> Imagine if those F35 mounting pylons were used to drop field-portable water-purification systems directly where they are needed most.
Except we can (and do!) accomplish that with much simpler airplanes. The staggering costs and complexities of an F35 (the thrust:weight, maneuverability, and stealth) don't make sense for any "peaceful" application.
I believe the point is that doing supply drops with C130s and C17s is vastly more efficient than any hackjob you could do with F35s, both in terms of throughput and cost.
With that in mind, if you were to say the US should spend more on cargo planes and humanitarian aid drops and less on fighters like F35s and starting unnecessary conflicts around the globe, I'm totally with you.
The F35's are already there, they are highly effective means of delivery in emergency conditions, they can get there faster than a C130, why not de-weaponize them and use them to drop high tech water desalination devices on the beaches of Gaza?
Why not? Because there are too many in power who think that their identity is more valuable than human life. That power is perpetuated by the tip of the spear that is the F35.
So, not only do we _take that power from them by turning the F35 into a Real Peace Machine™_, we do it with haste in order to address the current immense crimes the warrior narcissists have already committed.
Spend a billion dollars to make these devices, de-commission the F35's from the task of bomb dropping, paint it pink and turn off its stealth, and have them drop the cluster medical kits immediately.
Oh, of course this is a fantasy, but what means of peace didn't start out as a fantasy, eh kids?
The point is not just to turn the F35's into peace-making devices - but to remove their potential future use by warrior narcissists to commit more heinous crimes against humanity.
Two factors: save the children. Stop the warrior narcissists from further atrocities.
Full-scale de-weaponization of everything. No exceptions.
The transport airplanes are also there. Aid has been dropped from them to Gaza and some of it killed people and it was generally a drop in the bucket compared to aid entering via land. Instead of fantasizing about F35s which are a very expensive way of delivering incredibly small amounts of things we should fantasize about getting more trucks to deliver stuff where it's cheap and massive amounts. That's a lot more tractable and achievable. We can also fantasize about what peace looks like and it doesn't look like dropping things from F-35s, that's generally what you do when you gave up on peace (which holds for both bombs and supplies).
Since the "ceasefire" about 21,000 tons of medical aid has entered Gaza. The amount of water already delivered is also immense and if you were to replace/complement this with desalinization you need to build a proper desalinization plant or repair the one that was already there. Let's fantasize about what more is needed and working with the different parties to get there. An F-35 can carry about 10 tons. So you'd need 2000 sorties to deliver a similar amount under the most ideal conditions each sortie costing something like $100K. A C-130 about 20 tons and has about x3-5 less operational cost per hour. It's not just about carry capacity it's about systems to deliver them (like parachutes or whatnot) which a C-130 is already fitted with. So for air delivery of stuff (which is ridiculously low volume and expensive) the C-130 is the preferred choice between the two. We also happen to have an inventory of things on pallets that are ready for C-130s. It's still not a great choice anyways. A commercial truck can carry 40 tons and operating costs would be something like $100 and the trucks are also already there and moving. If we need to get more of those that's what we should work on (and for all those options you need to work with the people on the ground and in the region. The problem isn't capacity/capability it's the politics and the situation on the ground.
If we're fantasizing maybe start with Lennon's "Imagine no religion" ;)
Religions are just a subset of that identity. Warrior narcissists will subjugate any human organization to build their mirror - religion, government, media - anything.
Sure, we can discuss the logistics. We, the peace-makers, should be smashing the mirror no matter what it takes. For me, that is efficiently represented by the de-weaponization of all the things, not just the F35.
But, still. Use the F35 to drop cluster medical kits. That'd cost a pittance and it would make far more peace than the million dollar GRU or glide kit.
> Use the F35 to drop cluster medical kits. That'd cost a pittance
Your "pittance" and mine must be very different.
If you were performing this function on behalf of any charity you would be prosecuted for this type of grossly, objectively inefficient resource allocation.
> The F35's are already there, they are highly effective means of delivery in emergency conditions, they can get there faster than a C130
Do you have any idea what you are talking about? Operating and maintenance expenses dominate all aircraft expenditures - "already there" is completely false. Putting these aircraft in the boneyard and writing off the R&D expenses is the only logical answer to "peaceful use."
An F-35 can get somewhere "quickly" when it's ferried there by a fleet of tankers and logistic support - but at that point, you just fly the C-130 directly to where it is needed.
No single day makes the difference in any of the situations you've proposed, and no operation to get a payload-laden F-35 anywhere it needs to be is organized in a day.
> Spend a billion dollars to make these devices, de-commission the F35's from the task of bomb dropping, paint it pink and turn off its stealth, and have them drop the cluster medical kits immediately.
