HN user
funding the conquest of Ukraine
It is well known that China is still engaged in trade with Russia- oil and gold going one way, drones and weapon components going the other.
But you said funding, and I assume you meant things like grants or loans. Do you have any sources for that? I could only find one that was attributed to indirect open source intelligence, nothing specific.
I'm not sure about some of the things you mentioned. Stuff like this is food for social media algorithms - "the world is ending!" But they are interesting points to think about.
How much of what you said holds true in other cultures with plumetting birth rates? Japan, Mexico and India for example? Russia? Seems to be quite a few exceptions.
Quick comments on your post: 1) I'm impressed by the young, they're trying, maybe more so than gen-x and boomers, who went from lazy-as-anybody to mucho reactionary, 2) That graph doesn't say that 80% of men drop out of the dating pool, 3) I agree that affordibility is a problem, but I'd question both sides of the supply/demand curve, and (in the U.S.) Reaganomics, 4) how does partisanship relate to birth rates? For example, Congo is divided, but birth rate is high, 5) I agree that algorithmic profit seeking social media is a huge problem, but those who rule us like to push their propaganda, and they are doing a good job.
I've always heard that lower birth rates were correlated with urbanization and educating women. Always and everywhere. That having kids in the city costs too much, compared to on farms, and that women want to avoid a bad situation if they can.
How to make things better?
I think that there is a lot we can do to make life more social and affordable, for example imagine a world with more cheaper housing options, no need for a car, no need to wage-slave full time, less mercenarial, less scams, less manipulating people to buy things they don't need, etc. Better living for less money. Easier to have kids. In aggregate we are plenty productive enough. It'll take time to unwind so many decades going in the other direction. And we haven't even started. Because the people capturing all that wealth don't want to make those changes.
I assume that kids will figure it out eventually. This is self correcting. The world will go on :-)
There were a lot of voters who didn't want those cuts. So they complain. Is that what swing voters thought they were getting?
The government spends like 1000 billion on the military, a couple/few 10s of billions on aid is just being charitable. And projects soft power, buying good will. And was probably well used by the cia.
And then there's the philopher Peter Singer, who would say that not helping other people is immoral. Most people wouldn't go that far, but some do. Some religions ephasize such things.
Opinions differ.
So does that mean our social/political/economic system (culture) is a failure - having created the conditions for population decline (including industrialization and urbanization), but unable to survive the consequences (shrinking birthrates)?
Lots of the world gets by on a fraction of US per-capita GDP, and isn't as screwed up as Haiti. Countries like Japan, Korea, Italy and others in Europe are blazing trails with this problem, a generation of aging (no millenials) ahead of the US (assuming no more immigration). We'll see how that works out.
Scary to back-slide on standards of living, but it's happened before in history. Best not to get too comfortable with the idea of the American Dream. Stay flexible. Stay healthy. Good luck!
I want to see humanity live and thrive
Me too. It would be nice if we, as a society, did more to prioritize that.
Letting big tech psycholocally pollute everyone for profit is not helping.
maybe you don't give a crap if today's teenagers will inhabit a horrific world with twice as many old people as society can afford to support
I wouldn't say that a lower population needs to result in a horrific world.
I assume standards of living would change. What other choice is there, given the change in the ratio of workers to retirees? Not everyone could afford a big house of their own, a car, and tech toys and other possessions, but we are productive enough as a society to feed, cloth and shelter everyone, including a bunch of retired people. We could still afford the really important benifits of modernity. And we keep getting more productive, finding easier ways to do more, so who knows?
The Ahmish wouldn't describe a simplier way of life as as horrific. Nor people born a hundred years ago. Nor people living like that in many countries today. Change society like that and, who knows, young people might be more open to having kids again.
Why do you think things would end up being horrific?
no one really does audit it
Isn't this article about an AI that just audited it?
not more secure than others
Didnt the audit only found one bug, much less than other kernels from the same audit?
