> Is this good enough for light web browsing, emails and word editing?
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* https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47092006#47100204
* https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2026/02/wikipedia-bans-a...
It is a recognized idiom in many English dialects:
> If people work very hard for long hours for very little money, you can refer to it as slave labor.
* https://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english/slave-l...
> very hard work for which people are paid very little
* https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/slave-la...
> (informal) work that is very hard and very badly paid
* https://www.oxfordlearnersdictionaries.com/definition/americ...
See also "working in the salt mines" where people do not literally take sodium chloride out of the ground.
* https://idioms.thefreedictionary.com/back+to+the+salt+mines
† I've seen articles from 2019 discussing the (alleged?) shortage.
Or: Iran was supporting them already, but more people joined up because they were more desperate because the alternative (aid) had gone away.
The quality/quantity of support from Iran may not even have changed, but rather people's willingness to accept it.
> A rise in instability abroad also creates a national-security risk for the U.S., Wright adds. Yemen—once a major USAID recipient, with $768 million worth of aid flowing into the country in 2024—is also home to the Houthis, an Iran-backed militant group that controls much of the country’s north and has been designated a foreign terrorist organization by the U.S. As USAID funding disappears, support for the rebels is only likely to grow, he says. “Iran can continue to finance rebellions like the Houthis,” says Wright. “These second- and third-order effects might be even more consequential to the U.S. than the direct effects.”
* https://time.com/article/2026/05/15/usaid-shutdown-rise-glob...
* Analysis: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.aeh7122
NYT has no such reporting because it was reporting from ProPublica. In a series of (Pulitzer-prize finalist) articles they estimated about 700,000:
* https://www.propublica.org/series/the-end-of-aid
* https://www.pulitzer.org/finalists/brett-murphy-and-anna-mar...
An analysis in The Lancet estimates that by 2030 as many as 14 million people could die, including 4.5 million children under age 5:
* https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6...
A recent article in Science found that after aid was shutdown there was an increase in violence in various regions where it was previously present:
After the JCPOA the stockpile went to zero (esp. >5% enrichment):
* https://www.statista.com/chart/23528/irans-stockpile-of--low...
* https://www.armscontrol.org/factsheets/status-irans-nuclear-...
* https://www.forbes.com/sites/niallmccarthy/2020/11/18/the-de...
One year after the US left JCPOA (during Trump 1.0) the stockpile started going up again.
If it was worth (i.e., profitable) the effort to create to new supply wouldn't someone have done it by now? If no one is willing to pay for the effort, why should anyone do it at a loss?
(Isn't this, in theory, what The Market™ is all about? If people really wanted something they'd be willing to pay more for it, and it would be an incentive for more supply.)
I've heard the same thing about petroleum. :)
Because until six months ago there was a cheap and convenient supply coming out of Persian Gulf states, and so its importance was not noticed (like so many other items that 'suddenly' became apparent when the supply was suddenly cut off).
> Ripple effects from the war in Iran and the closure of the Strait of Hormuz continue to widen. There's yet another brewing shortage, this time in helium. While most people associate helium with balloons and funny voices, the element is used in a surprisingly wide variety of industrial settings, including semiconductor production, where its role in advanced lithography has been growing rapidly. But helium mining and exploration in North America has been practically non-existent for a variety of reasons. And while the US used to have a strategic helium reserve, the government started selling that down in the late 1990s. On this episode, we speak with Nicholas Snyder, the founder and CEO of North American Helium, which does helium mining in Canada. We discuss the properties of helium that make it so useful, as well as the difficulties of expanding global production and distribution.
* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bjc6MgUY0BE
* https://omny.fm/shows/odd-lots/now-theres-a-helium-shortage-...
* https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/now-theres-a-helium-sh...
The US had a strategic reserve, but it was sold off:
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_driverless_train_syste...
Existing drivers could be moved to customer service roles on the trains (driver+conductor on 1 train -> one coductor on 2 trains), or moved to non-autoamtable roles (buses, trams).
I wonder if some more automation (GoA3/4) would help in being able to run things more often (at least during rush hour?):
Perhaps drivers/commuters should also be better charged for the resources they use:
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Congestion_pricing
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_High_Cost_of_Free_Parking
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_price
We can let The Market™ decide what the alleged convenience of driving is worth.
Not unreasonable, but low farebox recovery (or "subsidies") may still be less expensive than building out roads/highways to handle various situations:
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commuter_rail
* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vxWjtpzCIfA
The idea that roads are subsidized for commuters should also be considered:
Driverless (GoA3) and completely unattended (GoA4) rail operation is possible, which could help with personnel costs:
I know of pilots who buy the +Cellular simply for GNSS and do not get a separate plan.
Charging more for the C-series hardware is understandable, but if there's enough of a 'transistor budget' it would be nice for the GNSS functionality to be more universal (since the N-series seems to be going into everything).
