Technic used to do these cool books of instructions only - they were 14 dollars around 1992 - which if you owned Technic set X and Technic set Y you could build Z.
You could build the ALIENS PNEUMATIC LOADER in Lego Technic. Coolest thing ever.
Anyway yes creativity is great but also official instructions are great too.
It'd be nice if Israel would let UN fact-finding missionaries or other independent research teams into Gaza to find out (in addition to not barring and/or killing humanitarian aid workers)
It’s perfectly normal for militaries to have press restrictions in conflict zones, for opsec among other good reasons. No one bats an eye when Ukraine does it for example.
1. Ukraine’s media restrictions are virtually non-existent when compared to those enforced by the Israelis in Gaza, including the intentional bombing of media offices. Keep in mind that Hamas has repeatedly called upon Israel to allow foreign press and NGOs to visit and see what’s happening on the ground.
2. The Ukraine war is a conventional war between sovereign nations with standing militaries with equivalent capabilities (air force, anti-air defenses, armored vehicles, bomb shelters, etc). The Gaza genocide is an onslaught by a sovereign nation with a well equipped military against a militant group in a dense urban area. Leveling entire city blocks when fighting against an opponent that has no air force or anti-air capabilities is not only unimpressive, but also breaks the principle of proportionality.
1. It's pretty much the same - no press in dangerous areas unless invited and escorted by the military. The only major difference is that Ukraine is >1000x larger, and has safe areas far from any fighting where such press restrictions aren't needed.
2. You're making a bunch of separate accusations without connecting them to the topic at hand, which was press restrictions.
No, they’re not the same, and (2) is very relevant.
Let me reiterate: Ukraine is a sovereign nation with a sovereign military that has the ability to enforce restrictions within its own territory.
To bring your bad analogy more in line with reality on the ground, imagine if Ukraine was still part of/occupied by the USSR/Russia, and Russia enforced press restrictions across all of Ukrainian territory during a Ukrainian insurgency. However, in this theoretical USSR, Ukrainians did not get Soviet citizenship, and were under a total blockade.
> The only major difference is that Ukraine is >1000x larger, and has safe areas far from any fighting where such press restrictions aren't needed.
But Israel never allowed press into the strip, even during “ceasefire” periods - like right now! This implies that Israel is not somehow paternalistically concerned for press safety; it simply wants a media blackout.
So no, this “major difference” is irrelevant when comparing restrictions between the two conflicts.
I'm not sure what you're getting at. Universally, modern militaries don't like journalists wandering around near their assets.
> and Russia enforced press restrictions across all of Ukrainian territory
Your analogy isn't very different from reality. Russia does enforce press restrictions near military assets, including in occupied parts of Ukraine.
> However, in this theoretical USSR, Ukrainians did not get Soviet citizenship, and were under a total blockade.
That would seem very unfair, if Russia did it just because they're mean and not because this hypothetical Ukraine had launched tens of thousands of rockets at them. But I'm not sure what it has to do with press restrictions.
> even during “ceasefire” periods
The ceasefire was pretty much dead once Hamas attacked IDF soldiers in Rafah. Now it's just a lower-intensity conflict. Still not a great idea to have random journalists waltzing around and tweeting photos of military assets.
> it simply wants a media blackout
This is a funny explanation because there are millions of cameras in Gaza anyway, and this is the second most covered conflict (by metrics like article count) in all of human history. Not much of a "blackout" at all.
Alright, your good faith arguments have convinced me! To summarize:
On one side, two sovereign nations setting press restrictions in areas they control. Standard stuff.
On the other side, a genocidal state blockading a tiny strip of land for 20 years waging a campaign that has killed & maimed so many children that we have lost count unilaterally enforcing a total international media blackout. Also standard stuff.
Silly me, how could I even argue about this? It’s just so damn obvious! Sometimes, arguing with random anons on HN pays off :)
You're just changing the topic with unrelated accusations. How nice or mean you think a military is irrelevant to the fact that they don't like random journalists tweeting photos of their military assets.
Gaza population September 2023: 2.3 million. Gaza population September 2025: 2.1 million.
Hamas casualties make up only a portion of palestinian casualties; palestinian casualties make up only a portion of excess deaths; excess deaths make up only a portion of total deaths.
