Daho0n

>Most of Europe has effectively outsourced its military defence to the Americans

That is a very American point of view. Many Europeans see it more as "The US pay a bigger part than we do in bolstering American control of the western world", which is exactly as it should be. IMO the US should pay exactly 100% of the bill for its own defense and enforcement of its power projection. The US does this to protect the US, not Europe. Europe is only interesting if it is pro-US and as a buffer and economic zone. Old Cold war plans even had plans to nuke Europe to show the USSR that the US meant business in the event of a USSR invasion..

What we see here is a perfect example why I (as a Danish citizen) have heard Denmark called Little America and Scandinavia's answer to the USA by both Swedes and Norwegians. Often living here feels more like living in a satellite or puppet state than a free country:

Do F-35s match our need? No not at all but we better break our own laws to make a contract that only the US can win. Do citizens want a US base the Danish military isn't allowed to monitor for nuclear weapons? No but we still got one (and even though not allowed it still had nukes). Do the people want a NSA like intelligence system? No but even the average elected politicians can't get access to any information about FE and what they do (only leaks like this tell them what is going on). And so on and so forth.

The latest Democratic Perception Index (chaired by the Danish former NATO general secretary Anders Fogh) found when asking people "Who is the biggest threat to democracy in the world?" most rated the US as the biggest threat (if I remember correctly, northern Europeans especially had this viewpoint).

This is just a situation of the puppet doing as it was taught.

The way The West "takes on" a country will not work with China and I'll take a bet any day that the west cannot change its way and take on China in new functioning ways. Using the old tried and true ways we have used against everything from African rebel leaders to South American democratically elected presidents is helping CCP internally in PRC, not hurting it. It's as clear as day and reminds me of the old "Do you know the definition of insanity" quote. Either we work with China and try to influence in positive ways or we won't make any (positive) difference. Don't take on China, work with China, period. Its way too late now unless we go for full scale war or treat China as we do North Korea. The road we are on now only leads to China becoming the new top dog above the US. Change or become irrelevant.

It's because Airbnb (ab)use the same kind of hole in the law as Uber does. Hotels have to follow more rules and can't build a room in random buildings that happen to be available but build lots of rooms in huge buildings. The problem isn't hotels but that Airbnb isn't seen as hotels as they should be. Luckily some cities are waking up and stopping the abuse.

PHK is one of the few people in IT I follow. He isn't scared to write opinions without having them put through a big PR machine removing anything interesting. The spectrum of posts are also very wide indeed, from restoring old historical hardware over political ramblings to time-keeping and code.

Thank you :)

What is the 'messy' problem with Firefox on Android? I have moved those I help with tech to Firefox. My mother for example. They don't know the difference between "the internet" and "Firefox" but so far they run Firefox with UBO with no problems (well not anything new that wasn't there with Chrome too but that is a old people Vs tech problem not unique to Firefox).

Anything I need to know?

Woooooosh.

No it clearly is not. It migh be to you but I would never drink water in the US from the tap. When you are used to clean groundwater and discussions about water from the Alps not being clean enough then the water in the US is not even on the same level.

And how did it look in the US in the 70's when it were booming like China is now? Children in plastic cocoons because the air were toxic with lead, drinking water full of crap, dead fish everywhere from dumping of chemicals in lakes and sea, radioactive waste leaking, etc.

It's all blah blah blah to me. The point is that GP is full of crap. Not everyone hates Israel as you yourself have just proven. Yet posts like it are seen multiple times at every thread that mention Israel.

In your opinion.

Who said remove them? Access to other app stores could just as easily let you pick one with more control and review instead of less. That should be up to the user. Not you, me or Apple.

By killing competition and locking down their hardware so we couldn't get more open hardware? That's not "saving" anything but themselves.

Linux != a distro though.

How does it matter which policy the app store have in ease of providing support? Providing support in Windows (can't talk for Android) isn't hard at all.

If much of the world wants you dead (your words, not mine) then maybe it's time to look in a mirror.