* https://www.apple.com/ipad-mini/specs/ § Location
Edit: to perhaps make it more clear, I meant still sell a +Cellular variant with the C-series chips (or whatever), but move the GNSS functionality into the N-series chips. So you'd have a non-cellular and a cellular, but both would have GNSS.
For a fuller treatment see:
Shareholder value (primacy) is one interpretation on the purpose of companies (and a relatively recent one):
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friedman_doctrine
There are others:
* “Profits are to business as breathing is to life. Breathing is essential to life, but is not the purpose for living. Similarly, profits are essential for the existence of the corporation, but they are not the reason for its existence.” ― Charles A. O'Reilly, Lead and Disrupt: How to Solve the Innovator's Dilemma, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_A._O%27Reilly_III
* “On the face of it, shareholder value is the dumbest idea in the world. Shareholder value is a result, not a strategy...your main constituencies are your employees, your customers and your products.”[72] — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Welch#Politics
If you back to the mid-1900s US:
> In 1949 General Foods’ president Clarence Francis told Congress that he had a “three-way responsibility to the American consumer, to our associates in this business, and to the 68,000 [stockholders in General Foods]. We . . . would serve (the company’s) interests badly by shifting the fruits of the enterprise too heavily toward any one of those groups.” Two years later, the president of Standard Oil of New Jersey claimed that managers needed “to conduct the affairs of the enterprise in such a way as to maintain an equitable and working balance among the claims of the various directly interested groups—stockholders, employees, customers, and the public at large.” So widespread were such views that, in 1959, one writer in the Harvard Business Review complained that it was no longer “fashionable for the corporation to take gleeful pride in making money.” Instead, he complained, it was typical “for the corporation to show that it is a great innovator; more specifically, a great public benefactor; and, very particularly, that it exists ‘to serve the public’.”
* https://law.temple.edu/10q/purpose-corporation-brief-history...
Or further:
> American corporate law has long drawn a bright line between for-profit and non-profit corporations. In recent years, hybrid or social enterprises have increasingly put this bright-line distinction to the test. This Article asks what we can learn about the purpose of the American business corporation by examining its history and development in the United States in its formative period from roughly 1780-1860. This brief history of corporate purpose suggests that the duty to maximize profits in the for-profit corporation is a relatively recent development. Historically, the American business corporation grew out of an earlier form of corporation that was neither for-profit nor nonprofit in today’s parlance but rather, served a multitude of municipal, religious, charitable, educational, and eventually business purposes in early nineteenth-century New England. The purposes of early American business corporations—rather than maximization of profit to private shareholders— were often overtly public, involving development of local transportation, finance, and other much-needed economic infrastructure. With the rise of factory-based manufacturing, railroads, and other capital-intensive industries in the middle decades of the nineteenth century and the advent of general incorporation statutes, the purpose of the American business corporation shifted fundamentally from public to private. By 1860, the stage was set for the modern firm.
* https://repository.law.umich.edu/mbelr/vol9/iss1/2/
The idea that it is some kind of 'legal requirement' is also a myth:
* https://www.mercer.com/insights/investments/market-outlook-a...
* https://info.marsh.com/marsh-cfa-institute-global-pension-in...
* https://rpc.cfainstitute.org/research/reports/2026/marsh-cfa...
The "4" would be valid in hex, decimal, and even octal.
At what point does it become Russian roulette with a Glock?
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_20:23
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sacrament_of_Penance
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confession_(religion)
There was an early Christian heresy what believed that clergy must be faultless for their ministry to be effective and their prayers and sacraments to be valid:
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donatism
And another belief that humans can be saved by their own efforts, without the need for God's grace:
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pelagianism
In some ways your idea would be contrary to scripture (?): since no one can (fully/perfectly?) live those values, then no one can (fully/perfectly?) be Christian. Whereas is in the 'Lewis model' every one can be a Christian, but just a better or worse 'instantiation' of one.
Isn't this what Go programs are to a certain extent?
> Izzat (Bengali: ইজ্জত; Hindi: इज़्ज़त; Urdu: عزت, romanized: 'izzat, lit. 'honour') literally translated: "respect" is a concept of prestige, dignity, and social respect.
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Izzat
* Similar? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Face_(sociological_concept)
I am reminded of the US DST changes back in the 2000s: there was all sorts of drama because a lot of software is written in the US, and there was much 'computerization' in the 1990s, but US coders had never personally experienced a DST rule change during that time period, so any change needed a reboot to pick up the new rules.
That drama led to (e.g.) periodic dynamic checking of /etc/localtime on various Unix-y system.
Sometimes you don't realize that things can be improved until you experience situations in which they currently suck.
Have you ever gone to a mass on random Thursday? There is often no sermon during daily, non-Sunday mass. Yes, there are readings, but the central part of the mass is the Eucharist, which the Catechism (¶1324) calls the "source and summit of the Christian life".