HN user
Are taxpayers funding the government?
Yes. It certainly isn't the billionaires as all their wealth wouldn't as the OP noted.
Last year, federal tax revenues were $3 trillion less than federal spending.
A once in a few generations pandemic will do that. See how when things are put into context, it doesn't seem so bad?
Wrong. Business is about relationships. Be competent and do what is minimally required. Do extra networking or befriending your manager/boss/etc.
People who get ahead build relationships. The slaves stick around to do the extra work.
Competence + relationship > competence + extra work
It's so funny how all the business advice is about how to be a good slave rather than what really gets you ahead.
I sincerely doubt you would, since I asked you for the citation and we're discussing moderation in this thread.
I will if I get assurances that I will not be penalized.
In the absence of this, what is anyone reading your original comment to do with your assertion? Are we supposed to take some random internet person at their word?
Yes. Because it's an experience many shared. You've used this forum for a while now. You don't think there is a particular bent here? Noticed a lot of cultural posts that lean a certain way? No?
Maybe you'll prove yourself wrong, and not be censored.
I was proven right many times already. Seems like you want to get me in trouble.
How about this, in a few weeks or maybe months, I'll get bored of HN and then I'll post it.
It's so funny people think that mods are beyond flamebait. Think about why you would want to be a mod? Especially a "tech/business" forum which is at the forefront of political/cultural issues.
If the US confiscated all of the wealth of the billionaires in the US (which would absolutely wreck the economy as well as that wealth, since much of that their wealth is tied up in stocks)...it would fund less than a year of government spending and not even be able to pay for the $3.5T package that is currently being debated (maybe close...the most recent estimate wealth for US billionares is between $3T and $3.5T).
That is so deceptive. You are assuming that everyone else won't be paying their taxes. Everything would be paid for but we could use the "confiscated" wealth for additional stuff. Not that I am necessarily for or against wealth redistribution.
Nobody is saying the wealth should be used to fund the government. The american taxpayers do that. The additional money could be used for other stuff.
Considering MAD existed and most nukes would have been dropped on the US and USSR, not Germany, I don't think that's the issue. We and the russians had far more to worry about than the germans. Of course MAD pretty much ensured a 0% chance of nuclear war so really nothing to worry about. Nations truly worried about nuclear weapons develop them, not fight against them. Think about it.
Considering that Germany is an american vassal with significant russian influence, it's more likely political factions tied to US and Russia. US doesn't want Germany to develop nuclear energy because nuclear energy research is the same thing as a nuclear weapons research. A nuclear armed germany is pretty much an independent germany which is something no empire desires. Empire and freedom/independence/sovereignty don't mix. And russians don't want germany to develop nuclear energy because they want to sell more oil/gas to germany and gain more influence over germany/europe.
Maybe it's a temporal vs spatial vs cardinal issue. I'm sitting "between or in between" two people ( open boundary or exclusive or non-inclusive ). Seems spatial is always open boundary. Park your car between those two trucks. I walked between two clowns.
There is no assertion in my post that the nazis invented unethical medical experimentation which would be absurd.
But you asserted it's why we stopped. So your logic is we were okay with experimenting on black slaves, aborigines, natives, etc, but it was the nazis that made up stop? Even though we recruited these nazi scientists after ww2 and even though we continued with unethical human experimentation after ww2?
Why not admit you were wrong and just move on?
It is a famous example taught in medical history classes.
Then you should ask your school to provide a broader/complete view of history.
We are still carrying out human experimentation on poor people - especially in africa and india. In case you were wondering.
https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/industry/healthcare/bio...
The only time it really stops working is if people start treating it as doctrine, and demanding that you accept it on faith, and take any questions as evidence that you are an enemy of science. If anything destroys science, it is this line of reasoning.
Agreed with everything you wrote. We should be especially vigilant when politics/media gets involved in science. Science is just as corruptable, especially in the short term, as any other field.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piltdown_Man
The more obvious example being the purging of "jewish science" from germany during ww2.
The nazis didn't invent human experimentation.
Human experimentation happened in the US before the nazis.
https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/danvergano/cruel-medica...
Also, we created the largest human experimentat during ww2 - hiroshima and nagasai which was used to test the short-term and long-term effects of radiation on a large sample size.
