I mean, if you could actually solve that problem, it would be worth a LOT more than 1 billion. I just don’t remotely believe that you can solve it for 1 billion. Training costs alone would eat that and more.

Firefox with ublock origin for desktop and mobile. Grayjay for mobile (integrates Nebula too so you can get both your feeds at once). Android TV with FCast and Smart Tube Next for your TV. Never see ads again.

Yeah, Nebula is awesome.

This is a completely valid point, and I don’t disagree with the idea that Trump simply did not have any strategic goal in mind when he started this war. I nodded in that direction in my previous comment. I’m definitely not presuming long term thought. Not sure how you would have gotten that impression from my describing him as a being of pure id, incapable of long term planning. You did read far enough for that part, right?

Anyway, I’d still contend that “Bomb shit and feel powerful”, while objectives, do not qualify as strategic objectives. Its certainly possible those were Trump’s only goals - and it does look like he mostly got dragged into this by Isreal anyway - but if that’s the case then we have to conclude that it’s impossible for the war to be anything other than a failure, strategically, because you cannot achieve your strategic goals if you don’t have any.

Trump struggles to understand the most basic question of warfare, which is “What are my strategic objectives?”

To put that in simpler language, “what do you want to get out of this?”

To put this in context, it’s important to understand that, in purely strategic terms, the second, Iraq war war successful. Keep in mind that “successful” doesn’t mean “a good idea”. It was horrendously immoral, did serious longterm damage to the US’ global standing and reputation, cost far too much in lives and dollars, and caused untold harm to the people living in that region. But the goal for the US was to install a compliant government and gain access to military staging points in the region. They succeeded. The cost was far too high, the execution was an endless series of blunders, and they shouldn’t have done it for numerous reasons, ethical and practical, but they did technically succeed in their objectives.

If we were to hazard a guess at Trump’s goal with this military action against Iran - and we have to guess to some degree, because Trump has offered so many different justifications - probably the most consistent goal would be “Regime change.” This has been a fairly standard goal for US policy; replace a hostile regime with a compliant one.

So far they have not achieved anything remotely close to that. The exact opposite, in fact. Arguably, the Iranian regime is now more strongly entrenched and more firmly anti-American than it has been in years. There is little hope for a return to the negotiating table, and the nascent revolution that was brewing prior to the war has been severely damaged, especially by idiotic, self-defeating actions like bombing a girl’s school.

If this war is complete, then it has been one of the least successful wars America has ever prosecuted. Not the most costly by any metric, but the degree to which they have managed to damage their own interests in such a short period of time might be unprecedented.

Many Iranians and some Americans are dead. A lot of military hardware has been expended and destroyed on both sides. But none of those things constitute a goal, or meaningful progress towards one. America’s actual strategic goals in the region are now significantly further away.

Do I believe that Trump will try to declare victory and walk away anyway? Absolutely. In fact I think it’s probably the most likely outcome. This is a consistent pattern with Trump. He doesn’t have the attention span for long term projects, and war is very much a long term project. He loves military power, but he loves to exercise it in brief, explosive orgies of destruction. He’s a man of instant gratification. Pure, unbridled id.

But what it will take to get what he wants out of this - if he actually focuses on his goals for long enough to recollect what they are - is boots on the ground, and that will be one of the hardest and bloodiest military campaigns the US has seen in a very long time.

I do, but it’s more out of laziness than anything else. I hate having to remember sixteen different ways of doing things, so I tend to configure all my stuff as identical as reasonably possible. Is this the best way of doing things? Probably not. But it keeps my blood pressure down.

Yeah, at this point they know they got conned, and they either have to admit that or double down and act wildly impressed at its ability to, like, drive on an unpaved road.

I mean, if the US goes ahead with boots on the ground the cost could be immense. Like Afghanistan, Iran is extremely mountainous. Unlike Afghanistan, Iran has a population of almost 100 million, spread across an area almost 3 times the size of Texas. And you can bet the Iranians paid very close attention to the tactics that worked in Afghanistan, on both sides. Tunnels and caves are extremely effective at nullifying air power, and tanks and IFVs don’t do well in mountains. That means you’re mostly left with grunts and artillery, fighting in terrain they don’t know, and which their opponents know intimately. And that opponent has been preparing for this fight for quite some time.

Oh hey, look, it’s an object lesson in why being a reliable partner on the global stage actually matters.

OK. And Epstein said he wasn’t fucking kids. I don’t know why we would trust the public statements of the Russian government on the subject of whether or not the sanctions are hurting their economy. Seems like the least credible source possible in the circumstances.

Yeah, we’ve been through this exact same game with multiple iterations of Intel and AMD chips. When AMD first started doing consumer CPUs they badged them according to their equivalent Intel clock speed because one to one comparisons were misleading.

What’s the L1 and L2 cache? What are the bus speeds? How many cores and how are they architectured? Multi-threading? How many steps is the instruction cycle? There are so many factors beyond just clock speed that play into real world performance.

I think that’s 100% what this is, and it’s a very smart play if that’s the case. Intel are reeling from some significant setbacks, while Nvidia is swimming in cash. There’s never been a better time for them to make a play for the desktop CPU space.

And they’ve got absolutely no illusions about what’s happening with AI. They’re the ones who are literally paying AI companies to buy their chips. They know the space is collapsing. But as the guys selling the picks and shovels, they can ride out that collapse if they’re smart.

End of the day, if what we get out of this is a new, serious competitor in the CPU space, that’ll at least be some kind of win. With Nvidia’s money and expertise they could really force Intel to get their shit together. AMD chasing their heels is the only that’s ever kept them from completely going to shit, but more competition is even better. With all three major companies playing in both the CPU and GPU spaces, that could be really good for consumers.

Excellent addition, thank you.

Yeah, Hitler understood that you needed the bread as well as the circuses.

That said, the degree to which he improved material conditions in Germany is overplayed in popular media. While the Nazis did push programs like the VW Beetle and cheap holiday packages, their relentless push to rearmament came at a serious cost to Germany’s ability to produce or import consumer goods, and the average German frequently struggled with empty shelves in the supermarkets.

This week, the president belittled the so-called special relationship with Britain for being “obviously not what it was.”

Gee buddy, can you possibly imagine any reasons why that might be?!

It annoys me that I can guarantee they’re doing this to make it easier for agentic AI to interact with the web, but I guess if we get some important accessibility benefits along the way that’s not a bad thing.

Well, I’ll grant you that.

They didn’t, either time. But reality got in the way of the meme so OP ignored it.

The first Iraq war was an unqualified success. There’s really no way around that. Should they have gone the whole way and removed Saddam from power? Maybe. But the goal of the war was to protect Kuwait and that goal was accomplished.

The second Iraq war was stupid, unnecessary, messy, pointless, badly mismanaged, and came at a staggeringly high cost. But it was successful. They achieved the regime change they wanted and ultimately created a puppet state in the Middle East. They’re using Iraqi bases right now in their attacks on Iran, something that would not possible if that war had been a failure.

Doesn’t make it a good idea. Getting what you want isn’t great if you massively overpay for it.

Afghanistan, on the other hand, absolutely counts as a loss. The US got nothing that they wanted - it didn’t even lead to the death of Bin Laden since he was hiding out in Pakistan - and wasted a tonne of lives and resources to ultimately just put the country back in the hands of the Taliban and give them a whole bunch of military hardware.

“Heartwarming! One twin wants to feed all trans people into a giant meat grinder, other wants to raise minimum wage by $0.25, but they still get along despite their differences!”