Sorry about including the bit about Hezbollah; Lemmy’s “auto-grab subheader” code apparently doesn’t play well with CNN’s live updates page, grabs content from the latest update or something rather than the linked one.

I couldn’t find many details yet online on any news sites. There are some video clips on various sites, not much commentary.

EDIT: This says that tank fire is involved, not whether it’s direct or being used as short range artillery, though:

https://www.ynetnews.com/article/r1u3xkdra

Ground operation in Lebanon begins with heavy artillery, tank fire

On the Saudi Al-Hadath network a report said that there is “Israeli preparation for the entry of ground forces and commando forces, in order to locate Hezbollah targets and blow them up.” Another Saudi network, Al-Arabiya reported that tanks penetrated Rmaich in southern Lebanon, but later deleted that report.

So maybe not direct engagement on the ground yet, but I assume that that’s imminent.

The EU’s answer to this has been baffling, to say the least. In a bid to save its inefficient (and expensive) car making industry, the bloc is actively going against consumers (the people who theoretically vote in all those bureaucrats) by doing its best to make Chinese EVs more expensive, thus forcing people who want EVs to pay more than they otherwise would have in a free market.

I mean, vehicle production is a strategic industry. There are reasons – aside from domestic politics – why you’d want to have the ability to produce vehicles. It’s cheaper for Europe to buy vehicles from China than to build them domestically (though I suppose it’s probably possible for European manufacturers to improve on cost competitiveness relative to where they are now).

In World War II, American vehicle production capacity was fairly important. It wasn’t just the fighting vehicles, but also a lot of unarmored vehicles, trucks and such. When Nazi Germany – which was mostly using horses for logistics still – had logistics problems reaching into the Soviet Union, the US had provided a lot of trucks to the Soviet Union, not to mention also providing some to the British and motorizing and mechanizing American forces.

https://www.historynet.com/studebaker-us6-the-lend-lease-deuce-and-a-half/

An ideal free market will optimize using price to guide it. But in order for that to produce the outcome you want, the price information needs to reflect everything that you care about.

When you have externalities, there are factors that the market will not take into account.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Externality

In economics, an externality or external cost is an indirect cost or benefit to an uninvolved third party that arises as an effect of another party’s (or parties’) activity. Externalities can be considered as unpriced components that are involved in either consumer or producer market transactions.

Externalities often occur when the production or consumption of a product or service’s private price equilibrium cannot reflect the true costs or benefits of that product or service for society as a whole.[9][10] This causes the externality competitive equilibrium to not adhere to the condition of Pareto optimality. Thus, since resources can be better allocated, externalities are an example of market failure.[11]

National security is a public good.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_good_(economics)

In economics, a public good (also referred to as a social good or collective good)[1] is a good that is both non-excludable and non-rivalrous. Use by one person neither prevents access by other people, nor does it reduce availability to others.[1] Therefore, the good can be used simultaneously by more than one person.[2]

Public goods include knowledge,[4] official statistics, national security, common languages,[5] law enforcement, public parks, free roads, and many television and radio broadcasts.[6]

The value of a public goods is normally going to be an externality.

So you’ll want to internalize it:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Externality

Governments and institutions often take actions to internalize externalities, thus market-priced transactions can incorporate all the benefits and costs associated with transactions between economic agents.[12][13] The most common way this is done is by imposing taxes on the producers of this externality. This is usually done similar to a quote where there is no tax imposed and then once the externality reaches a certain point there is a very high tax imposed. However, since regulators do not always have all the information on the externality it can be difficult to impose the right tax. Once the externality is internalized through imposing a tax the competitive equilibrium is now Pareto optimal.

Now, is this tariff the right way to do that? Is the value the EU places on it correct? I don’t know. National security is a positive externality, which I suppose might be an argument that EU vehicle production should be subsidized, rather than external producers subjected to a tariff. And it’s hard for me to say “this is the right number to price in national security”. There’s also a question here of the impact on EVs – which I think are the future of a lot of vehicular transport – versus other types of vehicles; placing a tariff just on EVs will tend to also encourage use of other types of vehicles. So, you could argue the details. But I will say that there is very probably some value associated with having the ability to having a “safe” source of vehicles, that it is non-zero, and internalizing an externality like that is not unreasonable.

