The high seas (https://open-slum.org/) ... and as a compensation donate to the author somehow or make a donation to your local library for a clear conscience.

Good design follows the function. Not distinctiveness per se.

If it's an interface and not an art object, then the design is secondary to the function of said interface.

Good hammer is a good hammer, not a "distinctive" hammer.

Distinctive hammers and other tools get brand recognition and free marketing out in the field, ostensibly increasing sales - that's why all the tool companies have their distinct colors and you can see the type of tool someone uses from a distance. Matching chargers/batteries incompatible with other brands perpetuate this even further.

Someone IS designing all this, they just aren't optimizing for what you wish they were.

For any serious tool, the brand recognition is secondary. It might be a different color, but the function is the more important part.

A classic "the tragedy of the commons" with the SMTP protocol.

When the cost of spamming is near 0.00, all open platforms will be abused to the tilt. We have seen the email channel get less and less reliable with our own clients (password recovery, notifications and etc).

This might evolve into a couple of oligopolies (Microsoft 365 Outlook, Google Gmail, may be some legacy email providers like Yahoo) and if you want delivery you'd need to pay them, because they'd be the verifiers that you're not a spammer.

And these platforms will have a hell of time to fight the spammers that will create millions of email addresses and spam trough them.

I don't think the protocol is necessarily the problem. For example we don't say the HTTP protocol is the problem when spammers abuse website comment forms or forums, we say it's the server on the other side.

I think the answer is somewhat the same as where we've gone with many HTTP servers: proof of work. Just like Captcha and more recently Cloudflare turnstile required you complete a task before you'd be able to access as website, senders should be required to complete a task before you'll accept their email.

It can even be a sliding scale: the higher you want the chances of the recipient seeing it to be, the more work you need to do.

However this also break emails considered "legitimate" by businesses, like marketing newsletters and other nonsense, which is why it'll likely never happen.

The legacy compatibility of the protocol has brought all the hacks on top of it for identity verification like SPF, DMARC, DKIM ...

Even with those, the amount of farmed accounts from a reputable platforms is still high, and it will go higher with the cheap AI targeting that will make the texts much more well crafted and spam filters much more aggressive.

My other conjecture is that the big mail providers would have enough data to catch the spammers based on a number of signals.

I'd be happy if we at least started punishing the large, well known and established companies for spamming us...

...you know the one, where you have email preferences, and you only have "new messages" and "commercial offers" in the settings, and you uncheck the "commercial offers" and think you're sae. Then you get a spam email from them... check the preferences again, and there's a "new product notification" preference, checked by default, and you uncheck that too. Bam! another spam! "personalized offers" option appeared, check by default. "limited time offers". "value deals", etc.

I've gotten my email routed to spam even though it never left the Google cloud. They don't say, "Gosh, this is coming from inside the house. Therefore it's trustworthy." Nope. The push legit mail from other Google hosted domains into spam without a second thought.

I've had emails from Google end up in spam and I'm using Google Workspace, it's driven by what people flag as spam, not domain trust.

Well... some people buy debrid subscription for 3 USD/month on the high seas...

They have a working operational system and battle tested tactics, not only procurement. It's not the rifle that distinguishes the special forces, but how it's used.

They built a network centric warefare with starlink and cheap android tablets down to the drone teams in the field.

They built a network of cheap acousting sensors (old phones) as passive sensors and using ML models to find the drones cheaply and increase the coverage. (Radars are expensive and easy to hit because they emit).

What they achieved is a "sensor fusion like" distributed system buid on cheap components and updated realtime. And all this is battle tested in the new environment of transparent battlefield (there is always a drone looking).

Also a lot of real-life electronic warfare stuff and drone applications.

This is what's missing in the US army. They are optimized for a symetrical 20th century warfare.

UKR = entire country of +40m is on the battlefront so they can do total war mobilized homefront distributed system... so can Iran. But it's very different for force projecting security guarantor US - can't convince paying protectorates to pivot total war defense posture in peacetime, that's what they bribe US not to do.

And ultimately whatever model of distributed lethality / survivability (which US planning foresaw) is less relevant that US global commitments requires high end hardware that has to be rotated / propositioned selectively, and sustainable only in limited numbers vs adversaries mobilized on total war.

