Yizahi

I wouldn't call a maintenance and ops for a large energy intensive Lunar structure "marginal". The dust is going to be a major pain permanently. Powering the system will be a pain, cooling both railgun and power generation for it will be an incredible feat of engineering. And that's just the initial hurdles of what I suspect would be a thick book list just the problems.

PS: I would also leave it to everyone to evaluate how many seconds would this railgun keep existing until the other superpower will blow it up to pieces, "just in case". Question works the same for any owner and any opponent pairing.

That is a valid argument but so far I'm not aware of anyone doing the complete calculation of what that could entail and which exact medicine could be cost efficient to manufacture like that.

But if that would be a real market case, then Elon's solution is actually the optimal one, and very similar to the possible approach which more knowledgeable space analysts said for years. Basically it is super pointless for humans now to have big manned space stations for any economical purposes. We should build them of course, but they will be a net loss for centuries. If any space research or space manufacturing would be required by the market, then one-off space missions are the only rational way to do it cheaply. Something like the platform showcased here, or something bigger, like a converted Dragon/Cygnus/etc. ship into a mini lab. Commercial Space Stations is a bunk program, specifically in the word "Commercial".

Given the current state of the lift industry and price per kilo, it is economically unfeasible to manufacture or mine anything in space if it needs to be transported down or up the gravity well of any planet. Not even chips.

Funnily enough, all these constructivist and brutalist buildings are often in practice more expensive than something from 19th century. Flat roof means snow and water accumulate there (because effective flat drainage is expensive to construct and to maintain, so it was skimped) and damages roof and corners. No external rain pipes for the sake of flat facades means rain now falls close to the foundation, freezes and cracks it. No rain covers over and under windows (or too tiny) has the same effect. Oversized windows are hard to do and the seating is getting degraded over time while any maintenance to these flat glass monstrosities is prohibitively expensive. Then during the actual usage the heating bills are enormous while the interiors have freezing temperatures. Flat and blocky balconies and protrusions have the same issues and flat roofs. Saving money on the "invisible" parts like rods inside the concrete causes them to rust, degrade and break (remember Genoa bridge?).

It is already a topic in student textbooks, how the first private villa in the constructivist/bauhaus style was wildly over initial budget and suffered severe degradation even in the first few years, strictly because of the design decisions.

Oh, imminent, right? I like the word imminent. Imminent UFO disclosure. Imminent Bitcoin usage as a currency. Imminent Metaverse adoption. Imminent peace talks with Putin.

It's nice to a have a certainty, a predictability in these stormy times. It's reassuring. Imminently reassuring, I mean.

I also recommend works of Gerhardt Fjuck about this topic:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uvU5dmu4sl8

They can simply connect to the existing grid and let others look for alternative or cheaper generation. Who's going to stop them?:)

"Easily", you would use this word for such activity, really? And what's the criteria for "weirdness"? Are you inspecting payload for every packet of legit apps for weirdness? How do you know they are not exploited? And for how low do you propose doing this "easy check", 24/7 forever? I'm utterly baffled by people suggesting things like that with a straight face.

Check what exactly? Run wireshark 24/7 and inspect every network packet for the malicious bits?

Why do we need to "define 12:00"? And if yes, why would that "must" be a be sun's high point? I mean, outside of the tradition and the fear of change.

We really need to finally abandon the notion of strict fixing clocks to sun. Of course without taking it into absurdity and dumb black/white pointless extremes. Semi-rigid fixing of clocks would work just fine imo. Some countries could pin sun maximum to 12:00, some to 12:30, some to 11:30 etc.

All to maximize actual insolation benefits for actual humans.

Humans > machines or ease of calculation or tradition or niche astronomy purposes etc., for me at least.

