Yeah, turns out running the largest economy on the planet is even more complicated than setting the clock on a VCR. Who would have thought. At least they tried.
503 karma · joined September 30, 2010
Incompetent leader and a coterie of overconfident personalities with no depth or expertise. The fallout is predictable.
Given the betrayal of former allies, unprovoked trade war on nearest neighbours and most loyal partners, and a complete lack of any demonstrable moral values or principles, I’m afraid to think what monstrosity may arise out of that pile of ashes.
Boy, am I happy I decided to do some googling before pressing send…
Although Xilinx indeed has jacked up the prices, the sub-$10 Altera category is still alive and well.
Furthermore, both Lattice and Renesas have devices in sub-$5 category.
For super cheap programmable logic, Renesas has a sub-$1 simple programmable logic devices.
So much options out there…
Are you claiming that the EU is spending US money under NATO? This is a textbook trumpian fallacy: a gross oversimplification aimed at spinning facts so they support his false premise.
Truth is that US defense spending benefits primarily US companies and US economy.
Further to this, EU defense spending also primarily benefits US companies and US economy: 63% of it actually goes to US suppliers [1].
So Trump insisting on 2% GDP spending on defense for NATO members was a pretty effective racket: forcing them to spend more of their public budgets in the US.
Incidentally, this also benefitted EU NATO members in the context of the Europe’s developing security situation, but Trump was not interested in giving his EU partners some tough love, he simply wanted them to buy more US weapons.
Now, your claim is even worse than Trump’s false re-framing: you go even further, claiming that somehow EU (NATO?) is spending US money. This fabricates an image where poor US is somehow forced to foot the bill for entire NATO, which is false, naive, and frankly ridiculous.
In reality, NATO is effectively a US-dominated organisation. The only country to ever invoke Article 5 was US in 2001, after September 11, leading to a series of devastating wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, and ultimately Syria, in which US dragged its NATO partners.
NATO exists primarily because it is in US interest. I believe it is also in the interest of European member states, but the US has been driving it because the administration knows it is in US interest. In the long term, dismantling NATO, or distancing US from it would hurt US the most.
It will lead to further strengthening of defense spending by the European countries, accelerated development of EU-specific defense structures and organisations independent of NATO, and it will give tailwinds to (dominantly French) efforts to decrease European spending on US-made systems and increase buying those built at home.
This is either yet another short-sighted populist move aimed at scoring points at home, or if it’s somehow strategic, it’s a sign of US scaling down its global ambitions, realising its waning power and influence.
[1] https://www.france24.com/en/europe/20240909-the-eu-buys-too-...
https://github.com/arcataroger/awesome-engineering-games?tab...
Where HN is hit or miss when it comes to getting engagement on your posts (in my experience), a large subreddit can more reliably yield comments for popular topics like this.
But there’s a great deal of noise on Reddit, and the quality of comments is generally lower than HN.
There are some very effective devices out there, but they are priced well above $500. Way too expensive for where they are needed the most.
If designed cleverly and open-sourced, effective trapping devices could be distributed widely enough to make a difference when combined with other methods of population control.
Basically, all you need is an IR source, appropriate light source (see e.g. [1]), human odour, CO2, and a trapping mechanism.
Most of this is cheap and super accessible: Peltier for IR, LEDs for light, self-sourced human odour, and simple computer fan for suction and trapping into a net mounted above it. That’s easy.
The only thing I am not sure how to do best is safe, cheap, portable, and reliable CO2 source.
[1] https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/ece3.9714#:...