After the huge impact on the PC gaming community, it's logical to despise AI and ban it from any awards. First cryptocurrencies pumped huge price raises on GPUs, then prices won't return to normal due to AI and now it's impacting RAM prices.
Next year a lot of families will struggle to buy a needed computer for their kids' school due to some multibillion techs going all-in.
That's a very good point. I included a "Cost Comparison by Bandwidth Usage" section that shows the cost for Digital Ocean compared to a commercial bonded solution. At 10TB the monthly DO cost goes up to $84/month which is significant, but if you compare that with a commercial solution that gives you a bonded connection (Speedify) they would charge $120/m for 10TB.
If you used Oracle cloud, I think 10TB is still in their free tier so you'd be looking at ~$15/month.
The article doesn't mention it, but there is an increasing worry that the USA could remotely disable some jet functionalities at will, or that any basic operation should be monitored and approved by them. So, this is not a reliable weapon that any country would like, unless the politicians agree to be vassals for life.
Even if there isn't a literal kill switch, there might as well be. Without a constant stream of maintenence and operations support from the USA there things are no good.
And the F-35 is very very high maintenance. Requires much more ground maintenance time that it's predecessors or competitors. That's a real problem in an active combat situation because it means less plans in the sky.
It actually requires substantially less maintenance time if you look at the equivalent force it replaces, for example the associated awacs capability needed for a sortie for previous gen fighters.
Honestly, it's just absurd to think that any jet fighter is somehow low maintenance. The issue here isn't the f35, it's the host country becoming a unreliable/hostile partner.
And what if you look at the equivalent force it's competing with on the market? It's a bit pricey once you factor in CAS and supersonic interceptors to fill the gaps.
> The issue here isn't the f35, it's the host country becoming a unreliable/hostile partner.
Here? The issue is the F-35. What happened to Pakistan's F-16s when America became an unreliable/hostile partner to them? They kept flying them for decades, that's what happened. Same with Ukraine's Su-27s, Iran's F-14s, North Korea's MiG-29s... plenty of countries keep other nation's keepsakes in the air. The jet abides.
The F-35 has to be bought as a subscription package, you can't "own" features like sensor fusion without the US' consent. All but one nation has been denied the right to modify the airframe, everyone else is basically just renting the jet with permission to go eat an R-77T when the time comes.
The us provides has provided upkeep for pakistans f16s under strict supervision and according to some AI summary maintenance has been a huge issue for them that limited their effectiveness. So not sure the story you are painting is quite as rosy as the reality. Fighter jets are not easy to maintain, without a large domestic fighter jet industry.
Consider for example when one of the radar elements in the f35 burns out, among the thousands that are there. Where in Pakistan does on obtain custom GaN radar ASICs that integrate with the f35?
Apparently one aspect has to do with the inevitable result of a what a stealth fighter is: it can deploy weapons far further than it can see. So without comlinks with intelligence from a specific satellite system, it loses half its features.
Second for the on-board radars to evade detection they need to be reprogrammed with the latest updates regularly. Not so much because the programming has a kill switch but because otherwise "adversaries" could still turn out to have rockets that can home in on an F-35.
And even in the case of the US, you don't have to shoot down that many F-35s to get them all.
It is. Germany had to invest heavily in airport infrastructure and security.
One strong reason why Germany got a batch of F-35 instead of the very capable and EU manufactured Typhoon is the fact that the F-35 is certified to carry nuclear bombs, and the Typhoon need certification for this particular mission capability. (The ordonance in this case is US tech).
Yep, I think people arguing “there is no kill switch” miss this point. There doesn’t need to be if the lack of updates makes an F-35 an expensive, inferior version of a jet they could buy elsewhere!
The F-35 isn't inferior to many other aircraft as far as raw capability goes. Really only the F-22. Nor is it expensive, at least the F-35A (I'm speaking of the initial cost, not sustainment which may or may not be a bargain).
The F-35 is the only genuinely stealthy aircraft any country outside the USA has access to (other than China, and the efficacy of its stealth technology isn't known). F-35 stealth is a game changer, as seen in every exercise in which they're involved.
At full capability, yes, it is. However if you don’t have the updated targeting data then my understanding is that it loses a lot of those advantages. And even if it didn’t, it may still be a case that it’s more cost effective to buy higher quantities of slightly inferior aircraft.
It’s hard to know for sure, though. The only true information we’ll get is when it’s used in a hot war and hints if or when countries reduce orders.
