SoC RAM let's the vendor abuse the user. The 8GB needed to go from 8GB to 16GB on a MacBook Air cost Apple less than $10, but it charges the customer extra $200 for it.
Don't see how Apple makes more money is a good thing - it means millions of their clients have less money left.
I can go buy two sticks of 6400MHz DDR5 for $20 per 8GB, to match the bus width and speed. The manufacturer might be paying more than $10 for the chips, but not much more. I don't know if I should expect much price difference between DDR5 and LPDDR5?
We were talking about $10 for Apple to buy raw RAM chips.
I showed that a company can buy those chips, put them on boards, package them, ship them in tiny quantities, market them, and support them for a total cost of $20.
How much do you think those things cost? They all need to be subtracted from the $20, and also Apple can probably get a better wholesale deal than the brand I was looking at.
I'm not saying $10 is definitely right, but I think it's a pretty good guess.
I'm not sure what they cost to Apple (can they use standard parts?), but I'm also pretty sure other laptops don't have up to 400 GBps memory bandwidth like Apple's Max laptop lineup.
So there's something they're doing pretty differently.
That said 8->16 GB should be more like $50, not $200.
They're getting more bandwidth by having more chips in parallel. It makes their CPUs more expensive but it doesn't affect the price per gigabyte of memory at all.
They do use LPDDR5, which was harder for me to find a price on, but so do lots of other laptops, and I don't know if it's more or less expensive than DDR5.
I need 64GB, this Intel new generation will be useless to me. I think Dell XPS is the only laptop with Qualcomm Snapdragon X that offers 64GB currently.
I see upgradable RAM as on of the big advantages of x64 laptops over Apple and Qualcomm. Not sure Intel's current strategy to emulate their competitors, rather than play to it's own strong points is a good one.
"In fact, Intel’s future hardware will offer upgradeable RAM. Jim Johnson, Senior Vice President at Intel, explicitly said about user-upgradeable RAM: “We will offer those options in the future.” He also said that the “next turn of the roadmaps will offer more traditional options.”"
Ideally, some RAM on a tight and close bus with high bandwidth is a good thing to have in the CPU package. Xeons have HBM since the Phi alongside motherboard based memory.
I think it's early days and whyle AI can write code to deliver features it's not perfect. So someone who knows how to write code, deploy software has a basic understanding of software architecture and cyber security will have a lot more luck than someone who has to run everything through the AI.
It's similar to how computers in chess worked. At one point (around the 90s and 00s) computers could play very good chess, but they had weak spots. So the best chess player in the world was a team of humans and computers. But eventually computers got better and no longer needed any human help. I think a similar scenario may play with software development, and we're still not at the place where an AI can everything without technical input from a human.
FWIW, you can often feed the generated output back into the AI and ask it to troubleshoot, like "when I ran this code, I got ____ error" or "it's missing the ____, how do I fix that" and it will usually apologize and try again. It takes a few tries. But it usually does with humans too.
Very interesting. Wonder what does building an aircraft carrier fleet say about China's military priorities. Are they more focused on occupying Taiwan, or on keeping the Malacca Straight open for commerce, or on power projection across the Pacific and Indian Oceans.
Taiwan is just 150 miles / 250km from the Chinese mainland. You can just use a regular airfield. When talking about the island chains around Taiwan you get a bit further out, but nothing you can't handle with one midair refueling.
On the other hand if China were to prepare for a war in the South China Sea aircraft carriers would be very useful. They have a couple airstrips there, but they are vulnerable and not as flexible as bringing a couple carriers to the coast of your enemy. It's also a good deterrent as a pure show of force.
Keeping the Malacca Straight open might also be a big part of it.
Probably more about keeping distant sea lanes like the Malacca Strait open in the short term, until the overland routes are more developed. After which, carriers are a waste of resources.
Otherwise I'd say it's just as silly for China to build obsolete carriers as it is for the US to keep building them.
Missiles outrange carriers which in turn outrange battleships. The battleships became obsolete in 1941. The carriers became obsolete in the early 2000s.