On aborigines before the nazis.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unethical_human_experimentatio...
On native canadians before the nazis.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unethical_human_experimentatio...
The pioneers of unethical human experimentation was the US and Britain. Germany came fairly late to the game. And unethical human experimentation continued long after ww2. You can look those up yourself.
Funny how we always have to look to the nazis for evil when all we have to do is look in the mirror. Nevermind we recruited nazi scientists to work in our institutions after ww2.
https://www.npr.org/2014/11/05/361427276/how-thousands-of-na...
So I don't think your assertion is true.
Is there any evidence this is actually true?
Apple stock hasn't cratered so the markets don't think much of this story.
Literally every year at this time, Bloomberg or the WSJ reports that Apple is due to cut production due to some negative factor or another.
You shouldn't be downvoted for stating a fact. For every "fusion energy" story, we've had a "apple production cut" story.
could you provide a link to an example?
I was going to link to an example but removed it before posting because I'd get in trouble. It's the "chilling effect" of censorship. You probably think I'm lying but actually searched on algolia and got the precise thread/comment. But edited it out because of censorship.
solipsistic flamebait, and a universal negative you can’t possibly prove.
No. I didn't say only I think. I made a general statement about people. You are reading into things.
I leave showdead on while browsing hn
So do I. You know, it's not that bad. The world didn't end.
anarchy can be dystopian, too…
Who is advocating for anarchy? I'm for blocking spam. I'm for giving more power to the community/user. Give users the tool to block content/speech/users they don't like. For example, give users the option to set comment thresholds to view the comments.
So the definition of "nonconsenting prisoners" is "killing a person without their consent...". That makes every organ transplantation of prisoners "nonconsenting" since nobody consents to their own execution. It doesn't mean the prisoners did or did not consent to donating their organs. It just says they didn't consent to be executed.
I'm against any and all organ donation. So I don't support taking the organs of prisoners. But the author's problem here isn't with organ donations but with the death penalty. He's not saying that the prisoners or their families didn't donate their organs, he's saying prisoners cannot consent because they are prisoners.
The article also said that singapore and taiwan used to allow prisoner's organ donations until their were "bullied" into dropping the practice. So it seems like it is a cultural issue. If the chinese want to allow prisoners to donate their organs, who are we to say otherwise. We use aborted fetuses for medical experiments. Should china be allowed to force us to stop such behavior? Not to mention medical testing on poor people in africa, india, etc.
Is it any better to take organs from poor and desperate people? Use poor people for medical experiments?
It's so strange to see the same people denouncing censorship everywhere celebrating censorship here. I know, I know. Moderation isn't censorship. Moderation is censorship you agree with. Censorship is moderation you disagree with.
Also, there is plenty of flamebait on HN - especially "cultural" flamebait. Some of which the moderators actively participate in. HN seems to be good at keeping certain types of flamebait in check - the national/racial flamebait ( which may or may not be a good thing ).
If people truly took a step back and assessed this post, they'd realize how sad and dystopian it really is. But people don't like to think. An entire post dedicated to praising the censorship of fellow HN poster.
In other words: Ignorance is bliss.
Climate science is politicized because moneyed interests have a strong incentive to continue to deny the science and conservative individuals have both a shared financial interest with liberals to conspire with those interests and a unique political interest in drawing a contrast between themselves and progressives by spreading propaganda and lies.
Except that climate change is funded and backed by wall street, banks, media, etc. The real monied interests are on the side of climate change.
Thus while Democrats and Republicans both vote against all of our interests only Republicans because of their unique interests have an incentive to spread lies.
But monied interests back both democrats and republicans.
Specifically people used to literally argue that warming wasn't even real and now 2/3 of people in the US hold that its an issue and that government isn't doing enough to address it.
Wonder why that is? Oh that's right, the monied interests are backing neverending ads pushing climate change.
It's funny how everyone from the world bank, goldman sachs and google is backing climate change and you are saying it's the "monied interests" who are against climate change.
Think about it. If monied interests were against climate change, then google wouldn't be banning anti-climate change ads...
So that's what dinosaur tastes like.
You believing or agreeing that climate change is an existential risk to humanity makes no difference to the evidence we have.
