anyone with twenty years of devops experience is likely to abhor Diallo's hot take and for good reason.
AI is being sold as a developer, as it is being sold as the do-everything alternative to traditional processes and methods. it is not being sold as an intern or a junior, but a real developer.
turning the tables and gaslighting devops professionals into believing the issue isnt an emerging technology with overwhelmingly heavy handed marketing and profitless operating strategy thats been shoehorned into seemingly everything and promises anything, but somehow their own oversight, will destroy whatever "vibe code" market you think you have at the cusp of a global recession.
had this AI been a real programmer chances are great they would have (intelligently) foreseen the possibility of damaging a production environment and asked for help.
to play devils advocate: you could hire a junior dev for a fourth of whatever the AI token spend is, and have likely avoided this issue entirely. sure, a greybeard is going to need to pull themselves away from some fierce sorting algorithm challenge for a second to give a wisened nod, but you would have saved yourself an inexorable amount of headache and profit loss in the longer run.
>It’s not a fun place for me to be anymore. I want to be there but it doesn't want me to be there. I want to get work done and it doesn't want me to get work done. I want to ship software and it doesn't want me to ship software.
Has anyone else shared this sentiment? If so Redmond needs to lean in hard.
this is an absolute killing blow for Microsoft if it gains real traction. You made developers your cornerstone eight years ago for nearly 8 billion dollars. you spent another 2bn on minecraft to clinch the deal with young developers and the code camp kids.
Youve lost the OS, and the server realm. Lose the developers, and youre on your way to becoming the Xerox of the 21st century.
> Youve lost the OS, and the server realm. Lose the developers, and youre on your way to becoming the Xerox of the 21st century.
This is a very HN take. MS is terrible or at best "second tier" on everything they do including gaming, they also lost the mobile race, they're very likely going to lose the AI race, but they'll still hold hostage of the vast swathes of average white collar workers with Office, people that don't care at all about technology as long as they have Word and Excel.
There's a reason why writing .docx was one of the first proper skills that Claude got.
It's something that Microsoft leadership themselves certainly seems to have believed at times. From "developers, developers, developers, developers!" to courting Linux-targeting webdevs with WSL to VSCode, they've done lots to court developers, sometimes explicitly professing it as a central part of their strategy.
I can't disagree with any of the rest, though. Microsoft's (anti-)competitive strategy has never been about excellence so much as positioning worse stuff to win in virtue of network effects and integrations.
I think it's more accurate to say that Wine contains some components that are emulators, not that it is an emulator. Sure, it has to emulate the x86 MMU's segmentation behavior, because Linux doesn't set it up the same way. It has to emulate x86 interrupt & CPU exception delivery, because Windows delivers those to applications in a different way than Linux does. For some very old programs, it has to emulate I/O ports and some device behavior. I think GDI and DirectDraw require emulation of a framebuffer and palette hardware.
But the vast majority of Wine's code is not emulation; most of it is a clean-room reimplementation of the win32 APIs, a PE/COFF loader, Windows registry, etc. All of those parts are implementations of API contracts and binary format parsers, not emulation, in the same way that GNUstep is a reimplementation of NeXTSTEP/Cocoa, and not an emulator. (The main difference being that Wine can run Windows executables unmodified, whereas GNUstep expects you to recompile/relink from source. That is a sizeable difference, but not an emulator-sized difference.)
And yes, the computer science definition of "emulator" doesn't specify hardware: it's simply a system that reproduces the externally observable behavior of another system. But if we follow that definition too closely, then things that are clearly not emulators become emulators. Like musl and glibc are emulators of the C standard library (or of each other?), Android is an emulator of the Java virtual machine, and Mesa's software renderer is an emulator of OpenGL or a GPU (that latter bit is tempting, but it really isn't a GPU emulator). At this level, "emulator" just means "abstraction layer", which makes it pretty useless as a term if we take it that far.
So I think "WINE Is Not an Emulator" is true. It contains some bits that are absolutely emulators, but it is not, in its entirety, an emulator, and emulating isn't the function of the bulk of its code.
(I'm not trying to be pedantic here; this was actually a fun thought exercise about emulation in general and Wine in particular.)
> but they'll still hold hostage of the vast swathes of average white collar workers with Office, people that don't care at all about technology as long as they have Word and Excel.
I can't wait for the anti-trust lawsuits. M365 and O365 are already super shady in terms of being able to migrate out or be interoperable with other solutions. "Accidental" roadblocks almost everywhere.