The next census will be in 2027. No one knows the population until then.
It’s not clear that Hamas limits their counts to excess deaths. Even if they intended to, a lot of it is based on a web form, with not much validation besides basic checks that the person exists etc.
As with pretty much any conflict, there's a ton of uncertainly, and people shouldn't be recklessly speculating based on things like WhatsApp chats. Responsible casualty estimates would look more like Ukraine, where for example Zelenskyy said "tens of thousands" (one significant digit) were killed in Mariupol.
You are the one who proposed birth estimates and casualty claims suggest population increased. How do you think population estimates work?
There is no census scheduled for 2027. Gaza (much like Israel) does not conduct full censuses on a regular schedule. Neither Gaza nor Israel have scheduled their next full census at this time. The most recent census for Gaza was 2017 (for comparison Israel's most recent was 2008). All population numbers of relevance are determined by statistical methods. For large numbers, this is perfectly adequate.
> As with pretty much any conflict, there's a ton of uncertainly, and people shouldn't be recklessly speculating based on things like WhatsApp chats.
Numbers of deaths aren't being estimated from WhatApp chats. The most widely agreed upon estimates are based on morgue data, which if anything should undercount the actual death toll as plenty of bodies never make it to a morgue operated by health professionals. These health professionals are the same ones giving the birth rate estimates.
> Responsible casualty estimates would look more like Ukraine, where for example Zelenskyy said "tens of thousands" (one significant digit) were killed in Mariupol.
That's not what one significant digit means. That is an order of magnitude estimate. I believe everyone is in agreement that the death toll of the gaza war was likewise in the tens of thousands. 1 significant digit would indicate how many tens of thousands. For example, death tolls for Mariupol range from between 20,000 and 90,000. Estimates for Gaza range between 60,000 and 100,000, or roughly half the band for Mariupol. Note that Ukraine does not have access to Mariupol to investigate, as the war is still ongoing, whereas we are several months past the ceasefire in Gaza. Based on pre-war numbers, natural deaths unrelated to the conflict should be a rounding error at this resolution.
Certainly the claim that the population increase is proof of anything is absurd.
2027 is the expectation, since it's supposed to be at least every ten years.
> Numbers of deaths aren't being estimated from WhatApp chats.
Unfortunately they are. [1] was based on messages in "X (formerly Twitter), Instagram, Facebook, WhatsApp, and Telegram". An example of content they scraped is [2], but they also included non-public chats in WhatsApp etc.
> The most widely agreed upon estimates are based on morgue data, which if anything should undercount the actual death toll as plenty of bodies never make it to a morgue operated by health professionals.
This isn't the case even for GHM's official counts. Anyone can report a Gazan "martyr" or missing person on a web form right here [3]. Those get included in GHM's counts, if they pass basic checks like the existence of that name and ID.
> That's not what one significant digit means.
I think the concept still applies, though I should have said zero significant digits, since "tens of thousands" implies an exponent but zero digits of the mantissa. But my point is that responsible estimates involve acknowledgement of uncertainty.
> I believe everyone is in agreement that the death toll of the gaza war was likewise in the tens of thousands.
Most of Israel's critics are not satisfied with Hamas' ~70k casualty figure, and seek out higher estimates like the aforementioned one that used WhatsApp chats. For example, a HNer yesterday wrote "They've killed people in the hundreds of thousands in Gaza now."
Estimates of birth that rely on the mid-2023 figure and deliberately ignore Israel's systematic dismantling of the health and food systems in Gaza and the drop in fertility levels.
>the casualty count that Hamas claims
The Gaza Health Ministry's count is widely regarded as an underestimate, but mostly by people who don't refer to it with a dogwhistling caveat.
I wasn’t going to reply but since you’ve been rescued from the flags: which “genocide scholars” think that in increase in population is possible during a genocide?
I figured it may have been because you decided to get informed about how genocides are identified by intent and not population deltas. But since you think a projection is the same thing as a census, that obviously isn't the case.
Regarding intent: if Israel intended to kill everyone in Palestine they’d nuke them, and not risk the lives of their children trying to ensure noncombatants are out of harms way in operations against Hamas.
