closewith

However, there's opportunity here. As the cost of building and maintaining software products collapses, taste and carefully choosing what to build becomes a major differentiator.

I think it takes a wilful ignorance of the history of industrialised warfare to believe this.

No, the opposite has happened with this war. Adversaries globally have seen the ability of the US and Israel to operate with near-impunity over Iran, and it has destroyed confidence in non-Western defence systems.

The big weakness is industrial capacity, but only China can exploit that at scale.

You have the same issue with the conventional bombs and their guidance kits, which when delivered in contested areas are not usually cheaper.

The issue is general industrial capacity, not missiles specifically.

The headline is inaccurate, as the article actually says that the US Army has used nearly all of its long-range precision missiles, referring to ATACMS and PCM.

First, those are short- to medium-range weapons.

Second, the USAF and USN hold most of the US's long-range precision weaponry, the only real exception being the Long-Range Hypersonic Weapon (LRHW), which is not yet fielded.

> A new, fully equipped ambulance is about $150k.

This is definitely not true. A base model unequipped ambulance may be in that ballpark. A fully equipped ambulance will vary wildly in cost based on clinical level but will be about $250-500k in the US.

> Then you have liability, both for the vehicle and for the medical treatment; that's about $12k per year.

Maybe for BLS or non-emergency ambulances in a low-utilisation role? For ALS/Critical Care or higher in a busy jurisdiction it's going to be significantly higher.

I tried to find the asterisk there to see the details, but could not.

FWIW I think that HEMS cost is significantly under costed, as the London HEMS H135s run about £2,500 per flight hour on direct flight costs alone, so I suspect the £4,748 figure is referring to that alone.

I think a closer estimate is probably total annual operational costs divided by total shouts, (£18 MM / 2,000) or about £9,000 per shout.

Even that's an under costing, as the clinical personnel, equipment, and liability is shouldered by the NHS. A pure costing is probably closer to 2-3X that per clinical flight.

Still an order of magnitude less than the commercial US operators.

> Only a complete moron would think the answer to this is no. If there's no personal cost to using an extremely expensive service, every one is going to use it regardless of whether it's actually necessary. It will quickly turn into a free taxi service for anyone who wants to go anywhere near a hospital.

Okay, so why don't we see this behaviour more in other countries?

In my jurisdiction, the incentives are actually weighted towards pushing people to ambulances, as there is a €100 fee for self-referral to ED which is waived if you're transported, but while there are time wasters and frequent flyers, the service is actually less abused than US ambulances under EMTALA.

And overheid.nl is their government site for that reason.

Yes, which I think is also very common, but what Wikipedia was referring to is that there's no official second-level domain for Government, unlike say gov.br or gov.uk).

Gov.nl is just a domain owned by the Dutch Government, like gov.ie or belgium.be.

That's the most common approach globally. Like most countries, the Dutch Government use .gov.nl.

Can you name one?

I wonder where you suggest researchers go that is both granting funding and not attaching similar or more stringent strings to the money?

Our developers work office hours, but would frequently have 10 plus sessions open. Massive parallelism is one of the benefits of agentic coding.

Yes, subjectively there do seem to be moments where the quality of the output drops significantly - usually during US peak hours.

My company has several MCPs that our very token intensive, but it seems that with Claude Code, usage is throttled even before hitting limits. I don't have any proof, but often when using intensive MCPs, Claude Code will just stall for 10+ minutes.

I wonder if anyone else has experienced this?

Tongue, meet cheek.

Americans desperately trying to justify their firearm fetish is embarrassing.

> PS A "curve-off" public welfare policy is far more effective than banning guns.

Roll eyes emoji.

No, you should always follow you're own moral code.

Companies don't have morals, only people. Abdicating your moral responsibilities because you're employed is cowardice.

> Cars kill more than guns.

In most countries, but not in the US.

Was there a Send Me to Heaven for Sora?

No, current LLMs are already good enough to read the subtexts from documents, email, call transcripts where available. They're extremely good at identifying unwritten business practices, relationships, data flows, etc.

> I don't know of many professions[1] with such demands on time outside of a work day to keep your skills updated.

This is an extremely miopic view (or maybe trolling).

The vast majority of software developers never study, learn, or write any code outside of their work hours.

In contrast, almost all professional have enormous, _legally-required_ upskilling, retraining, and professional competence maintenance.

If you honestly believe that developers have anywhere near the demands (both in terms of time and cost) in staying up to date that other professions have, you are - as politely as I can - completely out-of-touch.

LLMs are already good enough to read corporate email and document shadow functions and hierarchies.

Private companies literally are building drone armies right now. Are you sure their use will be limited to Ukraine and the Middle East?

You're obviously entitled to your opinion, but if you think it generalises, you're simply wrong. There is extremely strong and consistent polling across the EU in general, and Ireland in particular, showing that while the public supports Ukraine and moderate defence spending, it does not support direct military involvement or major escalation, and has zero tolerance for armed conflict, severe economic self-harm, or escalation against major powers.

In Ireland specifically, the cost of living is the key political issue at this time for Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael. Neither has any mandate or capacity for military or economic conflict with the United States - our recent diplomatic efforts, in spite of the Greenland and Iranian crises, should highlight that.

Ireland is more dependent than ever before on the US. We would veto any EU efforts against them.

The ~2M figure was a 2025 EOY nameplate capacity target, not actual output for the year. Even those capacity numbers are widely overstated - it’s well known in defence circles (where you claim to be) that real capacity is running at about 40% of official claims, with some shortfalls being made up by international procurement, but the majority remaining unfulfilled.

As for EU motivations, Orbán is the visible blocker, but the Western states are even more constraining than Hungary. It’s Spain, Ireland, Germany, France, etc. that have no appetite for war or economic upheaval, which would immediately topple governments across the bloc. EU defence policy requires unanimity across states, and it doesn’t exist.

Rhetoric is strong but thin, and almost everybody apart from yourself sees it. Let’s come back to this in a year, when production figures and defence spending for 2025 become public and see.

And I'm a former soldier and current defence advisor. I suspect you'd be horrified of the realpolitik within the EU today.

This is absolute fantasy. Stockpiles are only depleting, production hasn't and won't come close to meeting demand, and until there's a shooting war inside the bloc, it won't.

What are you talking about, 2025 defence spending is coming in below 2024