Missiles out-range carriers but the cost of hitting a target in Yemen with a Tomahawk missile launched from afar (2 million dollars, range 2500km) is much higher than the cost of dropping a bomb (~ 16k dollars) from a jet on said target. Even after amortizing all the other costs. The firepower an aircraft carrier brings with it to any location it gets to is really hard to match with missiles. More than the "bandwidth" and cost of that, there's also latency. Drones are another thing to compare to.
much higher than the cost of dropping a bomb (~ 16k dollars) from a jet on said target
If you can operate a jet fighter-bomber for less than (say) $200 K an hour* I'd be very surprised. And that doesn't take into account the servicing time on modern 'hangar queens' to get them ready for their next sortie. And what's the cost per hour of operating a carrier??
Try to include ALL your costs in working out the cost-efficiency.
* Let's be really generous and say you get 10,000 hours of service life out of a fighter jet. (The designed service life is only 8,000 hours.) The F-35 costs around 130 million bucks so over 10,000 hours that cost comes out to $13,000 per hour in just amortising the purchase cost, without adding in the operating costs themselves.
A jet can also carry a lot of bombs and you might need the jet for other missions anyways.
I agree completely but I think the economics still favor the jets, especially if you need any precision or control, if you just want to lob explosives as cheap as possible maybe the equation is a bit different (though lobbing a lot of them over very large distances is still expensive).
Yeah I am far from an expert in actual academic military studies (?), but I think there’s a lot of theory still riding on “big boat capable of deploying a variety of aircraft”, even if they’re not used exactly how they were in past wars, cold and hot. Just, like, from a million miles up: planes and drones are a lot more useful than missiles alone, and the economic angle you highlight is just one of the basic differences in tactical affordances.
…”weaponry studies”? Now I’m curious to what extent there exists an academic commentary on stuff like this, separate from internal researchers/stakeholders…
Even if we accept the premise, carriers are still formidable force projection against non-peer adversaries. Imagine for instance a chinese carrier vs the Philippines, not vs the US.
> if you can't defend a mobile ocean-going fortress, what can you defend?
Underground bunkers (I believe Sweden has a decent history of converting caves into aircraft hangers). Just as we don't really have conventional fortresses on land any more, only trenches and bunkers, as munitions get better we're reaching a point where the only way to keep anything safe is to bury it.
We found out that the battleship had become obsolete because of a world war. We aren't going to know for sure whether the carrier is obsolete till the next major naval war.
Note how Ukraine sunk much of Russia's Black Sea fleet... without having a navy of their own to speak of. No carriers involved but it's a harbinger of what's to come. Missiles and drones.
Carriers are increasingly vulnerable against things like missiles and drones that are multiple orders of magnitude cheaper. Think about how a carrier group would defend itself against, say, a heterogenous attack of 100-200 combined simultaneous ballistic missiles, cruise missiles, drones, and/or manned aircraft.
Obviously carrier groups have multiple layers of missile defense: CWIS, combat air patrols, etc. But you only need one missile to get through and that carrier is quite possibly going to be unable to launch planes for quite a while.
And even if you don't hit the carrier, the carrier is going to be undertaking evasive maneuvers during the attack. That means no planes taking off and landing. For a very early example of this, look at the Battle of Midway. The American air attacks were disorganized and sporadic. And yet, they largely kept the Japanese carriers from flying planes for much of the day, leading to a crushing American victory just as their window of opportunity closed.
None of this exactly means carriers are "obsolete." Against non-peers, that is still a whole lotta force projection.
There are no missiles capable of loitering. (And if there were then they be essentially like airplanes and air dominance is what matters.) As such land launched missiles are mostly useless against carriers in open seas. By the time the missile reaches the carrier group the group will have moved position.
It’s hard to find a specific ship in open seas. The Russian navy suffers from a lack of combined arms and force protection. A carrier battle group is far more capable of defense than the Russian navy in the Black Sea.
I don’t believe you are well versed in modern naval operations. I’m not either but the fact that France, UK, Brazil, India, and China have aircraft carriers suggests they aren’t obsolete. Carriers are well protected. Not invincible.
