kinsomo

> Underdogs with nuclear weapons?

For most of their existence their much larger Arab neighbors (who had the backing of a superpower) had the explicit and oft-stated goal of destroying Israel. Those weren't idle threats: several wars were fought under that banner, one of which was almost successful.

While they currently have a somewhat more secure position, due to peace treaties. They remain unpopular, and a governmental change or revolution could easily put them under intense threat again.

> You should only be buying from an American supplier, even though we just spent 30 years shutting them all down

> Factories won’t be growing up out of the grown churning out parts in 6 mos because of this

If you wanted to reverse the trend of all the American suppliers getting shut down, and re-build the American manufacturing base, what actions would you take to accomplish that?

> (a) does not harm China, as intended, as they are still the only viable place to purchase these items, yet (b) actively harms business in the United States, as we are paying the additional cost ourselves.

There's an important qualification: that's probably only true in the short or medium term. I believe the goal is that the higher cost would produce economic space for competitors to enter the market.

Ironically, I believe the WTO rules allow for countries classified as "developing" (like China) to maintain high tariffs to develop local industry for precisely this reason.

> What I don't understand is the response. The burden of this cost has entirely been placed upon US businesses

I don't think that's true, which is proven by the fact that China is strongly opposed to the tariffs and plans to retaliate with their own. China's exports will go down, so it will cost them too.

> let me piggy-back, is Apple going to have proper HDMI ports in future? Im going surface book the moment my current macbook stops working.

Unlikely. That would require a 180 degree change of direction. Apple has decided that fewer ports in kind and number is what they're going to do, and I don't really see them responding to external feedback (and basically admitting to a mistake). They're too insular. Case in point: there have been loads complaints for half a decade about the current Mac Pro, and all we've seen so far is a souped up iMac and vague promises.

"Suicide drone" is just a trendy name for really old technology. Most people already know of them as "[guided] missiles."

MIPS must've been in pretty bad shape if they were acquisition material by a startup. You'd think the acquisition would've been the other way around.

> So... two of the routers affected by the recent VPNFilter malware? Interesting choice.

If you're looking for a router that's never had a documented security flaw, you're probably going to buy a no-name brand that's full of them (because no one's looked yet, so it has a "clean" record).

The factors that you really need to look for are 1) good engineering practices for security, and 2) prompt and effective response to flaws. 1) can hard to verify completely, but you can get a sense of 2) based on patch cycles.

I have a Mikrotik router at home, and I chose it because their products are inexpensive and aimed at professionals, which means the software support is much better than consumer routers. Mine is quite old, but it still gets patches.

> Maybe SWAT can use this to validate that it's actually the right house when serving a no-knock warrant.

How would a stick figure images help a SWAT team validate that they're at the right house?

This could only help them by giving them a clue about where to point their guns once they bust down the door.

> Meh, that seems a little sensationalist. Any significant metal would likely throw this in a loop

Maybe even chicken wire in the walls.

> Because people rely on reviews and ratings to buy stuff?

There are people who try to make a living on YouTube. Demonetization hurt them and they have a ready-made audience to vent to.

But legitimate reviewers won't really care if Amazon implements stricter checks, because their livelihood doesn't rely on Amazon reviews. People won't have much sympathy for the people pushing crappy products using sketchy reviews who might get hurt, and they don't really have a high-profile forum to complain.

If Amazon wants to implement a stricter review check you can rest assured that it will not be like YouTube demonitization all over again.