Trying to frame the violent expulsion of Palestinians from their homeland as just "Jews trying to live in their own homeland".. isn't working in 2026 and nobody needs to read the thoughts of a man who saw Cecil Rhodes as a kindred spirit.
Remember when Germany lost the second world war, lost a third of its territory, had millions ethnically cleansed from said territory and then proceeded to not maintain a goal to wipe Poland off the map (again)?
No. Speak to Persian and Iraqi Jews about their expulsion.
You can also look up arab violence and laws against Jews at any time you like. When the belief system mentions fighting Jews at the end of time when the trees will reveal them (except the evil Jew loving tree, yes really) you tend to act on those beliefs.
You mean the well-documented terrorist operations by Israel against Jews in the Arab disaspora? The terrorist state started with terrorism and sustained through it.
The focus on a particular location is a religious one (in the scriptures there was a Jewish homeland before Israel or Egypt, and Israel is singled out because God told them to go), but it's also a selective one that ignores all the times God arranged for Israel not to be there; and crucially does not stop and wait for His opinion about the present. It is the most dangerous kind of religious opinion: one invented by us.
Herzl makes no religious argument, he is fairly close to an atheist. That’s why I mentioned people should read the book or a summary before commenting on the matter.
Of course there could be, and Hertzel writes about it explicitly - the idea that Jews need a homeland because antisemitism makes it impossible for them to live within another people.
In regard to religion itself, like the other post said, he couldn't really care less and even advocated for Jews to convert to Christianity at a time, seeing it as another solution to the discrimination they're facing: "I see myself as an average modern Jew and I'm not afraid from the idea of a formal conversion to Christianity. I have a son, and I'd prefer converting today and not tomorrow so that his membership will start earlier and I can save him from the troubles and discrimination he'll face as a Jew".
Look, there's no way the coordinates this guy triangulated lined up with the religious site by chance. That would be similar to the odds that a flawed calculation of the age of the earth would turn out to be 6,000 years. If he had said anywhere else that argument might be right, but not of all places the temple mount, the one place in the world nobody would need any explanation for. If you're saying he was writing from a pragmatic standpoint, perhaps he argued that it would be convenient and more conducive to organizing power to follow along with what others believed: but that's still based on the religious thought.
Of course it did not happen by coincidence, but Hertzel himself was considering other places too. There were real discussions around the best location, and finally it was agreed that Mandatory Palestine is the place most Jews would unite around - due to history, religion, culture, existing population etc.
My point is that the idea that Jews need a homeland was prior to the idea of the exact location it should take place in. If you bundle history, culture, belief and a like into the word "religion", then sure, we can say that the later decision of the exact location was based on religion. For us non-religious Jews that sounds awkward: we feel connected to the place because of our culture, not because of our non-existing religious feelings - but that's just semantics.
I guess we have just been talking semantics. I am only saying that the cultural view came from the religious view originally. I don't think that is something many people would disagree about.
There are other groups that could claim the same: Romany/Gypsies would be a big one but no one seems to want to claim a North Indian homeland for them; Sikhs might be another.
I'm not sure what you're trying to say, but if there are other groups who are being discriminated against, and have a strong connection to a specific place on earth - be it Romany, Palestinians or whoever - I definitely wouldn't be the one objecting their right for self-determination. The way I studied Zionism as a child was clear: through our (Jews') right to a land we can understand the right to land of others.
Roma do have a supposed homeland in India and have been badly persecuted. There is an exceptionalism about Zionism. Many features can be found elsewhere. When I've seen Haredi in Israel, they look like Eastern Europeans to me in their mannerisms, dress (inappropriate for the heat) and even language. I personally think European Jews succeed better in the USA than Israel. Israel is under siege all the time. I have spent a few months in Israel. I left with a very different opinion.
"I don't believe in god but he promised me this land 3000 years ago" sums up Zionism pretty well, or "Jews aren't safe anywhere so let's create a state by wiping out and expelling the native population and make enemies of all our neighbors". It's such a laughably self-contradicting ideology
The effect you're describing is often created when people with very distinct views agree on one thing and argue in favor of it along conflicting axiomatic lines.
