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From Sofia to the West of Turkey should be relatively easy. After that, travel through Iran, Afghanistan and Pakistan will get hairy.

You'd be surprised at how cheap, relatively safe and reliable bus services are in those regions.

Source: me and my wife traveled extensively by public transport in, well, at least Pakistan. The other countries are indeed sort-of hairy, but mostly for job-clearance-related reasons.


10s of thousands of religious pilgrims travel by bus between Pakistan and Iran every year. You can just avoid Afghanistan.

Generally the border between Paxistan and India cannot be crossed though. I believe Attari/Wagah is the only place, and it was closed too last I heard.

Indeed, it has been closed since the aerial clashes last year. But we can hope for peace, and with it cross border tourism.

Can locals still cross at Kasur/Ganda Singh Wala like before 1971?

To my knowledge, no. In the recent past, either you could cross via the the Wagah-Attari border crossing or get on the Thar Express train [1], which connects Karachi with Jodhpur via the Zero Point crossing. But the Thar Express has been closed since 2019.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thar_Express


They should avoid Pakistan if they can, not Afghanistan. It’s in relative peace while the border region of Iran/Pakistan see regular fighting between Pakistani forces and Baluch separatists[1].

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Balochistan_Liberation_Army


There were some bad roads in the Balkans as well.

A few more:

Jeff Dean doesn't use a compiler; he just glares at his source code until it executes.

Jeff Dean once optimized a sleep(10) call to return in 5 seconds.

Jeff Dean’s keyboard doesn’t have a Backspace key; he simply doesn't make mistakes.

/end. There's no need to get up. I will see myself out.


I just wanted to point out that Boom Aerospace is now mainly focused on delivering a Gas Turbine for power generation [1].

In an interview with CNBC Mr. Scholl talked about this pivot [2].

1. https://boomsupersonic.com/press-release/boom-supersonic-to-... 2. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ELl2uUAfGBw


I apologize if this is common knowledge. Modern C++ coding agents need to have a deep semantic understanding of the external libraries and header files. A simple RAG on the code base is not enough. For example, GitHub Copilot for VS Code and Visual Studio uses IDE language services like IntelliSense. To that extent, using a proper C++ IDE rather than a plain editor will improve the quality of suggested code. For example, if you're using VS Code, make sure the C/C++ Extension Pack is installed.

What is the halation like artifact around the edges called? This makes the picture so unappealing to me. I'm so glad the modern digital cameras don't have this problem. I hope I'm explaining the issue well. I wish I could post a frame grab here.


This ship is a known blockade runner. "The ship has frequently carried oil from countries under U.S. sanctions, and its tracking data shows multiple recent trips to Iran and Venezuela"

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/12/10/us/politics/oil-tanker-ve...


For it to be a blockade runner, there would need to be a blockade.

Are we blockading Venezuela? That would generally be considered an act of war.


Right. The official reason given for seizing the M/V Skipper was sanctions violation, not a blockade. I don't know whether this was the real reason but as of today other vessels are still sailing in and out of Venezuelan ports without interference. There is no blockade.

The vessel is registered in Guyana so I guess they can complain if they think the seizure was illegitimate.

https://www.marinetraffic.com/en/ais/details/ships/shipid:41...


Guyana says it's a false flag,

> "The government of Guyana — which borders Venezuela — said in a statement Wednesday the ship was falsely flying the Guyanese flag, despite not being registered in the South American country"

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/what-we-know-oil-tanker-the-ski...

(Context reminder: Guyana is the country Venezuela's Maduro threatened to invade in 2023).

(Also context: the sanctions on this ship's Russian owner date from 2022, and are about violating US sanctions on Iranian oil).


UNCLOS gives any state the authority to interdict stateless vessels.


The US pressures countries to deregister ships on US sanctions lists. The ship had previously been registered in Panama.

It feels a little sketchy to force countries to deregister ships in order to seize them, but they could have flown Venezuela's flag instead of taking the risk of being stateless instead.


> The official reason given for seizing the M/V Skipper was sanctions violation, not a blockade.

“Sanctions” imposed by one country on another limiting its trade with third countries are (if force is used to effect them) a (limited) blockade and absolutely an act of war.


Well then I guess Guyana can declare war on the USA if they want to.


Further context: it's owned by a sanctioned Russian oligarch,

> "The ship — known as Adisa in 2022 — is among the vessels controlled by sanctioned Russian oil magnate Viktor Artemov, the Treasury said in a statement[...] The tanker is controlled by Nigeria-based management company Thomarose Global Ventures LTD and owned by a firm linked to Artemov, according to publicly available data."

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/what-we-know-oil-tanker-the-ski...


As the article states, generating the key itself is easy. But getting credit and billing are the issues.


I have it running and calling but it's not showing the usage and I set it up the day gemini 3 came out


You can check your usage, inclusive of Gemini 3 here: https://aistudio.google.com/usage?timeRange=last-28-days just make sure you have the right project selected


Agree, Google made it really easy here, compared to using service account certificates like with some of their other APIs.


>As for Copilot? I don't know anyone who uses it. Do you?

This sloppy journalism. One should probably read the original report in The Information [1].

Bloomberg has updated its story today with a note from Jeffries [2]. "The analysts also said their checks showed robust adoption of Microsoft’s Copilot line of AI assistants"

1. https://www.theinformation.com/articles/microsoft-lowers-ai-...

2. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-12-03/microsoft...


All it takes is for the dot com of chatGPT to be blocked in my organization, and copilot has succeeded. Now we have a presentation from microsoft and half of their thinking problems didnt even work. Of course, i have used copilot chat extensively, and since the rollout of deep thinking, it has provided many benefits. Writing and editing workflows in excel or officesript, for instance. Custom JSON formatting in sharepoint. It has even made a regression model in an excel workbook. Takes knowledge to edit it, but it does get me there.


You went further with GCP than I did. I was asked repeatedly by support to contact some kind of a Google sales team.

I get the feeling GCP is not good for individuals like I. My friends who work with enterprise cloud have very high opinion about their tech stack.


> I get the feeling GCP is not good for individuals like I.

Google isn't good for individuals at all. Unless you've got a few million followers or get lucky on HN, support is literally non-existent. Anyone that builds a business on Google is nuts.


I'd like to state the AWS, in contrast, has been great to me as an individual. The two times that I needed to speak to a human, I had one on the phone resolving my issue. And both issues were due to me making mistakes - on my small personal account.


This kind of circular deals are very common and doesn't violate any laws. It's the magnitude and prevalence of it in the AI sector that flashes a warning sign.


A lot of stuff doesn't violate any laws until it does. Laws are created after the crimes have already happened. That's why we have the letter of law vs the spirit of the law.


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