There's no expense that justifies keeping these aircraft in operation for any peaceful purpose. Basically every modern cargo or passenger aircraft is better at the tasks you're describing and can do it cheaper.
Taxation is inherently backed by violence, so it's amazing how you can casually just suggest "spend a billion dollars" and not see the cognitive dissonance you're spewing.
Accomplishing all of this random humanitarian shit costs money (a proxy for human labor output), money comes from somewhere, and it isn't going to be given to your causes voluntarily.
>There's no expense that justifies keeping these aircraft in operation for any peaceful purpose.
Ah, yes there is: the expense of the children with severed limbs dying every single minute under the rubble that was placed upon them by the very F35's you worship.
If it was "efficient" and "cost effective" to use the F35 to murder tens of thousands, its even more efficient and cost effective - and urgent - to de-weaponize them and use them to drop cluster medical kits.
>humanitarian shit
Listen, warrior narcissist, I'm sick of your shit. Smash your own mirror.
We paint the F35's pink to make amends for the murder they have caused.
> the expense of the children with severed limbs dying every single minute under the rubble that was placed upon them by the very F35's you worship.
Now you are standing on the graves of hypothetical children? Expense is real: you suggested an extremely poor way to allocate finite resources. More hypothetical children could be helped by putting the F-35s in the boneyard and using conventional cargo planes, so by your own twisted logic, are you not part of the problem?
> If it was "efficient" and "cost effective" to use the F35 to murder tens of thousands
Ignoring the emotional component: even pro-military detractors of the F-35 program argue that it isn't cost effective or efficient to use the F-35 for what it was actually designed to do. Hence why the F-16 keeps getting new avionics, engines, payloads, etc.
I mean, with limited resources sure, but in your example if we use F35s to drop these supplies we can only drop half or a quarter as much as the supplies. Then we will also need spend a time, money, and resources into maintaining the F35 instead of using those to create and distribute more helpful resources. Its horribly ineffecient and you want to help, you gotta use your resources wisely instead of dropping water pumps from F35 because its cool and already there, Im sure the people in the area would rather 12 hours and get 50 water pumps instead. Then you could also drop in people to help install the water pumps( or doctors if we talking medical supplies). There is a finite amount of time and resources, we shouldnt be wasting them just to make a point.
a) use the fastest means possible to save the human lives that were smashed into obvious by <insert weapons system here>, and
b) de-weaponize all the things - take the mirror from the warrior narcissist immediately - and "paint those F35's pink" (its a metaphor, relax) - disable their stealth, and have them and their pilots serve the human beings whose lives they have spent years obliterating, as amends to the rest of the human species whose lives they are making utterly miserable with their actions ...
But yeah, your ideas are cool too. I'm waxing philosophical because we all know, the bombs are going to continue to drop, no matter what we peace-makers say and do on HN ..
While I would much rather see medical kits distributed to Gaza today than bombs, this could (and should) be accomplished not by converting F35s.
Dismantle the F35s, and drop supplies with a C130 or other military transport capable of airdrop, which will be VASTLY more cost/fuel efficient, thus allowing you to do a lot more of it than you ever could with a fleet of F35s.
Which I'm 95% certain is exactly what the other folks you're arguing with are suggesting.
Dismantle the F35's: sure. Once the victims they created are safe.
But if the F35's were used to murder, they can be used to rescue, too. So do that as fast as possible.
In fact, turning the F35's into medical-supply dropping devices immediately would have another very, very important impact: it would be making amends for all the death and calamity their warrior narcissist pilots, who have spent their lives learning to murder efficiently, have been causing.
We paint the F35's pink to make amends for the murder they have caused.
> In fact, turning the F35's into medical-supply dropping devices immediately
In your scenario, how many people are dying as a result of the carbon impact of this foolish waste of fuel and other resources as opposed to using the right tool for the job?
> you can't possibly be saying XYZ...rant about XYZ, among other things
No, obviously that's not what they're saying. There must be some reasonable interpretation then, right? Let's look at the chat thread and see what we can find.
> be very cautious about evil uses of seemingly safe technology when developing initial capabilities
>> that's super hard since most things can be repurposed
>>> (your other comment) it's actually easy though, just look at how we could repurpose these death machines
The subtext to their answer is going an entire opposite direction to your rant. People are saying that turning anything into a killing machine is easy, and their comment is saying that doing so is sometimes Pareto-suboptimal, and so wildly so that no semi-rational-at-least-a-little-bit-sometimes military is going to bother trying to weaponize your silicone basting brush or what have you.
They're not saying that you should mass-murder people, as you, yourself speculated.
All of this random F-35 shit is completely missing the point. The F-35 isn't "there" - no aircraft is "there" because the costs to operate them far eclipse their acquisition costs, always.