I assume those are lines of code in just the kernels.
As an FYI to everyone: The OpenBSD and FreeBSD teams both maintain entire distributions, similar to Linux + Debian or Linux + Redhat. The OpenBSD team also owns a number of other projects - everything from OpenSSH to PF, OpenBGPD, OpenNTPD, OpenSMTPD, OpenIKED, LibreSSL, pledge and unveil, their own set of perl patches, etc.
I'd say that less lines of code seems to correlate with less bugs in absolute numbers, which works out as more secure for those who don't need the extra code.
you should be able to pass BT through USB
I use a Creative BT-W2 bluetooth usb dongle. Small and has a button on it for pairing. OpenBSD sees it as a normal audio device.
I'd say yes. Things like increased military spending (2% of gdp, largest since the end of the cold war), buying more non-US weapon systems (like Saab's GlobalEye, instead of US AWACS), exploring other alliances (with Europe and China), and lessoning dependencies on US companies (like Palantir).
Are you thinking that the Candian public doesn't care about Trump's annexation threats?
I agree, we could do so much better. Zoning can be a tremendous quality of life issue, and needing a car to participate in society is an expense other people in other places aren't burdened with.
Or a regression in the standard of living. Ideally to a comfortable sweet spot for people.
There were lots of Jan 6 weapons related convictions:
"180 defendants were charged with entering a restricted area with a dangerous or deadly weapon, which includes firearms and other types of weapons." [0]
What you described as a riot is considered by others to be part of a "fake electors" plot, to keep Trump in power after he lost the election [1], a plot which Pence didn't go along with. Trump even tweeted that day about it:
"If Vice President @Mike_Pence comes through for us, we will win the Presidency." [2]
[0] https://www.reuters.com/fact-check/us-capitol-attack-rioters...
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trump_fake_electors_plot
[2] https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/tweets-january-6-2...
To build high-density housing, the city or state would have to buy out the existing landowners
Couldn't they just change the zoning to allow for greater density?
The properties become more valuable, some would want to develop, and some would sell to those developers. Moreso over time.
Does the interestate commerce clause preclude state laws pertaining to implementation and usage?
For example, can a state outlaw public plate/facial recognition cameras, or usage of social network data and AI by local police?
You could still buy AI, but The People decided you can't use it on the public for anything and everything just because big tech profits.
Or has that become the point of the interstate commerce clause, that big companies can maximize profits in cooperation (lobbying) with one federal government, instead of being inconvenienced with the laws of fifty states, in this the richest country of the world?
The best solution is to have uniform federal regulation with no state laws
What if the feds won't let a state outlaw policing using AI? Or insurance companies setting rates based on AI interpretation of their driving, phone location, browsing and/or credit card data? Or public license plate and face tracking by private companies?
Why do the feds want to interfere with the states setting implementation rules for themselves? What if the federal rules are really bad, or non-existent, perhaps due to lobbying/corruption?
Who is helped by uniform federal regulation? The public in all fifty states? Or big tech AI companies?
If self-driving is better, then presumably cheaper insurance costs would be an incentive.
Big tech is a coercive power. They are cooperating with the government to control the population. Doesn't that worry you? Don't you think there should be limits, beside profitability?
I think of it as flaws in our system that need to be patched. The masses are manipulated by their algorithms. Those who would protest are surveilled by them. The rich seem to be running everything to their advantage. The rugged individualist is running out of space.
What about radical individualism + regulated tech - inevitable technology?
I don't see anything wrong with individuals who by consensus choose to regulate "inevitable" technology. Technology is not a person, and we don't need to make ourselves subservient to it.
I'm thinking of things like liability as a publisher for algorithmic feeds, anti-trust enforcement against companies competing unfairly, mandates for inter-operability to avoid user lock-in, limitations on surveillance capitalism, protections for personal data, maybe also regulating things like advertising, campaigning, fake news, etc.
