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Miscellanea: The War in Iran

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Re: Miscellanea: The War in Iran

#801

Post by names_are_hard »

johnohara wrote: post #72

The Straight of Hormuz is open to any country willing to pay $2M per voyage. Any country except the U.S. and Israel. The most important aspect of the "toll" is that Iran prefers payment in yuan, not dollars. If Iran succeeds in nationalizing the Straight and is successful in enforcing the toll, it represents a very serious threat to the dominance of the U.S. Dollar as the world's reserve currency for trading energy.

But it's still described as a $2M toll, not a 13.81M CNY toll. So I guess we're not there yet.

Re: Miscellanea: The War in Iran

#802

Post by ChrisMarshallNY »

hansvm wrote: post #631
ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #497

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> buying a piece of shrink-wrapped software and using it for the next 18 years I'm wondering how that works. I have written software that was still being used, 25 years later, but it was pretty much a "Ship of Theseus," by then.

Not all software can be sufficiently insulated from external changes, but almost all software I care about can be. My normal update cadence is every 2-3 years, and that's only because of a quirk in my package manager making it annoying for shiny new tools to coexist with tools requiring old dependencies. The most important software I use hasn't changed in a decade (i.e., those updates were no-ops), save for me updati…

The software that I wrote was a device communication SDK, written in C. It abstracted the hardware/link stuff, and presented a common API.

Basically, a driver. Pretty involved one.

Re: Miscellanea: The War in Iran

#803

Post by GJim »

gloosx wrote: post #798
khhu2bnn wrote: post #26

The amazing part to me is just the perceived invincibility this small circle within the US administration has. You can find dozens of articles with a search limited to Feb 1~Feb 27, plenty of analysis warning of the risks that have now become reality, everything - the strait, no revolution, further radicalization, critically low US stockpiles, abandoning other US partners, gulf destabilization, etc. In the fantasy im…

>In the fantasy imagination of some people Could it be fantasy reinforced by some LLM "advisors"? I have a strong feeling that the people in US administration are talking to LLMs which constantly reassure them that their imagination is the best

Famously, the 'Trump Tariffs' were almost certainly determined by LLM, hence tariffs being applied on uninhabited islands.

https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=trump+tariffs+decided+by+a

Re: Miscellanea: The War in Iran

#804

Post by enaaem »

pstuart wrote: post #449
abraxas wrote: post #260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps they are not as intelligent as you think they are.

I believe that highly intelligent people can do incredibly stupid things -- I've seen it first hand. The correlating factor for those two acquaintances is that they are both devout Christians . I find that to be beyond ironic but also makes sense, as that devotion parallels the appeal to authority and many churches are run by leaders who believe in Supply Side Jesus. I don't mean this to be inflammatory as it's only…

Ironically Jesus always had beef with the religious conservatives of His time: the Pharisees.

Re: Miscellanea: The War in Iran

#805

Post by xg15 »

> Neither is the Middle East [an area of vital security interest to the United States]

> So long as [the Suez Canal and the Gulf] remained open the region does not matter very much to the United States.

I feel his assumption there can't be correct. Just look at the amount of military bases the US has built in the region, or the sheer number of wars there that the US was involved in. I can't imagine that a country would spend that kind of resources, money and lives for an area it deems not of vital strategic importance.

Re: Miscellanea: The War in Iran

#806

Post by ChrisMarshallNY »

throwup238 wrote: post #511
ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #497

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> buying a piece of shrink-wrapped software and using it for the next 18 years I'm wondering how that works. I have written software that was still being used, 25 years later, but it was pretty much a "Ship of Theseus," by then.

Old hardware or emulation of old operating systems on new hardware. Quite common on old industrial machinery and other capital equipment like lab equipment. San Francisco BART for example has to scrounge eBay for old motherboards that still allow DMA to parallel ports via southbridge because it’s too expensive to validate a new design for controllers.

I remember visiting a doctor, about ten years ago (so well into the 21st Century). His laptop was an old one, running NT.

The software they would buy, cost tens of thousands of dollars, and they couldn’t afford to keep upgrading (or the original vendor went belly-up).