Sure, but in any case the nations buying the F-35 are so tied at the hip to the United States it would be fantasy to expect them to break off in any meaningful timeframe relative to the lifespan of the plane.
Beyond that, is there a viable competitor available for an US allied nation to purchase?
I don't think the concern is that they would turn hostile to the US, but rather that they would need to strike a country that for one reason or another, the US doesn't want them to strike (though of course you also have to weight the risk of a coup and of a hostile regime coming to power into a formerly friendly country).
Fictitious scenarios: let's say the US sells F35 to Taiwan. China tries to invade Taiwan. Taiwan wants to use the F35 to fight Chinese forces. China makes a deal with the US to limit the economic impact on the US of the invasion of Taiwan, and the US president of the time thinks maintaining a good trade relationship with China is more important than Taiwan remaining an independent democracy, and will therefore curb Taiwan's ability to use those F35. Not completely far fetched. Doesn't mean Taiwan has gone rogue.
The US tries to keep good relationship with Pakistan, while at the same time considering selling some weapons to India. You can imagine why India would prefer the older French Rafale (the French are much less demanding about what you do with their weapons, though there is the precedent of helping the UK with the Exocet it sold to Argentina during the Falklands war). The middle east is also full of those complex relationships.
> Beyond that, is there a viable competitor available for an US allied nation to purchase?
US allied is a concept that is quickly losing its meaning. As the current administration no longer treats allies as allies, most European fighters are more viable
> Beyond that, is there a viable competitor available for an US allied nation to purchase?
Not available yet, but Korean KF-21 and Turkish Kaan/TF-X (which Spain is thinking about buying/co-producing IIRC), though they're both considered 4.5th gen fighter jets rather than 5th like the F-35.
There is also the metric "sorties per day", which is severly underlooked and very useful in any prolonged conflict. The F35 is not a clear winner there and might not be the best fit if you are a smaller nation.
Military procurement is not about what is the best system, it is about who gets the money.
Plus every other party has far inferior fighters to "the West" anyway. And then you calculate ... you are not going to successfully defend against the F-35 in a war with the US. Not going to happen. Against Russia/China or anyone else ... every fighter jet will do fine, so take the cheapest.
The US got guaranteed this business because of international treaties ... which Trump has abandoned. But no worries, I'm sure he'll just make a "deal" and fix things again, right? Meanwhile I suggest you invest in EU weapons manufacturers, who are a lot cheaper than the US ones.
> Against Russia/China or anyone else ... every fighter jet will do fine
Will it though? Underestimating your (potential) enemies might not be the smartest idea. Of course as the war in Ukraine has shown jet fighters might not even be that relevant anymore if you can't take our your opponents air defenses.
That’s because Russia and Ukraine don’t have the capabilities of NATO. Russia is completely incompetent. Ukraine was incompetent and has spent most of the war trying to remedy that.
NATO doctrine is to start by controlling the skies. I can see a world where a lot of the strategies we see start to crumble when a jet or bomber can pick off key targets at will on and off the battlefield.
One thing I've been wondering about: a jet powered cruise missile is less than $50000. A propeller powered cruise missile can be built for under $10000. Both have ranges over 1000km. The US has, grand total, about something like 40000 interceptors.
That means enough propellor powered cruise missiles to guarantee US air defense penetration is (a lot) cheaper than ONE F-35 (and they can still go ~500km/h), jet-powered ones cheaper than 2, maybe 3 and that's not counting equipping the F-35 with something to shoot, and of course there's the suspicions that F-35s have kill switches that Trump half-confirmed (yet another brilliant move there, Mr. Orange President).
How many of those interceptor rockets are available to be loaded into actual equipment in less than the 6 hours it takes jet powered cruise missiles to reach the US? I don't know, but let's go with 10%. In other words: the defense that Israel mounted against Iran is pretty much same effective defense the US would have if Russia started ... The US wouldn't be able to shoot down more of those, even if Russia had 100x more rockets than Iran.
Oh you want to shoot them down using bullets? Ok, halfway we have those cruise missiles switch to a ballistic trajectory. At that point it will be difficult to shoot them down, but that's not really the point. They're ballistic, and the problem with ballistic rockets is that they're like an (explosive) rock. You can shoot it ... but that only causes momentum exchange ... it doesn't actually give the rocket a different trajectory. In other words: it'll still hit it's target, just with less accuracy (and if the guidance remains intact, not even that). You have to hit it hard enough to get it to break up, which means rockets, which the US doesn't have enough of. Which nobody has enough of.
