pointer to distract a cat, fun, but meaningless.
Do I realize that? I know we pay a fuck ton of tax subsidies to oil extractors, but the only people keeping happy are the small "mom and pop" oil producers that eat up all that subsidy.
Prices are still set on the international market, that subsidy does not affect prices.
Or, do you have some other subsidy that brings down the prices that consumers in the US pay? If so, name it!
If President Trump–who is so deep in oil & gas special interests that he has decided that US Taxpayers need to pay nearly $1B to cancel a wind power project–is going to start doing export controls to keep oil prices down, well then he runs into the problem that we export and import a ton to get the right type of crude in our refineries. If he is going to start subsidizing oil consumption, well, my god we are in for a wild ride on the economy and deserve all the misery that it will bring.
That means they're passing the cost onto the whole world. The US is making this war everyone else's problem and it's ruining foreign affairs and good standing with the world.
I think people are more concerned about the massive deindustrialization and famines which could result from the Strait of Hormuz being chaotically strangled, not the hit to their pocket books at the gas pump
"Green movements" look for a planned transition away from oil that doesn't cause worldwide economic disaster. The whole motivation is to prevent human suffering, not increase it.
That this makes you wonder indicates that you fundamentally misunderstand the entire point of environmental movements.
Further, even if there was "celebrating" how would you know? Are you involved with the groups politically working towards those ends? Perhaps you should question your information diet, rather than assuming that your information diet is representative of reality.
It is nice to be rich. People in India and Asia are heavily reliant upon oil and gas coming through the strait. When prices shoot up by a multiple, guess what happens? The poorest people have to do without cooking gas. “Rationing” is a cute word to mean the poor take the hit on the chin.
There is enormous, real suffering hitting those who can least handle it.
Edit: I would add that those in the renewables industry are absolutely making lemonade off the situation. Energy analysts agree that short term profits will go up, but long term, everyone is going to be running to renewables. No country wants to have this existential fuel disruption risk hanging over their heads.
Is the job of a leader (or the administration) to foresee threats before anyone else can see it coming? Is their job to make sure that it does not manifest?
It is interesting that when they does it, the majority is against it, precisely because no one else could see it and can agree with the action of the administration?
So it seems that if someone is a very good leader, they will be ridiculed by the very people they are trying to protect. I think this happens if the unit in question is a family, or a country.
I am not picking sides in the on going crisis. But just making an observation.
- Many don't understand that stewardship of nuclear weapons alone is a major undertaking that Iran cannot be trusted to manage. US & USSR alone has several near-miss detonations/launches.
- Many will refuse to accept solely because 'orange man bad'.
- Some are paid to criticize on influential online forums and HN makes no effort to moderate or police such activity.
The ballistic missiles are the danger, and Iran already has those. There is no missile or reentry vehicle in Iran's possession that can credibly threaten the United States with a nuclear weapon.
> US & USSR alone has several near-miss detonations/launches.
According to Seymour Hersh, Israel was close to using their nuclear weapon as well. Why not focus on their disarmament first to deter Iranian retaliation?
> Some are paid to criticize on influential online forums and HN makes no effort to moderate or police such activity.
Yesterday the Iranian embassy in the UK called for attacks in the UK. Today there were stabbings. Iran likes to demonstrate that they can reach out a touch someone.
Case in point. Clearly neither of those are nuclear-level threats, the IRGC and Mossad have both fomented public violence for decades at this point.
Their Tom & Jerry reenactment is not casus belli for the US or Europe. You'll note that no Article 4 has been invoked over Iran because it's not a legitimate security concern for any of NATO's members.
Remember when North Korea and Pakistan had to be prevented from developing nuclear weapons at all costs because they would obviously use them ASAP to kill as many people as they could because they were crazy?
Remember when multiple US administrations have internally pushed for nuking Korea and Vietnam, and yet we are apparently still allowed to have nukes?
Remember when Iran used to have a fully operational biological weapons program that they have dismantled as confirmed internationally.
Iran has enough Uranium to make bombs. The physics package that actually detonates things is not as hard as enriching Uranium in bulk.
Why hasn't Iran used a weapon of mass destruction yet in this almost existential war? I thought they were nuts? I thought they wanted to nuke all the infidels?
Peace in that region of the world, since you can't just bomb Iran consequence free anymore?
