Yea, keep bitchin Putin. You started this war and while Ukraine isn’t going to win it outright, it has found a way to survive and potential thrive with the EU behind it. It doesn’t even NATO at this point. Ukraine found away to adapt, sustain, and build global alliances. Russia has a axis of frienemies, and a dependence on oil ports that just keep getting blow up.

It can’t even hold the Free Economic Zone it invaded as it’s in a budget crisis over holding it, but giving it up means a political loss. Couldn’t happen to a better bunch of idiots.

We could talk about the demographic flip and failure Russia is seeing because of this. Ukraine will see this too, but has better chances at being it’s diaspora and new immigrants in.

Oh, and my original point was that Europe was in this fully when the defense industry from around the world started build industrial based in Ukraine putting their skin in the game.

Absolutely bullshit in a headline, but also potential mamas will probably use this often. The value in hearing your baby’s heartbeat is probably a huge reassurance to many.

Having said that, as a hardware professional, when could we see a consumer accessible mobile ultrasound? I don’t have a spare $2-5k for what they use in ambulances, but I am hoping something low res low quality is accessible in a few years. (Having just read about the open source phased array, I have new hope for many things).

While I understand the taco sentiment, I actually think this might stick for a bit. There’s a huge amount of back end political pressure on this and Israel is probably feeling it too. Asia & Europe are at their oil breaking points (Asia is in particular struggling to get oil even at inflated prices), and that frankly is most of it, but you also do have the hardware expenditures yearly budgets spent in days. No one except Israel and Iran hardliners really want this war.

No no, you should feel valued! You played, you learned, you moved on.

I was hoping someone else would catch that. Fuck making a real value, just make it seem like it.

Asshats. May their stock go down like the Titanic and their management find mud pits.

Beyond cutting prices, PepsiCo is also rethinking its overall game plan to get sales back on track. In December 2025, the company said it would shrink its product lineup by about 20 percent, focusing more on its biggest, best-selling brands while cutting down on less popular items. At the same time, it’s investing more in promotions and tweaking package sizes to make its snacks feel like a better deal for shoppers.

Zscaler ThreatLabz researchers recently discovered a highly deceptive campaign leveraging the leak as a social engineering lure to target developers seeking access to the source code.

In this newly discovered campaign, attackers have established malicious GitHub repositories that masquerade as the authentic leaked repository.

One prominent page, published by a threat actor named idbzoomh, currently ranks near the top of search engine results for users attempting to find the files.

The repository promises an unlocked version of the enterprise software featuring no usage limits. Instead of legitimate code, the provided zip archive contains a Rust-based dropper executable.

Upon execution, this dropper deploys the Vidar information stealer to siphon sensitive credentials and GhostSocks to proxy network traffic.

This is another view on what happened on Sunday in California. Batteries charged heavily throughout the day, soaking up the excess solar, approaching charging rates of 10 GW at times. In the evening, most of the output was centred on the early evening peak, but batteries supplied a significant share throughout the evening.

The biggest loser in this transition has been gas, with the share of battery storage staying at high levels throughout the evening peak. On Sunday, it stayed above 20 per cent of grid demand for almost four hours.

As Fulghum noted: “To put that kind of output during peak demand hours into perspective, it’s equivalent to the output from:

• 15-20 combined-cycle gas plants
• 6 Hoover dams
• More than the all-time peak demand of Portugal or Greece.”

Nice eval and analysis. I am finding it more and more obnoxious that lemmy doesn’t seem to like true debate. Take the down votes as a good sign that you struck a possible cord of reality.

It does. Missiles are $30k or £100k+

The Rocky Mountain Biological Laboratory is in the former ghost town of Gothic, abandoned after the closure of its silver mines. Over winter, the landscape lies quietly under a bed of snow. In early spring, the only way for researchers to get to experimental sites – at an altitude of 10,000ft – is by skiing across country.

Electric infrared radiators warmed five experimental plots of 30 sq metres year-round. Head-height heaters were on day and night over a patch of meadow, keeping it 2C above normal temperatures with an annual electricity bill of $6,000 (£4,450). They warmed the top six inches of soil. Animals could come and graze and the natural system was preserved as much as possible.

Over 29 years, researchers found that shrubs increased by 150% in warmed plots compared with those without warming. The surface of the soil was dried by up to 20%, and shallow-rooted plants became stressed. Some wildflowers went extinct in heated plots. “It’s a sign of things to come,” says lead researcher Lara Souza from the University of Oklahoma.

Scientists also noted big changes in the invisible world of soil fungi and microbes. Shrubs and sage brush don’t rely on fungi in the same way as grasses. They found a decline in fungi that help plants acquire nutrients, and an increase in fungi that decompose organic matter. “This highlights that when you have a big change above ground, you’ve likely got a big change below ground,” says Souza. “Turning back is very unlikely.”

As The Soup, I bequeath the honor of my crest! Slurp thy in my name!

Might have been performative in part but net migration was negative for the first time in 50 years which will have a long term negative impact on our economy in many ways given the demographic bubble we are in as well as general brain drain tend we are seeing.

White House spokesperson Taylor Rogers said Friday night that Trump “reversed course on Joe Biden’s costly green energy agenda that gave preferential treatment to intermittent, unreliable energy sources and instead is aggressively unleashing reliable and affordable energy sources to lower energy bills, improve our grid stability and protect our national security.” Rogers added in a statement to AP that the administration “looks forward to ultimate victory on this issue.”