Except none of these statements are part of the Zionist agenda. You putting them in quotes does not make them a quote.
I already explained why your first "quote" is false: Hertzel didn't think Jews should move to Israel because it was promised to them.
The second one is also completely wrong: He never called for expelling the native population, and he actually advocated for close and good contacts with them and the surrounding countries.
Don't get too excited about their views - they very much believe that the land belongs to Jews, they just think they should wait for the Messiah to give us the signal before going there.
It's funny how people associate their views with humanism: they are simply extremely religious and on this specific question, the current result of their extreme beliefs happen to align with yours.
I recommend _Culture in Nazi Germany_ by Michael K Kater. [0]
The push for a Zionist state started and accelerated in the 1920s to the end of the 1930s. Most of the Jews that moved from Europe to Palestine, which was part of modern day Israel, were by the Zionists. Reason is because the only jobs at the time were farming so people would have to give up their current triad.
Number of these individuals actually supported fascism. Even after WWII the mind set was not that fascism was bad but poorly implemented. That mind set was shared by a number of Germans and Jews that moved to Palestine before Israel became a state.
It was not until the late 1960s that younger culture started to shift that mind set to fascism is bad.
If you think I am wrong about the summation of the book ... read it.
It's a hundred pages. If someone hasn't read it, or even a summary, they have little knowledge of Zionism. WW2 was far after the modern return of Jews to Israel.
I grew up in a very left leaning, pro terrorism household. I was absolutely wrong about what Zionism was - not a 'God promised me this because I'm special" as I was told but rather "racism means we need a homeland let's all go back to Israel".
You sound like you’re trying to collapse the term into a single definition based on one guy, which just doesn’t match the variety of people and motivations using it today. Christian white nationalists in the US are not calling themselves Zionist because “we need a homeland, let’s all go back to Israel”.
You might as well say that Republicans are the party that fought the Confederates and freed the slaves. It is not true today.
How does having a religious base state prevent bigotry and discrimination? Both are mutually exclusive.
In the world, Jews discriminate against Jews, Christians discriminate against Christians, Muslims discriminate Muslims, ... A religious state can only have one variant of religion that is deemed the right variation even though multiple variations exist.
The closest thing to a non bigot and discriminating state is one that is not built on religion but accepts other people and allows them to exercise their variation of religion.
Earth is the home land of humans not a politically divided territory.
> How does having a religious base state prevent bigotry and discrimination?
Jews are an ethnoreligious group. You can be an atheist and return to Israel if you want. 20% of the population is Arab, with more rights than most Arab countries, for example Arabs in Israel vote for Arab politicians that argue with other Arab politicians in the Knesset, in Arabic.
Likewise Druze are more protected in Israel than they are in the rest of the middle East.
> prevent bigotry and discrimination
Israeli Arabs have the same rights as Jews, Asians and Europeans.
"More rights than most Arab countries" lmao sure, just cause you keep repeating a slogan doesn't make it true, that's called propaganda, there's very systematic and well-documented racism towards anyone who's not a Jew
When it comes to their most basic democratic rights - the right to vote and the right to be elected - they're also better than most Arabs in Arab countries.
Less than half of Israelis are Askenazi, and unless your solution is to "ethnically cleanse" by sending people back to the countries their grandparents fled, it hardly matters.
Americans and Europeans have the false notion that Israeli Jews are predominantly European. They are not.
While I agree that the land has been taken by force, unfortunately returning the land is no longer an acceptable option.
The land of Israel has been developed in such a way that it has become completely different from what it was one century ago, and there is no doubt that its previous owners could have never succeeded to do a similar development, due to a combination of lacking both the financial means and the skilled labor capabilities.
While I believe that returning the land would be unjust at this time, I also believe that the never-ending war between Israelis and their neighbors can be stopped in only 2 ways, one of which is not acceptable in the modern world and which would bring eternal shame on Israel if they would ever succeed to realize it.
The second option is for Israel to do the same that Israel has demanded and has obtained from states like Germany. This means that Israel should admit that they have occupied the land by force and they should repair this by paying a just compensation to the remaining descendants of the former inhabitants, exactly like Israel has received from countries responsible for the oppression against Jews during WWII.
