I used vim before TextMate but TM has multiple cursors where vim has none, and I use that every day. The closest thing to that in vim is "repeat edit" but your edits need to be somewhat trivial to be repeat-able. Next is vim macros but that is too complicated already.
The real choice though is between (a) buying an apple gizmo and not having to set up local networks; and (b) buying a non-apple gizmo and having to do that.
> the plurality of instruments in most orchestras is violins.
That only has to do with physics of sound intensity: to create a sound that is perceived as "twice as loud" as "one violin" you'd need ... ten violins.
When you consider that different ebooks and different font selection can result in lines and pages breaking at any random place, ebooks may actually be more expensive to produce.
Don't think I've ever read a properly produced ebook. Page breaks fall wherever and formatting is dictated more by my size/border/etc choices than by whomever "produced" then book.
Nevertheless automatic typesetting and formatting have existed for decades! TeX and LaTeX are ancient and produce better looking results than any book I've ever read on any of my ereaders, and those aren't the only tools in this space.
Whatever people are paying for such "production" seems wasted.
I converted ebooks into PDFs specifically formatted for my reader size and typeset in the fonts I like. It had proper kerning, hyphenation, widow/orphan control, drop capitals, etc.
However that PDF is not reflow-able (or changeable in any way) once it's on the device, and that's not what people are buying ebook readers for.
I'd take these options from several companies (all selling hotdogs) and wrap them up in Collateral Hotdog Obligations which I'd then offer to investors.
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.
France also joined China and Russia in blocking Bahreini resolution that would authorise "all defensive means necessary" to protect commercial shipping in the strait. That is why their tanker passed.
that could be 100 billion USD in deferred revenue, if we assume that LNG is not going anywhere from wherever it's sitting underground, and will be simply extracted and sold later
> plus whatever it costs to do the rebuild
That is the real cost, which I would assume is nowhere near billions
> that could be 100 billion USD in deferred revenue, if we assume that LNG is not going anywhere from wherever it's sitting underground, and will be simply extracted and sold later
I don't think anyone should have any concern whatsoever regarding Qatar revenues vs. Qatar budgets, as they are nowhere near bankruptcy, with this setback or without. Their position by projected GDP per capita may decrease from 6th (currently) to maybe 10th place in the world, which is still better than about 180 other countries.
Cluster munitions are great against infantry in open field; less so against population centres equipped with advance warning systems. As it stands, they fail to even cause the damage worth offsetting by firing interceptors. The damage these inflict on Israel is not unsustainable, and they don't do much to create deterrence.
Given a choice of conventional 500-800 kg warhead or cluster munitions warhead, I think that the nations in the current conflict would prefer being on the receiving end of cluster munitions (as a less bad option) every time.
>The damage these inflict on Israel is not unsustainable, and they don't do much to create deterrence.
Has there been a study on this? What is the GDP loss of having however many Israelis go to bunkers due to incoming ballistics instead of working ?
If a trash cluster missile that costs 100k USD to build causes 1mio USD worth of GDP to not be produced (numbers completely made up) then it's very worth it.
No idea about studies or GDP; just observing that the losses inflicted by Iran on Israel in June 2025 did nothing to deter Israel from going on offence again eight months later.
Ballistic missiles do not cost only 100k USD to build. They are very unlikely to ever be that cheap. Rocketry requires enough precision to not explode on the launcher. Ballistic missiles with conventional munitions are only useful for point targets. Cluster munitions like Iran uses are an admission that they aren't targeting specific systems, aren't expecting to penetrate defenses, or other reasons why they would waste a ballistic missile on the modern equivalent of the Paris Gun.
Harassment weapons don't do much. None of the harassment campaigns done by the Nazis for example really amounted to anything.
Modern Shaheds can be possibly built at a scale to affect that, but we really haven't seen it happen yet. That would be something like thousands launched in a single wave against a single city or installation. But they still lack the precision and warhead to be targeted meaningfully.
You need WW2 industrial scale manufacturing lines worth of Shaheds to get beyond harassment. You need to be producing hundreds a day or more. That kind of industry is nearly impossible to protect from your adversary so unlikely to take shape.
> None of the harassment campaigns done by the Nazis for example really amounted to anything.
