Wattage = V x A.

They’re pointing out that it’s impossible to hold both wattage and voltage constant while changing the amperage.

On a long enough timeline.

In reality, they lost to TSMC as much as anything. That’s the real meat of why this case was so important: AMD not being able to gain marketshare meant they couldn’t afford to reinvest into R&D. AMD falling behind in fab tech and having to spin off Global Foundries to stay afloat was a near-direct result of Intel’s anti-competitive moves back then.

That lag in process tech had ripple effects for years. AMD didn’t really start to gain serious marketshare until the one-two punch of Zen and Intel hitting a process wall (while TSMC kept moving).

Hardware like that has been and is still being donated through third parties daily.

It’s more in Ukraine’s interest to limit the use of Starlink to only those terminals that have been vetted through official channels than to allow blanket use and try to filter out things through other means due to… the exact kinds of situations this article is talking about.

but that would require the CEO of the company to actually want to help honestly.

Sure. And part of the reason we know Starlink is entirely capable of geofencing is because Elon’s done it explicitly to stop Ukraine from being able to operate near Crimea. That whole kerfuffle lead to military usage being pushed over to Starshield and a contract with the US government that gives them explicit say on when and where Starlink works in Ukraine.

Elon is dumber than a bag of hammers but it’d be next level stupid even for him to willingly break a DOD contract, especially when people were already floating the idea of invoking the Defense Production Act last time around.

The old FourSevens Quarks used to rotate the tailcap the switch between modes. I’ve got one of the older QT2L-Xs that’s probably my favorite light ever for that reason. That and it’s the perfect size for pocket carry while still being decently bright. The newer models since they got bought out ditched it which sucks because it was such a simple interface.

I got a couple of Fenix lights recently that I don’t hate. They still do the “cycle through modes with a button” thing, but it’s at least a dedicated button separate from the tailcap switch.

There are definitely solutions but they all involve giving a Russian agent direct knowledge of troop movements.

Starlink terminals are activated using a unique identifier. It’s how billing works.

SpaceX knows which terminals have been provided to Ukraine. We know they can geofence service. Geofencing the Ukrainian theater to terminals that were provided to Ukraine shouldn’t be a massive technical leap and doesn’t provide any information they don’t already have.

As long as you don’t need particularly tight tolerances or fine details, it works perfectly fine. The setup really isn’t anymore complicated than I described. I have done it just because I wanted to see how difficult the process is. It’s around $100 in startup costs assuming you have access to a printer. After that it’s mostly just waiting and occasionally measuring cut progress.

Check out the Rack Robotics Powercore as well. It’s a low cost wire EDM system that uses cheap 3D printers as a motion platform. It uses a very similar principle to cut metal using wire as the cutting tool. May or may not be more suitable depending on your exact use case. Still pretty rough around the edges though; SendCutSend makes more sense for most people that need things cut from flat stock for the most part.

The majority of components in these things typically are printed. It’s just the pressure bearing components like the barrel where ECM is being used.

The FGC-9 discussed in the article is notable because it was explicitly designed to be manufactured using components that are not regulated as firearms parts under European law. So there are non-printed parts in it, but everything is dual-purpose and can be acquired through unregulated channels, e.g., the hydraulic pipe that gets used as a barrel.

The reality is this is one of a handful of emerging technologies that are going to reshape a lot of things about the world in the future in ways I don’t think society, as a whole, is cogniscent of, let alone prepared for.

This is one of them. The battlefield use of small drones is another.

I tend to say that the world we’re living in now is one where gun control is increasingly obsolete. That’s not a moral judgment. It’s not a statement on whether that’s a good or bad thing. It’s just what I think we’re going to increasingly find to be the new reality: the rise of small scale, low cost, divertible manufacturing technologies is going to make traditional supply-side approaches to regulation untenable. That genie is out.

(Drones are in a similar, if distinct space: low cost, commodity, and divertible from low/no regulation supply chains in a way that makes it nearly impossible to cut off supply without shutting down other legitimate economic activity).

I don’t know what the right answer is. I do think it’s going to take a pretty fundamental rethink of how we approach these problems. I don’t think the full ramifications of these types of technology have really reached the wider zeitgeist, and, frankly, I kind of worry about how people will react. There are a lot of pretty scary paths this could take, both in terms of how the technology gets used and in terms of what attempts to curb them could look like if they’re not carefully thought through.

