To me, that makes it sound like you’re writing too much and too complex yaml files manually, and/or that you don’t have good enough CI to catch invalid configurations. Unless, of course, you have very few prod failures overall, and the few that happen are due to yaml indentation, which I still think is a bit weird, since an invalid config caused by incorrect indentation should ideally be caught at compile time (if you’re generating code from the yaml) or by some linter or something (if you’re using it for config).

I’ll agree that significant whitespace can be a PITA (one of the reasons I prefer json over yaml), but at the same time I think improper or lacking indentation hurts readability even more than significant whitespace. Toml basically encourages a completely flat structure, where objects and sub-objects are defined all over the place. At that point, I much prefer an enforced structure with whitespace.

.vscode would like a word.

But besides that, I just can’t understand why even someone that hates JSON would choose TOML over YAML for a config file.

A heavy chunk of armour with a gun and optics that can hit a gnat at 2500 m is far from obsolete. However, combined arms warfare has quite recently seen the introduction of small drones as a branch in itself. These will require dedicated counter-measures just like any other facet of combined arms.

Man portable anti-tank weapons didn’t make the tank obsolete. They made it clear that tanks needed reactive armor, active protection systems like TROPHY, and supporting units that prevented infantry from shoot-n-scoot’ing from places the tank can’t see. Aircraft didn’t make the tank obsolete either, even though an attack helicopter can absolutely wreck a tank column. They just made it clear that any mobile armoured unit needs sufficient air cover. The same is true for small drones: Today, there are very few effective counter-measures available, which makes any tactic other than “hide underground” seem obsolete. However, counter-measures like the PROTECTOR CUAS are likely to become more commonplace, and once the tanks move together with those, they won’t be as easily countered by small drones anymore.

I’ve never gotten to be good friends with toml. I’ve never liked that the properties of some thing can be defined all over the place, and I’ve definitely never liked that it’s so hard to read nested properties. JSON is my friend.

You are aware that the whole basis for my original comment (and follow-up) was that insurance isn’t inherently a scam, right? Any transaction can be turned into a scam if you refuse to hold up your end of the deal, but that doesn’t make the concept of transactions a scam in itself.

My impression is that US insurance companies are particularly bad about not paying up, and thereby scamming people. Luckily, I don’t live in the US, and don’t have any historical precedent that gives me reason to doubt my insurance company would pay up. The problem with insurance (and a lot of other things) in the US is a system that heavily incentivises squeezing consumers at every turn. The problem is not that insurance is an inherently a scam.

I agree that the house is winning here (as always) and I also hate companies that squeeze us regular people for cash at every opportunity as much as the next person.

My point is that I don’t really see buying e.g. house insurance as a gamble as much as I see it as paying a monthly fee for the peace of mind it gives me to know that I won’t be financially ruined by a house fire or a burglary. It’s not about making money in the long term for me, it’s about mitigating the consequences of highly unlikely but absolutely devastating events.

Why would I take that when I already have a running bet with my insurance company where I only pay ≈ 20 USD / month?

The whole point here is that I can afford 20 USD/month indefinitely. However, having my house burn down at any point would be absolutely detrimental to my personal economy, to the point of bankrupting me and likely preventing me from being able to afford a new house in the foreseeable future. I’m well aware that in purely economic terms I’m taking a losing bet. The point is that the consequences should the bet strike home are so large that I can’t afford not to take it.

Of course, you could argue that I would be better off saving that money and being “my own insurance”. You would be right, except for the fact that the house burning down is just as likely tomorrow as in 20 years. If I had enough cash to insure myself, I obviously wouldn’t need to take this losing bet, but I don’t.

That’s just blatantly false. I’m all for hating companies that gouge people to make money, but insurance isn’t inherently a scam. Insurance, when implemented properly, is paying a low regular premium to offset a risk you can’t afford should it hit. I’ve insured my house against burning down, because I can afford to pay a small amount once a month while a fire (while unlikely) would bankrupt me. Most likely, I’ll lose money in the long run by paying for that insurance, but that’s not the point. The point is that I can afford to lose money over a 30-50 year period, but I cannot afford to lose my house at any single point during the next 30-50 years.

At the same time, all mammals are evolved from a common ancestor on land, which means that whales, seals, dolphins, etc. are the evolutionary result of land-based mammals “re-entering” the ocean.

