https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47582043

It doesn't seem Iran still has a navy that could board ships and force them to stop without actual violence.

What happens if a tanker decides to not pay and chance it? Will Iran sink it? That would constitute an act of war (a reprise of the war). Hard to pull off politically (even if it's easy to do technically).

Altman SAYS he does not recall the exchange. Not the same thing.

If the US military would like this war to stop they could not fight it, that would be pretty easy I think. Probably not without consequences, but that would show actual courage. Whereas dropping bombs on civilian from afar shows zero.

How do you know? Trump's frustration is on the rise; at some point he very well may threaten nuclear strikes.

Another scenario is, he tries to invade, an Iranian drone makes it through and sinks a big US ship, hundreds or even thousands of American soldiers die in a very short period of time. Now everyone's upset and the American public screams "revenge".

Then anything can happen, really.

Yes and the most important lesson of recent history is for have-nots to become haves ASAP.

Many people are cruel. Not all people, maybe; not most people, also maybe; but some people enjoy hurting others. We see this everywhere. Isn't it possible that this kind of profile jumped on the occasion to inflict pain on people with no fear of repercussions?

In other words, isn't this study just a sort filter to triage / order students from most cruel to less cruel?

We're at war with bureaucracy and the front line is, well, the front line.

Landing on the moon in 1969 was an extraordinary achievement, perhaps the most beautiful thing ever done by mankind. But now? What's the point exactly?

We know we can't go much further than the moon anyway (as this very same blog has demonstrated many times); what do we expect to achieve with astronauts that robots can't do?

Not in my time it didn't. It was thermal paper that grew grey after a while (or a short exposition to direct sunlight); it came in rolls and each page was cut after it was "printed" and fell to the floor where it curled. 500 pages of this would have created a huge, unmanageable mess.

One of the first digital Ixus (IV maybe? from 2000?) made images of just one megapixels, but they were amazing. I miss that thing.

But as said needs are mostly general curve + highlights down + shadows up, it's possible they could simply be a jpeg preset in camera.

This line made me chuckle as well:

> Since I was a teenager I’ve used digital cameras

Digital cameras didn't exist when I was a teenager; and they cost about as much as a car when I was in my twenties. Overall I don't miss film cameras, although the scarcity was interesting. Taking a picture was an actual decision, unlike today.

Yes, that's a great observation. Not easy to fix though.

What's depressing is that it's like Fred Books' book never happened: most managers think the way to solve IT problems is just to trow more people / more money at it until it gets solved; and they're all surprised when it doesn't work, but try again the next time anyhow.

Yeah but you'd think not dying involves killing those who want to kill you, or at least shooting at them! Isn't it super interesting to learn that 80% of riflemen don't ever shoot?

But the most important question is, what's next? If depriving tens of millions of people of energy doesn't work, what will he do next?

One hypothesis is he'll threaten Iran with a nuclear strike. In response, either China or Russia or both, will say that's a line that cannot be crossed.

And then, we will either all die, or be living in a world saved by authoritarian regimes from the irresponsibility of the US.

It will be interesting! But probably extremely unpleasant.

This is a bad start. Louis XIV at Versailles and Marly famously made while forests appear or disappear overnight, to the utter dismay of Saint-Simon, the memorialist, who thought this was an unacceptable waste of money and energy.

And this was before the industrial revolution. Today I'm sure many more miracles happen every day.

After Israel attacked gasfields and Iran retaliated. Iran didn't start any of this.