I hate to say it, but the aerial bombing campaign against Germany in WW2 was not terribly effective. The Germans were quick to decentralize the factories, and burning down houses did not impair the war effort much.
What did work was bombing the oil infrastructure. Germany ran out of gas.
What also worked was using the B-17 fleet as bait for the Luftwaffe. The Luftwaffe could not help but rise to defend the country, and then they were shot down by P-51s and P-47s and Spits. The goal was to erase the Luftwaffe, and it worked. (Even though German warplane production increased, the pilots were dead and irreplaceable.)
Depends, blanketing Ben Gurion (or any airbase) with parked aircraft on the tarmac with carpet munition is a really bad day.
But yes, against protected targets cluster munitions do not achieve much.
If you have relatively few low-precision missiles, using single warheads means you are risking achieving NO damage (easier to intercept, a good chance that it will hit nothing), with a cluster munition you are guaranteeing at least some damage.
I think Iranians are mixing both types of warheads.
Tarmacs are really hard to hit exactly, especially so when you fire from 1500 miles away. Each angular second turns into a big miss. Also, the launch goes towards the area where GPS denial is assumed. This denial can come in many forms.
There were reports about three small aircraft being damaged in Ben Gurion, one of them caught a fire. I guess three millionaires will have nothing to fly until they collect their insurance money.
There is no point in trying to argue that such an attack is extremely difficult, it already happened, and an attack on Prince Sultan Air Base near Riyadh damaged/destroyed E-3 Awacs and several tankers (see e.g. https://www.wsj.com/livecoverage/iran-war-middle-east-news-u...).
It is not 1500miles away from Iran, but neither is Ben Gurion (Ben Gurion is cca 200-300km further away from the closest point in Iran that Prince Sultan).
That's a false comparison. You want to compare between the actual options you have, which are either (a) firing an interceptor (or several); or (b) repairing the damage caused by a non-intercepted missile.
Your first option comes with the major caveat that each interceptor you fire comes from a limited stockpile whose replacement rate[0] today isn't sufficient for even going 1:1, let alone accepting that multiple interceptors are required.
I'd say the real options in the near term when faced with an inbound missile is a) deciding to deplete your stockpile of interceptors with an incredibly limited replenishment rate; or b) risking a hit to a lower-value target.
Could the US go to a war economy footing and scale production? _Maybe_? I'm not entirely convinced the US can stomach the costs.
In theory; in practice however, there's been rocket fire from Gaza towards Israel where the offence was literally a metallic tube with a bit of TNT at a cost of about $800 per rocket [0] while the defence was $100,000+ per interceptor [1]. This has been going on for years, and as far as I'm aware there was no depletion observed.
I don't know the economic numbers off the top of my head but I have to imagine it's hard to find Israelis who think they're spending too much money on rocket interceptors.
It’s far more complicated than that. The choice is often between firing an interceptor against this missile aimed at this target, or firing that interceptor against the next missile aimed at a target you can’t yet know. Because unless your production capacity far outstrips theirs, you’re going to run out first.
Not if you (a) destroy their production capacity while they don't destroy yours; (b) you destroy their stockpiles while they don't destroy yours; and (c) you've found a bottleneck on their side (launchers) and destroy it while they fail to inflict the same damage on you.
That's true, but feels very much like "draw the rest of the owl." And even if you can do it, you'd have to do it against any country that starts to build this capacity that you think might somebody potentially use it against you, even if they aren't currently, unless you're confident that you can destroy their launchers and stockpiles so quickly that they can't be used in any significant number. (And if the USA couldn't manage to do that to Iran....)
Yes, it's complicated. There's almost 1,000 generals and officers spread across the US military. They (and the tens of thousands of people directly supporting them) spend a lot of time on these things.
Sometimes "draw the rest of the owl" makes sense when you've got 20,000 people actively drawing owls all day every day.
I'm generally sympathetic to the argument that there are a lot of experts doing expert things who know better about these things than some idiot sitting at his computer i.e. me.
But in this particular case, we're in the middle of a war where the owl didn't get drawn and the enemy has successfully launched thousands of drones and missiles at our forces and our allies, causing enough damage to severely disrupt the world economy.
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