The reference to Midway is odd because without aircraft carriers the U.S. would have lost the battle. Likewise, without carriers the Japanese would not have stood a chance.
Carriers are extremely slow. High end missiles are extremely fast. 40 knots < mach 15 / 1000s of knots. Carriers cannot, and have not ever been able to out run land based mach 10+ IRBMs missiles - the relevant type designed to hit carriers at sprint + airwing + standoff range or deter them from entering range where carriers can operate at all.
The entire carriers are fast and will be where missiles will not misconception comes from people conflating carrier speed (slow), with adversary ability to plan/execute counter strike operations (typically even slower). The prior assumption is _most_ US adversaries lack ISR (intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance) which would constrain mission planning to many hours which gives carriers room to move 100s of nautical miles, either outside of retaliatory missile ranges or simply adversary OODA loop, i.e. adversaries simply don't have hardware or software (as in processes) to plan a counter strike in time. It's not that carriers are fast, but adversaries are too slow in terms of operation planning to launch their fast hardware, giving carriers lots of time to slowly get to safety.
This is doesn't apply to high end adversaries with proper ISR (i.e. PRC who launched 100s of ISR satellites last few years) who pretty much knows where US carriers are at all times and have near persistent coverage of their operations, who can launch saturation strikes of mach 15+ missiles that can reach carriers within 30 minutes in indopac that can't be outrun and in salvo sizes that carrier groups does not have magazine depth to defend against.
Middle launched from mainland China at a carrier fleet 1000 miles away isn’t going to hit with the current missile technology. Missiles are great at hitting fixed targets. They have some room for adjustments and maneuverability but not enough as it currently stands. Pinpointing within 100ft where a carrier is in open seas is highly nontrivial.
Look up all the latest CSR reports / think tank analysts who track PRC missile developments. Or former Pac fleet deputy chief of intel Fanell who confirmed tandem PRC hypersonics struck moving ships at sea a few years ago - two high end missiles from different sites 1000km inland synced to hit moving hull in time+space. This fairly straight forward technology for country that has space program, especially mars/dark side of moon where communication is just one big killchain problem. Because carriers are so slow, highend missiles so fast, maneuverability/adjustments relatively easy problem, carriers can never get so far away from where fast missiles will not be, and fast missiles only need to make minute course corrections to compensate.
PRC commercial sats can track individual fighters. PLA has enough ISR (look at all the Yaogan launches within just last few years) now for persistent IndoPac coverage, they don't need to pinpoint/loiter/luck etc, they essentially know where a carrier is within meter level accuracy at all times, including SAR to look through clouds. They're not spitting out spacex # of paylods but they've put up 100s of imaging satellites in last few years, with more coming, and likely have enough just commercial imaging now to track US carriers globally without losing sight of it.
This is not meant to condescend, but essentially your talking points are based on popular misunderstanding from online opinons that poorly regurgigated a series of online articles explaining why carriers are "not doomed" from Naval Gazing ~5 years ago, but even in those essays the author specifically carved out PRC nascent carrier kill chain at the time as the exception. It's 10 years later, PRC now has 100s times better ISR coverage missile capabilities, the talking points are even more out of date. The caveate of the articles was always, carriers are not doomed, except for maybe against 2015 PRC whose has XYZ (ISR, # of launchers / salvo sizes, level of informatization) that puts the fight pretty even. It's almost 10 years later, PRC has increased XYZs by magnitude, it's not level playing field anymore. i.e. PRC deliverable single salvo size went from, 2015 maybe a US CSG can successfully defend if dump missile defense into VLS and airwing to 2024 PRC who can launch enough to satutate any CSG loadout at ranges where they can't effectively operate.
E: this is not mentioning PLA system destruction warfare that will also degrade fixed targets like replenishment fleets who has to reload in port, the tldr is they can simply disable the entire carrier group (really all of USN) by limitting them to single deployment assets by denying airwing/escorts fuel. There are many ways to break USN carrier conops that are not designed against peer adversaries who can reach deep into USN logistics chain.
