xibalba

Wow! For my money, this might be the most beautiful footage ever recorded.

Which makes me wonder, what do others think is the most beautiful video of all?

The CCP has long been building a database on people in all countries of strategic interest (U.S., UK, Austrlia, India, etc etc). And not just the prominent people. All the people. [1][2][3][4][5]

But hey, tell us again how China is only interested in the Chinese.

[1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/in-a-...

[2] https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/security/china-spent-years-coll...

[3] https://www.vice.com/en/article/xg89aj/china-has-been-doing-...

[4] https://www.securitymagazine.com/articles/94493-china-has-st...

[5] https://www.npr.org/2021/02/24/969532277/china-wants-your-da...

[flagged]

So then just say “poor people”. I’m always surprised at how many well meaning people actually project racist views unintentionally.

And by the way, many “people of color” groups outperform white people both academically and economically. Asians Americans, for instance.

Know any people of color? They're screwed

Uh what? Do you really not see how racist this is???

He broke the law. He fled the country to avoid the rule of law. He sought refuge in a country run by a criminal syndicate that is presided over by a madman ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

The key distinction is that they own a lot of Apple stock, but not enough to call people who work at Apple their own employees.

I don't think that is sound logic.

As disgusting and insane as this invasion of Ukraine is, the current state of European treaties would not necessitate a world war as an outcome.

Putin, the evil war making scum that he is, has been explicit for DECADES that the armament and NATO flirtation with Ukraine is completely unacceptable to Russia, Russia sees Ukraine as a buffer zone against the West, and that Ukraine belongs in the Russian sphere of influence. History does not disagree with him. Ukraine was for centuries part of the Russian empire and then the Soviet Union. Ukraine has a large population of ethnically and/or culturally Russian peoples. All of these facts have been known and communicated for many years. In fact, these are some of the reasons Ukraine has never been on the path to NATO membership.

In other words, while we can and should condemn Russia's invasion of Ukraine, it does not, per se, set us on a deterministic path to a world war.

Quoting Obama circa 2016:

"The fact is that Ukraine, which is a non-NATO country, is going to be vulnerable to military domination by Russia no matter what we do."

From the article:

* Ukraine is not a NATO ally, and the alliance is not treaty-bound to protect it.*

I suspect risking a military engagement between NATO and Russia would be to risk a world war.

This is a case of people putting their conscience before their wallets when it really matters–a true act of bravery.

People of JetBrains, I salute you.

I think you're not understanding. While a bunch of people losing money is bad, it wouldn't create another Great Depression, per se. A huge investment bank with millions of counterparties going under absolutely could cause massive, long term damage to both the financial markets and the real economy. For example, people losing their hats in crypto wouldn't cause commercial paper markets to dry up. A big IB going down almost did in 2008. That would have resulted in huge businesses that employed, collectively, millions of people becoming effectively insolvent. Now you're talking about a Great Depression. Big difference. This is where the keyword "systemic" comes into play–as in, this entity is a critical node in the system. Its collapse could jeopardize the system.

The difference (systemic vs non-systemic) is not just about magnitude, but also in who Lehman's counterparties were and the effects when those counterparties (those who were exposed to Lehman) could not get their expected capital (and the chain reaction of events that sets off throughout the capital markets and then the real economy). I remember reading some stat that claimed Lehman had derivative contracts with total notional value in the 10s of trillions.

Hi, could you please stop marketing here? You've posted a bunch of replies in this thread linking to your employer. It's nice that you're (sort of) disclosing your biases, but we really don't want HN to turn into marketing spam.

How is crypto a systemic risk?

From my recollection of the 2008/09 financial crisis, systemic risks were those in which entities were deeply intertwined with one another on a massive scale, such that there failure would potentially bring down the entire system of finance. We're talking: retail banking (payments, savings, lending), commercial banking (idk?), public debt markets (bigco and gov funding), but most especially short term commercial funding. Again, going on memory, failure of short term funding (repo (?)) markets would have caused real, non-finance companies to become insolvent or at the very least massively impair their working capital positions. This has the knock on effect of reducing demand throughout their supply chains and major cost cutting (job loss). Etc etc. In other words, massive recession or even deep depression.

