Emulating the RPI PIOs instead of the TI PRUs is really a miss.
The PRUs really get a bunch right. Very specifically, the ability to broadside dump the ENTIRE register file in a single cycle from one PRU to the other is gigantic. It's the single thing that allows you to transition the data from a hard real-time domain to a soft real-time domain and enables things like the industrial Ethernet protocols or the BeagleLogic, for example.
Tooling for the RPI PIO design is probably a bit more accessible than the TI PRU situation. I'd say its not really a miss - more of a necessity given bennies' proclivity towards open/available tools. Getting access to architecture details of the TI PRU would necessitate an NDA, would it not?
I always wonder why Ubuntu is even on the radar anymore. It is a pile of questionable decisions with a billionaire ego bus factor. If you like apt, just use Debian. sid is fine for desktops if you are moderately technical.
The biggest thing that has prevented me from switching prod systems to Debian is that the window for updates is fairly small, at around a year. 13 came out Aug 9, 2025, and 12 goes EOL June 10, 2026. Compared to Ubuntu 24.04 coming out in April 2024, and 22.04 goes EOL in May 2027 (a year after 24.04). So Ubuntu covers 2 releases plus a year.
I know a lot of people feel like this isn't a big deal, but even with Ansible it can be hard to get our fleet of a few hundred machines all upgraded in a year window, being already busy. Some of them are easy, of course, but there are some that take significant time and also involve developer work, etc...
Don't get me wrong, I think Debian is great. But in the data center, there's definitely a case for a longer support window, and I like that about Ubuntu. RHEL is even better for that, but it is very nice that Ubuntu free and Ubuntu commercial are the same, but with RHEL there is that split to CentOS being the free one (haven't used RHELs in quite a while, obviously).
Except their LTS is a lie or maybe plausible deniability for businesses that DGAF. They have no idea what they are doing with backports and lack thereof. And if you aren't paying you aren't even receiving many of the updates.
> And if you aren't paying you aren't even receiving many of the updates.
Are you sure you didn't mean RedHat? Last I checked there's no requirement to pay anything in order to use an LTS release of Ubuntu. Even if you go with Pro to get those extra years of Extended Support (to make it ~12 years?) you still get up to 5 licenses for personal use. No money asked, no *BS* subscription model. Isn't that more than enough any non-commercial user?
Read https://ubuntu.com/security/esm carefully. The chance of running everything out of 'main' is close to zero. I am shocked by how little people understand this.
Main is all you need to set up a working system and deploy services. Much like BaseOS in RHEL you get full support for those packages for 5+5 years. With snaps you effectively get rolling releases of LXD, microk8s, openstack, docker and other relevant things. What else do you need? Seriously, how come this isn't enough for a non commercial user?
Because this is Stockholm syndrome, better community options prevail, main is not all people deploy and is not the only repo default enabled. openstack, docker are legacy tech, never encountered anyone using LXD or microk8s thankfully I'll steer clear of that snap garbage barge.
However, I've been extremely happy with Devuan. It is Debian minus some bad decisions the Ubuntu voting block forced upstream (for instance, there's no systemd).
Intel has had a somewhat awkward relationship with FreeBSD forever. While they are forced to support it (for $reasons) they never have properly covered it.
I would say as of FreeBSD 12-13 most major issues are addressed from 1gig up to current 100g. There is an odd bug in 2.5g igc where some users have interface stalls whilst others like Netgate are shipping large numbers without issue, waiting to hear if this is firmware or not.
Source: I maintain several of the Intel drivers on a volunteer basis and used to send several Tbit/s to the Internet over them professionally.
I like Miniflux becuase it is easy to run and keeps a centralized status if you have multiple devices. I guess if Thunderbird supported the Fever protocol you could use them together unless there is some other method I'm not aware of?
I've wanted to try Miniflux for a long time, so a few weeks ago I set it up on a headless debian box I have running for some homelab services. That's part of my Tailscale network, so I was able to immediately start testing on desktop, phone, etc. It's great!
I might take a stab at customizing the UI a bit. I like that it's opinionated but pretty bare-bones visually out of the box.
Yes, the web UI is not great but there is a nice iOS app called Reeder, and some desktop clients too. I'd love to use Thunderbird as the desktop client.
Conceivably, the 50 tankers per day could move in batches with the protection of a Destroyer. It's hard to imagine a credible surface or subsea threat with current fleet presence so it's basically a question of missile defense. Some constellation of vessels can indefinitely secure the zone if any powers that be with a suitable Navy desire it, and there are at least a few that have plausible capabilities.
