Israel seems to have incredibly good intelligence for this fight. If I were tasked with reconstituting Iran's defenses after this fight is over, I'd put a whole lot of resources into figuring out how the Israelis seem to know where everyone in Iran is at any particular time and how they're getting that information to war planners, with an eye to preventing it from happening again.

Or you could go with Plan B - don't FA with Israel to begin with.

In theory, yes. But does that actually happen IRL? I've never heard of a lawyer getting disbarred for the quality of suits he or she is filing.

Many years ago in Northern CA we had a lawyer that was basically going around filing suits against everyone she came in contact with as a way to pay the bills. She was eventually declared a "vexatious litigant" and had to get a judge's permission before she could sue anyone in the future, but they didn't disbar her.

how is that any different than a lawsuit. You can file whatever you want, it doesn't mean the judge is going to hear the case

It's different because there's no lawsuit if the judge doesn't allow it to go forward, so the defendant never gets served, they don't have to hire a lawyer, and don't have to deal with the stress.

She might lose a lawsuit in summary dismissal, but the defendant is going to be out thousands of dollars by the time that happens. Anyway, the goal was never to go to court in any of her filings. What she wanted was to bully people into paying a settlement, since that meant she didn't have to pay any court fees.

>Smallpox, which the only remaining samples exists in a couple of secure facilities controled by superpowers...

I used to believe that, too, until the Russians found a few vials in a random storage cabinet. The fact is we have no idea how many samples exist and where they all are.

Fortunately, we already know how to make a smallpox vaccine.

Not only that, but we have currently functioning distribution networks for pox vaccines. AIUI, the MPox vaccine is just a smallpox vaccine that happens to also work for MPox.

The base variant killed millions of people. It wasn't the Black Death, exactly, but it was pretty dangrous.

Now, if you want something that will keep you up at night:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Npf-B5Av7aQ

The USG should not be in the position that it can't manage key technologies it purchases. If Anthropic doesn't want to relinquish control of a tech it's selling, the Pentagon should go with another vendor.

Anthropic isn't preventing them from managing their key technologies. If my software license says 1000 users, and I build into the software that you can only connect with 1000 users, is your argument that the government can no longer manager their tech?

That my software should allow license violations if the government thinks it is necessary?

I worked in defense contracting looong ago, so this is old news: when software is purchased by DoD or Govt generally, FAR compliance notices make it a license, not a sale of IP.

There are so many license types, DoW buys into all sorts.

You are misrepresenting the situation. The debate isn't about whether they should go with another vendor or not. Everybody can agree that they would have the right to pick a different vendor. That's not what they're doing, they're instead trying to force Anthropic into doing what they want by applying a designation previously only reserved for Chinese companies like Huawei as punishment for taking their stance, with an unspoken agreement that if Anthropic backs down and allows full usage then the designation will be removed

The Pentagon does this kind of thing all the time. It's just usually not this official.

Completely false. It's the first time a US company has been designated a supply chain risk. Now the likes of Boeing can't use them. Health companies with Medicare/Tricare contracts don't know and will hold off until it's fully litigated.

This is not the government saying they're going with a different vendor, it's the government saying everyone has to choose to either have federal contracts or Claude, they can't have both.

So sure... and so wrong. I've done government contracting. If you angered the Pentagon enough they would simply blacklist you. You couldn't get a contract or be a part of someone else's contract.

The difference with Anthropic is it's open and above board instead of the customer telling a company "You can't sub with those guys or you won't get the contract."

Your response is myopic. Do you think large health insurers gave a shit about DoD unofficial contracting black lists or even if the DoD would even know who they're contracting with?

The impact of this is far more than just DoD procurement, which is already enormous.

>You can do the core functionality of your product as cross platform, to some extend, but once you hit the interaction with the OS and especially the UI libraries of the OS, I think you'd get better software if you just accept that you'll need to write multiple application.

Or you can use a VM, which is essentially what a modern browser is anyway. I wrote and maintained a Java app for many years with seamless cross platform development. The browser is the right architecture. It's the implementation that's painful, mostly for historical reasons.

But using a browser (or a VM) buys into the fallacy that your customers across different platforms (Windows, Mac, etc) want the same product. They’re already distinguished by choosing a different platform! They have different aesthetics, different usability expectations, different priorities around accessibility and discover ability. You can produce an application (or web app) that is mediocre for all of them, but to provide a good product requires taking advantage of these distinctions — a good application will be different for different platforms, whether or not the toolkit is different.

Putting an existing company out of business means putting thousands of people out of work. That's the kind of thing that gets your party thrown out of office.

It's not magical thinking; it just doesn't happen overnight. The real question is as we get relatively less wealthy in the West, will we start moving the other direction?

Differential pricing schemes are the primary way Corporations avoid corporate income taxes. I remember reading an article by an old Africa hand where he quoted the manager of an international corporation being exasperated with him and saying "You think I'm actually trying to make money here? This is all about taxes."

In theory overpaying for modules produced by your subsidiary, or overpricing IP, in a low tax country is illegal, at least in the US, but so much of that is subjective it's difficult for tax authorities to actually do anything unless the numbers are eggregious.

If I had children I would never let them do gymnastics seriously.