MAD has had its virtues extolled, yet assume it won't work with another country because somehow they are even more irrational (if true). Even though that is exactly for whom the MAD strategy is designed and operates under.
It is only the build up of Iran getting a nuclear weapon that is used to go to war.
The game theory here seems rather simple, honestly.
And if Iran is seen as hostile, we need to look at the countries for whom the USA allies with and what wars they launched in the region. And they are plausible nuclear capable where their neighbors are not.
I think Israel is currently a larger aggressor, literally flattening more towns through demolition.
I think the bigger question that you should be asking is what is America going to do for the next 5 years without the stockpile of munitions that the just burned through.[0]
China has every incentive to goad Israel or Iran into starting another round in this conflict so that America will deplete even more missiles. Iran destroying one of these[1] and an AWACS should startle everyone and with the right supplies from China Iran has the capacity to take out even more of them.
So if in two months this conflict heats up again and we're looking at half of these radar systems destroyed and minimal amount of missiles available, would you consider it well worth it?
Because that's a very plausible scenario and I'm very concerned about what the world will look like by the end of the summer if that comes to pass.
This superficial analogy comes up a lot but these two states don't share anything in common aside from internal repression. They're diametrically opposed in their external behavior.
Look at a small sampling of Iran's external actions in the region through the Quds force. The hundreds of thousands of Syrians killed by Hezbollah or the almost 300k dead in Yemen due to the Houthis. Iran's actions in 2019-2022 against CENTCOM bases in Iraq and elsewhere. The puppet Iraqi president propped up by PMF.
North Korea doesn't do anything like this until very recently when they started sending troops to invade Ukraine. They don't organize their state around an expansionist death cult ideology.
NK doesn't behave different due to owning a nuclear weapon. Before the 1990s they were like this too.
North Korea routinely attacks South Korean and US assets in its area like the sinking of Cheonan. North Korea is strongly allied with its other neighbors China and Russia.
Iran is not organized around an expansionist death cult. They have not expanded or attempted to expand at all. They are involved in lots of neighboring conflicts because they are in a region with lots of conflicts. We are also involved in lots of conflicts there.
There is no possible closer comparison for a nuclear Iran than nuclear North Korea.
It's so despicable and dishonest what you're doing equating NK's support for nation states to Iran's support for Quds proxies that receive thousands of missiles and rockets directly from Iran, hijack the sovereignty of the countries they're inside of, worship the Iranian leader as a pope-like figure, assassinate rivals domestically and kill hundreds of thousands of people. Liar.
It's despicable and dishonest to pretend they're different in a relevant way. You can hate Iran till your dying breath, but it has no bearing on the economic question.
the right question to ask is how much worse is the situation now that tensions have been radically escalated without any meaningful path towards Iranian disarmament.
Oh wait, that the Trump and his war criminal friends. They make the problem, blame it on someone else, and then claim they fixed it while making life worse for everyone else. Meanwhile Trump and his corrupt oligarch cronies are profiting massively.
howmayiannoyyou 1 hour ago [dead] | root | parent | next [–]
Regurgitation of talking points doesn't change the irrefutable fact that the JCPOA only kicked the can down the road & Iran was cheating the entire time - as they now admitted during negotiations.
Too lazy, didn't google: it's "Etsy for electronics".
It was a huge part of the DIY maker scene in the 2010's, alongside pioneers like Adafruit, Hackaday, and SparkFun. It meant a lot to people back when 3D printers and drones were something you built, instead of bought. You know, back when "men were men" and The Register (yes, that one) send homemade UAV glider-planes to the edge of space launched by rockets that were themselves launched from high-altitude weather balloons: https://www.theregister.com/2011/07/29/lohan_concepts/
It was a place to buy the things that didn’t exist on any major marketplaces yet. Today, the electronic DIY scene is dominated by Chinese hackers and most things people want are available from China so Tindie got squeezed out over time.
It does not appear that Hackster.io have received responses to their inquiries made >5 days ago (I assume they would make a follow-up post if they did):
> Tindie, Supplyframe, and Siemens have been approached for comment. Rowsell's full statement was available on document sharing site PrivateBin at the time of writing, but was set to automatically delete in the next six days.
> Makers' marketplace Tindie has been down for over a week, following its acquisition from former owner Supplyframe by parties unknown — with claims that it is undergoing a major overhaul following a period of apparent neglect failing to fully placate its sellers.
