DdCno1

The above comment is an example of this getting waved away.

The type of capitalism found in China is known as state capitalism and it's an unholy blend of central planning and free markets, with the government owning significant stakes in all key industries, exerting a massive control over both the economy and society as a whole using all of the methods used by previous Communist autocracies, only this time with far more technology.

This isn't IS though.

This is built from scratch. There is no reason to use an antique cannon barrel for this - and it's not like those are lying around in Syria, whereas material and equipment to manufacture this is far easier to come by.

I believe this is one of the famous Omar cannons:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Improvised_artillery_in_the_Syrian_civil_war#Omar_cannon

Easily one of the most sophisticated Syrian hell cannons. It's breach-loading, it has a recoil damper and it's mounted on a strong enough truck chassis. They are even seemingly hitting what they are actually intending to hit, which is far from guaranteed with these kinds of improvised artillery pieces.

What's your plan? How do you combat a terrorist organization that interprets any kind gesture, any attempt at normalization as weakness and uses it as pretext to attack? Should I remind you how Hamas has reacted to past concessions?

Yeah, no. This comment alone would go against any government NDA - and this user is just some random person who, going by their comment history, most certainly has no inside knowledge of anything.

I sometimes wonder what needs to happen to people in order for them to confidently write nonsense like this.

I sometimes wonder what needs to happen to people in order for them to confidently write nonsense like this.

So if you're wearing a bulletproof vest and somebody shoots at you and either misses or hits the vest, are you not allowed to shoot back? Are you supposed to just stand there and let the attacker continue until they succeed?

Keep in mind that every single Hamas rocket attack means a disruption of daily life, with people only having seconds to rush to shelter. It's stressful and traumatic, to the point that a few months ago, a nine year old with a preexisting condition died from a heart attack that was caused by the fear and stress of being under attack:

https://www.timesofisrael.com/9-year-old-ashdod-girl-dies-after-suffering-cardiac-arrest-during-rocket-siren/

There is nothing safe about it. All the Iron Dome can do is lower the risk, but it doesn't eliminate it. It doesn't eliminate every one of these unguided rockets and the debris still rains down.

The ironic thing is that for many years, this system saved more Palestinian than Israeli lives, since it allowed Israel to more or less eat these rockets instead of having to strike back every time. After Hamas used a rocket barrage as cover on October 7 - which they also used to murder people hiding in shelters that they had the terrorists knew the locations of - Israel cannot ignore these attacks anymore. The risk is too great now that it's not "just" a rocket attack, that it's part of a larger assault, perhaps a further escalation, e.g. with rockets that aren't just filled with explosives, but perhaps with dangerous substances as well.

It seems like the entire industry is in pure panic about AI, not just Google. Everyone hopes that LLMs will end years of homeopathic growth through iteration of long-existing technology, which is why it attracts tons of venture capital.

Google, which sits where IBM was decades ago, is too big, too corporate and too slow now, so they needed years to react to this fad. When they finally did, all they were able to come up with was a rushed equivalent of existing LLMs that suffers from all of the same problems.

Just tell them you're not drinking alcohol for health reasons. Nobody will really disagree with you on this.