That didn't keep them from getting bombed for a month, and their senior leadership all killed. It just let them punch back a little bit. Not an equal amount, just a little bit.

So, no, not a "nuke equivalent".

"Our position is that it should" is very different from "the text of their statement says". This is Senator Wong's (or Australia's) idea of what would happen in an ideal world, not anything anybody involved recognizes as relevant. (I mean, they may not recognize the text as being relevant, either, but this is a step below even that.)

> The short range of IR terminal guidance limits the size of the associated warhead.

Could you explain this a bit? OK, IR guidance is short range. Why does that mean I can't put a bigger bomb in it?

The warhead is typically 10-30% of total missile weight and most of the non-motor weight. A substantially heavier warhead on the same rocket motor greatly reduces missile acceleration, speed, and range.

IR missiles must accelerate to ~Mach 2.5 over a very short distance to maintain lock and close the distance for the purpose of air intercept due to the short-range of the guidance. IR seekers are lightweight and compact, which lends itself to quick acceleration.

This short-range performance profile can be maintained with a heavier warhead using a larger, heavier rocket motor. This has cost, weight, size, etc implications but that isn't a reason to not do it in isolation.

The upgraded IR missile is still short-range but now it has a footprint similar to long-range radar missiles and those have a similarly large warhead. It erases the major technical advantages of IR missiles (cheap, light, small) without addressing their major deficiency (short range).

You could build an IR missile with a heavy warhead but it doesn't make much sense. The quick acceleration requirement creates a lot of engineering pressure to reduce weight, which can only be meaningfully achieved by reducing warhead size.

Humans are different. Humans - at least thoughtful humans - know the difference between knowing something and not knowing something. Humans are capable of saying "I don't know" - not just as a stream of tokens, but really understanding what that means.

> Humans - at least thoughtful humans - know the difference between knowing something and not knowing something.

Your no-true-scotsman clause basically falsifies that statement for me. Fine, LLMs are, at worst I guess, "non-thoughtful humans". But obviously LLMs are right an awful lot (more so than a typical human, even), and even the thoughtful make mistakes.

So yeah, to my eyes "Humans are NOT different" fits your argument better than your hypothesis.

(Also, just to be clear: LLMs also say "I don't know", all the time. They're just prompted to phrase it as a criticism of the question instead.)

Disagree. If you went to 100 random humans and said, "Tell me about the Siberian marmoset", what fraction would make up completely random nonsense to spew back at you? More than zero, sure, but most of them would say "what are you talking about?" or some variation.

I asked Claude Opus 4.6, Sonnet 4.6, Gemini 3 Thinking, and Gemini 3 Fast "Tell me about the Siberian marmoset" exactly and all 4 said it doesn't exist, with Gemini Thinking suggesting that I'm thinking of the Siberian marmot or Siberian chipmunk (both real animals).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tarbagan_marmot (also known as Siberian marmot)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siberian_chipmunk

More: They produce 396 a year when they already have 20 times that number in stock. If they don't have 20 times that number in stock, can they produce more per year? As CharlieDigital noted, yes, they can, though at the price of lower or no production of LRASM missiles.

As does this one. The 10 points aren't the agreed-upon terms, though. The agreed-upon terms are: stop bombing for two weeks, and open the straits for two weeks.

Does Iran acknowledge the second one or do they believe they are the toll takers of the strait?

Good question! And I don't know the answer. "Reopen the strait", but I haven't noted whether it's with or without toll for the two weeks.

What in that do you read as "Trump agreed to give Iran control over the Strait of Hormuz"?

For two weeks, you're going to have to consult with Iran to get through the straits.

If I understood you correctly, land that has no building on it is not eligible for a mortgage, and is therefore cheaper to buy? With the downside that you have to pay cash, because you can't get a mortgage either?

Yes the land value is so insanely cheaper on un-mortgagable properties in my state, it's off the charts.

I have developed land in my county so I'm familiar with the costs to develop, buy land, place utilities etc. (I did not become a land developer on purpose, only because I realized this absolutely crazy arbitrage)

It would cost you about $200-$250k to buy a rural small acreage land with a manufactured home on it. If you pay cash for the land and drop the exact same manufactured home on it, it would only cost you about $150k, and you would get a brand new house instead of a "used" one.

There is huge pent up demand for someone to just buy a huge swath of small acreage properties and just drop the cheapest manufactured home you could on it as the non-luxury starter home market is currently not being met. You could pretty much double your money. I'm not sure why this isn't being done en masse although a few private actors seem to be doing it and making a killing.

Only if they go back through their threads.

Or they use something like https://www.hnreplies.com/ which many do. In any case the @ doesn't work regardless, it does not ping anyone.

Hmm. You just gave me a flashback to Putin's invasion of Ukraine. He was saying all these threatening things, and moving all these troops, but surely he would never do that, right?

Wrong, it turned out. Sometimes bluster isn't bluster. Or perhaps sometimes blusterers back themselves into a corner with their mouth.