You need to take into account that Zionists are aging out of the population. The younger generations in the West absolutely support military action against Israel. If it was taken by force, it can be returned by force. I would definitely support US military action against Israel to defeat Zionism.
> younger generations in the West absolutely support military action against Israel
The West–and America in particular–has always had a contingent that believes in drawing foreign borders through force. Particularly in the Middle East. It goes back to Sykes and Picot.
I wouldn't put a war with Israel out of the cards in my lifetime. But it’s not happening in the next two decades—our neo-imperial ambitions have found purchase closer to home.
At some point, all land has been taken either by direct force, or by the threat of force.
All land, everywhere. It is NOT a natural right that anyone owns any land, nor that any countries exist. That is something everyone's ancestors fought each other for and created as a system of human society.
Of course that's written in the past tense. Facing reality rather than the fantasy presented in history books and documentaries; not only did our ancestors do that, it hasn't stopped. The bloodshed still happens today in so many places. Those we might hear about in the news, and others forgotten even in the news because it is considered normal and thus ignored.
We are not yet a species of plenty. Scarcity still exists, at the very least in the real form of land where people want to be.
> At some point, all land has been taken either by direct force, or by the threat of force
You're broadly correct. But there is land that was settled within the historical record.
The Levant, obviously, is not that. It was settled prior to the historical record. It is the coast closest to our cradle of civilisation. Every human with ancestry outside Africa has some sort of claim to lineage to that land.
'within the historical record' -- No one still makes a big deal about it because it happened long enough ago.
There are places that are not widely contested today, generally most of their present borders are assumed to be generally stable. Or places with obvious natural geographic bounds and mostly internal conflict through history.
Yet at some point were those places not battled over? Even the internal conflicts count, even if as a whole the majority of a country's population of today considers themselves of one people.
The regions that remain in conflict are considered such largely because of the people who have, at some point, lived in an area long enough for it to become a notable part of their history, they have not unified as a people OF a place, but as a distinct ethnic group (be that religious or otherwise) who happened to have at some time lived in some area.
They have all been 'wronged', and all* (generally an assumption but likely to be true) have 'wronged' others (at least in 'aggressive self defense' if not in some other way) at some point.
-- put into a metaphor --
There's a public park owned by the people (earth) which has a single tree that many children have made memories with. However two or more groups of childhood friends want to continue making memories with that tree and disagree with each other and how each other interact with the tree.
What is the solution?
The evil answer from a fiction writer is to destroy the tree to remove the problem. However that does not make a right.
Using any method to give the tree to one group would be a wrong to the other groups.
The groups cannot agree on how to share, nor how to all be full adults and make memories with the tree in peaceful coexistence.
Thus, lacking an accepted answer, the problem remains unresolved.
Antarctica is Earth's southernmost and least-populated continent.
Situated almost entirely south of the Antarctic Circle and surrounded by the Southern Ocean [ and ] is the fifth-largest continent, being about 40% larger than Europe, and has an area of 14,200,000 km2 (5,500,000 sq mi).
There was no one to "take it from" and when it was divided up by "Great powers" that was more by competition (race to open routes) and some notion of good sport:
Antarctica was claimed by several states since the 16th century, culminating in a territorial competition in the first half of the 20th century when its interior was explored and the first Antarctic camps and bases were set up.
Then there are the more remote parts of Australia, nominally "taken" by the English (despite not being reached for some time) and later returned (post Mabo) to the descendants of what seems likely to be first settlers some tens of thousands of years past (the multiple waves of settlement arguments and other aspects of the History Wars in the Black Armband / Quadrant circles are looking thin in these days of genetic markers).
But that one's a complex can of worms that takes some time to unpack.
No land was stolen. All land was purchased before the war. All land taken after wars was taken after wars started by the Arabs.
That's always been the case with nations who lost wars. Germany lost the war and lost land because of it. Should Germany take back land that was "brutally taken from them"?
Or should they maybe just accept that they shouldn't have started the war? The Germans certainly have accepted that.
> If a war has finished, should the victor still be able to keep taking land off the loser? What’s the duration of that right?
Practically? In 2026? As long as you can keep it. We're back to deciding borders through force versus treaty. Which, based on the rhetoric around Gaza, is ambiguously worse.