All that being said, it is also important to recognize that there is a cost to doing this. There are a lot of risks out there that one might hedge against, and vehicle production may or may not be the main one to be concerned about. There are a lot of vehicle manufacturers out there around the world. Japan makes vehicles, Korea makes vehicles, the US makes (kinda expensive) vehicles. Unless the EU believes that they will be cut off from those, they could choose to not maintain a domestic source, but they would probably want to make sure that they had high confidence that those sources weren’t cut off.

Another factor is that automobile manufacture has high capital costs.

For a market to be efficient, it needs to be competitive. That is, if you have monopoly providers of something, the market may head away from being efficient. One way you can get monopolies is if the environment is such that it tends towards a natural monopoly.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_monopoly

A natural monopoly is a monopoly in an industry in which high infrastructural costs and other barriers to entry relative to the size of the market give the largest supplier in an industry, often the first supplier in a market, an overwhelming advantage over potential competitors. Specifically, an industry is a natural monopoly if the total cost of one firm, producing the total output, is lower than the total cost of two or more firms producing the entire production. In that case, it is very probable that a company (monopoly) or minimal number of companies (oligopoly) will form, providing all or most relevant products and/or services. This frequently occurs in industries where capital costs predominate, creating large economies of scale about the size of the market; examples include public utilities such as water services, electricity, telecommunications, mail, etc.[1]

High capital costs can act as a barrier to entry and cause an industry to head towards being a natural monopoly. So, from this standpoint, it might make sense for the EU to ensure that it has access to a competing automobile industry if the potential alternative is a world where they can only otherwise obtain automobiles from China. Here, you’re basically paying something to make sure that you retain a market that is – at least somewhat, even if the tariffs decrease that competitiveness – competitive for the long haul.

Is that justified here? I don’t know. But it’s at least something to consider. The author is just saying that any restraint on trade makes a market less-efficient, and that’s true in the general sense. But…there are also exceptions, like the above factors. It’s not prima facie a bad idea for the EU to take those exceptions into account, which I think is what the author is saying.

Remember Nord Stream 2? That was fairly inexpensive as a source of energy. But…there were some externalities, some costs that were not incorporated into the price there – like the fact that the Russian government might use that dependence to cut off gas supply as a source of political leverage, even if it didn’t make sense for Gazprom as a company. The EU probably did Nord Stream 2 because its market regulators didn’t internalize national security costs.

Does the same thing apply here? shrugs I don’t know. But the idea that it might ain’t crazy.

I’d also add that the US has been doing something similar.

I don’t see people “forming a cult”.

• Apple does a walled garden that I don’t want but some people are fine with. If you give them a bunch of money and these days entrust them with a bunch of your data, they will give you a pre-set-up environment that works well. That’s fine for a lot of people.

• Valve does a successful electronic storefront that has synergized well with the Linux world. God forbid Microsoft were in their position. They aren’t DRM-free, but you can use GOG if you want that, and the commercial game world was not going to go DRM-free.

• Kagi takes money, provides privacy for a search engine and some perks; they let their customer be a customer rather than the product. I use it myself, am happy with it. That’s a tradeoff that I’d wanted for a while, and would like Google to provide with YouTube.

• GitHub wouldn’t be my own choice for source hosting in the Microsoft era, but so far they seem to be getting along reasonably well. They provide functionality that’s needed, source hosting plus issue tracking, and their system is pretty usable.

• Mozilla does Firefox, which is much more customizable than Chrome. I use it!

• I don’t know what 404 Media does. Some sort of tech reporting, looks like. Okay, fine.

If you don’t want to use any of those, you can probably avoid all of them, other than maybe GitHub if projects you use are hosted there.

I decided in the late '90s, when Apple killed the Mac clone market and took things towards a single-vendor platform, that it wasn’t where I wanted to be, but for some people, it’s fine. Other than 404 Media, which I don’t know about, I don’t have any problem with the others here, and some are companies that I’m fairly happy with.

