perestroika

Possibly, reverse motivation - the training goal of such an agent would not be nice and smooth output, but shooting down misinformation.

But I have serious doubts about whether all of that is feasible, given the computational cost of running large language models.

Speculation on my part:

Patriot stocks may have been really reduced - by defending Israel during Netanyahu's adventure against Iran (it could have been smarter to tell Netanyahu not to start).

There is no reason to think that stocks of other weapons (e.g. air to ground missiles, glide bomb units for F-16) have suddenly gone really low. In fact, there is probably a f**kton of them.

Consequently, I suspect that Trump and Putin have made a deal they failed to disclose: Putin promised to refrain from helping Iran (it was an easy promise, he was really low on supplies). Trump promised in return to refrain from helping Ukraine, which he could have easily helped. At best, he got conned, at worst he got to do what he already wanted.

I would advise journalists to ask around: "has the US DoD been ordered to alter criteria for determining what is sufficient supply?" If yes, we're looking at an excuse. If no, we're looking at inability.

Both are bad, but inability can be corrected with honest admission and action, Ukraine has a bit of money from other allies to actually buy some US weapons, although they are rushing to make more domestically.

If it's not inability but an undercarpet deal, then corrections are bit harder to achieve.

But the SBU had followed the pair and had special equipment on hand, the operative said, expecting another attack after the previous blast. “We had certain technical means to block the signals to the telephone,” said the source. When Alexander rang the phones strapped to the bombs to detonate them, the calls did not go through.

That was thoughtful of them. :)

At this temperature, emergency medical departments are guaranteed to be full. Weeks later, an uptick in mortality is registered on stats, without exception.

I think the 38% number is definitely wrong, maybe even wrong by one order of magnitude.

I tried fact-checking and came up with this:

https://providencemag.com/2018/04/what-a-country-immigrants-serve-us-military-well

Few Americans realize that 65,000 immigrants serve in the US military today. That number includes some 18,700 troops who hold green cards (in other words, legal permanent residents who are not yet naturalized citizens). According to the Pentagon, about 5,000 such residents enlist each year.

Since the total number of the US armed forces is around 1.3 million, it follows that 38% is definitely wrong and the correct number of immigrants is likely around 5%.

I think the 38% number originates from service member naturalization stats or service member family stats and has been mis-interpreted. Can't tell for sure, didn't hire a spy to find out. :)

P.S. Edit: found a secondary source with similar data:

https://www.usafis.org/can-i-join-the-us-military-as-a-green-card-holder/

Approximately 8,000 Green Card holders join the US military each year and around 35,000 are currently serving on active duty.

Since green card holders aren't the only variety of immigrant, the number 65 000 seems plausible.

My estimate is that this will result on 410 lawsuits filed per day. :o

I think it's not a smart move to have 150 000 lawsuits per year over the same question - it's much preferable to have 1 lawsuit for a whole class of people - defending the rights of everyone in the same situation - and some extra lawsuits for those who want to present a unique take on the matter.

They use resistive heating, so they can only charge it dirt cheap when there is surplus solar or wind.

It's a pretty neat system:

• can be set up anywhere
• can supply high grade heat (process heat, not mere space heating heat)

However, heat stores are subject to scaling laws which don't favour sand on the large scale, at least unless it's underground (and then you have to keep groundwater out to avoid vaporizing it). Large thermal stores benefit from storing heat in water, and placing the water deep underground, so the boiling point rises. If local rock has low thermal conductivity, even better.

For comparison Helsinki (.fi) has a 10 GWh underground thermal store. Where I live, Tallinn (.ee) will soon get a 1 GWh surface thermal store. And Vantaa (.fi) will soon complete a whopping 90 GWh thermal store that's located 100 m underground, so their water will boil at 140 C instead of the usual 100 C. Boiling points up to 300 C are attainable in practise, then the curve starts leveling out.

There is plenty of resources to support humanity.

I cannot say I agree, and I think I recall that some indicators currently suggest we'd need about 3 planets to keep going at the same pace.

I think we shouldn't use up every atom on Earth to churn out more humans. Our species has experienced a massive population explosion and is at peak numbers.

Usually this kind of events are followed by a hurtful population crash. It seems considerably better if growth ends due to a (subconscious?) decision to stop expanding, rather than a war for remaining resources.

Regarding AI, some simple examples of likely computing expense:

• performing 1 + 1 in assembly language: 1 CPU cycle
• performing 1 + 1 in a high level interpreted language: maybe 10 CPU cycles
• performing 1 + 1 using an LLM: millions of CPU cycles
• asking "why was the rabbit an animal after 1 + 1": probably priceless, maybe a billion cycles