Crypto, on the other hand, seems to be mostly a casino, a big one, yes. But one that is not deeply intertwined with other parts of the financial system. Coinbase, for instance, is not systemically important. It doesn't (yet) have tendrils in so many important lines of business as did the megabanks of yesteryear.

You seem to misunderstand me. I don't make an argument for its "rightness".

Rather, war crimes will always occur in war. And the primitive instinct to stay alive, at almost any price, is programmed into us. When faced with existential threats to our loved ones, these ivory tower questions about the relative worths of lives (100:1? 10:1?) are exposed for the nonsense they always were. Our biological programming kicks in: "survive at any cost - protect your own – eradicate the threat". It is only subsequent generations, from upon high in their ivory towers and far removed from the threat, who are able to condemn the savagery of the survivors.

In other words, it is always best to not enter a war. Perhaps even if attacked. 9/11 and the U.S.'s insane and disastrous responses in Afghanistan and Iraq being the latest demonstrations.

The entire concept of "war crime" is a post hoc rationalization for killing one's enemies after the conclusion of hostilities (see Nuremberg trials). It is also semantically redundant. It's like saying "candy chocolate" or "dirty mud".

Further, for much of human history, genocide (or the attempt thereof) was standard practice in warfare. In other words, this is a 20th century neologism and not some kind of timeless truth.

How many people would you kill to stay alive? Or to keep your loved ones alive? The truth is, you can't know as it is impossible to simulate that scenario unless you're actually in it. But if I had to guess, for the average person, the number would be much greater than 1.

Somewhere between 1:1 and 10:1?

Are you asking a question?

Going any further (e.g 200:1)

You're engaging in pseudo-intellectual quantification that is meaningless and unbound by anything objective. But that's besides the point.

The point is, the U.S. was pulled into war by Japan and did not have had any obligation to lose even one more person to end the conflict. And yet the calculus was clear: the loss of life by the U.S. was going to significantly increase per unit of effort/victory as it approached mainland Japan.

doesn't make those lives worthless

No one is arguing this. But when it comes to the life of my son or brother vs. the life of someone I don't know, I know what my choice will be every single time. And I would bet my entire net worth that 999 out of 1,000 people would choose similarly in that situation. The instinct to stay alive completely outstrips armchair intellectualism and 20/20 hindsight.

you can't seriously be saying it's justified to kill 200k Japanese civilians to save a small handful of allied lives

I absolutely would argue in favor of this. In fact, I would argue that it would have been morally just to kill every last Japanese person, military or not, if Japan refused surrender (which was part of the Emperor’s plan for self preservation). Remember the context: 1) Japan attacked the U.S. to initiate hostilities and 2) Japanese resistance became more fierce, fanatical, and deadly (ex: suicide bombings by both military and civilians) as the U.S. approached mainland Japan.

the military dictators of Japan did not plan to surrender

The U.S. was on solid ground in its conduct of any form of bombing up until a Japanese surrender-including massive conventional bombing campaigns and atomic bombings. Japan launched an unprovoked attack on the U.S. at Pear Harbor to initiate hostilities. Fighting, as the U.S. approached mainland Japan, became more fierce and costly. Any number of dead Japanese—military or civilian, was better than one more dead U.S. serviceman.

Then all of the greatest scientists in human history were arrogant (by your judgement). So what?

Progress and truth are much, much more important than fitting in and pleasing others’ sense of propriety.

Society will feel more free if more criminals are caught and punished and thus more potential criminals are deterred.

What do you do for a living?

Whatever it is, I will say to you: that's a paid hobby or a side gig. Then I will take the product of your efforts without paying for it. See how that works?