If you said "scrap the F-35s, spend money on humanitarian purposes" - you'd have a cogent (albeit naive) point. "Use one of the most expensive per-flight-hour aircraft in the world to do a mission it can't do and wasn't built for" is not intelligent.
Roughly, just considering fuel: the F-35 burns ~10,000 lbs/hr of JP-8 and can haul just 18,000 lbs of relatively small/multiple payloads. A 747 burns ~20,000 lbs/hr and can haul over 300,000 lbs of palletized loads. See the issue?
We paint the F35's pink to make amends for the murder they have caused.
You know, amends. One of those spiritual concepts you can't eat, since you don't know what salad is and you're too busy serving yourself lines off The Mirror™ you made from some billet somewhere ...
"Spiritual" concepts don't feed people, and the dumb idea you've suggested actually harms people more than whatever abstract/intangible spiritual victory you're achieving.
With this incorrect vehicle, you cannot move as much food, desalination equipment, or whatever other nonsense you think will help. You are suggesting something that will objectively result in fewer resources being given to those in need - why would anyone donate to your cause?
Is the propaganda victory of "making amends" somehow worth the lives of the people you want to "help?"
Yes, it is the refrain of the warrior narcissist, a heinous human mental virus condition, which can see no value in human life worth more than to simply build a bigger mirror for them to stare and admire their own identity at the cost of so much human life.
I think of the distinction here is about the domains we're coding within. If your software projects are product-y CRUD apps/sites... well, LLMs will tend to perform decently at that, because it's fundamentally pretty trivial work anyways, and there are so many examples to draw from. All CRUD apps are essentially isomorphic, with just some rules to plug in about data validation, business logic, etc. On the other hand, if your software projects involve more-difficult subject matter, you're going to find it struggles a lot more.
LLMs seem good at things you are not good at... primarily because you lack the skill to actually judge the goodness of their work, and they present their work confidently with an air of authority.
When I apply LLMs to domains where I'm already an expert, I find it particularly lacking when I want it to do deep, difficult, novel work that requires precision. On the surface, the output looks pretty amazing at first. But when I turn a critical eye to every detail, I end up finding a lot of flawed "thinking", and the lengthy process of fully understanding what it generated and cleaning it up to my standards makes me question the entire value proposition. However, I find it does a great job being a low-level automaton sort of assistant.
For instance, in the domain of software engineering: I would not trust it to implement a major architectural change, or a groundbreaking, complex new feature. I would trust it more (but not completely) on something like a refactoring that may touch thousands of lines in a fairly mechanistic way, but that was a little too-complicated for simpler tools likes regexes. While that's kind of a nifty use, I think it's fair to say that non-LLM software purpose-built for such tasks can probably do the same thing more effectively for less real cost (meaning the currently-subsidized real cost of all the training and inference power burn, etc)
From the content hosting side (getting reamed by scrapers overloading infrastructure), the problem is that we have to be able to set "reasonable" ratelimits to share finite network uplink and server cpu resources between all of our real users and these scrapers.
When you can identify the nature of the traffic (quickly in realtime, based on simple deterministic rules), you can protect the resources: you can rate/concurrency -limit the AI scrapers in the name of saving resources for the real humans, effectively putting the scrapers in a lower priority band (which is how it generally worked for search engine scrapers before!).
The problem is they're using resiproxies to disperse and whitewash their traffic, making it extremely difficult to tell their requests apart from the legitimate human requests. They're basically lying to us about the origin, and thus denying us the ability to put them in a lower priority band than humans.
They may scrape us at, say, 25K reqs/second, but it's coming from 50K random residential eyeball IPs at an average rate of only 0.5 reqs/second/IP, and then they're intentionally lying with the UA and headers and other fingerprint details as best they can to "blend in" with the humans so that we can't differentiate.
Let's do an analogy: Imagine if there was a neighborhood grocery store you and all your neighbors rely on for food. It's cheap because they keep their margins low, and more importantly the next store down the road is like 50 miles further away. That store 50 miles down the road also charges double the price. Now they've decided to play arbitrage: they load up 100 employees in the back of an air conditioned semi, clothe them to look like local shoppers, park it 3 blocks from your neighborhood store hidden inside a fenced property, and have them all go in and buy out all the inventory in the store over the course of a couple hours. The store just looks like it's having a great sales day at first. All these customers waiting in line, each getting just a few things at a time. But two hours later, the store shelves are empty, the semi is loaded up, and they're headed 50 miles back to double the price and sell it to someone else. You go in to buy some veggies to cook dinner and there's nothing to buy.
We've been playing this game with AI scrapers and resiproxies for way too long, and someone needs to hold them accountable for their fraud.