Orsted said that at a time of growing energy demand, Revolution Wind will provide price certainty and stability, citing a preliminary analysis by the state of Connecticut that estimates it will lower wholesale energy costs by about $500 million per year by 2028.

…

Orsted began construction in 2024 about 15 miles (24 kilometers) south of the Rhode Island coast. The wind farm has 65 of the 11-megawatt Siemens Gamesa turbines, and more than 1,000 people have been working on it.

That’s all before we’ve even considered ASML’s accumulated know-how as, in Yangyuan’s words, “merely the integrator.” The company’s EUV dominance rests on a supply chain of more than 5,000 subcontractors, along with decades of high-volume manufacturing data. No amount of reverse engineering can quickly replicate that. While it’s true that Chinese firms have made real gains in adjacent equipment categories — Naura, for example, is one of the world’s top ten semi equipment vendors by revenue — lithography remains well out of reach.

It took ASML decades to do this, and while I won’t discount a genius level breakthrough, I doubt stealing and reverse engineering is going to shortcut the lead that much. I wouldn’t be surprised if they keep on the track they are that by 2035 they may finally be able to over take ASML though.

I entirely agree with your points.

A. that China has been using BRI as well as other trade schemes as soft power in both Venezuela and Iran.

B. That China has taken some risk in it’s investments given the near single source economies both Venezuela and Iran have.

C. The closing of the Strait of Hormuz, even temporarily, will have knock on impacts on China internally and with it’s external influence.

Having said that given China’s balance of trade and overall finance capacity and strategic position, if either Iran or Venezuela default on loans I think they can sustain it and likely get something out of it in the long run (terms you mentioned). Evergrande’s default at some where between 300-450 blillion was far more of a direct impact as a single company and they were capable of weathering that, while also dealing with other housing builders similarly defaulting.

Further as you have noted, Beijing is strategic in it’s stockpiling. It also is in it’s purchasing strategy. Russia is desperate to sell more oil an even though it might go above 20% of China’s market share this year, that’s an option. Which is to say China has created a situation where it has options and isn’t beholden to the strait of Hormuz. It will certainly have an impact, but I would be surprised if China doesn’t come out stronger, some how.

All of this is really in support of your argument as we both agree there’s a WTF element to this with Trump. There is no coherence. Where as we can speculate in a general direction with China as it’s not entirely predictable, but it has been somewhat consistent in areas lately.

I mostly commented in exasperation at the incoherent, nonsensical, asinine, people in power and those behind them. I’d much rather have a conversation with you than let my rage take me when considering them. (Also frankly I like long comments.)

And this: https://cupblog.org/2026/03/02/trump-plays-directly-into-chinas-version-of-reality-thomas-colley-and-martin-moore/ which is a whole different argument.

When was the last time you were a student?

Also, there is a reason you want students to use your product before hit the work place, as they bring the interest in the product.

And China, even withwirh their downturn is the player the US should be focused on. Fuck Iran. If anyone remember that old adage that Yamamoto was worried about with the US, being an industrial might capable of pivoting faster than Japan could even imagine. This is now China and not the US. We can build one carrier at a time, they have built 3 in a similar time. They have built an entire interstate and high-speed rail system in twenty years or so. Their military isn’t the professional capability of the US, but they keep stealing plans and buying trainers so they might be in a few years, and they are massive.

Oh and they want Taiwan. As in Xi has said we will invade Taiwan to get it back.

So why the fuck is the US playing with Iran when it was self-destructing? Grrrr.

This is a great question and one that is worth diving into a bit, but not necessarily by me. There are a plethora of answers here with some insightful and some less so backgrounds. I suggest that you dig into some outside sources and potentially you can work through the complexity of the answer as history often is.

I’m sure others have some great references as well, but given this crowd I’d suggest some youtube videos. I also suggest some recently written long form articles in foreign affairs which is always good for understanding context, as well as a few books.

RealLifeLore:

• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n8kSGH4I8Ps Why Iran Regime is Failing (Water, economics, and more.)
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j3l5bCGjqLE Why It’s So Hard to Defeat Iran Militarily
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dmvB7KW7WJA How The US & Iran Became Arch-Enemies

Related:

• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oytfhLUy0Fg How Israel Checkmated Iran
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EuFGyFLehNw Why Russia’s New Axis is Way Dumber Than You Think

Also Foreign Affairs has some good long form pieces:

• https://www.foreignaffairs.com/middle-east/why-iran-will-escalate
• https://www.foreignaffairs.com/iran/trump-iran-gamble-vaez
• https://www.foreignaffairs.com/iran/what-it-will-take-change-regime-iran
• https://www.foreignaffairs.com/iran/americas-best-chance-transform-iran-trump

Book wise I recommend:

• Worlds Apart: A Documentary History of US-Iranian Relations, 1978–2018 by Malcolm Byrne and Kian Byrne offers a meticulously curated collection of declassified documents tracing pivotal moments in bilateral tensions, including the Iranian Revolution and nuclear negotiations

• Axis of Empire: A History of Iran-US Relations by Afshin Matin-Asgari examines America’s Cold War hegemony, the shah’s regime, the 1979 Revolution, and Trump-era escalations, including the 2025 US-Israel attempt at regime change in Tehran

• Iran’s Perilous Pursuit of Nuclear Weapons by David Albright uses Mossad-seized Iranian documents to detail clandestine weapons efforts, assassinations of scientists, and cyberwarfare like Stuxnet