“Don’t trust Google! It shows you the bad stuff! Only trust Truth Social for your information!”

While it’s not directly-related to this news item, I was reading the text, and the next news item in the CNN feed on the conflict has Iran warning Israel that it cannot attack Iranian diplomatic facilities, as they are inviolate. That caught my eye:

Iravani also “strongly” warned against “any attack on [Iran’s] diplomatic premises and representatives in violation of the foundational principle of the inviolability of diplomatic and consular premises.”

I think, from memory of reading the Vienna Convention for some other conflict, that that’s not an obligation on parties other than the host state. The host state (the Lebanese government) commits to not entering Iranian diplomatic facilities when it permits establishment of same, but I don’t believe that other countries hold any obligations towards Iranian diplomatic facilities in Lebanon.

kagis

https://legal.un.org/ilc/texts/instruments/english/conventions/9_1_1961.pdf

Article 22

1. The premises of the mission shall be inviolable. The agents of the receiving State may not enter them, except with the consent of the head of the mission.

2. The receiving State is under a special duty to take all appropriate steps to protect the premises of the mission against any intrusion or damage and to prevent any disturbance of the peace of the mission or impairment of its dignity.

3. The premises of the mission, their furnishings and other property thereon and the means of transport of the mission shall be immune from search, requisition, attachment or execution.

kagis more

This Reddit comment from several months back does seem to agree, and is talking about this conflict:

https://old.reddit.com/r/internationallaw/comments/1btv5f7/embassy_protections_in_war/kxpg19y/

First of consulates and embassies are protected under different Vienna conventions, respectively the Vienna convention on Consular Relations of 1963 and the Vienna convention on diplomatic relations of 1961. They confer broadly similar, but not identical, protection to embassies and consular premises.

Both of theses conventions confer on the receiving state an obligation to protect the embassies and consular premises cf. on diplomatic relations art.22 and 45(a), on consular relations 27(a) and 59, but impose no duty on any third party to protect or respect these premises.

Therefore Israel has no obligations towards the Iranian embassy/consulates other than those conferred generally to civilian objects under Jus ad bellum and IHL. Neither IHL nor Jus ad bellum has any special protection of embassies or diplomats.

Regarding locations in third countries it would be a violation of the sovereignty of the third country to conduct millitary operations on their territory (definition of aggression (A/RES/3314, as reflecting customary law art.3(b)). An embassy could be a legal millitary target under IHL, but attacking it would constitute a violation of the sovereignty of the third country.

On the other hand allowing your country, including embassies on your territory, to be used for acts harmful to a country, outside of those acts generally accepted under under customary law applicable to neutral states, would be a violation of the sovereignty of the country injured. Those two countries have a duty to peacefully resolve that conflict and not resort to armed conflict. It could, if severe enough, constitute aggression on the part of the state hosting the embassy cf. A/RES/3314, as reflecting customary law art.3(g and f).

Israel would be obligated to not violate Iran’s embassy in Israel, though (though I doubt that those two have diplomatic relations).

kagis

Yeah, looks like they don’t have diplomatic relations:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_relations_of_Iran

Following the Iranian Revolution in 1979, the two states become hostile and the current Iranian government does not recognize the existence of Israel. The back covers of Iranian passports read: “The holder of this passport is not entitled to travel to occupied Palestine”. Both countries have severed their diplomatic and commercial ties with each other. Iran does not recognize Israel and refers to it as a Zionist entity or a Zionist regime.

So the Iranian-embassy-in-Israel situation probably wouldn’t come up; no Iranian embassy in Israel for it to affect.

That being said, if Israel were to hit Iranian diplomatic facilities in Lebanon, it’d presumably tick Iran off, but I don’t believe that it’s an issue from an international law standpoint; it’d be like any other building in war.

Wikipedia is under a Creative Commons license.

$100 crude target

I’m gonna go out on a limb here and say that that probably wasn’t a number resulting from a bunch of economists and computers spending a long time crunching numbers to try to produce an optimal target for Saudi Arabia anyway.

I’d be fine with hissy fits if they were about something real.

One issue that has come up recently in discussions on here is that it’s hard to get dumb TVs or computer monitors in large format in 2024.