Or former Pac fleet deputy chief of intel Fanell who confirmed tandem PRC hypersonics struck moving ships at sea a few years ago - two high end missiles from different sites 1000km inland synced to hit moving hull in time+space.
Thank you for this, new to me, information. Did they hit ships on a fixed course or hit ships doing evasive maneuvers?
are based on popular misunderstanding from online opinons that poorly regurgigated a series of online articles explaining why carriers are "not doomed" from Naval Gazing ~5 years ago
I've never heard of Naval Gazing. You don't know the sources of my information as I've not mentioned what they are.
We just know it's a moving target, likely towed, which is about as mobile as sinkex goes, including those by USN. Other things to note is PRC does tons of missile tests - 100s - more than rest of world combined. Good reason Fanel, deputy chief of intel for IndoPac asserts PRC can hit moving ships at sea. Because PLA does the same tests US does to validate AShMs, but they also do a shit ton of them.
Not trying to be presumptious about your sources, but basis of narrative that carriers are fast and hard to find traces back to those series of articles if you formed your opinion from readings within past 5 years - that's where it likely came from. It gots regurgitated and telephone gamed in various defense blogs and corrupted even more in online commentary. If knowledge is older than that, then it's obsolete.
That's playing with kessler syndrome game theory, since PRC has anti sat capabilities too. Except US has lead in space assets, especially for defense, and would lose disproportionately more capabilities in full scale ASAT war - global capabilities they need for other commitments. Degrading space degrades carrier group capabilities.
Other thing to consider is US ASAT capability is limited - only like ~20 ASM135 which can reach high (~500km) LEO were produced (but we don't really know how many exists). SM3s which US has ~500, not all of which are ASAT capable and validated at ~250km. A lot of Yaogan constellation are at ~500km. Those SM3s may reach that, but they also double as ballistic interceptors for high end AShMs. TBF we don't know much about PRC ASAT inventory, we just know they have capbility with industrial base to build a lot of ordnances.
PRC also can launch satellites rapidly via road mobile TELs, and have long range, disposable, supersonic drones like WZ8 as backup/redundant kill chain. Of course US likely has ability to quickly put up space assets as well. There's also all sorts consideration like US launching an coordinated ASAT strike is basically shooting 100s of missiles without warning - if it doesn't accidentally trigger MAD it's going to trigger use-it or lose-it counter strike. Doing it gradually/piecemeal = PRC will have time to respond.
Really it comes down to attrition/numbers game, but when space assets in the multi 100s, there's a lot of build in redundancy against decapitation strikes, which inherently makes such strikes more difficult to pull off, i.e. is US going to disperse elements in theatre because just about anything in 1IC can still likely be hit with PRC missiles without GPS using INS/dsmac/tercom navigation. PRC going to know somethings up if Yokosuka gets emptied and adjust retaliation posture accordingly.
Things gets complicated vs adversaries with modern ISR in the ~100s. Caveate being that club is pretty much US+PRC. RU also has 100s but a lot of it legacy. Essentially everyone else US would consider adversary like IR or NK has single digits, and would get steam rolled. 2010s PRC borderline in this category, their ISR fleets was low/mid double digits then. Hence carriers are hard to find/kill holds true for that calibre of forces. But "neutralize enemies advantages" is apropos, and against most US adversaries, US primacy is based on US having ability in neutralizing those advantages. Difference vs PRC is PLA spent last 20 years of modernization specifically to neutralize US advantages - that's what their systems confrontation/destruction warfare doctorine is designed around - build enough redundancy to mitigate and defeat US advantages.
What you are describing is just another aspect of modern warfare. It’s an arms race and an attempt to gain superiority in various areas/capabilities. What you are demonstrating is not the obsolescence of aircraft carriers but just another dimension to fleet defense. Infantryman are not obsolete despite long range artillery, missiles, planes, helicopters, and tanks.
If navies are obsolete then Taiwan’s best course of action is reconciliation with China with the best terms they can find. Likewise for all other countries near China.