Basically, Microsoft furiously bribed their way into formally standardizing the utterly broken MS Office formats, so EU and potentially other regulators couldn't mandate them to be "interoperable" with existing standards (e.g. OpenDocument, based on OpenOffice, which was on its normal way to become standardized with no fast tracking and no bribing). They even called it "Office Open" to foster confusion.
They can do whatever they want and get away with it because a big part of their business model is, much like Oracle and SAP, based on bribing government bodies across the world.
Yes, but this time there’s the additional driving force of countries trying to become more self reliant and not get locked into US software giants (France and Germany for example). A long way to go, but it’s gaining more traction than the past half-assed attempts.
FWIW I also think an underappreciated advantage is Windows Server (last I checked that was still rock-solid) and Active Directory. Lots of CIOs / CTOs would correctly veto a move off of these, absent a specific technical problem. This is really more of a "hard knocks" lesson than anything fundamental to operating system design or implementation, but: the two Linux shops I worked at got at least a little sloppy about the sudoers list, or got frustrated and gave too much access to a "shared" folder, etc etc, largely because the admins got fed up with all the Mother May-I-ing. It just seemed to inevitably turn into a mess; sometimes that mess is fun and even productive, sometimes it's actually unacceptable.
Even the research hospital I worked at had a proper SELinux setup on the Red Hat installations, but by-quantity most servers were CentOS and it was way more of a free-for-all than it should have been, e.g. I was the fed-up admin when I was really not qualified! I screwed up a lot. Not that big of a deal: this was research-related computing and deidentified data. All the clinical computing was Windows Server. That is not a coincidence, it is really a market difference.
As someone who hates Windows 11... I do like the core Windows kernel, and would much rather do IT on Windows machines than Linux machines. Windows NT is very fussy and a bit bloated, but a huge part of that is an admirable commitment to backwards compatibility; a lot of XP applications run fine on Windows 11, except DPI wonkiness. And Windows' driers advantage isn't just commercial support; the kernel is fundamentally leaner and faster than Linux at real-time IO, and better about cleanly isolating driver processes across privilege levels. Very broadly, compared to Linux I find administering Windows easier to navigate and harder to screw up, especially with handling user permissions. Surely part of this is what I grew up with, but there's also a values difference: a lot of Linux users like how low-friction it can be since the OS doesn't get in your way. I kind of like that Windows makes you turn an excessive number of disarming keys... even when I am frustrated by it.
It does make me quite sad that the only real general-use OS options are the apex of a 20th-century operating system family, Apple's version of that, and a truly 21st-century monolith-microkernel hybrid whose specific design is a mystery to public science.
They're referring to the Windows kernel; see the preceding paragraph on the Windows kernel - the three general purpose OS families are Linux, macOS, Windows.
Personally I think not enough credit to macOS here; Apple's Mach/XNU has been microkernel flavored since the NeXT days and many subsystems run in userspace like Windows.
Last years Crowdstrike outage never hit any of the macOS computers with CS installed because on macOS the Crowdstrike agent runs entirely in userspace thanks to the Endpoint Security framework.
Really the security of macOS is probably the best of all of the desktop OSes, and as annoying as it can be.
People have been saying that MS was becoming obsolete for at least two decades. And a few times, it did seem heading to obsoletion: first when Google Docs launched, and second when Windows Phone failed.
And yet we're where we are. MS is still one of the most important corporations. Perhaps the most important one if you only count enterprise usage.
I'd say that for the majority of old-school, established, non-tech organizations (oil, steel, manufacturing, governments, etc), it's not only an issue but it's the de-facto standard, along with Exchange, ActiveDirectory and all the nice things that come with it.
> you spent another 2bn on minecraft to clinch the deal with young developers and the code camp kids
You think? They're still pushing the "native" Minecraft that isn't scriptable aren't they? And maintaining the fully moddable java MC against their will.
I know there is a complicated history here as well but I personally find VS Code pretty satisfactory for my needs and really appreciate that it's free.
Not sure if that balances out the burning fire of hate I feel for Microsoft Office but it's something.
Nope. I think all this is mostly virtue signaling and a bit of "GitHub derangement syndrome" in the water.
People are ANGRY about the AI boom impact right now and "microslop" is trending harder than "M$" back in the day.
MH had a weird ass set of Tweets a month or so ago talking about GitHub needing disruption and how the UI was bad. Now it's "Not fun anymore".
I guess you die a hero or live long enough to be irrelevant and shouting at clouds like Stallman.
