Their economy certainly isn't embargo proof although they did certainly try. They are hurting and there are many things they simply cant produce domestically and would take years to be able to. But none of that deterred Putin from invading. And just like how the Russians failed to learn that attacking civilians with indiscriminate bombs and missiles doesn't break their resolve. The West failed to learn that economic sanctions don't deter. They still hurt and punish so they are worthwhile. But sanctions never prevented a war.

That was a foolish policy in 1914, 1939 and 2022. War mongers don't care about trade and economics and are more than willing to throw that away to take what they want. The problem is leaders in western democracies thinking everyone thinks the same as they do.

Fashion doesn't have to be logical. Its a watch because watches are cool.

Luxury goods aren't always about being the best or most exclusive. Its about being exclusive enough. Sure, they guys at the top will want the 1 of 1s to prove their gatekeeper status. But for most Rolex owners having any Rolex is probably good enough. Because the goal was to let everyone know they have a well paying white collar job. Not that they necessarily have the best aesthetic taste or that they are the richest man in the world.

Their value has nothing to do with their utility. They are Luxury goods. Wearing a Rolex or Patek or IWC, Longines etc is about showing the world you are wealthy and successful. Otherwise how else can you explain the design atrocity that are Richard Mille watches? The price is extreme yet they make your eyes bleed. But they are distinct. And wearing that distinct brand makes you look successful.

They are separate, incompatible platforms. Back when Apple still used Intel you could make the argument to compare them directly because they did use the same hardware as PCs for the most part. So even if the OS was different it could be worthwhile to benchmark cross platform applications.

Now not so much.

There's still some crossover but where it is tends to be niche like the adobe suite. And those who live and die in that world know enough to look in the places where that is tracked and benchmarked.

Otherwise, people will stay in their ecosystems and buy what they are used to. Most people are either PC or Mac, not both and have no need or inclination to switch. Just knowing how to use the one platform you've chosen is hard enough for most people.

OK first, all radar altimeters transmit and receive. There aren't "receive only" models. That's not how they work.

And the problem is not that policymakers don't consider receivers in their policy. The problem is that this part of the spectrum has been pretty clear up until recently so OEMs were able to get away with being lazy. The FCC has for a long time regulated how much interference radios for a given band must be able to tolerate, and radar altimeters are radios. All radars are technically radios and are governed in this manner too. This is just the FCC actually enforcing what was already in the regulations because not it actually matters .

There is a 220Mhz guard band between where 5G stops and these radar altimeters operate. That's frankly a very generous guard band and the radar altimeters already operate over an equally generous 200Mhz band allocation. These regulations were set at a time when there wasn't much going on in that part of the spectrum. Now its changed and it turns out that this whole time the OEMs were being lazy with their designs.

Secure communications and anonymous communications are mutually exclusive. For communications to be secure you have to know who you are talking to. In same way you have an identifier that can't be repudiated be it a phone number or a public key or anything else.

Name calling? Over a discussion about obsolete hardware and a market battle that is long over. Real mature. I bet you're fun at parties.

We were talking about 1992. Don't move the goalposts.

What the Amiga could do n years before is irrelevant.

With an expansion bus that relative to ISA, nobody supported? What kind of support did Zorro really have? ATI didn't support it. Neither did Soundblaster, or Adlib, or Roland. For every product on zorro there were five for PC.

I find that fans of the non-pc brands of this era always seem to forget what PCs were truly capable of. I don't know if that's just general ignorance of the platform and market or if its an assumption that PCs of the time worked like everything else and they conveniently forget its biggest selling point was its expandability.

The PC had arguably the best midi soundcard in the Roland Sound Canvas which launched in 1991. But it also had wavetable based synthesis available in the Gravis Ultrasound.

As for 256 colors, meet the ATI Mach 32. It was a 2D accelerator capable of 24bit color in 1992.

Amiga's tight integration of first party ASICs to the platform is definitely an evolutionary dead end for the PC. The platform became generic and got its power from expandability. Who cares about some chip called linda or steve when I can buy this year's hot new sound card?

I don't know if it has anything to do with the app store or not since the issue extended to Safari on all platforms and not just iOS. But, and I don't agree with Apple often, I do like that they resist supporting every asinine new feature that web developers mess their shorts over. I'm very against using the browser as a software platform in and of itself. Maybe that makes me a luddite but if so I'll wear that badge with pride.

Oh man! You are in luck, his website is an absolute goldmine for these kinds of things. http://www.projectrho.com/publ...

The site's main focus is spacecraft propulsion and what systems are theoretically possible. Its math heavy but he goes to lengths to make cheat sheets that help speed up calculations. He touches on a lot of potential Sci-Fi topics though. In all its meant to be a technical aide to aspiring Sci-Fi authors who want to give their works a dose a realism instead of just handwaving FTL this or death ray that. I apologize ahead of time for the the time you will lose diving in there.

The site is mostly just based around hard numbers. Especially the propulsion sections. But you probably wont agree with everything there. Some stuff, like the concept of stealth in space has wiggle room. Or the shape warfare may take since that is due to politics as much as it is technology. And politics cant be predicted with any certainty.

I know what E-3 and E-7 are. Switching to AESA improves performance but it does not make you omniscient.

Part of Wenchell's argument is that because there is no weather or atmosphere in space, radar and other sensors will work at much longer ranges than they otherwise would. You do a fine job of illustrating that isn't necessarily the case. You don't have to worry about the horizon problem anymore, which does improve performance. But a SPY-6 sized radar isn't going to give you target data out to Jupiter.

What you describe is less a radar and more a microwave based directed energy weapon at that point. It would also be absolutely massive from the radiator surface area required. I assume you want at least equivalent to a SPY-6 on the newest Aegis boats. So we are talking megawatt range output for the array. That would require a reactor far more powerful than what has been put in to orbit in the past. Not impossible but not really feasible yet. So don't go expecting the space force to launch it nay time soon. Totally viable for a Sci-Fi setting without pulling BS.

You have decent odds on that. They've already announced plans to surveil the moon.

He is correct in theory that anything can be detected. However reality is often much messier than math implies. Phased array radars are not a panacea. If they were then an AWACs would effectively be omniscient on the battlefield. They are good but they aren't that good. High powered radars have been aimed at space for a long time now and they have no instantly revealed every near earth object. Having more of them running more often will certainly help but is isnt a silver bullet. Radars are expensive, require a lot of power and make a lot of heat. They also, as Wenchell notes, have the annoying property of making the user more visible to the people he is trying to detect.

I'm happy to get into the weeds on any particular detection method if you want. But my stance boils down to there being many confounding variables that make the reality of finding things that don't want to be found very difficult. Not impossible but difficult.

That makes me think Winchell Chung is massively over estimating how easy it will be to detect spacecraft in the future. He claims "stealth" in space is impossible because there is nowhere to hide. Yet we can't even find asteroids until they have almost hit us.