I'm contextualizing that carriers are much more obsolete vs some force structures / hardware stack than others. They are signicantly less less defensible given XYZ adversary capabilities, like having proper ISR, and advanced AShMs. I didn't say navies were obsolete, but their roles may be greatly constrained in IndoPac scenario, hence US wants to preposition land missiles, harden air shelters in region, get TW to porcupine and build asymetric forces. But my feeling is carrier effectiveness specifically, are going to have bad time matching up against near/peer opponents. I've written elsewhere, but USN 11+10 carrier force is literally mandated minimum by law. We know USN + rest of DoD is pivotting hard to reorient force towards confronting PRC, and we know USN specifically are betting on distributed lethality and not building any more carrie than mandated in navy force design 2045. Also despite 10+ years of lamenting the sad state of US shipbuilding over last 10 years, little is being done. Maybe that's reflection US industrial scoliosis, or maybe it's indicator of how planners view navies, more specifically large manned surface combtants.
Too open ended to speculate. Near/medium/long term. What's state of PLA modernization. How close is PRC to nuclear parity with US. What's the state of PRC renewables / electrification / autarky. But I think import recognition is PRC ultimate geopolitical goal is to kick US military out of east asia, and if they have to do it via hot war using TW/reunifcation/civil war as springboard, they may not avert it if they have means to not do so, and hence it will likely end in a much broader/bloodier war than just TW unless US chooses to pack up and leave (doubt).
The less bloody route = PRC feels like it's ascending power, and they may think eventually correlation of forces in region will make it obvious US security architecture can't deal with PLA. Ask yourself how much hardware PRC can hypothetically put in Canada, Mexico, Cuba, Carribeans to really deter US. The answer is probably no amount, because US size + disproprotional military potential is in aggregate much larger. PRC 300x ship building advantage is result of casual PRC 2% GDP military build up, they haven't even began the industrial scale arms race i.e. PRC mass gigafactory scale defense procurement. I think in next medium/long term years it will be increasingly clear US posture in region is not going to be survivable or enough to deter PRC. Combine with PRC building out global strike that can conventionally hit CONUS strategic targets may force US to substantially reduce (not abandon) their security posture in East Asia to level that PRC finds tolerable.
I think PRC ability to take TW is almost forgone - can always blockade or raze TW like gaza with purely mainland platforms and grind for capitulation. But after US made PRC containment goal explicit, there's really no seperating a TW scenario with broader PRC/US+co scenario anymore. TLDR is it could end very badly, but I think unspoken is it could end as badly for US as it does for PRC. I think it will end _very_ badly for US partners in region.
Ukraine apparently uses remotely operated drone boats that are cheap, can loiter, and aren’t easily detected because they need not be high above the waterline (Theirs probably are noisy, but only when moving)
If all you want is defense against an enemy deploying an airfield (aka aircraft carrier) close to your border, I think you could build thousands of them for the price of an aircraft carrier.
A bit like a minefield with mines that can target ships passing by.
An attacker would have to use mine sweepers to destroy them, protecting them with their carrier further out, but, these things being mobile, you could keep replacing them. Not invincible, but I think it is something planners are looking at.
In the future such things as you describe will be a problem but not at this time. China can’t invade Taiwan because it doesn’t have the ability to deal with carrier fleets.
China can’t invade Taiwan because it doesn’t have the ability to deal with carrier fleets.
(No such animal as a country called Taiwan. However there is an island called Taiwan.)
China doesn't need to invade the Republic of China. They just need to blockade it, just like Britain blockaded Germany in WW1 and WW2. The island of Taiwan would be out of fuel and food within weeks.
China invading the Republic of China would be like the US invading Hawaii. Why would you blow up your own stuff? You'd only have to spend perfectly good money to replace it.
You have a tenuous grasp on reality. Regardless of your views on Taiwan being a country it is indisputably true that U.S. carrier fleets are a primary reason China can’t invade, blockade, or otherwise disrupt the integrity of Taiwan.
