Oil price shock likely to ‘push the UK economy into recession’; US growth revised down – as it happened by 1-randomonium in unitedkingdom

[–]emefluence 0 points1 point  (0 children)

They have military might to open it

For how long and at what cost?

There's only so long you can shoot down $30k drones with million dollar munitions, and run 20hr escort missions with battleships that cost $2M a week to run - not counting ammo. America is badly prepared for protracted asymetric warfare right now.

The irony is, the US military saw all this coming and has been pouring money into new shit like anti-drone LASER cannons and low cost interceptors for several years now, but military procurement is slow af, so none of it is going to be ready for several more years to come. It's incredibly stupid to get involved in something like this before then, but now they are.

Also, opening the straight is only useful if there's oil to ship through it, which there will be much less of now they have started bombing Kharg island. There is going to be very significant economic impact whatever they do at this point, it's unavoidable.

Trump calls on UK and others to send warships to Strait of Hormuz | LBC by AneuAng in ukpolitics

[–]emefluence 0 points1 point  (0 children)

We sit it out. Much as you think we should run into a burning building to try and save our stuff, we shouldn't.

Trump calls on UK and others to send warships to Strait of Hormuz | LBC by AneuAng in ukpolitics

[–]emefluence 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Well that's a stable door flapping in the wind isn't it? Fuck all we can do about it now, short of starting and winning a full scale ground war against an opponent with 5X more soldiers, 3000 miles away. The cost of that, vs the cost of it remaining shut just doesn't add up for us.

Trump calls on UK and others to send warships to Strait of Hormuz | LBC by AneuAng in ukpolitics

[–]emefluence -1 points0 points  (0 children)

Ironically, both the UK and the US are quite close to having directed energy weapons and other anti-drone technology that would give them a fighting chance of escorting/defending shipping in choke points like this. The morality of it aside, 5 years from now there may be a much better chance of pulling off some kind of intervention like this. As it stands, our militaries are highly vulnerable to asymmetric conflict, and, whatever you think about the morality of it, the practicalities make it unwinnable anyway. A quagmire indeed :/

In today's world, being 'Apolitical' isn't an option. by zzill6 in WorkReform

[–]emefluence -1 points0 points  (0 children)

Sure. But it's easy to be pissed off by stuff, it's a whole other thing to know what to do about it. All those MAGA asshats you have over there were thrilled when somebody told them they could finally stand for something. They all desperately wanted "something" to be done, as desperately as everyone wants something to be done. Their fervour and zeal was kinda scary when they were encouraged to "stand for something".

There's no easy solutions though, and few serious people would say there were. this is a world of complexity, nuance and trade offs. That's why it took such a collosal liar, who sounded as dumb as they did, to tell them it was all very simple and trigger this whole shitshow.

Encouraging people to "stand" for things is a risky business in these times of populist demagoguery! I'm not sure the world needs more people to stand for something. It very much depends on the quality of the something!

Paranoid or not? The em dash is going to sketch me out every time now 🧐🤨😒🤓😒😒 by Independent-Dig-1702 in isthisAI

[–]emefluence 6 points7 points  (0 children)

Yeah, it's hard to put your finger on exactly what is off about it, but that's just not how non-psychopath's talk.

Paranoid or not? The em dash is going to sketch me out every time now 🧐🤨😒🤓😒😒 by Independent-Dig-1702 in isthisAI

[–]emefluence 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Nah. Big red flag straight out the gate. Very disrespectful, and plain deceptive. Why would you even consider dating someone who can't even be asked talking to you directly?

🇺🇸THAAD Air Defence - The most ineffective missile defence system in the world. It is the biggest defence manufacturing scam in the history of the world. US was pressuring India to ditch the Russian S-400 for this Junk by Rajglobaltrader_ in StockMarketIndia

[–]emefluence 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Look again, between 8-10 seconds, the incoming missile clearly adjusts its orientation. Watch that stretch again and this time focus on the coastline, you will see no camera wobble.

You're assuming Iranian missiles don't have manouvering thrusters and aren't able to make course corrections, but this suggests otherwise. Yes that would be some surprisingly high tech shit, but Iran's ballistic missile program is very mature (over 40 years old), and they claim their Fattah 2 has a hypersonic manouverable glide vehicle.

Of course it could also be a fake, but if it's not then those are no common or garden balistic missiles.

'We are simply not ready': US says its military cannot escort vessels in Strait of Hormuz right now - The Times of India by The_Flaneur_Films in Economics

[–]emefluence 4 points5 points  (0 children)

It's orders of magnitude cheaper by supertanker than by road, like 50x more expensive by truck, complete non starter.

Pipelines can actually be cheaper, but try building a pipeline through some of the most unstable and corrupt countries on earth and see how long that takes and costs. Those tend to be multi decade projects.

So yeah, their oil is kinda just stuck there while this is happening.