All the arguments you made applies to VPNs or tor as well. I'm sure rightsholders would be very happy if VPNs are banned, because that gets rid of one avenue for pirating with impunity. Same goes with every ad network ever, which has to fight click fraud.
I agree with you, for the mass consumer car market (individual/family transport) as a whole. It's coming fast. However, the current EV technology (mostly batteries + charging) is not a good fit for a whole lot of edge cases, and in the aggregate they matter, too, and thus the ICE engine industry won't really go away anytime soon:
* General-purpose Semis for commercial hauling. Yes, there's some EV Semis on the road today - pilot projects, or specific routes on specific schedules. But there's a lot of general purpose semi-hauling that happens every day on odd/long routes without sufficient chargers in the right places, and they need much bigger chargers. And then there's the specialty semis that carry large/wide loads. I see them almost every day in my area, carrying large chunks of power substations, heavy manufacturing equipment, blades for wind turbines, etc.
* Fire trucks, Ambulances, Tow trucks, Police cars - For various similar reasons, it's tricky with some of these, although in well-constrained cases and with extra vehicles on tap as backup (when the other one is low on charge in an emergency), maybe can kinda work, eventually.
* "Personal" trucks that see heavy towing/hauling use (think: hauling a livestock trailer or farm equipment or heavy materials (or maybe an EV race car!), possibly long distances on a regular basis). The battery range really suffers when you put all the extra weight and drag on by towing, and people aren't willing to turn what was a 5 hour diesel trip into a 9 hour trip with supercharger stops (more time in the heat with animals, more time on the road in general, and do you have to disconnect the trailer just to reach the charge cable?)
* Backup generator ICE engines - home, datacenter, industrial use, etc. The problem here is mostly runtime and peak watts of output vs cost. You can use a battery-based solution for most of these cases, but it currently costs prohibitively more for the same performance specs. When they're being used in austere environments, sometimes there's no electric grid to even charge from, so slap on a massive solar array cost, too.
* All military use of ICE engines in general (transport, generators, etc) - Not insignificant in scope and scale, and obviously they're not going to run EVs or find chargers on battlefields.
These cases will diminish over time, especially as we continue to make advances in charging and especially battery technology, but it will probably take a few decades because there's science challenges, not just engineering ones. The military case might never go away.
ICE cars/vehicles aren't going to disappear overnight. There are enough used ICE vehicles for ALL of the edge cases and a ton more for the next 20 years. There is no need to buy new ICE vehicles.
Look, sure. No one is saying "no ICE ever". Some people still ride horses.
125 years ago cities were built around horses. Stabling. Breeding. Feeding. Grooming. Street cleaning (turns our horses poop a Lot). By 20 years later that's all gone.
Sure horses survived in rural areas. Sure the Amish use them today as then. But the horse-based industry has (in real terms) vanished.
ICE is headed the same way. It will exist, but no daily-driver car will be ICE. EVs win, because in cities they are better. Because they're cheaper to own.
If Ford wants to own the ICE niches, fine. But it won't be cars.
It's not quite that simple though. A lot of these edge cases are necessary for everyone to live their cushy little city lives. It's not a matter of outmoded things. We will still need ambulances, and we will still need livestock trailers, and everything else on my list, for all of the foreseeable future. Unless batteries and charging gets a lot better, we'll still be manufacturing and improving ICE engines for many applications. Just not simple passenger cars.
Quite a bit indeed. Forbes ran an article a few months ago claiming that a family of four with two incomes needs to be earning a combined $400K to be able to reasonably afford the paid child care needed for both parents to be working.
> Many workloads don't need something like Galera [etc...]
This continues the faulty line of thinking that open source is just for hobby-level projects or early startup throwaway infrastructure. So many open-core models rely on this falsehood to rationalize their decisions. It should be possible to run large-scale important Internet things on Open Source code, too, for a variety of reasons.
> This continues the faulty line of thinking that open source is just for hobby-level projects or early startup throwaway infrastructure.
How so? I don't understand your comment at all. A huge chunk of the world's economy runs on async replication in FOSS MySQL/MariaDB, my whole point was that you literally don't need Galera to do that.
I think this also speaks to the heart of the non-political spectrum between "conservative" and "progressive" societal evolution. It's progressive to enact these kinds of changes in the name of supposed convenience, efficiency, and modernity (whatever that means), and to do it quickly without sufficient thought as to all the unintended consequences. It's conservative to fear such changes and try to slow them down for the same reasons. Rapid societal changes are always risky, even if we suspect they may be net positives.
Except we can (and do!) accomplish that with much simpler airplanes. The staggering costs and complexities of an F35 (the thrust:weight, maneuverability, and stealth) don't make sense for any "peaceful" application.