Machine is borderline overselling it.

The ECM process works by pumping water containing an electrolyte through a metal part. When a current is applied to the water, exposed metal gets slowly etched away.

What these groups are doing is starting with high pressure hydraulic pipe and inserting 3D printed jigs that are basically a negative mask to bore out the pipe to their desired diameter, cut the chamber, machine in rifling, etc, with the end product being a functional barrel. As far as I’m aware, so far this has been limited to pistol caliber cartridges; rifle calibers are a step up in pressure and come with a whole host of different engineering challenges.

The “machine” is really nothing more than a bucket, an aquarium/pond pump, and a desktop power supply. It’s honestly a really clever approach to the problem from an engineering standpoint.

The ECM process isn’t suitable for manufacturing ammunition.

In general, you’d still be generally reliant on the traditional manufacturing supply chain there. There is development happening in that space, but nothing anywhere near as complete as the FGC-9.

Jake Hanhrahan of Popular Front has done really extensive reporting on the general topic of 3D printed firearms. He’s interviewed both people in the design community and people involved in the fighting and manufacture in Myanmar.

We also have real world examples like Alabama passing a voter ID law and then almost immediately turning around and closing DMV offices in poor, black counties, making getting an ID even more difficult for at-risk communities:

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-10-01/alabama-closes-dmv-offices-a-year-after-voter-id-law-kicks-in

Voter ID laws are very much about cloaking intentional disenfranchisement of legal citizens in a veil of preventing virtually non-existent voter fraud.

Clover is so beneficial that pre-WW2, grass seed mixes almost always explicitly advertised clover content. If you look up 19th or early 20th century catalogs, etc, listings for grass seed will nearly always not only mention that they contain a clover mix, but tout its benefits.

As you note, it was only post-war with the creation of modern herbicides that clover stopped being the norm. There was more or less a DeBeers-style PR campaign to convince people that clover is a “weed” since it can’t survive weed killers.

The spots that our dogs have destroyed clover, they had destroyed the grass anyway. And that’s under an old magnolia tree where everything struggles anyway. The rest of the back yard is fine.

dork enlightenment

I have no idea how I’ve never seen this up to now, but good god that’s the perfect encapsulation of that particular sect of morons.

The entire system is deeply corrupt beyond false positives.

We know for a fact that Russia was systematically cheating testing and the grand sum of the punishment they faced for it was having to compete as “Olympic Athletes from Russia” for two years.

It also helps that their attempts to redirect back mostly serve to highlight their weird preoccupations.

Things are happening like a former Trump speechwriter posting “Emmett Till was weird” on Twitter because they can’t comprehend just how unhinged and generally weird saying something like that is to a normal person.

Or they think they’re being clever flipping the script and ranting about “boys saying they’re girls is weird.” “Why do you spend so much time obsessing over what children have in their pants? That’s really weird.”

It all puts them in a bind. If they try to defend what they’re saying as normal, it’s very clear that it isn’t. If they try to deflect with what they think is weird, it just shows how detached they are from normal reality. It’s a surprisingly effective line of attack that largely neutralizes their normal gish galloping.

I’d be in favor of more. 26 is just because I think there’s a very easy argument to make for “every circuit gets direct representation on SCOTUS” and it’s not a huge leap to go to two per circuit from there.

Increasing throughput is definitely one of the reasons I’d support doing this as well. Thanks for highlighting that since I didn’t.

The problem is that the process for amending the Constitution is heavily, structurally biased in favor of the Republicans now. The GOP would absolutely rally around this issue because it’s one of the primary things allowing them to hang on to power right now.

I don’t believe in engaging in theatrics with a zero percent chance of success when there are real, feasible steps that could be taken to make things better.

Article III only lays out there there will be a supreme court and a Chief justice and makes Congress responsible for establishing them. It does not lay out the makeup or structure of that court. The current body of 9 justices is set by federal statute and could be changed by a simple act of Congress.

Article III also explicitly states that whatever Justices are appointed hold their office as long as they maintain good behavior (I e., as long as they haven’t been impeached) and that Congress cannot reduce their pay.

Term limits are explicitly unconstitutional.

Setting the number of judges is explicitly within Congress’ constitutional powers.

Randomized panels would probably be challenged just because it’s never been tested, but the language in the Constitution re: Congress establishing the Supreme Court is vague. That said, Congress has already established inferior Federal courts that operate in this manner, so there’s precedent.