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SLS has just put a capsule into orbit around the moon, however, while Starship has yet to embark on its first orbit of the Earth, with no date in sight. Additionally, pinning the entirety of the American space program on a single private company seems like a recipe for disaster.

It's mostly increases in targeting and accuracy -- in the era of air-dropped bombs, and early ICBMs and cruise missiles, having a reasonable probability of kill on a hardened target required an absolutely enormous warhead. With the minuscule circular error probables of modern weapons, the "city killers" of the 1950s and '60s simply aren't necessary in modern nuclear doctrine.

As you mentioned, fallout is greatly decreased by the reduction in warhead size. Additionally, as airbursts are more effective at causing damage, they have taken precedence over ground bursts, and have a substantial impact on the reduction in fallout.

The concept of a nuclear winter is primarily related to the expected firestorms in cities and forests, which would throw colossal amounts of soot into the air. With infrastructure devastated by the strategic weapons exchange, the resources to effectively fight the fires weren't expected to be in place, so it was thought they'd burn out of control. While there has been debate over how realistic it is that a nuclear winter would occur from a strategic nuclear exchange, nobody doubts that it would be catastrophic.

And how the test pilot who was flying the F-14 to get the shot for the movie died[0], as well.

[0]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Art_Scholl

This may sound like a distinction without a difference, but it is explicitly illegal to give money directly to politicians in the United States. Lobbying is giving money to their campaign committees, which get them elected or re-elected. It is also explicitly very illegal for campaign committees to use their funds to do anything for the candidate -- there are a huge[0] number[1] of politicians[2] who have been severely[3] penalized for flouting campaign finance laws. Further, there are severe restrictions on what the campaign committee can use their money for, which is largely restricted to travel for the campaign, advertising, and paying campaign staff.

These are just some recent examples of federal politicians who have run afoul of these laws, but they apply at all levels of government, as well as to staff (both campaign staff and the official staff of elected officials).

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duke_Cunningham

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duncan_D._Hunter

[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jesse_Jackson_Jr.

[3]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Grimm_(politician)

The Lusitania had nearly 1,200 of its passengers killed when it sank. It was clearly sunk by a German submarine. That was a much more overt act of war.

There is no such thing as NATO waters, only the territorial waters of NATO members, who must choose to invoke Article 5.

This is not an act of war with Germany. This happened in international waters. The pipeline is already shut down. This does not affect Germany's gas supply, as they were already receiving no gas from Nordstream 2.

Additionally, the assumption that Germany would declare war on Russia unilaterally over something like this is flawed. Sure, if this were a verifiable and identifiable attack on German territory, maybe. To suggest that any attack on international infrastructure in international waters with no mechanism for identifying the actor is intended to do anything other than instill fear is mistaken.

I'm certain that there will be investigations from NATO navies soon, and we will have some explanation. Whether or not that's actually what happened or not will depend on who did it and who is most beneficial to pin it on, but I'm sure there will be pictures that are illustrative.

Have you listened to Revolutions, his more recent podcast? Also great — and there are ten seasons, each about a different revolution, in-depth.

That's a little disingenuous, regarding the F-15 -- there is the A/B series, with A being single-seat and B being the two-seat trainer, and the C/D series, with the same distinction between the two models. Both the F-15A and the F-15C are air superiority fighters, with an exclusively air-to-air role. The F-15E is a multirole fighter-bomber, not an air superiority fighter. The F-15X is an F-15E repurposed as a beyond visual range (BVR) missile truck, with data links to AEWC planes that can provide targeting solutions for those missiles. All of the letters between E and X have not been used.

I think it’s fair to say that Rust has changed massively since initial release. There are certainly safety aspects, but doing what you describe should be trivial and trigger none or almost none of them.

The compiler’s error messages are fantastically helpful these days. Might be worth a tinker some rainy day, but understand being completely turned off of something as well.

I've read the book, albeit 15 years ago. That may not be the entire thesis, but it is the primary component of it. From Wikipedia[0]:

> Fukuyama argues that history should be viewed as an evolutionary process, and that the end of history, in this sense, means that liberal democracy is the final form of government for all nations. According to Fukuyama, since the French Revolution, liberal democracy has repeatedly proven to be a fundamentally better system (ethically, politically, economically) than any of the alternatives, and so there can be no progression from it to an alternative system. Fukuyama claims not that events will stop occurring in the future, but rather that all that will happen in the future (even if totalitarianism returns) is that democracy will become more and more prevalent in the long term.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_End_of_History_and_the_Las...

They are and they aren't. Both parties have national bodies that vote on a platform which all candidates are ostensibly meant to support. It's not as rigorous as parties in a multi-party parliamentary system, but it's certainly not true that they are only labels.

It may be narrative, but it's also a major component of many people's worldview -- especially of late, as the polarization has increased. The strength of one's bond to that worldview and the number of people who feel strongly both feed back into the party's platform, as those people are the primary voters (or "base").