Work at a company on GH Enterprise. Outside those recent major incidents and a few spots here and there we haven't even noticed issues. It NEVER comes up on engineering or leadership meetings as an issue or risk. Not a single time has GitHubs issues come up as an agenda item. Yeah, YMMV but still...
> People are ANGRY about the AI boom impact right now and "microslop" is trending harder than "M$" back in the day.
The writer of this blog post is Mitchell Hashimoto, and he has posted positively about AI, so that doesn't track at all.
The reason people are talking about it is because the decline is rapid. That's worse than the raw downtime. There's a sense that it will be even worse in a year.
I'm not a fan of AI everywhere but I have 0 reason to think this is from AI usage at Microsoft. Still, we talk about the issues a lot. We used to do our project management in GitHub. For whatever reason, projects don't work anymore. You can add an issue to a project and it won't show up. So we moved that part off of GitHub. That's too bad, I liked linking to issues.
If this happens enough, the only thing left will be hosting code, and we'll look at each other and go "we can do this anywhere"
Cursed by mighty Redmond to roam the market wasteland until death, one of the seventy some odd beleaguered CoPilot products is now being lashed like a haggard burro to the dying light of a once prominent development platform that, upon itself, were pinned the hopes and dreams of a commercial software juggernaut to capture the hearts and minds of developers all around the world.
exactly. this sounds like a third path where the UAE charts its own course, and that course increasingly looks paved in Yuan.
OPEC cartel membership didnt gain it access to Hormuz, and the US petrodollar promise to protect UAE states from aggression in exchange for trade in USD could not be upheld.
> the US petrodollar promise to protect UAE states from aggression in exchange for trade in USD could not be upheld
Well the war is still ongoing, and Iran's regime is already feeling the pain of the blockade [1]. Pricing oil in Yuan because, I guess, the US is somehow not protecting the UAE doesn't make sense because China won't be there to protect them either. The US can just say, well fine you can sell your oil in Yuan. But we'll just blockade the Straight and seize oil priced in Yuan or something. Who exactly does the UAE need protection from? Iran? China's ally?
I swear I read this same story over and over again. There's always just an accusation "thing happened, here's how the US is now in a state of being screwed" and there's just never any follow-up or perhaps imagination that the US could just do something too. Hypersonic missiles? US Navy is done for, no possible counter. Iran has drones? Boom. US is done for no way they can spend Patriot missile money on $30,000 Iranian drones. Nope, nothing anyone can do at all. Iran "closes the Straight", well the US can't do anything. Now they are "embarrassed" and "slammed".
> OPEC cartel membership didnt gain it access to Hormuz
> Pricing oil in Yuan because, I guess, the US is somehow not protecting the UAE doesn't make sense because China won't be there to protect them either.
It is an admission that US protection was always a paper tiger. Perhaps in the 1960s it meant something, but Iran has shattered the illusion that Washington has any credible defense of the country.
> The US can just say, well fine you can sell your oil in Yuan. But we'll just blockade the Straight and seize oil priced in Yuan or something.
The UAE primarily sells its oil to China, which is its largest export partner, followed by countries like India and Japan. the United States cannot do this without not only obliterating energy markets for an ally, but strengthening alliances between china and india. It is likely that should the US attempt such a move, China would respond with retaliatory technology tariffs and a reduction of agricultural trade.
> Who exactly does the UAE need protection from? Iran? China's ally?
the UAE did not "need protection" from any regional military threat until the United States used regional peace talks as cover to launch a surprise attack against Iran. the UAE would still likely be an OPEC member state had the US not unilaterally chosen to obliterate global energy markets for no consistent or clearly defined reason.
> there's just never any follow-up or perhaps imagination that the US could just do something too.
This conflict was well defined as geopolitical suicide for nearly forty years; its what kept the peace. All simulations and tabletop exercises predicted such an incursion would send global energy markets into panic, trade markets into recession, and produce no meaningful advancement of either regional security or regime change. Iran is backed by powerful allies and has shown numerous times it can meet each US escalation with yet more regional attacks. We have tried escalation and failed, burned through a decade of advanced missiles fighting cheap drones, and have no defined objective politically or militarily for this conflict.
> It is an admission that US protection was always a paper tiger. Perhaps in the 1960s it meant something, but Iran has shattered the illusion that Washington has any credible defense of the country.
sigh No, it's not. There are 3 aircraft carriers parked in the region, plus US air bases. Iran launched over 2500 missiles at the UAE alone. The US destroyed much of Iran's military, the only thing they have left is the ability to launch missiles and drones at ships or do terrorist style attacks.
