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anikan_vader commented on What you need to know about EMP weapons   aardvark.co.nz/daily/2025... · Posted by u/flyingkiwi44
Nevermark · 3 months ago
The irony is that if your defenses consist of, on the one hand, nuclear weapons, and on the other hand, pitchforks brandished by several farmers... You are going to be very, very respected.
anikan_vader · 3 months ago
Until someone calls your bluff, perhaps accidentally, and realizes much of the nuclear saber-rattling was just that. Of course, since it wasn't entirely a bluff, this is the easiest way to get a nuclear war going. (Get a country with nukes but limited conventional capabilities into a brinksmanship contest.)
anikan_vader commented on When the sun dies, could life survive on the Jupiter ocean moon Europa?   space.com/astronomy/when-... · Posted by u/amichail
JumpCrisscross · 3 months ago
> They’ll specifically look for moons around large gas giants orbiting a red giant sun

You're writing as if watery moons around gas giants aren't something we look for.

anikan_vader · 3 months ago
To date, there have been no confirmed exomoon detections. So hopefully they'll do a better job than we have so far.
anikan_vader commented on ICE Deports 3 U.S. Citizen Children Held Incommunicado Prior to the Deportation   aclu.org/press-releases/i... · Posted by u/mandmandam
anikan_vader · 4 months ago
Due Process is being denied to US citizens, who are being removed from the country without the opportunity for them or their parents to consult an attorney.
anikan_vader commented on A life that added up to something (Obituary of Paul Erdòs)   people.math.osu.edu/nevai... · Posted by u/joebig
eesmith · 10 months ago
He spelled it Paul, so why would he be incorrect about his own name?

In Hungarian the order would be Erdős Pál - https://hu.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erd%C5%91s_P%C3%A1l .

What's your point? We also say Carl Linnaeus instead of Carl von Linné.

anikan_vader · 10 months ago
The point is that the title and article misspell (in two different ways) his second name.
anikan_vader commented on Are you better than a language model at predicting the next word?   joel.tools/smarter/... · Posted by u/JoelEinbinder
anikan_vader · a year ago
Got 8/15, best AI model got 7/15, and unigram got 1/15.

Finally a use for all the wasted hours I’ve spent on HN — my next word prediction is marginally better than that of the AI.

anikan_vader commented on The rarest move in chess [video]   youtube.com/watch?v=iDnW0... · Posted by u/ca98am79
shric · a year ago
The creator admits it early on -- it's measuring rarity based on the specific notation everyone uses, which greatly influences the classification of rarity.

Fundamentally all chess moves are a piece moving from one source to another destination including:

- castling as a king move with a distance greater than 1

- pawn moves to the 8th or 1st rank with the additional datum of a new piece

- en passant is the same as a regular pawn capture, it just requires the victim pawn to have moved two squares previously.

Algebraic notation also has an arbitrary and reasonable amount of extraneous detail despite dropping the source location if it's unambiguous.

For example, the captures (x), check(+) and checkmate(#) symbols are all unnecessary given the previous state of the board is always known. With en passant it's also unnecessary to have a special symbol indicating an en passant capture, and indeed there isn't one.

I was initially hoping to get some insight on e.g. which pairs of squares had the fewest moves for a given piece etc.

That being said, I thoroughly enjoyed the video. It was beautifully illustrated and explained everything clearly.

anikan_vader · a year ago
Some sources do write ep after en passant captures. As you point out, it’s no more redundant than notating checks.
anikan_vader commented on 300k airplanes in five years   construction-physics.com/... · Posted by u/juliangamble
John23832 · a year ago
> It’s disingenuous to claim without citation that the US does not anticipate using artillery as one (of many) primary weapons in a land conflict against a near-peer adversary.

It's not disingenuous at all. It's pretty apparent if you even take a cursory look at modern American military doctrine/spending. The plan is always to park a carrier close by (maybe two), conduct an air campaign, then send in the troops. Artillery wars just chew up people which the the American public has not had an appetite for since Vietnam.

>The fact that thr US hasn’t had such a conflict since at least Vietnam (and arguably Korea) not withstanding.

It think that is a caveat as big as the Pacific. Vietnam was literally 60 years ago. You don't think top brass have rethought how wars are fought since then? For context, that's 10 Presidencies since LBJ (36th).

> Artillery has proved decisive in every conflict with static lines in the last 100 years.

Again, modern American doctrine has focused on the layering of power projection and troop mobility specifically to NOT fight in static positions.

