I mean, let's be real.

All known US VPN servers and Tor exit nodes--and probably all US Tor relays regardless of exit policy--are going to be considered a totally legitimate "communications facility" target for the warrantless wiretapping system due to exactly the scenario you just posited.

From that perspective you'd be better off using US residential proxies. Of course, while they'll never admit it in court, NSA just does whatever they want, laws be damned, and are almost certainly logging everything. So while such a scheme might theoretically hinder the introduction of evidence in a court case, it doesn't really matter; NSA is still gonna see your traffic and they're still gonna either drone strike you or "parallel construction" your ass, anyway.

It's not a blockade, and everyone involved is simply exercising their sovereign rights. But it is mildly coercive. Which, obviously, is the whole point.

The USA, like all serious countries, seeks to defend and advance its interests. Those interests include the suppression of self-declared enemies like Cuba and Iran, or seeking regime change so they cease being self-declared enemies of the US.

The irony of your claim that the US is starving the Cuban people is that in fact, the US could go that far and it would actually end the enmity from Cuba. But they haven't and they won't. It would harm other interests, possibly engender enmity elsewhere, and outside of total war Americans don't play the game that dirty.

But if people widely believe that's what the US is doing anyway, and they're "doing the time" without having actually having "done the crime", then considering that actually doing it would end the enmity from Cuba, it starts to look awfully attractive to Just Do It. So claiming that they are, when they actually aren't, only makes it more likely that they will.

Anyway, given that both ex-communist states China and Russia have demanded economic reforms from the recalcitrant Cuban regime--which have not been forthcoming--and that food is not embargoed, I think the impoverishment and hunger of the Cuban people can't credibly be blamed on "el bloqueo".

Cuba now imports their sugar--from the US of all places! You really think that it's American policy starving Cubans?

I am not sure about Louisiana, but you very well may be.

State insurance commissions sometimes promulgate onerous regulations that effectively require cost shifting. For example, if it's profitable to keep operating in a state overall, but you can't raise premiums or drop policies for the riskiest properties, then you just raise premiums across the board and let the less-risky subsidize the unprofitable policies.

And rising reinsurance premiums mean that everybody pays more to account for increasing risks and costs in the insurers' portfolios, which may be concentrated in riskier areas far from your own property.

Anthropic wants to have their lunch (low apparent prices, increased market share) and eat it too (controlled costs, adequate production to serve the demand).

They're advertising themselves as a $5 All-You-Can-Eat buffet, but then aggressively and arbitrarily restricting admission, sneakily swapping out the high-quality ingredients for garbage-tier slop, and kicking out anyone who even utters the words "to go box" or "doggie bag".

Would you want to eat at that restaurant?

> LFP batteries don't contain rare earths.

No, but good motors do. And probably GaN FETs to handle megawatt-class charging currents.

EVs are just mechanically much simpler, with a shorter BOM that largely centers around Asian (particularly Chinese) battery, REE, and semiconductor supply chains, so hundreds of thousands of good jobs that supported Germany's industrial model are now economically obsolete.

Maybe it doesn't help Design Compiler turn your shitty design into gold, but faster verification is an unalloyed good.

This paragraph goes hard. And this is exactly why design space exploration is essential. I think you're right that basically, simplistic delay/area models are insufficient and the exploration must be driven by actual metrics of complete P&R flows.

> [...] it's a pretty challenging problem to design a formal specification language that is simultaneously high level enough and yet allows a compiler to do a good job of finding the optimal chip design

My experience in this domain is that actually the challenging problem isn't so much the design of a formal language. Instead the challenge lies primarily in expressing your design in such a way that both generalizes over and meaningfully exposes the freedom in the design space.

> [...] solving the problem of "what is the most efficient way to approximate this algorithm with N% precision"

> [...] in many domains it's hard to formulate an error metric that isn't either too conservative or too permissive.

I think the latter comment alludes to my objection about the former: It all depends on what "N% precision" means.

Does it mean that for every input/output pair, the output is always within N% of the correct value?

Or does it mean that for N% of the inputs, the output is correct? Is that weighted by the likelihood distribution of getting those inputs?

Or does it mean that the total mean squared error over all input/output pairs is within N%? Etc. etc.

In other words, I think it goes beyond even conservative vs. permissive; simply, the devil is in the details, and digital circuit design is a difficult multi-objective optimization problem.

And it turns out that we actually live on a shared planet with a common atmosphere; sourcing your fuels from abroad does nothing to prevent climate change. But it does mean that you are unable to secure some of the most fundamental inputs to your economy.

They have been launching, continue to launch, and are planning to launch that and much more.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SpaceX_Starshield

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proliferated_Warfighter_Space_...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_Dome_(missile_defense_s...

"There's a genocide going on in Gaza? Yeah I know, you've been whining about it for years now."

The US feels threatened by Iran's nuclear and ballistic missile programs and has the military force to stop them, probably. Diplomatic avenues bore no fruit. Military force is now being used to--hopefully--end the threat definitively.

Yes, of course we are aware of what happened to Ghaddafi. It's very en vogue to point out the game theoretical incentives to develop nuclear weapons.

But seemingly people never bring up South Africa's disarmament. And nobody ever mentions that game theory also incentivizes the US prevent their adversaries from developing nuclear weapons where possible.

Giving up or stopping development of nukes may invite attack. Refusing to stop developing them may also invite attack.

You have previously intimated that you are also in the United States. Should I dismiss your arguments because you're allegedly based in the US, too?

"The Human Rights Activists News Agency says it confirmed more than 7,000 deaths and that it is investigating thousands more. The government has acknowledged more than 3,000 killed, though it has undercounted or not reported fatalities from past unrest." - https://apnews.com/article/iran-campus-protests-crackdown-54...

'"I would put the minimum estimates to be 5,000 plus," Mai Soto, the United Nations’ special rapporteur on Iran, said in an interview with ABC Australia. Soto noted 5,000 dead is a "conservative" or "the minimum" estimate. Other credible estimates, she said, indicate as many as 20,000.' - https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2026/02/20/how-man...

> as with all reporting about Iran, no proof.

In the same way there's no proof humans ever walked on the moon, I suppose.

We've gone from, "The amazing Islamic Republic of Iran isn't even capable of building deliverable nuclear weapons and they have lots of peaceful reasons to do enrichment to 60%!" to "Yeah OK, they are capable and they are indeed enriching Uranium for their weapons program--hey, look over here! USA and Israel!!!"

https://apnews.com/article/iran-protests-memorials-chehelom-... https://apnews.com/article/iran-protests-crackdown-hospitals... https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2026/02/20/how-man... https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c62v248xkl5o

Honestly I don't even know why I bother. You're not debating in good faith.

> They said they were not pursuing weapon enrichment.

There is literally no other reason for Iran to enrich to 60% U235 than for weapons.