But if you want to suggest that the US is a paper tiger here, that just makes everyone a paper tiger. Nobody can stop Iran. Ok.
> The UAE primarily sells its oil to China, which is its largest export partner, followed by countries like India and Japan. the United States cannot do this without not only obliterating energy markets for an ally, but strengthening alliances between china and india. It is likely that should the US attempt such a move, China would respond with retaliatory technology tariffs and a reduction of agricultural trade.
Then we would react with export controls, additional weapons shipments to allies in the region, work with Japan and South Korea to start weapons programs, blockade Chinese trade, there's a million things we can do too.
> the UAE did not "need protection" from any regional military threat until the United States used regional peace talks as cover to launch a surprise attack against Iran. the UAE would still likely be an OPEC member state had the US not unilaterally chosen to obliterate global energy markets for no consistent or clearly defined reason.
And yet, UAE wants the US in the region and in UAE soil. Iran launched over 2500 missiles at the UAE, including civilian targets. Not sure your comment here reflects reality.
> This conflict was well defined as geopolitical suicide for nearly forty years; its what kept the peace.
Things change. US is the #1 energy producing country in the world in terms of oil, gas, &c. We're less dependent on the Middle East, plus we've basically secured the Venezuelan oil supply. Seems to me that what was once geopolitical suicide is no longer the case. We're here today, and life in the US just goes on as normal.
> All simulations and tabletop exercises predicted such an incursion would send global energy markets into panic, trade markets into recession, and produce no meaningful advancement of either regional security or regime change.
TBD
> Iran is backed by powerful allies and has shown numerous times it can meet each US escalation with yet more regional attacks.
Yes, Iran, who is supplying Russia with drones and such for its war against Ukraine is an ally, as is China.
> We have tried escalation and failed, burned through a decade of advanced missiles fighting cheap drones, and have no defined objective politically or militarily for this conflict.
We have not burned through a decade of advanced missiles fighting cheap drones. We can build our own cheap drones and are working on scaling production, and just because you don't understand the political or military objective doesn't mean that there isn't one, however poorly or well-thought it may be.
The US has very much escalated and sits now at the top of the escalation ladder. Iran has been trying to get the US to the negotiating table due to the blockade. Iran can launch its missiles as it likes to at civilian targets in the Gulf. We + allies will just get better at shooting them down. Who cares? If Iran wants to try to escalate we'll just escalate further, blow up more stuff, keep the oil from flowing if we decide. It doesn't really hurt us much.
people tend to forget the exorbitant privillege of the US. originally this idea applied to USD being the global reserve currency. but it goes so much further. critics of american foreign policy simply lack a sense of proportion. there is so, so much leverage the US has. which they use to do things that wouldn't make sense for any other country. while still coming out on top. i'm glad to see specifics being provided in support of this idea
> Iran "closes the Straight", well the US can't do anything.
Well, Iran closed the Straight and the world is facing biggest oil crises since 90ties. US was in fact incapable to prevent it. Even if the Straight opened today, harm already happened and will continue to happen for months. And I dont think it will open today.
The war did not had to start at all and is causing considerable harm already. Iran feeling pain does not mean surrounding states were protected - instead they were put into harms way.
> Pricing oil in Yuan because, I guess, the US is somehow not protecting the UAE doesn't make sense because China won't be there to protect them either.
At this point, China is more predictable and crucially, more likely to keep their word. Not exactly entirely predictable and not exactly truth teller, but the difference here is huge.
> The war did not had to start at all and is causing considerable harm already. Iran feeling pain does not mean surrounding states were protected - instead they were put into harms way.
They were always in harm's way. The war could have waited, and Iran could have doubled or tripled its missile stockpile and then they really would have been in harm's way. You're falling in to the same trap I mentioned "country does X, end of analysis".
> Well, Iran closed the Straight and the world is facing biggest oil crises since 90ties. US was in fact incapable to prevent it.
Any country is incapable of preventing it then. Iran could always just mine the straight and threaten to launch missiles and go hide in the mountains. If Iran wasn't doing all of these awful things in the region, none of this would be happening.
> They were always in harm's way. The war could have waited, and Iran could have doubled or tripled its missile stockpile and then they really would have been in harm's way.
I keep hearing this line defending US intervention but it doesn't really make sense. Iran was not threatening shipping traffic in the strait regardless of how many missiles they stocked up until they were forced to do so as an asymmetric warfare response to an attack by a superior military.
The missing ingredient has never been how many missiles Iran has stockpiled, it was external military action from someone like the US that gave them the window to assert that control.
