The point the OP is making is not about the justification used by the US Admin, but instead a point about how when a country has nuclear weapons, they are typically not invaded, because you risk those weapons being used. NK developed a weapon and has some degree of safety from direct invasion.
Since it developed nuclear weapons, Israel has never been invaded by a foreign country. Israel launched the 1967 war, and in 1973, Egypt only attacked occupied Egyptian territory. Same for Syria.
The fact that the 1973 war only occurred in Egyptian and Syrian territory actually had a major impact on how other other countries reacted to it.
Even the US - Israel's main backer - basically treated Egyptian and Syrian war aims as legitimate.
There is a widespread belief that Israel would have used nuclear weapons if the Syrians and Egyptians had broken through to Israeli territory, and that this was one of the major American motivations for resupplying the Israelis during the war.
Obviously yes in the form that the comment you replied to refers to--US would be much more careful stringing a country with nuclear weapons. So while the invasion may not be caused by proximity it can be allowed bc Iran doesn't have one.
If you talk to your Asian and South Asian colleagues, the broadly held view among a lot of foreign "non aligned" nuclear countries is that Iran's regime is dumb and stupid because they didn't go nuclear first and instead tried to use it to squeeze the west by threatening to get nukes. The smarter states like India and China sprinted towards getting nukes before forcing the West to the negotiating table.
The middle eastern states are somewhat unique (and perhaps this is what inspired the end of history Western convergence school of thought in the late 90s geopolitical theory) in that they cannot survive without trade/exchange with the West. Your Asian powers like India/Pakistan/China/DPRK are all perfectly happy to be isolationist states to pursue autarchy and nuclear freedom but all of the middle eastern countries (including those like Syria/Libya) want to cosy up and trade with the West instead of going full autarchy. My theory is that it's because they are stuck in the oil resource trap and its just too easy to print money with oil than having to work and innovate.
Then again Iran is fractured internally, there's a lot of traitors within selling out the country to foreign powers. If you have Persian colleagues, ask them about the Iranian "Mossad jokes". They have a lot of funny jokes about the regime and Israeli intelligence.
> That doesn't make sense for America to care about this much, given that Iran has no way to deliver nuclear weapons to it.
A nuclear armed Iran could hold oil and gas shipments in the Straight of Hormuz hostage indefinitely. It could also threaten U.S. bases and warships in the area. It could threaten regional allies with a nuclear attack.
> Are we really back in "trust me they have WMDs" territory?
Irrespective of everything else going on, it’s well established that Iran has a nuclear program in the advanced stages of development. There was a whole UN program around inspecting it.
> A nuclear armed Iran could hold oil and gas shipments in the Straight of Hormuz hostage indefinitely. It could threaten regional allies with a nuclear attack.
Personally, I don't care about the profit margins of oil and gas companies, and I will vote against any politician that partakes in sending my fellow citizens to die for the profit margins of oil and gas companies.
I also don't particularly care about the plight of regional allies, particularly ones that have a bizarre tendency to constantly poke the bears around them.
Bat is nice. Oh dang now i have to try this plugin. I remember trying a couple of similar ones that got me so frustrated that i abandoned the idea of markdown viewers in nvim... Here we go again XD
I used opencode happily for a while before switching to copilot cli. Been a minute , but I don't detect a major quality difference since they added Plan mode. Seems pretty solid, and first party if that matters to your org.
Hallucinations are more or less a solved problem for me ever since I made a simple harness to have Codex/Claude check its work by using static typechecking.
Then you apply LLMs in domains where things can be checked
Indeed I expect to see a huge push into formally verified software just because sound mathematical proofs provide an excellent verifier to put into a LLM hardness. Just see how Aristotle has been successful at math, and it could be applied to coding too
"LLMs reliably fail at abstraction."
"This limitation will go away soon."
"Hallucinations haven't."
"I found a workaround for that."
"That doesn't work for most things."
"Then don't use LLMs for most things."
"Autocomplete is great!"
"It doesn't work in bash"
"Then don't use it in bash."
I don't see what's wrong with this argument, and I certainly don't see it as a proof that the particular technology is actually useless, as you seem to be suggesting.
I mean, Hallucinations are 95% better now than the first time I heard the term and experienced them in this context. To claim otherwise is simply shifting goalposts. No one is saying it's perfect or will be perfect, just that there has been steady progression and likely will continue to be for the foreseeable future.
I'd just do it over a Docker mount (or equivalent) to keep it a bit more lightweight. Can keep the LLM running local; and teach it how to test/debug via instruction files.
My wife and I work. We are blessed that we make enough that we buy ~anything reasonable we want, have 2 kids in private school, and max out our 401k/roths/backdoor every year.
What is the value in detailed tracking of personal finance? We audit ~every credit card bill when it comes in for oddities, but don't really pay attention where everything goes as long as more comes in than goes out.
For me I wanted to know how much I'm spending spend in different categories - not just for the phone bill where you can just see what it is every month, but for more irregular expenses: travel, repairs, appliances etc.
So why is this interesting to know? It gives you a better picture of where your money goes, what your bur rate is, how much of your spend is on mandatory stuff (food, rent/mortage etc.) and how much is on things you could potentially cut if need be. It makes it possible to know how far you are from various levels (/lifestyles) of financial independence. I have a pretty good idea that I could make it to retirement even if I permanently lost my job and I know what that lifestyle would roughly be like.
This also makes it possible to do proper budgeting by setting aside realistic amounts even for irregular expenses, so you're essentially 'saving up' for the irregular expenses. Done right, your "expenses" (money set aside in budget) are exactly the same month after month even though your actual money outflows in some months may be much higher. This is both true for the irregular expenses like travel, but also for semi-regular expenses that may come due only annually or every three months (mortgage etc.).
For me personally, it made me feel much more comfortable about spending larger amounts on travel etc. because I've already saved up the money via budgeting and I've never seen it as savings that goes away. Savings are per definition the difference in monthly income vs month set aside in budget. I make sure to be a bit conservative, so I actually also build a buffer on the savings account, usable for truly extraordinary expenses.
But your current situation sounds healthy - and if you have amble cushion, and you're confident it will continue that way and you have no desire to change it yourself, the above is of course less relevant.
Is there any chance this invasion has ~anything to do with Iran having nuclear weapons?
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