It's not me "believing", it's no sane person believes it. What "evidence" are you talking about? If you have evidence, then you should inform the bankers, government officials, business leaders, etc because they aren't planning on the world ending anytime soon.
If we don’t act
Act? You mean ban 0.00000001% of ads on google?
a lot of people will die
Not anymore. Google banned 0.00000001% of their ads.
our supply chains will be severely disrupted (do you think the current chip shortage is serious?)
Honestly, do people bother to think anymore? You are just parroting talking points. Why are you so worried about supply chains if we are all going to be dead?
and that could cause a partial collapse of our civilisation.
So which is it. The end of humanity
There was a time when I was like you. When I was still in school and watched Al Gore's "documentary".
You went from "existential risk to humanity" to "a lot of people will die" to "supply chains" to "could cause a partial collapse of our civilization". It's almost like you don't know what you are talking about and just parroting nonsense you saw on TV or read on the news.
Climate change happens with or without humans. It will be detrimental to some, beneficial to others. As with all things, it'll have its winners and losers. We will adapt. Whatever the case, life will go on.
Certainly, if we faced existential risk, we wouldn't let google exist and certainly wouldn't allow google's founder to boat around the world and buy up property in new zealand. The world is ending but all the rich people are living the good life. But you have the evidence after all. That's why you jumped from "existential risk" to a possible "partial" collapse of civilization.
Credit where credit is due, we all WISH nix had something like PowerShell.
Who is "we". I've worked exclusively on a windows stack so used powershell on the job. But at home, I use bash. I don't want something like powershell in nix and don't use powershell on nix even though it's been available on nix for many years now.
Passing strings from program to program is a pain
You can argue it's the basis of computer science and also pretty efficient.
passing around .NET objects instead is a great step forward, as can be seen by the several attempts at similar shells passing around JSON objects.
Passing around objects can be slow, inefficient, wasteful, etc though it can be convenient.
If you are on a windows stack then go with powershell. If not, then go with bash. Nobody should be on a windows stack but sadly, much of the business world has been captured by microsoft.
As others have pointed out in this thread, why doesn't india create their own tiktok or instagram instead? Just clone them if they can't come up with something new. Neither instagram nor tiktok is rocket science. The value of instagram and tiktok isn't their "technology" or algorithm, it's their users. Why is india ceding their entire market to an american ( or chinese ) company to begin with? Love them or hate them, at least the chinese leadership are competent. What are india's leaders doing? At least when the chinese ban foreign companies, they build up their own homegrown champions. I thought when india banned tiktok, they were going to do the same. Instead, they just handed over the market to facebook.
The difference is of course Consequentialism.
Which is just rationalization to justify something you agree with.
If you believe that your actions that will contribute to death and deprivation of future generations then you are morally obliged to treat this case differently.
You are talking about a company that helped foster the "revolutions" in the middle east and europe that led to the deaths of hundreds of thousands/millions of people. I don't think the death of anyone is on their minds. Your logic is also what pro-lifers use. Will google ban planned parenthood ads? Would you support it? You and google are the defenders of future generations right?
They are overwhelmingly educated individuals whose demographic overwhelmingly
Such a fine line between educated and indoctrinated.
believes our actions are having a deleterious effect on the future of our and other species
Ah, the same demographics that uses the most energy, creates the most waste, responsible for the destruction of most species, living in cities where most wild life was wiped out. I'm part of the demographics you describe and rather than the false virtues you attributed to the demographics, I'd say the demographics is self-righteous, hypocritical, brainwashed, etc.
Their is value in the objectivity you describe but it doesn't outweigh the survival of the human race.
If that was the case, wouldn't it be better to shut down google and all industrial activity? But of course, no real scientist believes climate change will be the end of the human race. It's just politically driven people who scare monger with lies. Obviously you don't believe that climate change will wipe out the human race since you are using the internet.
Ignoring the fact that google didn't ban such ads for 25 years, lets say you are right. Lets try a categorical imperative on your logic. Google would have to ban everything from the US government/military, every media organization, every fast food, soda, pharmaceutical, gambling, etc ads.
Funny how ads that will directly lead to the deaths of hundreds of millions of people are okay to you, but ads that will lead to the death of hardly anyone is banned.