The US didn't do the world any favors by getting it out of the way sooner or something, that's just absurd apoligism for a poorly planned war of choice that has obviously been a net negative for basically the entire world.
It would be like if the US nuked China and then shrugged after they predictably retaliated saying it just proved the threat from their stockpile that had always existed.
> I keep hearing this line defending US intervention but it doesn't really make sense. Iran was not threatening shipping traffic in the strait regardless of how many missiles they stocked up until they were forced to do so as an asymmetric warfare response to an attack by a superior military.
Why would they threaten to do so prior to being ready? Have you ever played a strategy game where you build up your forces for an advantageous offensive or defensive position? Countries do this too. If we were playing a game where my actions would provide some advantage or victory over you in some area or a broad area, why would I announce what my intentions were to you so you could react or anticipate my actions?
Separately, you can just ask: why are they even stockpiling missiles in the first place? Why isn't Singapore stockpiling missiles, or perhaps Portugal, or Panama, or Morocco? Of course, this then introduces the circular reasoning "because of a potential US attack", but of course if Iran wasn't funding Hamas, Hezbollah, Houthis, and more, building up these missile stockpiles, continuing to pursue a nuclear bomb, helping Russia with its invasion of Ukraine, we wouldn't be here. At some point you just have to look at their actions and their actions suggest implementing a plan.
> The missing ingredient has never been how many missiles Iran has stockpiled, it was external military action from someone like the US that gave them the window to assert that control.
They don't have control over the Straight of Hormuz. It's a bit of semantics, but control would mean they can allow or disallow ships to pass based on their own decision making. They can disallow ships, but the US can also disallow ships. If Iran controls the Straight of Hormuz because they can fire missiles at ships, the US also controls the Straight of Hormuz because of that very same capability.
> Of course, this then introduces the circular reasoning "because of a potential US attack", but of course if Iran wasn't funding Hamas, Hezbollah, Houthis
I think the first step of thinking about war objectively is to consider how each side sees it. The US POV is no less circular, from Iran’s perspective - they could list any number of provocations from the US to justify arming themselves, none more obvious than the war itself.
The debate around who started the hostility is ultimately pointless, the question is what to do about. Ideally the answer isn’t “arm for obliteration because the other side started it”
So let's say Iran stops building up massive amounts of missiles, funding these terrorist groups, stops pursuing a nuclear weapon, stops mass killing of its own civilians, and stops helping Russia prosecute its war against Ukraine (we can even leave this optional just to not introduce additional complexities).
What will the United States now have to do on its side as it pertains to Iran?
are you implying that the US share in the hostilities is only direct military intervention? because that's not correct. through their alliances, they are additionally responsible for more
It is not a game. And this war happened because Israel and USA assumed Iran is weak.
This had squat zero with acute danger of military buildup. This happened because Hegseth thought Iran will fold and found it super unfair they did not.
> Separately, you can just ask: why are they even stockpiling missiles in the first place?
To protect themselves when America starta Another war. It cant go without war for long. As brutal as iran is, there was no imminent threat of expansion
It is israel who just displaced millions of people.
Is the idea here that only USA gets to have missiles?
Iran is weak compared to the United States. The war wasn't started because Iran is weak, it was started because Iran is engaging in various activities that have effects in the world that the United States finds unacceptable.
> To protect themselves when America starta Another war.
Yet, only Iran has to protect themselves. Why is that? Well it's because they're doing bad things, and they know that we may do something about it. Why isn't Peru stockpiling missiles, or Thailand, or Iceland? It's because Iran's government was seized by an authoritarian regime that hates America and decided we would be the enemy forever and has continued to attack, and take other violent or non-violent actions that destabilize the region and global trade. If they just stopped doing this stuff, there wouldn't be a reason to "attack".
> It is israel who just displaced millions of people.
I don't think so. But Iran is responsible for Syria and those millions of people too. Like Maduro is responsible for the 8 million + refugees from Venezuela.
Your point of view of the world does not match reality. Stop making excuses and defending brutal authoritarian dictatorships.
> Is the idea here that only USA gets to have missiles?
Well you believe in nuclear non-proliferation, right?
