The time and expense to set up a manufacturing line for anything nontrivial is large. And Trump's policy volatility makes the risk completely not worth it.
I use Apple-Silicon MacBook Pro and Mac Mini for software development. I hardly ever use Apple software for business/personal/productivity. Jetbrains IDE tools, Docker, Homebrew work great. I install Chrome browser and use Google services, AWS and GCP consoles, etc. via the browser. YouTube for video, Google Music app.
As for all Apple software, I might use Preview or Numbers (spreadsheets) on occasion, and I'm forced to use Finder, which I hate. And Terminal works well. I avoid Safari.
Apple "PC" hardware is solid. I use third party apps though, little Apple software, there are better alternatives. I've used Android since the HTC Dream (I think it was the first Android phone in the USA) and have stuck with Android since, with few problems.
Edit: I thought the Apple Vision Pro would be interesting (I couldn't justify the expense) but I saw the value supposedly would be greatest for those fully bought into the integrated Apple app ecosystem and iCloud. I'm not the target user.
> Apple "PC" hardware is solid. I use third party apps though, little Apple software,
Same. I have two "deal-brakers" when it comes to notebooks: 1) it's got to sleep consistently and without problems when I close the lid. 2) it should be silent when I'm doing simple things or nothing at all.
I have never seen a Linux or Windows laptop that does these things well. Even Intel MacBooks would spin up the fans seemingly at random. I don't think I've ever heard the fan in my M1 MBP. I'm looking forward to the new M4 MBA to replace an older Windows 10 laptop, which spins up its fans all the time, and sometimes doesn't sleep, sucking the battery dry in the process.
With many things not working, and without mainline Linux support. And with platform that is not x86.
Yes, arm and riscv are interesting. I will definitely test them in the next ten years if they still get better. For now, x86 is still the best platform for me.
MacOS is a lot less solid than it used to be. Not just in UI terms, but the current networking stack is garbage compared to the Snow Leopard era, we've had versions of the OS ship that couldn't read FAT32 properly, frameworks are breaking all over the place, and they have locked down any attempt to fix it.
Snow Leopard and other releases were a mess and macOS had huge network bottlenecks that limited throughput to 2gbps even with a 10gbps or faster network card until recently. macOS is way ahead of windows or Linux in terms of kernel and os guarantees for user security. There will be bugs when products change so I’m glad they continue to evolve the stack.
Speaking of religion and Europe ... while not in Latin America I spent a few years growing up here and there in Arizona, my parents being ministers in a pentecostal church. All the pentecostal and charismatic churches were in thrall of the Hal Lindsey book "Late Great Planet Earth" [0] and other prophetic books trying to map nations/geographies from the Book of Revelation / Apocalypse to the then-day international power structure. "Sister Drew", our local in-congregation prophecy expert, would relay the latest findings. From what I remember, the idea was that Russia and Europe were to fight it out, Europe being the seat of the Antichrist's power, and somehow the Vatican was embroiled in it too.
Europe was supposed to be the "late stage" of human civilization, from Daniel's Old Testament dream of the human-form statue. The head of gold was the pinnacle of civilization, Babylon. The silver chest and arms were Persia. The belly and thighs were the Greek Empire. The legs of iron were the Roman Empire, resurrected as the fractious European Common Market (now European Union) in the feet of "iron mixed with clay".
The USA was variously portrayed as the Great Wh*re of Babylon, or else had some heroic role of some kind in these End Times.
At some point, all nations would stop fighting each other and join together to turn on Israel. Israel would be doomed but for God's intervention. From Daniel's dream, a pebble would form from nothing, grow to be a mighty boulder, and smash the feet of iron and clay (Europe, and by proxy godless humanity) and the rest of human civilization in form of the statue would crumble. The mighty boulder being ... Jesus. Israel would be mostly destroyed but a rescued "remnant", faithful Christians would be raptured / taken to heaven, the World would End ... and eventually all humanity would be judged for eternal salvation or punishment.