But the fundamental problem is US adversaries are catching up on precision strike complex. Iran isn't asymmetric warfare, but restoration of symmetry. It's not so much US getting weaker as adversaries getting stronger, and without monopoly over mass precision strike (which naval / air superiority / supremacy is only delivery platform), US expeditionary mode simply on the losing side of many local attrition scenarios. Ultimately all US adversaries will gain commoditized local precision strike (even deadlier if bundled with high end ISR), at varying scales due to proliferation requiring persistence across global theatres US simply doesn't have numbers/logistics for.

TLDR: US expeditionary model is bunch of goons with rifles in trucks, driving around neighbourhood where everyone had knives that could not get in range. The second everyone else buys guns, then rifles, the expeditionary model breaks.

That is all orthogonal to my point. It is fit for purpose and effective, but isn't cold fusion.

US manufacturers dont make cheap effective solutions because there is little profit in it when they can upsell expensive options.

The US has little motivation to optimize.

How is capitalism in the wrong here? Resource warfare is universal trough the history in any society.

The check and balances of the US President that can start an offensive war is more a political problem, not "capitalism" problem.

Was this started as a resource war, or as a money-making scheme, or as a distraction from the Epstein files, or just because DJT developed actual old age dementia after purging anyone who might say 'no'?

To the extent it's a money making scheme, well, capitalism gets blamed for all money making schemes even if it's supposed to be a specific subset of them which is useful for the feedback one can get from open markets.

(As that's a caveat inside a caveat, I'm mostly agreeing with you).

It's all of those, yet none are the real root reason.

For that, you must look at the main beneficiary. Which country stands to gain the most from a completely dilapidated Iran? Which country stands to gain more when all the regional powers that could stand up to it have been destroyed?

I think the answer should be blindingly obvious.

It shouldn't take a genius to figure out that Christians and Jews don't like Muslims and Muslims don't like Christians or Jews.

Just look at the Sudanese conflict.

> Was this started as a resource war, or as a money-making scheme, or as a distraction from the Epstein files, or just because DJT developed actual old age dementia after purging anyone who might say 'no'?

Or because America is filled with demented cultists who think a two thousand year old property dispute is the key to triggering the Apocalypse so they can all be whisked away to paradise.

It's not a 2,000 year old dispute. Zionism began in around 1900. It was spearheaded until recently by "secular" Jews, who were borderline atheist. The Jewish religious texts themselves make wishing for a "return to Zion and Jerusalem" sound like wishing for a utopia or world peace. It pretty much reads like a metaphor, not like a political programme. Finally, most highly devout Jews were strongly opposed to Zionism, at least until after WW2.

That comment accurately described what American evangelicals believe.

American evangelicals don't care about 1900, differences between secular and religious Jews or their disputes. They don't care at all. They actually agree with a lot of what loosing side of WWII said and thought. And they in fact do believe the end of times prophecy and their duty to speed it up.

If you are unaware of that, maybe you should not be so arrogant when comment on politics. Because the radical American religious leaders are literally talking to the troops now as minister of war is their disciple.

I can't say I'm surprised about the downvotes but it is odd, this isn't really a secret

There's something darkly funny about the reality being so demented that just describing it on HN gathers downvotes because it objectively sounds so awful.

The really crazy thing is just how few death cultists it really takes. The smallest minority of them have been busy radicalizing teenagers and biding their time for the past 20 years and this is what it’s come to.

It's so bizarre how OP was downvoted. It's a truth. History repeats itself. It's not the first war. It's not the last war. Maybe his (or her) tirade on capitalism annoyed the HN downvoting shoggoth.

> Was this started as a resource war, or as a money-making scheme, or as a distraction from the Epstein files, or just because DJT developed actual old age dementia after purging anyone who might say 'no'?

I don’t think we should look too far for reasons. He got all excited with the adventure in Venezuela and wanted to do it again, but with bombs and his pal Bibi. He’s itching to do the same thing to Cuba, and he’s not subtle about it.

Someone should tell him there is no such thing as Nobel War Price and he was pranked

> Was this started as a resource war, or as a money-making scheme, or as a distraction from the Epstein files, or just because DJT developed actual old age dementia after purging anyone who might say 'no'?