> Stop making excuses and defending brutal authoritarian dictatorships.
this style of argument really falls flat in 2026 tho. at least for a global audience. it seems you don't appreciate how much america's image as a champion in good faith of freedom, democracy and prosperity has been shattered. not least because the old neoliberal guard has been busy undermining it (see carney's speech at WEF, where he started by pointing out that not only was the rules based order a lie, but that it is no longer acceptable to pretend otherwise). but now also because US aggression is perceived as directly responsible for the global energy crisis, which is affecting everyone else. america simply doesn't have a high horse to get on anymore
Part of the problem here is that folks have become so angry about Donald Trump that they've forgotten the broader picture. Taking out Maduro, taking action to stop Iran's regime, and more are unambiguously good things from the prospect of "freedom and democracy". There's a lot of conflict and anger and whatnot regarding trade and Trump's general idiocy, but if all of the world order, all of the good faith, all of that stuff is shattered so quickly? It wasn't very strong or valuable to begin with and so I don't mourn its loss.
If we no longer have a high horse, that gives us much more flexibility to act in our own self-interest since we no longer have to focus on taking losses to placate an image.
as i mentioned elsewhere. i don't disagree that america is in a strong position, relatively to everyone else. and has the means to achieve its interests. even without the superficial image of acting in good faith. but the old messaging ("america's tide is lifting all boats" etc) comes across uncalibrated
agreement on fundamental principles at a global level was the american (liberal) context. stepping outside of it leads to discovering a diverse world that you didn't account for before. as an example, even among iranians there doesn't seem to be enough support for the attack on their regime
Those states could export oil entirely reliable. They had tourism and finance industries dependent on them being safe.
Iran did not mined strait until USA and Israel bombed it twice during negotiations, threatened civilisation destruction, murdered political leaders and attacked BOTH civilian and military infrastructure.
You dont get to start a war or bomb and then blame the other side for not passivele accepting the situation.
Iran threatens to erase Israel and the United States off the map pretty much daily. So I just don't care that Trump did the same back to them. If they don't like threats like that, perhaps they should stop issuing them yea?
> murdered political leaders and attacked BOTH civilian and military infrastructure
What civilian infrastructure was deliberately attacked? We do know that Iran deliberately attacked civilian and military infrastructure. Did you mix the two up?
> You dont get to start a war or bomb and then blame the other side for not passivele accepting the situation.
Who started the war isn't an easy question to answer. I can easily and obviously argue that Iran started the war when they attacked Israel through their proxy forces. Ultimately though who "started" the war doesn't matter that much. Both sides have had grievances for quite a long time and things are just finally coming to more direct conflict.
> What civilian infrastructure was deliberately attacked?
Its clear you have only been getting your information from a certain set of sources. a lot of civilian infrastructure has been destroyed in Iran.
One of Israel's goals is to cripple the economy of Iran.
"Israeli leaders, including Defense Minister Israel Katz, have ordered the military to carry out strikes on targets that cause economic blows to the Iranian regime."
"This included a strike on major Iranian gas infrastructure in the country’s south nearly two weeks ago, and strikes on two of Iran’s largest steel factories on Friday. "
"Missiles also struck one of Iran’s biggest state-run pharmaceutical companies, Tofigh Darou, destroying its production and research and development units, state media said on Tuesday, blaming the strike on Israel. It’s a major producer of anti-cancer drugs and anesthetic in Iran"
"A century-old medical research centre (Pasteur Institute) set up to fight infectious diseases like plague and smallpox has been heavily damaged in strikes on Tehran"
In addition, one of my friends who lives in Iran reported that a dialysis center, a refrigerator factory, a public park (that had "police" in the name),
a popular chicken restaurant, and an entire apartment building full of people were each separately targeted and destroyed (apartment building was double tapped,
killing rescue workers)
the above is just a small selection, universities, factories, bridges, oil infra has all been targeted as well.
would you consider US Steel factories, universities that do research for the military, factories or companies that make components that go into US weapons, apartment buildings where one military leader lives as military or civilian infrastructure?
> would you consider US Steel factories, universities that do research for the military, factories or companies that make components that go into US weapons, apartment buildings where one military leader lives as military or civilian infrastructure?
I would consider it military infrastructure, but if you don't then you can't really complain about the US attacking, say, a petrochemical facility while Iran is/was simultaneously attacking infrastructure in the Gulf and attacking actual civilian targets like apartment buildings.
So you have to be consistent. It's either military or not. Iran is doing the same thing the US is doing or neither are doing it. Either way there's no room for moral superiority or outrage when both countries are somewhat acting the same, of course with Iran attacking and killing more civilians and whatnot.
true, but there's some evidence that was unintentional. whereas Trump and Israel are openly saying they are targeting bridges, oil
infra, economic targets etc.