Wacky, fringe stuff ... EXCEPT THAT THESE BELIEFS ARE SO RELEVANT TO OUR PRESENT POLITICAL SITUATION IN THE USA. Check out the book "The Violent Take It by Force: The Christian Movement That Is Threatening Our Democracy" by Matthew D Taylor [1]. In this book and various podcasts Taylor describes the origins, religious and political philosophy, and current political power of the New Apostolic Reformation (NAR). No NAR church / congregation will claim the moniker today, but it remains a perfect description of the structure, leadership, and influence of this movement. The Bebbington Quadrilaterial splits "evangelicals" in the USA (and internationally) into four groups based on measures along two axes ... the "denominational vs non-denominational", and "charistmatic vs non-charistmatic". I grew up in in the denominational charismatic square, where churches believe in and expect the miraculous, but also belong to a centralized denomination with standards and accountability. The NAR congregations fit in the non-denominational charistmatic square, have a very authoritarian leadership structure with "apostles and prophets" at the top of each organization, and with a forest of MLM trees of such organizations, with no accountability at all for the "apostles" (c.f. the Mike Bickle scandal, and so many others, where people got away with abuse for years). In any case, in 2015 Trump's "spiritual advisor" Paula White (in early 2025 now is head of the White House Faith Council) gathered many apostles in this NAR movement around Trump, to throw their weight behind his candidacy and make him an acceptable candidate for their brand of evangelicals, and to pull in low-information evangelicals of other stripes behind his candidacy. And hence ... a conversation today between Trump and Zelensky, and many other knock-on effects.
Note that the NAR proposes to take over the world through their Seven Mountains Mandate, to "Bring Heaven to Earth", and usher in the End of Time. Of course, Trump does not believe any of this, but the evangelical power base is extremely loyal to him.
With Trump's fragile ego, there's a chance he will designate all humanitarian charitable organizations, and military-aid organizations, to whom USA citizens might want to donate, that have any ties to or otherwise benefit Ukraine, as terrorist organizations. I will be evaluating these ... if you have plans to assist, it may be better to do so sooner rather than later.
Ukraine is sending troops over 26 or so years old now. They will need to dip into their prime-aged young population eventually, the 18-to-26-year-olds. That will be a hard moral choice they apparently want to avoid, but perhaps necessary.
As a graybeard with teenage kids, this is terribly disheartening... I would rather be cannon fodder than my sons. After all, I have already reproduced and I have taught hundreds of youngsters all what I knew. I would gladly accept that my contribution to mankind is already done and gone, before seeing one of my children go to war. Is youth so important for soldiers? Wouldn't it be better to send forty and fifty year olds to the front? Anything before 18-26 youngs? It makes no sense. Are they so much more competent than any random middle-age?
Ukraine has churned all their greybeards and middle age folks, and 18+ are the only ones not conscripted yet. (Hence Trump's comment that Ukraine is having manpower issues and has no strong cards left for negotiations)
It hasn't any strong cards only because the west (which is now Europe - the US is almost at Russias side now) is trickling the weapons supply. Open the taps!
What's the point of more recruits when the existing ones don't get enough training and adequate equipment? Ukraine needs weapons far more than it needs manpower.
All these 18 year old cohort - they dont exist in Ukraine anymore, a lot of them escaped Ukraine while they were minors before reaching 18, because this issue of conscripting 18+ has been discussed for quite a while.
If you look at the reports from Ukraine high schools - its all girls class, no boys
There are pros and cons. I live in Canada now, and one major downside is that, because technically I would be an international student, I cannot afford a university. The tuition fee for international students is through the roof. But, ultimately, leaving Ukraine was a correct decision, because otherwise I would have ended up fighting Russia. In summary, it sucks but could have been worse.
You are correct. But, ironically, unlike in Ukraine, in Canada and probably in the US, entry-level jobs (also known as internships) are reserved for undergraduate students. You could call this is another downside of leaving Ukraine.
At least in the US, you can just make something complicated enough to show some skill and get a real job. That's what I did, anyway. I used to work in a factory.
Yeah, that's what I think too. I have been working on a project[0] to do just that, would you mind commenting if my project is something that can be considered complicated enough? In your experience, were you not blocked by the fact that companies are looking for "years of professional experience"?
Yeah no worries, I was wondering why the threads didn't show up and found the bot profile where it said it's actually the first weekday of the month, so it's all good.
There are almost no boys left in senior classes of Ukrainian schools. This was reported by the publication "Strana.ua" on the Telegram channel with reference to blogger Alena Yakhno.
As the blogger said, the 17-year-old son of her friend studies in Kiev , but all his classmates have left. "Only girls are left in the class. There will be no moral. It's just a fact," she wrote.