It's less that China can't destroy or seriously threaten US carrier groups, and more that China attacking a US carrier fleet would result in nothing less than instantaneous full-scale war with the US and it's allies that would result in massive destruction and throw the world economy into chaos.
It's World War III that deters China, not a carrier group or two.
In 1942 the US had the largest manufacturing capacity in the world. The US also had a large population of military-age men.
Today that position is held by China. How long do you think that the US could replace its lost materiel and men against a country that is four times larger in population and probably ten times larger in manufacturing capacity?
The WHOLE OF THE WEST (5 eyes, Europe, and Japan) is smaller than just China alone in population and in manufacturing capacity.
We in the West won't know what's hit us when WW3 comes along. It'll be a lot worse than Germany's disastrous war against the Soviets in WW2.
Taiwan means a lot less to the U.S. than it does to China. The U.S. is so afraid of confrontation with near peer adversaries that it puts many restrictions on Ukraine when Ukraine uses U.S. weapons. Ukraine and European defense are much more important to the U.S. than Taiwan.
Neither the U.S. or China is going to engage in a nuclear confrontation with each other and any war over Taiwan between the two nations would be conventional (though China is waging a rather successful cyber war against the U.S.).
I believe carriers are essential to deterrence against China attacking Taiwan. I could be wrong though.
The reference to Midway is odd because without aircraft
carriers the U.S. would have lost the battle.
Aircraft carriers were obviously the dominant force in the Pacific, almost a century ago. No argument there. There was really nothing to counter them, except fighters launched from other aircraft carriers.
Whether we're talking about 1942 or 2024, aircraft carriers can't perform evasive maneuvers and launch/land fighters simultaneously. You pretty much can't land a non-VTOL plane on a carrier doing anything but traveling in a straight line into the wind.
During the Battle of Midway, the USN fortuitiously exploited this weakness more effectively than the IJN. It was a big factor in the US victory.
[Carriers] aren’t obsolete
As has been stated by myself and others multiple times: they're not entirely obsolete and still serve an important purpose. The vast majority of potential adversaries are not peers or near-peer capable of advanced missile attacks.
But if you don't think a carrier group is extremely vulnerable to a superpower with advanced missile technology, you might literally be thinking in 1942 terms.
I don’t believe you are well versed in modern naval
operations. I’m not either
Those that are big enough to do major damage to an aircraft carrier can be intercepted by aircraft. Which is what I referred to when I mentioned air dominance being the key in this case.
There are no loitering missiles. If you read the wikipedia link you'd see this written:
Loitering munitions fit in the niche between cruise missiles and unmanned combat aerial vehicles (UCAVs or combat drones), sharing characteristics with both.
Aircraft carriers matter greatly in peer to peer naval supremacy. China is building aircraft carriers to contest the seas around Taiwan against the U.S.
You are not well versed in modern naval operations. Neither am I.
Ballistic missiles are also generally going to be traveling at hypersonic speeds. As they descend at steep angles from space. Even tricker than cruise missiles traveling somewhat horizontally.
Third, a US carrier hosts about 40 fighters. During high tempo operations a single bird might be in the air up to 10 hours a day or so, but this tempo can't be sustained for long - it's not like you can have 40 simultaneous fighters in the air 24/7. Planes need maintainence, etc. Surely even you can understand that there is a limit to the number of simultaneous missiles these fighters and the rest of the fleet's defenses can intercept. There are a lot of variables that go into that number, and we're talking about classified and rapidly-evolving hardware, but I don't know that anybody thinks it's more than a near-peer could throw at a US carrier group.
China is building aircraft carriers to contest
the seas around Taiwan against the U.S.
This is all speculation, unless one of us literally has access to what China's military planners are thinking.
But: no. I'd suggest looking at a map. Taiwan is less than a hundred miles from China's mainland. They certainly don't need aircraft carriers to fight a war in the seas around Taiwan. Come on.
They are, in all likelihood, primarily planning to use those carriers for force projection elsewhere in the world. (And/or for prestige purposes)
There are some informative answers from others in this thread; you would do well to learn about this topic if it interests you.