(this is a theme that will come up often once hamas or hezbollah start firing rockets at Israel again. The new laser interceptors have to hit the rockets BEFORE they're ballistic, in other words, what they do is make hamas fired rockets hit Gaza or South Lebanon ... Guess who will be blamed for intercepted rockets hitting houses, hospitals and kindergartens in Gaza and Lebanon?)
You’re overstating how good guided munitions are. They’re not magic. The further out from the target, the harder it is to hit that target. There’s a reason the USA flew a B2 stealth bomber into Iran instead of lobbing munitions over. And they could only do that because Israel had wiped out their AA capabilities.
Guided munitions are a piece of the puzzle but I don’t think we’ve seen evidence that they can fully replace the ability to point to something on a map, fly planes over and make that thing not be on the map any more.
But even with that you need to find targets, for which only piloted stealth jets work. Then at that point, you may as well drop some ordnance on it while you’re there.
The thing is, we can sit here on HN thinking we’re so clever but ACTUAL MILITARY LEADERS want to use F-35s so they clearly have insight and knowledge that we don’t.
Historically they are rarely very good at being able to tell how the next war is going to be fought.
Sure I suppose most generals these days are much smarter than the ones leading the French army back in 1940 (or pretty much anyone at the outbreak of WW1) but that's a very low standard..
> they're bad at it or because that's a hard problem?
Sometimes either, sometimes both. Historically it wasn't uncommon for mean who were exceptionally incompetent and ill suited to the position to end up leading the militaries of major powers (e.g. Gamelin, Cadorna, Fredendall and plenty of others)
Whether I would do a better job [obviously I wouldn't] seems entirely tangential and a pointless argument in general (especially considering I didn't even make any particularly strong claims. I certainly never claimed that the F35 is not the best fighter jet that's available currently).
Regardless decisions related to things like this are not made by individuals and are usually highly political, based on compromises and several decades in advance.
> The thing is, we can sit here on HN thinking we’re so clever
This was the precursor to the statement you objected to. It seems pretty central to my point: we only have access to public data and have no experience leading any military campaign. I’m willing to have a discussion to learn more but I’m ultimately going to trust that military people are looking at drone warfare in Ukraine and still trust the F-35 to be good value for money.
> based on compromises and several decades in advance.
Using drones in war has been a theoretical possibility since at least 2010, so I believe it’s definitely factored into their thinking.
Well, technically Pakistan shot a Indian Rafale with a Chinese made missile a few months ago, which created some consternation in France. I heard the French explaining it away, as India trying to bomb some Pakistani territory without hitting the Pakistani military, hence putting their jet fighters in unecessary harm's way. I am not qualified to draw my own conclusions on the quality of Chinese weapons but it seems to imply they can certainly do significant damage.
Rafale was shot down by J-10 plane using PL-15 missile.
Rafale, Eurofighter and J-10 are old 20+ years designs.
Europe has nothing equivalent to Chinese J-35 or even previous generation J-20.
> Beyond that, is there a viable competitor available for an US allied nation to purchase?
As I and others point out: the problem is if you do something Trump doesn’t like and he cuts off the extra features that make the F-35 better than anything else you can get. At that point you just paid millions for an expensive paperweight.
Mission Data Files (MDFs), sometimes also referred to under the broader term Mission Data Packages (MDPs) or Mission Data Loads (MDLs) are required for every mission, and they have to come from facilities within the United States. Currently from the U.S. Reprogramming Laboratory (USRL) at Eglin.
To be fair, the exact sentence is "we like to tone them down about 10%", which suggests a more common practice rather than only a plan specifically for the F-47.
Of course it's also a quote from Trump, so who knows how much of it is from his random sentence generator. Although I'd guess he's quoting another official or someone from the defence industry.
Wow, initially I thought this was the typical libertarian thing to pay less taxes. But thanks to your explanation, I see that the scheme is absolutely crazy. Software devs salaries, as any other employee, should be considered an expense.
But, in a second thought, if you sell a software that you hand crafted to a single customer, in Spain, the software enterprise currently deducts all salaries, while the customer has to depreciate the cost. Think about that in the likes of building an expensive machine: the manufacturer deducts all costs while the customer has to depreciate the machine cost over 20 years.
So the question is, how should a software development piece be considered when it's used internally? Why if you sell that software to others have a tax implication different than if you yourself use it?
That's a very difficult question to answer with too many edges.