Not impossible, but surprisingly difficult. I went looking for a large computer monitor for some user who wanted a large one. I eventually found an older one on Amazon still for sale, but it’s not that easy to get large computer monitors, which I think is part of what drives people to use smart TVs as computer monitors.

You can get projectors, but that’s not what everyone’s after.

I’d rather pay for pretty much all products up-front with money at purchase time rather than pay with my data.

Not gonna tell other people what to do, but for myself, whether it’s my car or television or search engine or whatever, I’d rather just pay the bill rather than having the manufacturer or service provider go data-mining my data to figure out how they can make money from it.

I think that YouTube is a great service. YouTube Premium, though, is ad-free. What I want isn’t no-ad stuff, but no-log policies. And there aren’t a lot of manufacturers selling privacy. And it’s hard to compare services and products based on that.

I’ll go one more step. I don’t want to go read through privacy policies and figure out what the latest clever loophole is. We had to deal with that kind of legal stuff back prior to standardization around a few open-source licenses, and it sucked.

And I don’t want to deal with privacy policies that change and maybe don’t do what I want.

What I want to do is look for a privacy certification, and let the certification agency deal with that.

Though then you have the specter of competitors clicking that.

some sort of plastic or rubber is degrading, maybe my phone case?

There’s this type of coating – I commented on it a while back, will link to my comment in a sec – that was put on a lot of consumer electronics that over time, breaks down to become sticky.

kagis

https://lemmy.world/comment/12199022

TPE, thermoplastic elastomers. They (some?) break down over time into really sticky goo.

I haven’t seen it in some years – was a real problem maybe, I dunno, ten years ago? If your thing is only six years old, I dunno if it’s that.

But isopropyl alcohol and enough elbow grease will get it off, if it’s just a coating on plastic.

I don’t see anything when searching for “sticky otterbox”, though, so I don’t know if that’s the factor, even if that’s what’s going on here. My experience that the source is pretty obvious, since it’s a “grippy” rubberized thing that becomes increasingly-sticky over time.

Ukraine’s apparently responded:

https://kyivindependent.com/putin-suggests-number-of-changes-to-russias-nuclear-doctrine/

The head of the Presidential Office, Andriy Yermak, responded to Putin’s statements by saying that “Russia has nothing else but nuclear blackmail, no other tools to intimidate the world.”

“These tools will not work,” he added.

I suppose “any non-nuclear state” here is intended to be read as “Ukraine”.

Isn’t it easier to just play a different game? I mean, there’s a ludicrously large library of games out there. If Sony is determined to only offer some game on terms that people don’t like, I mean, fine. Send money to a different publisher.

It doesn’t really seem worth the time and effort to make that game palatable. Give it a negative review indicating why you’re unhappy with it and move on.

I remember streaming internet radio (somafm) and trying out different skins on my windows xp laptop back in the early 2000’s and just feeling like the cyberpunk future had arrived.

SomaFM is still around.

It looks like Qmmp can use WinAMP skins.

Apparently archive.org has a library of WinAMP skins.

Milkdrop was my gateway drug.

That was reimplemented as projectM, and there’s apparently a Qmmp plugin.

The billionaire this week posted his hoped-for change that “the block function will block that account from engaging with, but not block seeing, a public post”.

If I understand the change aright, that’s an excellent move in my book.

What it sounds like Twitter is doing now is how Reddit used to work. When you ignore a user, you won’t see their responses, but other users can.

Then Reddit changed it to “blocked user cannot respond”, which people on Reddit promptly started abusing to, in heated arguments, make a comment and then promptly block the other person, so that it looked like they weren’t responding. You wound up with people commenting all over a thread with stuff like “this user blocked me, but here’s my response to this other comment”. Was one of the several major moves that Reddit made that I think were in error and made me less happy with the site.

Lemmy works the same way Reddit originally did as well; that’s how I’d want social media to generally work.

EDIT: It might also be that this is only a partial move in that direction, so that a block prevents a user from responding but not seeing a post. If so, that’d be an improvement, I think, but not as far as I’d like things to change.

My refrigerator is annoyingly far from my desk chair.