IMO slow acquisition = still playing around / PLANavy brass + CPC big bois thinks it's nice for dick measuring contest, with some limited peacetime use to wag said dick for diplomacy/"presence"/propaganda.
The reality seems to be that PRC is profoundly not serious about building carriers. They now have ~300x ship building capacity vs US, and outputs in one year as much tonnage as entire US WW2 5-year ship building program, yet is building up carriers at extremely slow rate (2.5 in ~15 years - with 01/liaoning rebuilt from USSR Varyag hull), when they can be spamming 2-3+ carriers PER year. For reference US was laying/building/launching/commissioning a Forrestal class and other large displacement carriers almost every year post WW2. It would be fairly easy for PRC to build 10+ carriers within a few years, but they don't, nor do they seem to be prioritizing building out requisit airwings. Relevant carrier programs are moving along, but it seems far from urgent. This is not the aquisition posture of a force that prioritizes / values carriers.
Compare to say PRC subsurface... they had shit subs until recently, but have consistently tried to close gap and built a lot of boats. Now that latest gen PLAN subs within 1ish generation of USN, they're expanding sub shipyards to build 6-8s simultaneously, i.e. 3-4x than US. Good sign they really care about subs.
TLDR is I don't know if PRC sees expansive role of carriers for future priorities, but it's still worth hedging / building up capability just in case. Real question is, why is PRC building so few carriers, why do most major carrier operators maintain minimal carrier fleet, which includes USN, whose minimum carrier #s are constrained by law (11+10 operational carriers/amphibious assault ships from 10 USC. 8062) and therefore we don't really know what USN priority would be if planners have freedom pursue any force composition. We do know USN insists it needs to build up against PRC but future navy force design is hedging on distributed lethality of more smaller hulls while maintaining the LEAST amount of carries they are legally obligated to operate, which to my knowledge they've never exceeded.
The first symbiotic event was a million times harder than the 2nd or the 3rd. The first time the host had the extremely hard task of dealing with any DNA and RNA produced by the guest during it's life and death. The host had to evolve stuff like a cell nucleaus and sex to live through it and alternative splicing to deal with the fact that all it's genes were damaged by selfish genetic elements that came from the guest. Integrating any later symbionts is still hard, but not nearly as hard.
It's possible that the first symbiosis that let to the origin of the eukaryotes is not a one in a billion years event, but one in a trillion or one in 10^20 years or ever rarer. That is it may be that in a billion planets with simple life forms only one "creates" complex life like animals. It can be the great filter that leads to the Fermi paradox.
> It can be the great filter that leads to the Fermi paradox.
I'm increasingly of a similar view — that the great filter is something we're already past, due to the incredible combinations of constraints that led to where we are today.
Another infinitesimal probability may be the development of abstract intelligence. The conditions that led to our brand of intelligence being an evolutionary advantage seem particularly unique: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK210002/
I feel there might be intelligent species out there without either the resources to develop technology or the ability to do so. Sharks could become smarter than us one day, but without thumbs they aren't going to succeed in overtaking the planet. Similarly, there could be a humanoid fish species under thick ice sheets of Europa, and they would never guess there is anything more than their "ocean" in the universe.
>> 4. I don't think the browser on WP7 is based on IE7 just for numbers to match. And this give me little hope there will be quick improvement in that area.
I think that would be for the "full Google experience" with Google-branded apps. If you choose to go plain Android with your own apps instead of the Google ones, you should be free.
Without license one also loses the name 'Android', the good deal on Google Ads and access to the store. All telecoms and big phone companies do pay the fee.
yeah, but from what I read, it's quite difficult to jack the bootloader to load Linux, and the hardware looks like it's at the level of the OLPC, which is pretty much unusable. (keyboard-wise, not cpu-wise)
I don't know of anyone who uses these seriously and really, before I buy something where touch is as important as a laptop, I'd like to either try the keyboard in person or at least hear someone on the 'net describe it. (I mean, for that kind of money, I'll take some risk... but I'd like at least some evidence that they might not be complete crap.)
Don't see how Apple makes more money is a good thing - it means millions of their clients have less money left.