>Well, Iran closed the Straight and the world is facing biggest oil crises since 90ties. US was in fact incapable to prevent it. Even if the Straight opened today, harm already happened and will continue to happen for months. And I dont think it will open today.
Adjusted for inflation the price of oil isn't even the highest it's been this decade, let alone historically.
The price tripled from 2003-2008 as well.
>The war did not had to start at all
We probably won't know for twenty years if that's true or not. It's not as Iran's been some peaceful country for the last twenty years, they actively have sponsored terrorist organizations with the purpose of destabilizing the region. The country also sits on a wealth of natural resources but was solely researching nuclear power for peaceful purposes.
Really the big lesson for the next superpower is to simply act earlier. If you don't care about winning and just being a thorn in everyone's side, ballistic missiles are a great investment, and it should have been taken more seriously when Iran started stockpiling thousands of them.
> Adjusted for inflation the price of oil isn't even the highest it's been this decade, let alone historically.
I dont think UAE cares about American oil prices that much. Nor does Europe nor does Asia. That just meand America is less motivated to solve clusterfuck it created.
And yes, it is huge issue already. With flies cancelled for summer, with strategic reserves already being used, with homeschool and home office in some countries, shorted workweek in others, factories producing less.
> We probably won't know for twenty years if that's true or not.
We do know that. There was no urgent reason to start badly prepared war. And no involved country is peaceful.
> The country also sits on a wealth of natural resources but was solely researching nuclear power for peaceful purposes.
It was entirely legal for them, because literally USA teared down agreement to do the opposite.
And what everybody knows now is that the only way to be safe from aggression is to have nuclear.
"Strait" refers to something which is narrow, especially at sea. It can be pluralised as "Straits" in many cases. "Straitjacket" also comes from this root.
"Straight" refers to something which is not curved. The "gh" used to be pronounced and still is in some parts of Scotland.
Yea there is some truth to that. The US is still in a wartime economy and cultural mode of thinking post-WWII (military budget, highway and infrastructure build, cultural characteristics around guns [1] and such). The downside is the degradation of quality of life, rage-bait, stress, those sorts of things. But if we have Americans constantly freaking out (and to some extent they should - being #1 is tough) about Chyna that does put pressure on the government to take these concerns seriously if they previously were not.
[1] Not a 2nd Amendment criticism, I’m a strong supporter. More so the folks who load up on ammo and “cool” gear and all that stuff.
If youve never experienced costco or been a member, this is difficult to understand but there is an undercurrent, nay, a prevailing sentiment of savings value and above all else things like rebate and cash back. Costco has established transparency for the consumer so pocketing the money is an egregious offense for most customers.
- credit cards offered by costco offer generous cashback
- most costco food items include discount pricing thats predictable and visible in the price itself. the decimal value of the price can even determine if the item is being phased out.
- even costco memberships are broken down into savings and the staff will gladly quantify your expenditures and potential cash back should you change or upgrade a membership. unused membership portions are even refunded.
- the refunds. no questions asked, for virtually anything, any time. this is where the costco member expects tariffs to be refunded as well.
I fully expect these to get refunded back to customers.
I occasionally get a gift card in the mail for a product I already purchased from Costco because they negotiated a better price for the batch after the fact.
> a prevailing sentiment of savings value and above all else things like rebate and cash back.
I did some consulting work there a long time ago building some software to manage inventory in one of their departments.
When we asked about their goals, like improve margins, they said "absolutely not, we will not increase beyond 14%". When we asked why, they said "the minute our customers think we are increasing margins, we will lose members, and membership is the goal."
Costco uses a convention for their retail (doesn’t work for by-weight) products where e.g .97 typically means it’s a limited run or to be discontinued.
There are others as well, they have more precise meaning for their internal procurement processes but that’s the customer facing rule of thumb.
unpopular opinion: this can be explained by the social and monetary economics of the gaming ecosystem as a whole.
- Microsoft has worked tirelessly to make the windows compute experience an evermore intrusive and soul crushing experience for the average gamer. artificially outmoded hardware at a time of GPU scarcity means consumers cant comply with redmonds increasingly arbitrary hardware edicts even if they wanted to. at the same time, linux has become ever easier to install and use as an alternative. there is likely an inflection point for a lot of gamers that are just looking to access their library.
- console gaming has become hideously overpriced. madatory tie-ins with playstation network, high costs for all consoles, and the potential for the console stocks to simply not be available at time of release make for a frictional and frustrating experience. Microslop is embracing the same playstation style enshittification that routinely brings sony to its knees. neither juggernaut seems genuinely interested in the end user with the exception of Nintendo, whos quality control issues and pricing as well with switch hardware make it a nonstarter for anyone but the most diehard zelda fan.