The publication recalled that upon reaching the age of 18, young people from Ukraine are no longer allowed to go abroad. In addition, the report notes, information about Ukrainian schoolchildren aged 16-17 leaving Ukraine en masse has appeared before.
Earlier, the Verkhovna Rada reported on hundreds of thousands of schoolchildren who left the country before the start of the school year. According to MP Nina Yuzhina, about 300 thousand students, mostly high school students, left Ukraine in July and August. In addition, due to the departure of young people, 2,114 schools have been closed in Ukraine over the past four years.
You can count how many high school children there are in Ukraine. There is something like 4 millions now, so the loss of a couple hundred of students of both sexes does not make classes girls only.
People, families with kids, leave Ukraine, because living in a country during war is not nice, to say the least. The fear of mobilization is only one aspect of it.
I don't know if original claim is true or not in general, but lenta.ru in particular is a poor source of information, it's heavily skewed into Russian-government side.
The media operation Strana is mentioned as the source for the lenta.ru story.
Strana is sanctioned and banned by the Ukrainian government, though Ukraine government hands out a lot of media bans.
It's a bummer that just about every media outlet in Ukraine is either tightly linked to Russian propaganda, or on the other side its mostly super pro Ukrainian (formerly funded by USAID) outlets with ties to weird libertarian billionaires who want to turn Ukraine into free market paradise. Hardly any middle ground.
Just think about it logically, if you are a mother of 16 y.o kid, and USA says you must conscript 18+ y.o to receive any further aid - would you just sit and wait for your child to get drafted on his next birthday?
oh totally, I would leave immediately. I financially helped a family with teenage kids smuggle themselves out of Ukraine to a different country a few months into the recent invasion.
Colonize it while it remains nominally Russian, would be a pretty good move. "Sick Man of Europe"-style. "Oh we British are just, just, like, helping the Ottomans administer Egypt, we're good chaps like that"
Ukraine knows the future of warfare and will prosper if they survive this. They will be the ones with the technology and experience in future warfare, and the USA is throwing away a chance to partner with Ukraine and guarantee such a victory.
In 20, 15, or 7 years from now when terrorists are sending drones into medium-sized cities in Alabama to kill indiscriminately, it would have been better for the USA to have been on Ukraine's side.
>In 20, 15, or 7 years from now when terrorists are sending drones into medium-sized cities in Alabama to kill indiscriminately, it would have been better for the USA to have been on Ukraine's side.
Spot on. This is what Zelenskyy implied when he said "now you have an ocean but one day you'll know how it feels". But the dumb kakistocrat commander-in-chief took it personally.
By the way remember the New Jersey drone sightings that spooked the East Coast for a week? That was likely the government secretly testing defense deployement against a hypothetical drone swarms attack.
I have assumed the same about the gatwick airport shutdown caused by drones in the UK in 2018. Newspapers saying "No culprit ever found" says "results of military exercise are classified" to me...
The value of having a front-row seat to this, from a doctrine and R&D point of view, is staggeringly high. Anyone who's getting copied on the reports is going to be a full generation ahead of countries that aren't.
... that goes for Russia's partners, too. Meaning it's even more important for us.
Trump is the commander in chief. Top military leadership who disagree with him will be forced to retire, and replaced with loyalists, if they haven't been already.
I agree, no coup. On the other hand, if we the US keep changing alliances at the whim of what are essentially twitterheads, we could end up having ZERO allies.
Beau of the Fifth Column (Youtube channel for Justin King) would always emphasize (before he relinquished it all for his wife "Belle of the Ranch" to take over) that international relations are usually well-orchestrated, even between enemies, with speeches and releases using heavily coded language, to minimize the possibilities of conflict. Friends and enemies both would telegraph to some degree their intentions, their protestations, their agreements, and shifting policies ... very very carefully.
Trump, Vance, Musk ... have upended this all with their amateur hour antics. They are not serious people. They think they can rewrite the rules but they've bought us at least a decade of hurt and isolation on the international stage, and likely worse economic prospects for a while. Nobody will trust us, even if saner leadership comes round in a few years.
I would believe ... plan to buy the ETF, find the number of shares of Tesla integrated into your ETF purchase, and then buy the ETF and short-sell that number of shares of Tesla "simultaneously". Keep checking the composition of the ETF and rebalance your Tesla short, or perhaps also the ETF.
Without fractional shares it might be difficult to get an exact counterbalance, and there will be inconvenient short vs long term capital gains tracking for rebalancing events.