Most humans can legitimately claim ancestry to the Levant. It's the coast closest to the cradle of civilization.
There is absolutely evil happening in Gaza. But pretending this is black-and-white, from an ocean away, is just alienating. It turns what should be a broad political discussion into a niche issue.
> Most people on the planet view this as a black and white issue. Zionists are the modern day Nazis and I don't see a lot of sympathy for them.
No. Most people see the nuance. There are a small number of extremists (on both sides, granted) who see this as a black-and-white issue requiring extermination.
Do most people see nuance with the Nazis? I suggest you talk to some Gen Z people as they most definitely view Zionists as Nazi equivalent. A view I think most of the non-Western world also holds.
> they most definitely view Zionists as Nazi equivalent
Some of them do. They’re concentrated in a few cities. (Principally New York.)
Most of them see the back and forth and minority of extremists in each camp not representing the others. (There are more than two factions at play before we even figure on the international elements.)
> most of the non-Western world also holds
Most of the non-Western world doesn’t know what Zionism is because it’s irrelevant to them.
Ukraine was my pet war. I had to fight the tendency to reduce every geopolitical and domestic political issue through it. Because it’s not true. We aren’t abandoning Ukraine because of some Russia conspiracy, we’re abandoning it because most voters care much more about pocketbook issues.
Do you have an example? I've studied quite a bit of Hertzel and what I mainly remember repeated to us is "We shall never discriminate between one man and another; We shall never ask 'what is your religion?' nor 'what is your race?'. For us it is enough that he is a human being." and "My will to the People of Israel: create your country in such a way, that the non-Jew will feel good to be your neighbour".
In a diary entry from June 12, 1895, Herzl detailed his plan: "We shall try to spirit the penniless [Palestinian] population across the border by denying it any employment in our own country... Both the process of expropriation and the removal of the poor must be carried out discreetly and circumspectly".
I wonder why would you drop the middle out of the quote where he talks about finding for them employment in other countries ?
"We shall try to spirit the penniless population across the border by procuring employment for it in the transit countries, while denying it any employment in our own country"
and what happened in reality, is that with arrival of Zionists area got economically developed and it resulted in migration of 100k-400k of arabs into mandatory territory in search of employment.
in your opinion, are they also not natives and should leave now ?
did you know that John Steinbeck's great-grandfather, Frederick Steinbeck, was murdered, and his great-grandmother and her sister were raped in 1858 near Jaffa by not zionists ? and their possession stolen.
no. but they were killed and raped by palestinians and belonging stolen at 1858. looks like tradition.
btw, here is an interesting quote from PLO commander Zuheir Mohsen (sounds palestinian enough for you ?):
"The Palestinian people does not exist … there is no difference between Jordanians, Palestinians, Syrians, and Lebanese. Between Jordanians, Palestinians, Syrians and Lebanese there are no differences. We are all part of one people, the Arab nation [...] Just for political reasons we carefully underwrite our Palestinian identity. Because it is of national interest for the Arabs to advocate the existence of Palestinians to balance Zionism. Yes, the existence of a separate Palestinian identity exists only for tactical reasons[...] Once we have acquired all our rights in all of Palestine, we must not delay for a moment the reunification of Jordan and Palestine".
The Arab homeland is in Arabia, not Palestine. Palestine is a Roman creation after the destruction of Judea. It was named after a group of European invaders who conquered a small part of Israel 3000+ years ago.
Arabs aren't native to Palestine. Jews are. They were present in Palestine before the name Palestine was ever used.
Exactly. It's usually the Zionist sources themselves that are unabashedly genocidal and supportive of ethnic cleansing.
More recent example is Bari Weiss, who wrote in 2021:
"The results of this mess, as always, are especially bad for the Palestinians who live under Hamas rule. Casualty reports are hard to verify because Hamas controls the media (even the international press) inside the Gaza Strip, but it appears that more than 50 Palestinians have been killed. Some of these people are entirely innocent non-combatants, including children. This is an unspeakable tragedy. It is also one of the unavoidable burdens of political power, of Zionism's dream turned into the reality of self-determination."
So according to Bari Weiss, the mass slaughter of children is one of Zionism's political responsibilities of power.