How is a single destroyer going to protect 50 oil tankers at once? Oil tankers are almost comically unsuited to warfare and you don't need missiles to penetrate their non-existent defences, they can easily and cheaply be taken out by drones. Here's Ukraine doing just that for the Nth time last week:
As the friendly article says, the US military has no idea about how commercial shipping works and how hard it will be convince anybody to transit through an active war zone.
How good is an Iranian navy really? At this point, seriously asking, why is there anything left of an Iranian navy? If we're in a shooting conflict that's a war not a war, why would they not be going after anything that could be considered a blockade? I'm going with these guys didn't have a real plan, and that block the straight is something they actually didn't consider so nothing in place to counter. It's Keystone cops
Ukraine's entire navy was sunk in the first 3 days of the war, and 4 years later Russian Black Sea fleet knows to stay in port as more than half of their ships have been sunk by Ukrainian missiles and drones.
The don't have a navy per se, just speedboats fitted with missiles, whatever is left of it. Enough to drive the insurance costs sky high and interdict tanker traffic through the strait. Also their navy port is right next to the strait, I wonder why.
"A navy, naval force, military maritime fleet, war navy, or maritime force is the branch of a state's armed forces principally designated for naval and amphibious warfare;" --wikipedia
Also, comical is a great description. I was aware that Iran has a speedboat navy, but wtf that video?! How much is AI? The shot with the giant flame throwing rockets flying slower that the speedboats is hilarious. I guess perspective is everything??
I guess you could call a fleet of dinghies a navy as well by that measure. Anyway, they no longer have their navy, because according to Trump it was, uh, 'knocked out'.
What they do still have however, is enough Shaheds to interdict tanker traffic through the straight.
Iran doesn't need a navy to sink cargo ships going through the Straight of Hormuz, they just need a handful of guys in the mountains with a stock of rockets or drones.
Not congruent to what I wrote:
Why would the batch size be 1?
Must it be the US military?
What anti-drone capabilities do Destroyers have or could be made to have?
If the tankers are primarily for the benefit of Asia and not the US do you risk bringing additional parties with a grievance into your conflict?
When the action you are talking about is, for anyone other than the US or Israel, signing up to become a co-belligerent with the US & Israel in their war with Iran? Yeah, the realistic options for who might do it are pretty limited.
Seems tinged in political fog. For instance, if China wants tankers to have safe passage they can present diplomatic arrangements with the other players (US&Israel and/or Iran) indicating they are there for escort only. Belligerence would not be up to them if they were forced to defend their merchant escort.
Kuwait, Qatar, UAE, Iraq, and Saudi are all US allies and they all rely on the Straits for exports. If they can't sell oil/LNG, they will be in much bigger trouble than their customers, who have other suppliers to choose from.
The simple solution seems to be to put the Trump fortune up as insurance collateral. If he's so confident that the war's such a good idea, he needs to put some skin in the game.
You have to convince three sets of people to move any tanker through the Straight:
- the crew
- the company
- the insurer
The company has an obvious reason to take on some amount of risk to move a vessel through the Straight. However, both the crew and the insurer will be quite risk averse, so the Navy would need to demonstrate a very high success rate in intercepting both missiles and shaheds to convince those two other groups to say "yes".
The missiles destroyers have are not the kind you want to use to shoot down shaheds. The economics don't work out in the long run. Same for AIM-9s. There are some new guided pod rockets that likely break even, but they are new.
Seems like a great way to have the destroyer's air defense overwhelmed/depleted by shaheds while IRGC drone boats and speedboats attack from the surface. Then you have 50 insurance claims against the US treasury.
It's less about "opening it up" and more about the tanker companies feeling there is enough safety. With the Red Sea instance, they didn't start running ships until the Houthis said they were done.
The feeling of safety in this scenario would be provided by the assurance that anyone who tries picking on a tanker would be stomped into the ground by a destroyer.
It'd be more helpful if you could explain for the class why you disagree with their comment, rather than disparage it with nothing of your own to offer.
It costs a lot more to block one than to build one, and Trump's already blaming Biden because the US is running low on the top tier interceptors. Congressional testimony suggests the current stockpile will last weeks. After that, they'll fall back on ones that are less accurate, and that will let some attacks through.
The destroyer doesn't help much in that scenario, in the same way it's not going to stop mosquitoes from biting the oil tanker's crew.
You could use it to transport a large number of interceptor drones behind an armored hull, I guess.
But, in scenarios where you need to worry about strikes taking out stored interceptor drones on the tankers, then the tankers are already swiss cheese.
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