You have empathy for strangers, that's all. I also wouldn't do that, because then some poor innocent person would buy something "new" for full price, and will receive used returned product, either overpaying from their pocket or facing a hassle and waste of time to punt that can down the line, until some innocent buyer #734 in the chain will accept used product for a price of new and won't return it. I consider such consumerism behavior very sociopathic.

> I don't think you've used one in the last 10 years based on your comment.

The oldest phones with underdisplay scanners are from 2018, so 8 years ago max, just saying :) .

My current Oneplus is 3 years old and my current Samsung is also 3 years old. That's not that old by my standards. Maybe something magically improved specifically in the last two years, but I will believe it when I see it. I remember EXACTLY the same phrases in 2020 with new Samsung flagship and newest scanner tech. Then there were EXACTLY the same claims next year in 2021, with yet another Samsung flagship. And fast forward to 2023 and the scanners were still subpar. I don't know, we'll see if they will every improve to the level of standalone scanners.

Most underdisplay fingerprint scanners are between mediocre to garbage. Optical scanners are slightly better but considered less secure, ultrasonic ones are a flaming PoS. Both on Samsung S-line, A-line and several Chinese Oneplus phones I've used personally, for years at a time.

Usually they require a very specific state of the fingers, not too clean (don't work after washing and drying hands usually) and not too dirty, not too damaged, not too oily etc. Winter zero degree weather causing invisible condensation or wetness on a screen? Nope. Rain or drizzle? Nada. Also Samsung specifically on their S-line has some obvious software glitches I've confirmed on my phone. For example - in normal conditions, inside apartment, with reasonably clean hands, try to unlock and fail 5 times in a row, input password, then immediately lock the phone and try scanner once again and it will work realiably. It seems that having phone initially in "sleep/hibernation" causes its scaner brains to freeze and glitch, and only fully operational OS causes it to start working properly.

I can totally see why Apple would opt for a better user experience, even if it's not as hyped or flashy on a shop display.

Hey, you forgot #3:

Selling sanctioned oil to India and buying unguided cruise missiles from Iran, through the Gulf state laundromats.

And not only CC BY-SA 2.5 requires attribution which wasn't provided by any of the AI corpos stealing that data, it also requires that derivative product MUST be licensed under CC BY-SA 2.5 too. So literally all AI models are in violation.

It is not weird when the standard is either outdated or meaningless. Why exactly a sun high point "must" match precisely 12:00 mark? Literally no one needs that precise match for any valid reason (if it were the case then DST would be impossible, and it is obviously just fine).

Imo the obsession with "solar/astronomic" time is weird. I kinda get the reason - a) we humans hate any change, b) we humans reaaaally like pretty and symmetric concepts. By why exactly it is "a must" that high point of the sun matched with 12:00 precisely? Who cares about that for a valid reason instead of tradition and fear? Why not match it with 11:00 or 13:00 or literally any time point?

Countries have long singe transitioned from the rural lifestyle and should adjust life and healthcare conditions for a majority, not for minority. A majority of population should get as much daylight as possible, for the best long-term health outcomes.

It should be a pretty simple and easy task for professional statisticians. Compile average outside time for every age and every job cohort, overlay them and we will get a nice graph with two nice normal deviation peaks - morning and evening. Then shift a daylight graph (which would be a single very wide "peak" of sorts) overlaid over that outside time graph by adjusting timezone point/center. Play with it until the area matching on both graphs is maximized and bingo - that's the optimal timezone for a majority of population.

I suspect with AI help it can be done in a week by a tiny team, instead of years and decades of baseless shouting and finger pointing and name calling in press, parliament and random social networks.

Lol, are there any adults left in White House? :)

At a guess - corpos like Big 4 consulting agencies and some extreme fintech ones, also corpos like Oracle and the like. And at another guess, outside of a legal agreement with a fixed time period, probably nothing hold them from quickly switching to a better model provider, if any comes ahead.