I would say that this directly targets the people that can already clearly afford the fines easily enough that they keep speeding enough to get caught. Someone that is severely hurt by the fines are already likely to be deterred from speeding by the fines. This addresses the people that eat the fines and keep speeding again and again.

Exactly. Air warfare has, since its inception, migrated towards more and more high-tech solutions. Modern fighters require modern AA missiles to counter, etc. Drones have flipped this in a sense by swarming in with cheap, low tech (compared to a modern fighter) weapons, that you can’t afford to shoot down with modern AA designed for those fighters. The response will have to be a cheap, low tech (again, relative) solution like flak. Flak went out of use because it didn’t have the accuracy or range to deal with modern fighters/missiles. That’s not a problem against drones. Additionally, drones are much slower and more fragile than a jet, so require far less heavy weapons to shoot down.

European armies, as a whole, need to do something absolutely massive about their production rates. We’re scaling up, but still working at an order of magnitude lower production rates than what we see is needed in Ukraine. This applies to everything from tanks and artillery to aircraft and ships, not to speak of ammunition…

Looking at the state of production today would lead you to think that the amount of equipment produced on European soil in the 40’s was simply impossible.

With the massive proliferation of drones, I see it as only a matter of time until we have this kind of system set up to fire light flak capable of shooting down small drones at ranges of a couple hundred meters. Honestly, I’m a bit surprised we haven’t seen it yet.

Conventional military doctrine is that infantry and vehicles should operate together. A couple vehicle-mounted automated flak guns capable of reliably shooting down drones at a couple hundred meters would heavily negate the absolutely debilitating threat that FPV- and dropper drones present to both infantry and mechanised columns today. If they’re able to build man-portable versions as well the drone threat will be completely changed.

Basically, the current picture of drone warfare looks to me like if people invented fighter jets but no AA. Eventually the AA is bound to catch up.

It’s one of the most fundamental principles of chemistry and physics. It was discovered by Antoine Lavoisier in the late 18th century, and you can only meaningfully break it during nuclear reactions (fusion/fission). If any container is gaining mass, it is either a dying star or there is more mass entering the container than leaving it. This also applies to the human body: If you are gaining mass, it is because there is more going in than out, otherwise you’ve broken pretty much all known physics (or you’re about to go supernova).

You won’t gain net weight my that mechanism though, you’ll just grow more dense. Mass is a conserved quantity, so if you’re gaining more muscle mass than you’re losing fat, that extra mass is coming from somewhere. That somewhere is your food.

Or conclude that they were accumulating mass some other way, such as

• Accumulating water
• Being severely constipated
• Some obscure bone disease that causes them to accumulate absurd amounts of minerals

My bet would be on (1) and/or (2).

Water content could be increasing.

My impression of the russian military is that their strategy is to give the impression that they can keep going forever (which they obviously can’t), no matter the cost, in the hopes that Ukraine will fold before they themselves crack. With this in mind, I believe that russia will keep attacking at a high rate, even far past the tipping point. I don’t think we’re really going to see how depleted the russian army is before it suddenly can’t do anything anymore. That is, I think the collapse of the russian army will look a lot like the fall of a dictatorship: First slow and almost imperceptible, then sudden and total.

While I agree with the idea, there are practical issues to reporting “drone resistance”. Mostly that drones are used to deliver anything from small hand grenades, which even the side-armour of a light APC should handle with ease, to dropping stacks of AT mines or a heavy HEAT round, both of which should defeat an MBT if hit on the roof.

There’s also the point that you have both bomber-drones, which target the roof, and FPV drones, which typically target the sides, optics, or engine.

Basically, the most reasonable “drone resistance” metrics you can report are probably whether the vehicle can withstand standard RPG rounds, and (importantly) whether it has any form of proximity defence (like TROPHY). If anything, I’m actually a bit surprised that some form of mounted shotgun that automatically targets FPV drones hasn’t become widely used yet. TROPHY is developed to target AT rockets moving at several hundred meters per second, which is complete overkill for shooting down FPV drones coming in at < 30 m/s.

There’s been a lot of talk about how effective drones are against armour, and how cheap they are vs. what is used to target them. I’ve seen surprisingly little talk about the fact that drones should be orders of magnitude easier and cheaper to shoot down than rockets. Basically all you need is a shotgun and a targeting system that is much, much more rudimentary than what modern AA uses.