I would love that Firefox focuses on the browser. I think I wouldn't oppose some monetizing strategy like DDG based on affiliate sales, or even a realistic affordable subscription model (10€/year?). They should put the efforts on privacy and good website usage, maybe include an ad blocker.
But we'll have to wait until Google finally stops paying them for the default search engine. Maybe diverting resources on the Firefox Focus brand will be a transition phase.
I remember when doing web development in 2001 in a company with massive traffic we had a total size limit imposed in each landing page or site, kind of what it's still required for ad networks.
It wasn't unusual to reject some designs due to weight. 500 Kb tops at the begging, so degraded backgrounds were a no-go.
I only have configured a task in Shortcuts that I find useful. I'm a freelance, and sometimes I have to use my personal car to do some work. So, I did a task that I voice activate on CarPlay in order to record the current mileage into a Notes note, storing the current date and the voice transcribed mileage.
I could not find another use for Shortcuts because there aren't enough integrated apps.
I use shortcuts to automatically start a specific music playlist based on the current time of day when my phone connects to my motorcycle's helmet audio system. I also have it automatically play music when I turn on the cheap waterproof bluetooth speaker in my bathroom. Finally, I used it to create an alarm that selects different music based on what I've been listening to recently instead of a static song I have to pick manually in advance.
Spanish here. IMO all those services should be state owned. Set them with a tariff-free base monthly consumption and start charging beyond that threshold.
I'm ok with private companies providing the service to the state, if they think they can do it more efficiently and with fair pay to their workers. And, short leases, no more than 3 year contracts. But the current scenario, where most of the services are effectively privatized, is awful, expensive, inefficient and corrupt.
I've been trying to go IPv6 in my network for several years, but it is really impossible. My ISP (Movistar, one of the big ones in Spain) does not enable it on its fiber network, although there is a beta program that does not allow new joins.
I've obviously configured HE's Tunnelbroker, and technically it works great. The downside is that their closest tunnel endpoint is in Paris and then all the usual web services identify my traffic as VPN/proxied/bot and it makes a constant flow of captcha solving requests or directly service refusal.
Adding to that, my wife cannot work from home, as the VPN her company uses fails when on IPv6.
If nothing big and dramatic happens in the close future, we'll be on IPv4 beyond my retirement.
I live in Spain and use DIGI; they give me an IPv6 address. Granted, I have only tested this through IPv6-detecting websites so I do not know how good it actually is.
The ISP itself is also reliable and cheap in my short experience with them.
This is what I don't understand. In Spain you can only vote in your assigned precinct. Otherwise, you have to vote by mail.
Every mail vote collected by the Postal Service gets delivered on the election day to the assigned precinct. At the end of the day, all those votes are mixed in the ballot box and then counting starts. It takes no more than three hours to get the 99.5% of the votes counted nationwide.
In order to vote by mail, you have to walk into any Postal Service office with your valid government ID and explicitly ask for it. The PS agent will verify your identity and will send you the voting papers to the address you register into. Then, you do your choices and go back to any PS office and send the vote to your electoral precinct by certified mail.
From the moment you ask for mail voting, you get marked in your precinct as a mail voter, so you cannot go in person and vote anymore. You can, though, on the election day go to your precinct and verify that your vote is there.
In Poland, you can only vote in your assigned precinct too - there's a list of eligible voters there and you show up with an ID and get ticked off the list - but you can effortlessly change it online, up until a few days before election. The change can be permanent (requires some proof of residence) or temporary, just for this single election (doesn't require anything). You can also get removed from the lists entirely and get a piece of paper that certifies your eligibility to vote instead, with which you can go vote anywhere - this way you don't even need to know where you're going to be on the election day beforehand, but if you lose it, your vote is gone, as it's your token that ensures you can only vote once.
There's also mail voting, but I never even felt the need to figure out how it works. I understand it as an accommodation for people who are disabled or otherwise ill that can't go vote in person. I always lived in cities or suburbs, so voting booth was always within a 10 minute slow walk and I've been always voting in person so far (even when away from home).
Also, in the context of US election, it's probably important to note that voting is always done on Sundays.
We usually get the official results in a day or two.
Each state in the US runs their own elections. Some states (like California) err more on the side of increased voter accessibility by offering many options to vote. This makes things convenient for voters but increases the complexity of administering election. There's no "right" or "wrong" way to do it---just different value judgments on what trade-offs are worth it.
Next year a lot of families will struggle to buy a needed computer for their kids' school due to some multibillion techs going all-in.