He has fun. It looks like that over past years war is the only thing which genuinely interests him. And his end goal by my guess, is producing a photo of him sitting next to Xi and Trump, titled "Yalta 2". That is literally all he cares about. This war will never end until he is alive. And given that he has a private hospital built-in in his residence and he had even dismantled street wires along his route to Kremlin to make helicopter evac possible at all points, he will live pretty darn long.

I vaguely remember reading an article at the height of the Nintengo cartridges valuation craze a few years back, that the guys behind the "grading" corporation which produced these insane valuations, were previously convicted scammers who went bust in dotcom and decided to try again.

This whole story about assigning millions of dollars of value based on a state of ten cents worth of cardboard and shrink wrap is craziness. Same with obsessing about the imperfections on the playing cards.

The same happened to me some time before Covid. I booked a nice villa half a year in advance when it was reasonably priced, for summer vacation. Booking was accepted by host. Everything was silent for months and then they cancelled with only weeks remaining until the trip. So of course I had to pay 50-100% more for the similar rental and have only 1/10 of the offers because everything was booked by then. No refunds, no excuses, no explanations.

Never opened AirBNB site again after that. Zero customer protection plus shitty fees and hidden traps (no linen/towels rental was a nasty surprise one time).

Why is anyone surprised in the least? I've been boycotting EA totally since 2012 or 2013, I don't even remember now, and they had a whole ass graveyard of dead studios even back then, on top of other immoral shit and lies they produced. People rightfully blame corpos like Actiblizzard or Ubisoft, but EA was always in a league of their own.

Oh, sorry, I got carried away and missed that part, my mistake.

Article 5

"The Parties agree that an armed attack against one or more of them in Europe or North America shall be considered an attack against them all and consequently they agree that, if such an armed attack occurs, each of them, in exercise of the right of individual or collective self-defence recognised by Article 51 of the Charter of the United Nations, will assist the Party or Parties so attacked by taking forthwith, individually and in concert with the other Parties, such action as it deems necessary, including the use of armed force, to restore and maintain the security of the North Atlantic area.

Any such armed attack and all measures taken as a result thereof shall immediately be reported to the Security Council. Such measures shall be terminated when the Security Council has taken the measures necessary to restore and maintain international peace and security."

Ok, all other members "assisted" Finland "as they deem necessary". No one sent armed forces, to prevent provoking friend Vlad or else... And why even bother, there is no fighting in Finland, Ruzzian force is standing guarding the city and is digging in. Why provoke Putin then if no one is getting hurt. Instead they are all collectively pressuring and blackmailing Finland to not counterattack.

Invasion was successful because they successfully moved their armies into Ukraine and they are still there. Invasion would fail if they didn't manage to do that.

Rational people still, in 2026, operate under a notion that Putin has some definitive target. Well, he does not, the invasion IS a target. The process is a target. So while the war goes on, the whole operation is a success to him personally.

Same with hypothetical NATO invasion. It's target won't be neither victory over the alliance, nor any gains in territory or cities. The point would be to create a permanent ongoing invasion(s) inside NATO member's borders and sustain it.

After reading its older comments, it seems your phrase is rather too polite :) . What a crazy account, like every comment is either a lie or a an insult.

Oh look, a paid propagandist in the wild on HN. You lot don't survive here for too long. Go learn English language rules and then come back (or better don't).

To me, a Ukrainian, it looks like Ruzzia had invaded Ukraine quite successfully and continues doing so. What exactly would prevent Ruzzian army from invading Finland if they would wish to do it? Say for example a battle group takes a Koitsanlahti city and stops there, the official explanation is that they are protecting some pink ponies... ahem... locals over there. Now what? Looks quite successful to me.

There was no coal for generation consumption decline in China, yet. You look at the relative units (percentages), but instead check absolute units. The consumption steadily grew up until 2023 and now it is flat for two years, but it is not yet declining. So all the existing coal generation is running as it were, it's just the new plants maybe aren't constructed. But we are far away from the "deliberately early decommissioning" stage.