> Artillery has proved decisive in every conflict with static lines in the last 100 years. Sure, hopefully air supremacy would overwhelm your opponent and prevent a static conflict, but no air force has ever established supremacy in a conflict with saturated strategic air defenses. Perhaps the US air forces could, but this capability is untested. Sadam and Yugoslavia were limited to tactical air defenses in relatively small numbers compared with modern day Russia or China.

Again caveats. Also a war with China will be fought exactly opposite to Ukraine (with missiles not artillery, and with dynamic naval fronts, not trench warfare).

anikan_vader · a year ago
Well we certainly do agree that artillery will not be the primary weapon of choice in any naval war!

I do appreciate your point of view, but I maintain that in a lengthy land war with a near peer, missile stockpiles would run low and 4th gen fighters would be unable to contest enemy airspace. Of course, the caveat is that the US would very much like to avoid any such conflict via either diplomacy or a decisive first few weeks of combat. And the hope is that 5th gen fighters would evade air defenses. Even so, US doctrine calls for being capable of fighting prolonged land wars on multiple fronts.

anikan_vader commented on 300k airplanes in five years   construction-physics.com/... · Posted by u/juliangamble
bluGill · a year ago
There is good reason for that: the US/NATO war plans are not to get into an artillery war in the first place. If there is artillery in the way the US/NATO plan is send an airplane with a few bombs to take it out. There is still some room for artillery in the army and so we produce some, but that isn't the major way to fight wars.

The Soviet plan - which both Russia and Ukraine are well trained in - was to use lots of artillery. In backing Ukraine NATO suddenly sees a need for some shells that they wouldn't use if it was them. But the Ukrainian generals know them and so that is what they want. (Note too the nobody has provided Ukraine anywhere near the number of airplanes needed to fight a NATO style war - even if all promised F16s arrive today with full training it isn't enough for a NATO war)

anikan_vader · a year ago
It’s disingenuous to claim without citation that the US does not anticipate using artillery as one (of many) primary weapons in a land conflict against a near-peer adversary. The fact that thr US hasn’t had such a conflict since at least Vietnam (and arguably Korea) not withstanding.

Artillery has proved decisive in every conflict with static lines in the last 100 years. Sure, hopefully air supremacy would overwhelm your opponent and prevent a static conflict, but no air force has ever established supremacy in a conflict with saturated strategic air defenses. Perhaps the US air forces could, but this capability is untested. Sadam and Yugoslavia were limited to tactical air defenses in relatively small numbers compared with modern day Russia or China.

In short, artillery remains important, which is why US artillery shell production is up an order of magnitude over the last 3 years, and will continue to rise.

anikan_vader commented on Creepy Study Suggests AI Is the Reason We've Never Found Aliens   sciencealert.com/creepy-s... · Posted by u/unnouinceput
chilmers · a year ago
This has the same issue I have with any theory where the great filter is a technology that evolves roughly contemporaneously with spaceflight (like atomic weapons): It’s just not probable that _every_ civilisation would destroy themselves before being multi planetary. By virtue of the events being so close, some civilisations would escape destruction if only through dumb luck.

Personally I think the lack of visible galactic civilisations is more plausibly explained by a combination of life being rare (and probably brought to Earth via panspermia after billions of years of evolution elsewhere) and both multicellular and sentient life also being rare.

anikan_vader · a year ago
Atomic weapons emerged slightly before the first craft to leave the Earth’s atmosphere, but we’re still nowhere near interstellar travel. On the other hand, the difficulty of space travel is largely a function of the escape velocity, which is dependent on the gravitational pull of your planet and solar system (both of which are variable).

One issue with your claim though is that once you have interstellar flight, you certainly have weapons of mass destruction. Even crashing a coke-can sized meteor into the Earth at 1% of the speed of light would cause major destruction.

anikan_vader commented on Three women contract HIV from dirty "vampire facials" at unlicensed spa   arstechnica.com/science/2... · Posted by u/alphabettsy
DoreenMichele · a year ago
Notice how it's never men doing stupidly risky stuff to try to look young and beautiful.

The societal pressure on women to look young and beautiful is ridiculous. And influential women actively promoting such garbage is part of the problem.

Men get former Mr. Universe's modeling "eat right and exercise." (Arnold in case you aren't getting the reference.) Women get this kind of crap.

anikan_vader · a year ago
I’m sure you realize that Arnold didn’t get that big just through chicken and broccoli…

u/anikan_vader

KarmaCake day904January 10, 2020View Original