I assume you're being funny, but the question is, will killing someone to make an example of them deter others? And the answer is: not as much as to justify killing people for being violent.
I’m not sure why you think pointing out that executing multiple time violent offenders stops violent offenders is ‘bad faith’ rather than logic, but I and presumably the others pointing out the same thing are not particularly bothered by your actions.
I answered you as if you weren't being funny, since the answer to you being funny is "ha ha".
The problem with killing people for being violent is that violence is a spectrum with genocide and serial murder on the one end, and snarky comments on the other. Whereas the capital punishment is pretty far towards the killing end of violence.
So when you seek to kill people for being violent, you need to at least specify how violent you need to be. Is killing one person enough? Or maiming multiple? Or just being really snarky for decades?
While "an eye for an eye" seems direct, manslaughter comes in several degrees based on intent and state of mind.
The main reason why capital punishment in the US is preceeded with decades of imprisonment is because killing people "legally" isn't simple.
The only way to simplify killing people is to let go of your humanity.
You can prove that most people don't learn CSS using most LLMs: they're trained on github code.
A card with a top image, some text and a button - which should be...
- A card
- A top image
- Some text
- A button
ie 4 HTML elements, ends up being about 10 HTML elements with various strange hacks in the div-soup HTML the models have scraped from Github.
Then someone else comes along and uses tailwind, because naming 10 arbitrary HTML elements (rather than .card, .card img, .card p, .card button or similar) is hard. They're right, but the problem is they didn't need that many elements in the first place and wouldn't if they'd just learnt CSS.
I’d spend time on the CSS Grid and Flex playgrounds. Get used to creating layouts using grids and padding and gaps, leave block elements and margins to actual writing.
CSS has gotten much, much better, which is why it doesn't suck so much these days, but come on now, using a div with a background image was a common practice. There were like, what, 3 different hacks to center an element inside another?
People don't just opt for a plethora of different tools to deal with it "just because".
So much this. The amount of unnecessary divs created by LLMs are an abomination. Let alone the blatant disregard for any semantic elements. Took a lot of strongly worded instructions to get rid of the bias for div-span-spaghetti, and it still slips in entirely superfluous elements.
> It's simply easier for the Microsoft development team to maintain one version of the suite and they've chosen the most convenient option — Click-to-Run (vs Microsoft Store)
Must be significantly harder to develop MS Store apps. Due to sandboxing limitations?
Microsoft publish two different editions of the Windows Minecraft launcher with different sets of features. One is the MS Store version and one is the regular version
Probably because there's internal conflicts between the store team and the applications group, that neither of them want to deal with anymore, this might have been for the windows S support (remember store only windows).
They have their own distribution system, so they don't need this anymore.
BGR used to be a decent blog when they were covering Blackberries... but once your main jam dies off all you can do is turn to longform slop a decade later.
It's a non-issue with GraalVM native binaries. See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46445989 for an example: this CLI tools starts in ms, fast enough you can launch it during tab completions and have it invoke a REST API without any noticeable delay whatsoever.
But also when running on the JVM, things have improved dramatically over the last few years, e.g. due to things such as AOT class loading and linking. For instance, a single node Kafka broker starts in ~300 ms.
graalvm is literally 500x more overhead than a statically linked dash script.
Maybe not an issue for terminal UIs, but the article mentions both TUIs and CLI tools. A lot of people use CLI tools with a shell. As soon as you do `for file in *.c; do tool "$file"; done` (as a simple example), pure overhead on the order of even 10s of ms becomes noticeable. This is not theoretical. I recently had this trouble with python3, but I didn't want to rewrite all my f-strings into python2. So, it does arise in practice. (At least in the practice of some.)
A hasty generalization with a little confirmation bias, perhaps?
$ time keenwrite.bin --version
KeenWrite version 3.6.5
Copyright 2016-2025 White Magic Software, Ltd.
user 0m0.329s
From Claude:
> It's worth noting this is a common perception about Java, and there's some historical truth to it (especially with Swing desktop applications from the 2000s). However, the absolute statement "no Java app... ever" is the fallacy - it's an overgeneralization from limited personal experience to a universal claim.
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