From the engineer's perspective, it's hard to take seriously a manager that is completely ignorant of any of your day-to-day work.

The Democratic Party has completely lost its bearings. It transformed from being a pro-union, center-left party in the middle of the 20th century into a "third way" neoliberal party that is much more well known for its social stances than for any semblance of a cohesive economic policy.

The article denigrates Bernie Sanders and "the Squad" as being extremely out of touch with mainstream American political views, but on average 40% of eligible voters do not vote in presidential elections, not to mention midterm elections with their even worse turnout. American adults are disillusioned, and feel that no matter who wins elections, nothing will change -- and to a large extent, this is true! The biggest economic proposals of any candidate in recent memory were the "Medicare for all" proposal from Sanders, and Obama's healthcare reform.

Imagine a world in which Obama had leveraged the 60 seats the Democrats had in the Senate to propose a single-payer healthcare system, rather than Romneycare. Of course the Republicans were going to throw a fit, stomp their feet, and call it socialism -- they've been doing that for decades. Starting from single-payer healthcare would've given the Republicans room to negotiate the bill into something actually bipartisan, but by starting with the furthest-right possible position, all they could do was say no. The desire to pass a bipartisan bill meant only that the Republicans were allowed to criticize the Affordable Care Act as socialism, despite the fact that they themselves had proposed an almost identical measure in the '90s under Gingrich, and Romney had implemented the same in Massachusetts.

Imagine a world in which Obama had leveraged the 60 seats the Democrats had in the Senate to propose a New New Deal, rather than the anemic $800 billion that ended up being spent on the Recovery Act. There was so much room for far-reaching infrastructure and green energy spending that just didn't get to happen.

The Republican party thrives on the government implementing half measures. It is worse to have an underfunded and thereby ineffective government program than it is to have no program at all -- look at the NHS in the U.K., which is a perfect example. The Conservative party removed a huge amount of funding from the NHS, and it began struggling. Wait times have increased, and quality of care has decreased. Now the Conservatives get to use the NHS as an example of an ineffective, inefficient, and failing government program, and are proposing private options to "bolster" it. If they just increased the funding and actually hired people and paid them well, this would be a non-issue.

In sum, I think that the Democrats need to show some cohesion and spine for once. They need to come up with a unified economic policy that is well-vetted, and they need to completely ignore Republican criticism, rather than waffling and watering things down. Nothing turns a voter off more than a politician who's views are blown about with the winds of opinion -- a simple, strong message that promises to make individuals lives better can be enough. They also need to stop proposing policies that result in large swathes of the population being immediately turned off -- there are nearly 400 million privately owned firearms in the United States -- it is simply not feasible to ban them at this point. What can be accomplished is regulation around the acquisition of firearms and ammunition: universal background checks, classes with meaningful exams, licensing to be able to buy (but not registration of the firearm itself, which plays right into the "gun grabber" fearmongering).

When Republicans say "this will mean tax raises!", the Democrats should respond "no, this will mean the closing of tax loopholes that allow the wealthiest individuals and corporations to shelter their profits from taxation".

When Republicans say "this is socialism and will take away your freedoms", the Democrats should respond "this is not socialism -- our European friends have policies that go far beyond these, and they are just as free as we are".

This stuff isn't rocket science -- the rest of the developed world has figured out a way for center-left and even left parties to move forward substantive policies that improve the lives of most citizens. The Democrats need to stop cowering and start leading.

I don't think anyone can possibly take the guy seriously after he wrote _The End of History_. What an absolute joke of a hot take that was. Did he truly believe that just because the Soviet Union and its satellites had a governmental collapse that the entire planet was going to turn into a liberal democracy?

It's pretty widely accepted that the government will help people gain and maintain access to infrastructure, even (especially?) in rural areas. Ever heard of the Rural Electrification Administration[0]? The Tennessee Valley Authority[1]? Despite the fact that it is not considered a _necessary_ utility de jure, internet access is hugely important in our modern society and economy. These areas have post offices, electricity, trash service, etc., so why shouldn't they also have access to internet? Those other utilities cost money to install as well.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rural_Electrification_Act

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tennessee_Valley_Authority

That's not advertising though -- the commenter stated that the scope of the law was for edited photos in advertisements.

That's ~575 new employees per week (probably more, making up for turnover)! Absolutely wild.

I haven't found one, unfortunately -- just setting team-wide architecture policies, and then using linters extensively to make sure those policies are adhered to.

It has so many built in footguns, however. For instance,`SerializerMethodField`, in conjunction with a list endpoint, can generate a huge number of queries if one doesn't prefetch appropriately, and this issue is very difficult to catch with a linter. Granular test coverage is difficult because the testable unit is the ViewSet or the Serializer. I think DRF is great for rapid prototyping and early stage development.