We won't know until everyone publishes their memoirs. I imagine absurd reasoning is entirely on the table. Given the administration's blind luck with its raid on Venezuela it assumed that scaling up the same plan would function, without realising how fortunate it was the first time. Reminiscient of Blair and Kosovo leading to hubris on Iraq.

Not sure this was blind luck.

They had a few people on the inside, who handed over Maduro to the US. May have been internal conflict in Venuzuela using US to get rid of Maduro.

Maybe US also had people on the inside in Iran, but killed them by accident on the first strike with the "precision bombings".

I think they were extremely fortunate that their complex plan actually went off without a hitch. Its quite a lot of moving parts and hoping that certain people will react in certain ways.

> Maybe US also had people on the inside in Iran, but killed them by accident on the first strike with the "precision bombings".

Yeah but no. Iran isn't Venezuela by a long shot, extremely different properties all round. Its hubris to think what worked out well in one case would apply to a completely different one on the other side of the world.

Rubio is the neocon mole responsible for these wars.

It's a contributor factor through the usual pro-war think tanks funded by weapons companies.

But, yeah the choice of Iran now isn't at all explained by "capitalism".

"Everything I don't like is woke." - Right

"Everything I don't like is capitalism." - Left

Global wildlife populations have dropped 69% since 1970.

Virtually all climate scientists agree human activity is destabilizing the climate, the oceans, and entire biospheres.

Military spending is at record highs while housing, healthcare, and clean water remain out of reach for billions.

These are some things people "don't like", which share a common thread...

I don't think my tone was 'raging'. Very strange takeaway - but also interesting...

"Keep raging" is a good example of what's known as a "thought terminating cliche". You might not want to terminate your thoughts so easily.

That, or just a way to save face: when you can't argue the point, argue the tone... If that's what you were going for - do you feel like it worked?

Didn't you hear? Capitalism is the root of all evil :) At least among English speaking "smart people of America and Europe".

Tu-144 was built because of concorde, but it wasnt' a copy. It was reimplementation of a shared idea. It's not like Tu-4 and B-29, which was a copy.

Apple has been doing it for years not allowing "unsigned" software to be installed using the same "for the safety of the user" even against the user's wishes.

And they should remain the outlier.

If the technology becomes cheaper, this creates more market pressure, by changing the cost base of certain product. For example books when printing press was invented went from luxury to something expensive but more affordable. In software markets that means that will have more software, more competition and in free market segments profits will evaporate.

The pseudo "entrepreneurs" who think they could outsmart the market by working less, are just naive. In a free market economy optimization is brutal and a freelancer developer will sell the same "product" cheaper, because he has the same technology available to him.

So the only way to get the gains from these AI technologies is to have something that can't be easily copied like market knowledge, data access or sweetheart deals with big companies that can pay more because their profits support the higher spend.

Also, services based SAAS especially B2B will not die, because a tyre shop won't have the time to write/debug/host it's own solution and will not want to depend to a single contractor who can disappear for a vacation. But the margins will go waaay down. 25$ for a set of forms and a database, not gonna cut it anymore.

> Also, services based SAAS especially B2B will not die, because a tyre shop won't have the time to write/debug/host it's own solution and will not want to depend to a single contractor who can disappear for a vacation.

True in the current state of LLMs, possibly not true forever if someone finds the magic bullet that turns the one-shotting (reliable) software dream that companies like Anthropic and Perplexity currently peddle into reality. Seems far-fetched ATM but the gains since GPT-2 have been very real.

We're quite a ways away from this though, even with Opus 4.6 and the like. And even further from it being part of Claude Code rather than some proprietary $1000/mo. closed-source solution.

As you say though, _if_ such a technology were to exist, it's Anthropic that holds all the cards, not random entrepreneur #25721 who is asking the Anthropic API the same thing that the actual customer could just be asking directly. At that point you're an undesirable middleman, not a business.

You can definitely invest trough a holding company set up in Ireland or in other lower tax jurisdiction and pay less tax that way. Even if you invest in a Croatian startup you can wrap in a UK structure to have the British courts available. Or you can structure the deal to include the British court as a venue for conflict mitigation. Also Irish courts are comparable and since 2020 have remote hearings (thank COVID). Either way, your main risk is not the law, but startup market risk.