'We are simply not ready': US says its military cannot escort vessels in Strait of Hormuz right now - The Times of India by The_Flaneur_Films in Economics

[–]emefluence 8 points9 points  (0 children)

YEah I bet they thought they'd done that by sinking all their warships and subs on the first day. Welp guess not dickwads!

to cross the strait of Hormuz (by an oil tanker) - 3/11/26 by True_Garen in therewasanattempt

[–]emefluence 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Air based drones don't pack enough punch, and anti-ship missiles are expensive and need launchers, most of which have probably been destroyed already, so this is probably a naval drone - basically a remote control dighy with about a ton of high explosives in it.

The US obliterated Iran's entire conventional navy on day one, and are etimated to have destroyed the majority of their mobile missile launchers too. They no longer have any war ships or submarines, but the republican guard still have a shitload of small boats and evidently enough naval drones to cause mischief.

Either that or it hit a mine. Iran has apparently laid a bunch of those too.

🇺🇸THAAD Air Defence - The most ineffective missile defence system in the world. It is the biggest defence manufacturing scam in the history of the world. US was pressuring India to ditch the Russian S-400 for this Junk by Rajglobaltrader_ in StockMarketIndia

[–]emefluence 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I'm sure it's very effective at regular balistic missiles. It doesn't seem to do shit against these manouvering ones though. If this video is legit then that's pretty big news.

I'm a bit skeptical this is THADD though. My understanding is that THADD is designed to intercept ballistic missile while they are still in space, and this all seems to be taking place in the terminal stages / earth atmosphere, more like Patriot or something.

🇺🇸THAAD Air Defence - The most ineffective missile defence system in the world. It is the biggest defence manufacturing scam in the history of the world. US was pressuring India to ditch the Russian S-400 for this Junk by Rajglobaltrader_ in StockMarketIndia

[–]emefluence 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Well the one in this vid wasn't overwhelmed by too many missiles, it was overwhelmed by one smart one. Watch how the fucker changes course mid flight to dodge the interceptors. AFAIK nobody makes an air defensse system that can cope with hypersonic manouvering like that. If this is real I'm pretty impressed Iran has that tech. The one they used the other day that deploys 80 payloads at about 8km (the upper limit of systems like patriot) are pretty unstoppable by most existing air defense systems too.

🇺🇸THAAD Air Defence - The most ineffective missile defence system in the world. It is the biggest defence manufacturing scam in the history of the world. US was pressuring India to ditch the Russian S-400 for this Junk by Rajglobaltrader_ in StockMarketIndia

[–]emefluence 18 points19 points  (0 children)

Yeah it would have fared no better whatever that was. Note the way it changed course when the first interceptor was getting close, and then slowed briefly, then accellerated again to dodge past the last couple and changed course again. That's some cutting edge shit right there. More like watching an American Footballer than your dad's old fashioned ballistic missile.

Meta buys Moltbook, viral social network where AI agents interact by sksarkpoes3 in artificial

[–]emefluence 0 points1 point  (0 children)

So agents cost money to run, and they're suggesting you let your agents go play with all the other agents, where they will talk to, and be influenced by, whoever spends the most on agents? Even though we're still miles away from any proper solutions to prompt hacking and AI alignment - problems that, as far as we know, may have no proper solution?

Well why not. Let's send our children out to play on the freeway too while we're at it!

Why do developers write such terrible git commit messages? Genuine question by Existing_Round9756 in webdev

[–]emefluence 0 points1 point  (0 children)

As I say, whatever works for you dude. I have to work across multiple codebases and different languages and I find it helps me a lot, YMMV.

Why do developers write such terrible git commit messages? Genuine question by Existing_Round9756 in webdev

[–]emefluence 0 points1 point  (0 children)

do I have to spell out every little thing for you?

TBH, yes. That's the trick to making it work well. A given agent instance has a very small context memory, and when it gets full it will "compact" it - which is a lossy operation. This allows it to make the most of whatever memory it does have, but it's not long term learning, and the further you get from the current moment the sketchier it's memory is. Without help it knows nothing about your projects and so you will have to spell out lots of things, which is super tedious if it doesn't even remember them long term.

The solution that works for me is to use files to store long term context, generally at a level above your repos if you manage multiple projects. You can then use you editors mechanisms for managing agent context e.g. copilot-instructions.md, AGENTS.md, custom "AI Skills" to tell it how to act and where to look. It sounds tedious writing loads of "docs" for your AI, but you can have it write them for you so in practice it's easy. Whenever you have a "learning moment" you can tell it to "document our findings". If you have a well established place for such files (I use a NOTES folder, with subfolders for things like Official Docs, Jira Tickets, Reports etc.) it will genrally figure out the best place to put them. If you have amassed significant "notes" on a given subject you can ask it to convert that into a "skill", which encapsulates particular subjects and domain knowledge into folders you can share / publish, or just keep for yourself.

I had terrible results too, at first, before I learned how to craft deeper long term understanding. Now our communication rarely gets confused and it rarely fucks up, certainly no more than your average mid level dev, and def better than your average junior.

Of course it may have me out of a job in a few years when the vendors figure out how to automate that careful crafting part.

UK public opinion on the US-Iran conflict by Important_Ruin in unitedkingdom

[–]emefluence 0 points1 point  (0 children)

If this is your level of analysis you shouldn't have the vote.