> Rowsell's announcement has done little to placate buyers wondering if their payments have vanished into a black hole, and sellers who have been left unable to fulfill — or even view — orders and to withdraw their funds.
Ah yes, definitely the language of an organization that totally wants to communicate with candor.
Also zero information about the new owners other than the name of a shell corp associated with an existing "EETree" company in Jiangsu, China that gets (mis?)represented as “a Washington State company”. Much honest, such wow. Sure, there's technically an LLC in Washington, but that's like calling pre-2020 Google "a Bermuda company" (which, tbf, is what Google did to avoid taxes via their Irish ~~subsidiary~~ "parent" company).
And still no information, remarks, or even acknowledgement for all the tindie sellers who’ve been unable to withdraw their funds.
The address listed at https://ccfs.sos.wa.gov/ ( 1475 NW SWENSON CT, POULSBO, WA, 98370 ) is shown on Google Maps as just being a completely empty plot by 2026 aerial photography. There's no way a whole house was built in < 10 weeks and someone was actually living there on February 25, 2026 when that address became their legally official place to reach someone at the company.
It's probably illegal to list that as the address -- the whole point of having a "Registered Agent" for businesses is so that if someone needs to serve the business with legal papers (like Tindie sellers suing for not being able to access their funds) then there's an actual person at an actual place where legal documents can be legally served. If someone doesn't want to make their own address public or isn't actually located in the state, "renting" a proper registered agent only costs $125/year - it doesn't require much more than a glorified mail-forwarding service, they receive your documents, scan them, and email them to you and the courts are happy with that because the business officially got served. It's a bit hard to serve papers to an empty lot.
Not providing a real address where someone can be located is a pretty bad sign for how much this ownership intends to respect any US laws. It's also potentially in violation of RCW 23.95.405, .415, .605 and RCW 43.07.210 & RCW 40.16.030, with penalties up to 6 years of incarceration and/or $15,000 in fines, dissolution of the company, and (most relevant to anyone who can't withdraw their funds from Tindie) a loss of "limited liability" status making the owners/directors/officers personally responsible for anything the LLC owes to anyone.
On the plus side, this year is the first year since the 2023 incorporation that the mandatory annual report wasn't a delinquent filing.
The business has had 3 addresses filed for it since incorporation:
(2023-2024) Principal place of business (a townhome): 1605 S WASHINGTON ST STE A, SEATTLE, WA, 98144-3193, UNITED STATES
(2023-2025) Registered agent (a house with 3 boats): 23022 49TH A VE SE, BOTHELL, WA, 98021
(Effective Feb 25 2026) Registered agent (which was photographed in 2026 to be a completely barren residential plot): 1475 NW SWENSON CT, POULSBO, WA, 98370
That was a huge fraction of computing at the time. Before 1992 or so, the only people I was aware of that was into computers were all associated with a University. Typewriters were still actually very common.
> After a $75 million fundraising round led by U.S. venture firm Benchmark in May 2025, Manus shut its China offices in July, laying off dozens of employees. It then moved its operations to Singapore.
The company itself was based in mainland China less than 12 months ago.
Yeah if an American tech firm had been working in the US for 5 years and then tried to close all US offices down and move its IPs and tech to a different country so that it can sell out to Alibaba or Bytedance, I'm sure the US would react in the same exact way.
The sinophobia in this thread is ridiculous. Whether you agree or disagree with what China is doing, nothing is happening that wouldn't also happen in the US.
What sinophobia? I haven't seen anyone here talking shit about chinese indivuduals. Or are they trashing China (the nation-state)? If we count that as xenophobia, is any unjust criticism of USA "americanphobia"? If so, fine, but I'd rather not anthropomorphize megacorps with monopolies on violence.
You don't think it's possible that Japanophobia could fuel criticisms of Nintendo? Or that Russophobia could fuel criticisms against a Russian company?
One thing is to say that some of the comments may be motivated by xenophobia (could be true, but I'm no psychic, and you likely aren't either), another is to use the criticisms as proof of xenophobia.
Since you mentioned Nintendo, do you think the many criticisms(fair or otherwise) against Nintendo and their games are due to Japanophobia?
I think its fairly clear that, when talking bad about China, they are focusing on its goverment, not its people nor ethnicities.
reply