- steam + linux offers a largely seamless experience for the casual gamer. steam sales are fun and engaging. the community is generally well rounded. gabe newell is generally well respected by gamers and visibly interested in gaming and the community. Valve has contributed significantly to Linux since their push to obliterate the Windows store and shows no sign of retreat anytime soon. Steam + Linux is free and works with your existing hardware in a time of high prices, inflation, and scarcity in the western world.
Blame it on whatever you like. oracle has been a rudderless leech for nearly 30 years now.
- overpricing the database led to a predictable exodus and new players with often times better performance.
- acquisition of MySQL led to a predictable exodus and new players like maria with often times better performance.
- Oracle cloud arrived late to spectacular skepticism and low user turnout from customers who had been burned by high cost and users burned from decisions like the death of opensolaris. it exists on federal life support these days by the grace of the prevailing administration.
- more than 80 products, with hundreds of thousands of patches and updates, yet no coherent or meaningful reform of the build for more than forty years. DB 19c still ships broken for redhat 9 as a means of driving users to oracle linux, and patching the installer is a 1970s experience in itself. DB 23's greatest improvement has been to tack the letters "AI" onto it to chum what shallow AI waters Oracle deigns to tread outside of an investment portfolio.
- dumping cash into oracle enterprise linux despite it only having around 2500 active corporate users.
Yeah, from small interactions over the past two decades, I have no idea how they could have been so bad while employing so many people. What on earth were those 30k people doing?! Their solutions were crap for ages.
>I have no idea how they could have been so bad while employing so many people
There is a significant correlation between how many people you employ and how much nothing you accomplish. It means you've gotten big enough to survive long bouts of doing something and achieving nothing with large amounts of people.
Well said. There are so many better companies out there. It reminds me of Microstrategy before their Bitcoin madness started... why would anyone use it?
i live in a small midwest town and had the privilege of watching it slowly atrophy into near nothing over time. the steel mill closing, 2008 market crash, fentanyl crisis, covid, both shopping malls turning into liminal spaces frozen in 1994.
The real nail in the coffin was watching the Sears in the mall turn into a casino about a decade ago. Having failed their people at all other prosperities and futures, politicians turn to the last grift in their arsenal and roll out legalized gambling before packing up and leaving town or retiring.
having failed the digital future, ransacked it for every last penny, politicians again in 2025 turned to the supreme court to legalize online gambling and in doing so obliterate a generation of young adults. in another decade i expect a political movement to "hold these scoundrels to account" similar to Facebook, long after any meaningful reform or regulation could have been made and the industry itself is on the decline. just one last grift for the government that enabled it in the first place.
- deregulation of airlines in the 1980s led to rampant consolidation of routes and SPOF hubs that only work for revenue purposes and offer no real resilience in traffic planning. over-subscription of flights and lack of any real competition compounds this issue.
- climate change and global warming increasingly exacerbate severe weather conditions that ground aircraft and incur delays or cancellations in an already fragile system
- reagan-era policy hostile toward air traffic control labor unions that once checked the excesses of capital resulted in understaffing issues for more than two decades later. poor regulation of working hours, outmoded systems, and wage stagnation has further stressed the ATC system.
- the partial government shutdown has caused massive delays and cancellations of flights as the artifice of security theater begins to break down under its own political morass.
the solution is reform and regulation through policy change and investment. this is not possible in late stage capitalism (Streeck, 2016.)
Calling it a perfect storm is too generous. This is deliberately tearing down the floodgates that protect you from the extremely normal and predictable storms.
AI is being sold as a developer, as it is being sold as the do-everything alternative to traditional processes and methods. it is not being sold as an intern or a junior, but a real developer.
turning the tables and gaslighting devops professionals into believing the issue isnt an emerging technology with overwhelmingly heavy handed marketing and profitless operating strategy thats been shoehorned into seemingly everything and promises anything, but somehow their own oversight, will destroy whatever "vibe code" market you think you have at the cusp of a global recession.
had this AI been a real programmer chances are great they would have (intelligently) foreseen the possibility of damaging a production environment and asked for help.
to play devils advocate: you could hire a junior dev for a fourth of whatever the AI token spend is, and have likely avoided this issue entirely. sure, a greybeard is going to need to pull themselves away from some fierce sorting algorithm challenge for a second to give a wisened nod, but you would have saved yourself an inexorable amount of headache and profit loss in the longer run.
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