Perhaps it would be worth thinking through the consequences of your attitudes if they were applied back to you?

Yes. It is human work, aka labor. [1]

What would you call it?

[1] https://www.dictionary.com/browse/labor

if I could pay these folks by article

Ah! This is good logic. Next time I'm at a restaurant, after service and food have been rendered, I will say, "You won't let me pay in the amount and manner in which I want, so I'm not going to pay at all!" Thanks for the tip!

all that stuff they are so keen to bestow on their workers in the lower organizational rings

So two wrongs make a right? Come on. These are ethics that are intuitively grasped by grade school children.

Media channels get paid even when they are free: in goodwill, reputation, visibility

Oh good. So when it comes time to pay their server bill, office rent, employee payroll, etc. etc. they will just forward goodwill, reputation, and visibility on. What is the current conversion between reputation and USD these days?

The basic and inexorable truth is this: journalism isn't free. Never has been, never will be. Especially good journalism. Childish, self serving rationalizations on why its not only OK but "good" to never pay for it are exactly what's got us in the current mess we're in (worse and worse clickbait, the slow merging of editorial and hard news, the rapid merging of monetization and 'news', etc. etc.)

my conscience is unblemished

Might be worth a deeper examination. Seriously. What would it do to the incomes in your field if people were able to just take your work product without paying? How would you feel if those takers said to you, "my conscience is unblemished because <reason>"?

Did you mean “free labor”? This “free information” you speak of requires the labor of humans in many forms to publish.

obviously silly

No. You've drifted into believing your opinions are facts. Reasonable people can disagree.

Having hired many people, I understand that everything in the hiring process, no matter how well calibrated and tightly looped, are rough heuristics for how well a person will do in a role.

So years of experience in the relevant activity gets at least equal weight to responses to relevant technical questions, coding challenges, etc. Yes, FAANG experience carries extra weight in opening the door because FAANGs are known to set high bars and have (overly) intense filtering. Etc. Etc.

downleveled from senior to mid ... because I didn't have enough years of experience in tech-specific jobs ... I was disappointed in Shopify for using such a reductive metric to determine levelling

I'm confused by this. Isn't this a pretty sensible reason to be downleveled. I don't think a company would care about your years of experience as, say, a lawn mower. In terms of experience, wouldn't years spent front end coding received almost all the weight?

Sure, your years mowing lawns may have been rewarding and may have helped you build good communication skills or something, but surely we don't expect companies to bump you to senior on that basis?

Whether you realize it or not, your oblique approach is undermining your claims. What is your claim, specifically? Who did Thiel bankroll? For how much? Why? What did they do with respect to Jan 6?

perhaps even more extreme views such as neoreaction

Evidence? I have and listened to Thiel extensively and see no signs of neoreaction. In fact, he has been pretty consistent in his claims of pursuing a less violent future.

Going from this hellscape to whatever is going on in Stockholm would definitely be an improvement

Are you sure?:

"Sweden has not built enough rental(s) ... meaning long queues for rent-controlled housing ... average waiting time was 9 years in 2020" [1]

"...fuelled a thriving sub-letting or "second-hand" market, with "first-hand" renters and owners alike offering apartments to tenants for very high prices, despite regulations designed to stop people being ripped-off." [2]

"70% of local authorities reported a housing shortage in 2020." [1]

"...strict rent controls discourage developers from building and individuals from renting out vacant properties..." [1]

"Generous mortgage tax breaks encourage households to buy property and the combination has forced up house prices and household borrowing to levels that threaten the economy" [1]

"Home prices have risen around 18% over the last year alone" [1]

"Regulations ... are also fuelling market instability" [2]

"'I have a lot of friends who are struggling - moving many times per year,' says Maria Grigorenko, a 29-year-old brand manager in Stockholm" [2]

[1] https://www.reuters.com/article/sweden-housing/factbox-dysfu...

[2] https://www.bbc.com/news/business-58317555