Re: Miscellanea: The War in Iran

#807

Post by pydry »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #524
pydry wrote: post #353

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These days conflating criticism of israel with anti semitism is a very clear, very obvious and very reliable racist calling card. Mitch McConnell (adherent of the great replacement theory) accusing Joe Kent of anti semitism gave the accusation the same gravitas it would have if Strom Thurmond or the Grand wizard of the KKK did it. i.e. it only serves to underscore the accuser's racism.

> These days conflating criticism of israel with anti semitism is a very clear, very obvious and very reliable racist calling card No it isn't. There are lots of anti-Semites who just don't like Jews irrespective of Israel's foreign policy. There are also a lot of people criticising Israel who are idiots, alongside the–I believe–majority who have thought deeply about the issue and concluded dispassionately.

Yes, anti semites exist but trumped up accusations of anti semitism against israel critics is still one of the most reliable indicators of a vehement islamophobe.

And, they hate anti-racists almost as much as they hate muslims.

Re: Miscellanea: The War in Iran

#808

Post by pydry »

brendoelfrendo wrote: post #378
pydry wrote: post #353

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These days conflating criticism of israel with anti semitism is a very clear, very obvious and very reliable racist calling card. Mitch McConnell (adherent of the great replacement theory) accusing Joe Kent of anti semitism gave the accusation the same gravitas it would have if Strom Thurmond or the Grand wizard of the KKK did it. i.e. it only serves to underscore the accuser's racism.

Did I cite Mitch McConnell? No, I did not. I tried to be clear that I am not accusing Joe Kent of anti-Semitism because he is criticizing Israel, and Mitch engaging in that kind of rhetoric is only serving to make it harder for me to make my point. I am accusing Kent of anti-Semitism because he has a history of engaging in anti-Jewish conspiracy theories and consorting with neo-Nazis. My point is simple: we should no…

>Did I cite Mitch McConnell? No, I did not

You didnt cite anything so i googled to see whom or what you might be talking about and thats all that popped up.

It turns your vague accusation only matched the equally vague accusations of a rather nasty white supremacist zionist.

I think that says that Joe Kent is being slandered mainly by some rather extreme genocide denying racists.

Re: Miscellanea: The War in Iran

#809

Post by arkensaw »

jmyeet wrote: post #714
AYBABTME wrote: post #665

I think this analysis is missing the big picture. (1) reducing oil shipments to China is good posturing for the US; hence Venezuela and Iran ahead of 2028. These are shaping operations. China suffers more from these conflicts than the US. (2) Iran isn't the only one who can control passage throught the strait. All gulf countries can do so. If Iran can cheaply cut off passage, so can Saudi Arabia and UAE and everyone…

The tl;dr here is, with all due respect, that your premises are basically all wrong. > (1) reducing oil shipments to China is good posturing for the US No, it isn't. For several reasons: 1. China has stockpiled ~1.4 billion barrels of oil. it'a net importer. Supplies from Russia aren't disrupted. At present, Iranian oil is still gointg to China; 2. China is rapidly decreasing its dependence on fossil fuels with renew…

> Take desalination plants as an example. Yes Iran has those too but Iran also has significant snow melt as a source of water, Mountains, remember? Iran has ski resorts they have that much snow.

Iran has suffered six consecutive years of drought, which has been bad enough that they were considering (before the war) moving the capital from Tehran to Makran on the coast of the Caspian

Re: Miscellanea: The War in Iran

#810

Post by aucisson_masque »

tw1984 wrote: post #666
aucisson_masque wrote: post #540

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Beside, on the rate earth materials, it just happen that China is able to exploit it cheaply but other countries also have access to them and could very well exploit.

> other countries also have access to them and could very well exploit. only in your wet day dreams. let's just look at Gallium which is arguably one of the most critical for defence. to produce 100 tons of Gallium, which counts for 10% of the global supply each year, you have to have 200 million tons of Alumina capabilities. "other countries" won't be able to do it, as they don't have affordable electricity and skil…

Well I am referring about rare materials for battery, energy storage, solar panel because the discussion was about that.

I don't know about defense needs, could be true, but I guess they are much less important in volume that the other. You may be able to store them in case of disruption.

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