jmyeet

48 ms·

481.
by jmyeet 6mo ago
Short answer? To ramp up production. For any sufficiently large and complex system, you need to keep that assembly line alive to keep the system alive. Part of this is for just replacement parts and general maintenance. Take something like
482.
by jmyeet 6mo ago
For comparison, Iran's annual military budget is somewhere between $7B and $11B [1], representing 2-2.5% of estimated GDP. The US military budget currently exceeds $1T+ and the ask for 2026 is expected to be $1.5T+, representing almost
483.
by jmyeet 6mo ago
> But the author just took pictures of food & expected a realistic response? If someone sent me a picture of a meal and asked me what the macros were or how many carbs this is, I would say "I can't tell from a photo. Nobody
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by jmyeet 6mo ago
Petrodollar discourse tends to annoy me because people tend to get cause and effect confused. The dollar isn't strong because oil is traded in it. Oil is traded in dollars because the dollar is strong. What makes the dollar strong? The
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by jmyeet 6mo ago
It's more complex than that. Saudi Arabia has the East-West Pipeline [1] that takes ~7Mbpd (million barrels per day) of oil to Red Sea ports to avoid the Strait of Hormuz. They were already using it so there's not a lot of extra c
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by jmyeet 6mo ago
Um, how do you figure? You realize that was a 10% cut in global oil supply, right? Of course it's going to spike crude oil prices. It's almost like the US completely stopped producing oil for 2 year (13M vs 9.7M). There are a numb
487.
by jmyeet 6mo ago
You can think that's how it should be. But that's not necessarily how it is. I'm reminded of the famous monkey selfie copyright dispute [1]. A photographer set up a camera and gave it to a monkey but after a legal dispute, co
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by jmyeet 6mo ago
The Supreme Court declining to take up an issue is taking a position. Now different circuits can take a different view of the same issue. This is a common reason why the Supreme Court will grant cert: to resolve a circuit split. Appeals c
489.
by jmyeet 6mo ago
Renewables (particularly solar) already are cheaper [1]. It's political will not economics that keeps us addicted to fossil fuels. Nobody gets rich from solar panels. You build them. They produce power. Oil wells like any mine are huge
490.
by jmyeet 6mo ago
The US isn't insulated from global oil supply shocks because crude oil and refined petroleum products are traded on global markets and natural gas is somewhat traded on global markets (there are limits to LNG exports). So yes the US co
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by jmyeet 6mo ago
I don't know where this idea that OPEC is toothless came from but it's objectively incorrect. Counter example: OPEC was the single largest factor in the inflation shock of 2020-2022. And nobody talks about it. In March 2020 at the
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by jmyeet 6mo ago
I believe that this administration more than any other post-WW2 administration either has a complete disregard for alliances or is actively seeking to shatter them even though most of them were designed by the US for US interests (eg NATO).
493.
by jmyeet 6mo ago
The UAE has the ADCOP (Abu Dhabi Cross Oil Pipeline) to move oil to beyond the Strait. It has a capacity of ~1.8Mbpd (million barrels per day) so is only a fraction of the UAE's total oil exports and a tiny fraction of the oil exports
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by jmyeet 6mo ago
The UAE has some facilities to export on the outside of the Gulf and they can ship I believe ~1.8Mbpd on the ADCOP (Abu Dhabi Cross Oil Pipeline). That's only a fraction of their 4-5Mbpd production and I'm sure they're alread
495.
by jmyeet 6mo ago
It's a good question. Let me answer the question this way: OPEC is the biggest single factor for the inflation shock of 2020 to 2022 yet weirdly hardly anybody talks about it. Let's rewind to March 2020 and the start of the pandem
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by jmyeet 6mo ago
To anyone wondering, yes this is a consequence of the War in Iran but what this means isn't exactly clear. Or rather the consequences aren't clear. For a super brief background, the US has what's been called an oil-for-securi
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by jmyeet 6mo ago
Every part of this technology is astounding and you need a reasonable basis in physics to truly appreciate just how astounding it is. And the tolerances are so ridiculously precise, it boggles the mind. Even before you get to the lithograph
498.
by jmyeet 6mo ago
I will say that UI designers left to their own devices will tend to make change for the sake of change. And it's annoying. Safari on iOS is a prime example of this. I used to be able to switch from tabs to private browsing. Now I have
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by jmyeet 6mo ago
The employer and the employee have different goals and metrics for "success". This mismatch comes up all the time whenever "interviewing is broken" threads come up. Many interviewees think the goal is to find the best pe
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by jmyeet 6mo ago
This is all basic economics. Companies can grow organically or through strategy and adding new verticals to a point. Eventually they're too large for that. They own the whole market, they can't get regulatory approval for acquisit
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by jmyeet 6mo ago
It's just own-goal after owl-goal with this administration. Federal research funding (NIH, NSF, etc) becomes economic power. I personally think the government should get a return on their research dollars but basically federally funded
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by jmyeet 6mo ago
So I agree the iPad range is more complicated than it needs to be but I'm not as enthralled by the Macbook Neo as the author. For one thing, a base iPad is US$349. Sure you need a keyboard too but it is less than $599. And the core of
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by jmyeet 6mo ago
This is a common refrain but in reality I'm not sure it made much difference. Papyrus just doesn't age well and most manuscripts from this era would've been on papyrus. What really decided what texts survived and what didn&#x
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by jmyeet 6mo ago
The one part I was curious about was who would be responsible for this? The app or the OS? The article says the app makers, which I think is correct. In the US, Meta in particular is pushing for OS-level age verification [1]. What a surpris
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by jmyeet 6mo ago
One of the issues that came up when Russia invaded Ukraine was that Russia just didn't have the weapons they thought they did, particularly tanks. There's been a bunch of corruption where generals have pocketed funds and just kick
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by jmyeet 6mo ago
The China invades Taiwan fearmongering is kinda silly for two main reasons: 1. Crossing 100 miles of ocean (between mainland China and Taiwan) may as well be 10,000 miles. It's essentially impassable.. Just look at Iran, where a countr
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by jmyeet 6mo ago
These have been my predictions since at least the first release of DeepSeek-R1 over a year ago: 1. There will be no moat where one company "owns" AI. China will see to that. It's simply too much in their national interest for
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by jmyeet 6mo ago
To quote Upton Sinclair: > “It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.” But there's something bigger that you allude to, which is that very few peoplel think of themsel
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by jmyeet 6mo ago
Covid wasn't some magical line in the sand when things got bad. It's really the tipping point for a trend that began in the 1970s of increasing inequality. Two big things happened in the pandemic that have nothing to do with other
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by jmyeet 6mo ago
When your product is used by a military occupation to target and kill civilians and their families [1][2], it's kind of shocking that there's any doubt. But as Upton Sinclair said: > “It is difficult to get a man to understand

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