This [0] mentions that social security, medicare, public assistance and military and other federal wages were a wash, as of 2018-2022 data:
Digging deeper into the component parts of federal contribution, red and blue states received similar dollar amounts in direct payments on a nominal ($6.9 trillion) and per capita ($42,900) basis, much of which come in the form of payments from Social Security, Medicare, and public assistance programs, such as the earned income and child tax credits. The red and blue states also receive similar amounts for military and non-military wages (excluding the U.S. Post Office, which is self-funded) on a nominal ($650 billion) and per capita ($4,900) basis.
Tax receipts were listed as the most significant difference, and after that other things like military bases, block grants, federal contracts and highways, some going one way, and some the other.
The numbers were interesting. They added it up to $1 trillion going from blue to red states.
[0] https://www.congress.gov/119/meeting/house/118494/documents/...
I didn't say that the economy would be cratered. GDP doesn't capture everything.
Are stock market profit expectations mostly long term? Stock markets have been wrong before.
Besides that, the U.S. stock market went up over several decades while manufacturing capabilities were transferred overseas. That has had, and will continue to have, domestic ramifications that might not be captured by investor profits.
You did specify revenue. The original comment mentioned benefits. I was thinking that the two are different.
Investors are optimistic, but what will this new tech be used for? Advertising? Propaganda? Surveillance? Drone strikes?
Does profitable always equal useful? Might other cultures justifiably think differently, like the Amish?
Hmmm, I got something different. I thought that Bullshit Jobs was based on people who self reported that their jobs were pointless. He detailed these types of jobs, the negative psychological impact this can have on employees, and the kicker was that these jobs don't make sense economically, the bureaucratization of the health care and education sectors for example, in contrast so many other professions that actually are useful. Other examples were status-symbol employees, sycophants, duct-tapers, etc.
I thought he made a case for both societal and economic impact.
drawing on a federal officer
It is my understanding [0] that multiple videos show that Petti did not draw his gun.
Do you know of evidence to the contrary?
[0] https://factually.co/fact-checks/justice/did-pretti-draw-wea...
If algorithm output is protected by the 1st amendment then perhaps Section 230 [0] protections should no longer apply, and they should be liable for what they and their algorithms choose to show people.
I don't get how that hasn't had an effect on prices.
There's not enough houses on the market (zoning, and people want to keep their low-rate mortgages), there's people worried they can't afford houses (prices inflated faster than wages, rates went up), and a large amount of housing transactions (someone quoted 29% of starter homes) are being paid for by institutional investors (who can pay cash).
Wouldn't these institutional investors buying houses be "marginal consumers", kind of like the marginal producers who set the price of inelastic commodities such as oil? Seems like 29% of transactions is even more than marginal.
I assume that sellers would need to come down in price to what non-institutional buyers could afford if institutional buyers were removed from the equation.
As an aside, I'd rather see supply increased, but maybe demographics over the next decade or two will fix that problem anyways.
Are you saying that one billionaire's loss in the primaries indicates money is not a problem in U.S. politics?
I was thinking of things like the 2015 study referenced in this article [0] that looked at 1,800 policy change polls over three decades indicating that elites got their way twice as often as the majority, and the majority never - not a single time - got something the elites didn't support.
In the other direction, the article gave examples of things the elites wanted that were passed into law, even thought he majority opposed. Like NAFTA, the Bush tax cuts, and the repeal of Glass-Steagall banking laws.
It appears that politicians pay more attention to voters with money.
btw, I agree with you that ideally voters are rational and informed. I guess that's a separate question than the influence of money.
[0] https://www.minnpost.com/eric-black-ink/2015/05/disturbing-d...
Other western democracies go further than the U.S. with campaign restrictions, including restrictions to campaign financing. One might say they protect the functioning of their democracies more with these additional restrictions, protecting voters.
And one might ask why we don't want to protect ours more.