In the long term, with a lot of complexity and a large organization, a more mature architecture that relies on components that wrap tables, composed together to form components that wrap business logic, which are composed into endpoints. Something like that is much easier to test and more scalable for disparate teams to step into and understand.

Right now, for instance, the American military:

- desperately needs a new self-propelled howitzer, as the M109 is a 60-year-old design that has been upgraded to its limit, and can no longer perform adequately in a modern near-peer engagement

- the AIM-120 AMRAAM is outclassed by other beyond visual range air-to-air missiles developed in the last 30 years

- the OH-58 Kiowa, based on the Bell JetRanger, was the Army's scout helicopter for decades -- but was retired in 2020 without a replacement

- the Ticonderoga-class cruiser, which was the first incarnation of the Aegis anti-air and anti-ballistic-missile system, is being retired without a replacement, forty years after it entered service -- its planned replacement, CG(X), was cancelled, and so more Arleigh-Burke class destroyers with larger Mark-41 VLS cells are being shoehorned in

- the Arleigh-Burke class destroyer, which also has the Aegis system, is still in production after 34 years because the Zumwalt-class that would've replaced it was a total flop due -- its eight-inch Advanced Gun System requiring bespoke ammunition on the order of $800,000 per round

These are all replacement programs that could have been (and in some cases were) started over a decade ago, but we are just now seeing the fruits of some of the very long development processes.

- the ERCA (Extended-Range Cannon Artillery) is not forecasted to enter service until 2025

- the AIM-260 is meant to enter production this year

- there is currently an ongoing competition between Sikorsky and Boeing to build the Army's next scout helicopter

- the DDG(X) program will replace both ship classes eventually, but is not even meant to begin construction until 2028

Meanwhile, one shining example of the successful replacements of older programs is the Virginia-class submarine. It remains one of the few examples of American military procurement that was delivered ahead of schedule and under budget, while still being a success.

That's not the _new_ Chinese carrier, that's the Type 002 class carrier _Shandong_[0]. Their latest carrier, the Type 003 class Fujian[1], was launched last month and has a catapult system, just like American and French carriers.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_aircraft_carrier_Shand... [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_aircraft_carrier_Fujia...

It's a 10x improvement by being 10x the size -- it hasn't improved efficiency by 10x or anything remotely like that.

I'm not talking about all validation, I'm talking about a length constraint on a string (that isn't something like a US state, which should be a two-character field) -- already a pretty uncommon thing. At work, our codebase has 975 instances of a column storing a text value, and the length is material only in a very small handful of those.

Yep, that's fair enough. In my experience, however, in the vast, vast majority of cases, folks either don't actually care about the length, or they should be using business logic in code to do the validation, rather than waiting for the database to yell at them, invalidate their transaction, etc.

Right, but use a check constraint and not a data type constraint (i.e. `varchar(x)`).

That sounds more like a code review issue -- `blob` would've been an appropriate storage type in that case.

> The solution was to grow the slug column to 512 characters and retry.

No, the solution is to always use `text` as your column type, and use a check constraint if you need to enforce a limit. It's much easier and safer to alter a check constraint than it is to change a column type live in production. The `text` type and `varchar(x)` are identical under the hood, `text` takes up no more space on disk.

Those HP Laserjet printers were just incredible. They printed pages so quickly and crisply. That warm toner smell :)

You can do it pretty much verbatim, with dynamic dispatch using enums and lots of pattern matching.

It gets a bit trickier when you are nesting environments for closures and the like, but certainly nothing insurmountable without a few things from the standard library.

This is a complete misunderstanding of warfare. Drones cannot take and hold ground. Without infantry, an external power cannot exert influence over an area. Sure, they can wantonly kill civilians, but that doesn't mean they are in charge. Until and unless autonomous drones with general artificial intelligence can be mass-produced and deployed on the scale of infantry brigades, massed infantry will be required. Even then, an EMP could disable those drones in one fell swoop.

They are absolutely not disposing of obsolete weapons -- and the West has no desire to "carve up Ukraine". How did Washington antagonize Moscow? NATO is a voluntary defensive pact. The Eastern European countries, who all have a long history of being oppressed and occupied by Russian (and Soviet) governments, asked to join NATO. What good would it do for the West to start a war? What is there to gain from brinksmanship when the stakes are a strategic nuclear exchange?

The idea that this war is at all something provoked by the West, or in any way defensive on Russia's part, is pure Russian propaganda. The Putin regime fears the democratization of its neighbors resulting in its own people losing confidence in its ability to lead the country. This phase of the war is merely an extension of Russia's desire to quash any semblance of Ukrainian agency -- this war started in 2014, after the last vestige of Russia's control over Ukraine, Viktor Yanukovich, fled the country.

Finally, your view actively denies the Ukrainian people their agency. If they did not find this war worthwhile, if they did not think Ukraine as an idea was worth defending, why are they dying in their tens of thousands to defend it?