And what happens when the enemy kills your satellites?

Now, I completely agree that stealth is overemphasized, but stealth is just part of a larger problem. The US military, particularly the Air Force, has a seriously bad tendency to rely on "magic bullet" solutions... a hyper-expensive technology that they think will win wars in a single blow.... instead of taking a layered approach that mixes new solutions with old. Which is important, because, war after war, we have to relearn the painful lesson that magic bullets tend to fail.

The F-4 Phantom not only met expectations, but far exceeded them, to the point that the USAF adopted it (even though it hurt their pride being a Navy program). McDonnell started the design in 1955, the prototype rolled out in 1958, and it entered USN and USMC service in 1960. After it was bloody obvious that the F-4 was far better than anything the USAF had in it's so-called Century Series of fighters, USAF adopted it in 1962 and their initial version... the F-4C... entered frontline service in 1963. It would dominate USAF's tactical fighter wings, with F-4's making up 16 of their 24 wings at one time. All on time, and on budget, with multiple versions being developed along the way (notably the RF-4 photo reconnaissance aircraft, and USAF's ant-surface to air missile "Wild Weasel" F-4G versions).

Take away the satellites, and you effectively take away the drones. Don't kid yourself. The destruction of comms satellites will cripple nations, as we've largely gotten rid of backup terrestrial navigation aids like LORAN in the West, while both Russian and China kept legacy nav and com systems as backups, and are even expanding them. The first day of the war, satellites will be the very first thing to go, because you go after your enemies communications first.

The real problem with AI, and the AI discussion is how muddy it is. Are we talking about llm's diffusion models, or classification systems? Do we mean to say that we're talking about transformers or the underlying architecture? Are we discussing huge data centers or device based AI? Nascent, active, or dormant compute? And the same is true for the ethics, legal, and data governance conversation.

Every single one of these things is a different discussion.

AI is not a monolith.

The thing is that places that historically didn't have to worry about this, now have to worry about this.

If they want it preconditioned? Yes, welcome to 2025, they can install the app on their phone. Or they use the 'remote climate start' option on the keyfob. Or they shoot you a quick text asking you to hit the button in your app.

You keep trying to paint these advancements in convenience and comfort as terrible burdens, and it's weird.

https://neildegrassetyson.com/...

Great. Tapping the 'climate start' button in your car's app on your phone not only will absolutely not 'make you late for work,' it will potentially get you to work quicker, *and* in a better mood, *and* more safely than driving an unheated car in -30 weather.

Because it's more pleasant to drive in a warm vehicle than a -30c vehicle? Especially when all it takes to accomplish this is three taps on your phone's screen?

The Dreamcast/PowerVR architecture was pretty awesome. But if there's one thing computing keeps teaching us, it's that in the end, brute force beats specalization. That said, we're about at the point for somebody to wire up eight SATA lanes in parallel, and make Super Parallel ATA or something. Then, in another twenty years, move back to serial when they realize that it's faster to blast eight bits down whatever new system there is, than to synchronize eight lanes. And so on.

Gasp, same as an EV! Hell, my EV 'heats up' faster than any ICE car I've ever driven, what with the heater being independent of having to warm up an entire engine block through inefficient combustion.

Perhaps, but it's not a battle that is solved by choosing an ICE car over an EV, so I'm not sure how it's relevant.

How are you 'delayed' by getting into a cold EV? Are you 'more' or 'less' delayed than climbing into a cold ICE car?

How is 'some people forget to tie their shoelaces' an argument against shoes?

I do. I also assume that everyone will remember to not swerve into oncoming traffic.

But, and here's the important part, *even if they don't remember to preheat their car, all that happens is that, at worst, their EV car then operates like an ICE car being started at -30, which is to say, takes a bit to warm up.*

Only faster than the ICE car will, and with less wear and tear.

Which is unreliable in many situations. I worked on several projects that had issues involving intermittent data loss on a DB9 port, and every time the culprit turned out to be a USB/DB9 adapter. When we'd install dedicated RS232 cards, the problem went away.

For laptops, the answer to this kind of thing should be a standard space where a customer can specify what ports he wants... you get X number of standard ports, and then you can choose what goes into one or two available spaces. But you're just not going to see that happen with manufacturers, even if the customer is willing to pay a greater cost.