What's the percentage of anti vs pro climate change ads? 1 to 1000? You see pro-climate change ads everywhere. You hardly see anti-climate change ads. So this has nothing to do with ads but politics. Google is just going to use it to silence politicians.
Honestly, your argument is humanity will become extinct. So lets cheer google banning some ads. I know your ideology/religion is climate change, but does that make any sense to you? So funny to see people defend google - a monstrous corporate entity.
And of course this would affect all their properties including search. There was a time, long ago, when we expected objectivity from google in search, etc. Those days are long gone as google is a political actor. What's next? Banning ads that deny christ? Are they going to ban ads from politicians who espouse a point of view that google disagrees with? Given google's influence, they can influence who wins elections. Hell they had a significant part in the chaos created during the arab and eastern european "revolutions".
"It's a private company" argument works when private companies are much smaller or influential than governments. When private companies get so large and politically active, we have to break it apart.
The real question is who is pressuring google to do this in the first place. But I'd doubt we'll ever find that out.
"This means that we will support Republicans, Democrats, and Independents - as well as candidates identifying themselves as Forward Party members."
It's not a party. It's more of a organization to fund politicians who align with their "core values".
Of course, immigration-driven growth is great! But for people on the ground, what matters is GDP per capita, not total GDP.
If GDP per capita is what you are interested in, you don't want immigration as it increases the "capita" part.
Also, Australia's growth had nothing to do with immigration. It had everything to do with China and China's economic growth.
What are you talking about? Australia hasn't had a recession in decades. Australia has done well with all the resources it stole from the aborigines. Most people living in australia has never experienced an economic downturn.
https://au.finance.yahoo.com/news/why-australia-hasnt-had-a-...
Australia hasn't had a recession since the early 90s and you are complaining?
Does Norway use most of their oil money for social media adverts?
There is another self-congratulatory norway article on the frontpage.
"Norway to hit 100% electric vehicle sales by early next year"
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28777672
There was another one just a few days ago.
"Norway bans gas cars in 2025 but trends point toward 100%EV sales as early April"
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28629184
There have been so much nonsense about norway peddled online for the past decade that I roll my eyes when I read the headline.
FAANG companies will primarily be differenated based on network or software, rarely commodity hardware.
I know. I didn't say they were going to sell commodity chips. Just that they were big enough to own their own stack.
Separately, Rockefeller's coercion of the railroads was not something he did because he was big, it was something he did to become big.
No. It was something an already large SO did to get bigger. If Standard Oil wasn't big, it could never coerce the railroads to begin with.
When they were struggling, he would buy them up at distressed prices and turn the rails back on.
I know. But small insignificant standard oil didn't do this. It was big standard oil on its way to even bigger and better things.
No. Science is about empiricism - scientific method, experiments, etc. Philosophy is an overarching field encompassing all pursuit/love of knowledge. It's why another term for science is natural philosophy. It's why people who attain the highest level of education get a doctorate of philosophy ( PhD ).
Maybe, just maybe we should take a long hard look at just how fragile and easy to topple all of our supply chains are
A global pandemic hasn't taken out the supply chain. So I wouldn't say fragile.
With how the climate is changing, we are only going to see more and more instability and disturbances to production and shipping in the future, due to climate refugees and unrest.
Global warming is going to open up the northwest passage and the arctic trade routes which would cut shipping times by a huge percentage from asia to europe. It would be the greatest boon to world trade in human history.
We've played a dangerous game of brinkmanship and now we're paying the price.
Seems like we are always on the brink of something. It's neverending and it's always wrong.
Next War. I guess we will never stop until someone destroys us. Or we destroy the world.
When we say something is barbaric, we mean it is in its natural, unrefined, untouched-by-civilisation state.
No we don't. We generally use barbaric to describe people. Barbaric comes from barbarian. Which was originally used to describe non-greeks, non-romans, foreigners, etc. It started out as a slur. Philistine is a synonym for barbarian.
https://www.etymonline.com/word/barbarian
Enough to have motivated our species to seek to not be subject to it.
You act like civilization was something our species strived for rather than had imposed on us. Civilization was predominantly built on slavery and exploitation. The vast majority of humanity suffered under civilization. Humanity no more clamored for civilization than livestock clamored for industrial farms.