Edit: HN commenters are so thick. First of all GP says everyone hate Israel. So that must include you the reader of this comment. If you actually take that shit serious and then have a problem with my comment instead all I can say is that you should look in a mirror too. It's a fat lie. Not everyone hates Israel. Actually most on HN loves Israel and always heavily upvote pro-israel stories.

Yes and we should compare apples to apples not a ripe apple to a green one (or a unicorn). PRC and the US are in two totally different places in their development and you cannot compare directly. China won't go from 0-60 in zero days just because other nations are already up to speed. They have to go through development itself and it is, much faster than the US did. It isn't an attack on the US which your comment reads like you believe. It's just that a country that is going through a metoric rise does not get everything right from day one because others have it somewhere else. It takes time.

Uh..

Can we get a new a trade deal with the US which enforces democratic and labor rights? Otherwise please embargo them for the sake of humanity, shift industry back to Europe and forget about them.

See how insane it sounds? Because it's not like the US is a shining beacon of democracy and worker rights. Sure it's better than China but by how much compared to say Scandinavia? It's all degrees. An Amazon worker looks like someone working under slave-like conditions from where I'm sitting.

>Chinese have access to poisoned shitty water

And the so-called top dog of the west have cities where people for years had to get bottled water because the whole city were poisoned and whole states are drying out. Not everyone in the west are as lucky as those of us with clean water. Definitely not the US.

Your examples says nothing about the rise (or decline) of the west. Only about how it is right now. That is missing the point. Those stats you mention seen over time show that the west is at best at a standstill while PRC have risen meteoric. The middle-class in PRC were pretty much nonexistent some decades ago in PRC. They did get the better standard of living and it is still becoming better. It doesn't go as fast as it once did but far better than the west.

>I'd like to think that extreme racism, homophobia, and other forms of bigotry won't be a winning recipe

It worked just fine in/for the US though. Look back at the US's rise to where it is today and it was pretty bad. Another example is that it is still pretty bad in the US today and it is top dog anyways. I doubt it will make any difference in PRC either.

It's very hard to disagree IMO. The west is in decline and unless something catastrophic happens in PRC or war breaks out (also pretty catastrophic) I can't see any future where the PRC isn't going to at least become on par with the US soon but most likely it will succeed it as top dog. The only question in my mind is where do the EU end up in all this and if Russia will become closer with PRC or EU.

IMO the biggest failure in all this is that the opposition to PRC's rise is the same old as we have seen before and it's very clear that it will fail. As an outsider to both the US and PRC it looks to me like the US does all it can to shoot itself in the foot continually for whatever reason while PRC is playing on a totally different level. Maybe because US policy are mostly only until next election?

People keep repeating this myth of birth control. I don't know how doctors do their job in other countries but if they look at the patients health history this number is a myth. Luckily health officials here (ETA: Denmark) inform about these myths on television whenever the government holds a press conference about new Covid-19 measures but this isn't so everywhere so please stop spreading FUD.

ETA: I see you made ninja edits to your comment....

Edit 2: So now you replied that you only added a word or two and then deleted you comment while I were replying. Your comment was only half as long when I replied (all the Twitter stuff wasn't there for example).

Yes, it's the one day you are caugh inside doing important work.

You are missing the point. That Israel have nukes are holding others back, not Israel. I haven't said anything about Israel going to war.

Many countries will think "If our biggest enemy has nukes we better get them ourself" which is one of the reasons that Iran wants nukes: To hold off Israel.

It's pretty clear that you have feelings invested in this and are picking sides which is understandable with the history of Iran and Israel but it doesn't change the facts that having nukes is most often a stabilizing event in a region (while the process up until they acquire them likely isn't) and if Iran trying to get nukes is a destabilizing event then the cause of this instability is not only that Iran wants nukes but also that others already have them and they now want them too which causes extreme tension especially in the country that already have them. This is the pattern we normally see.

>This is all before discussing how Iran and Saudi Arabia are carrying on a proxy power struggle between Russia and the United States.

Yes and again we know from history how this will likely play out. We actually have a very good example of what happens in a very unstable proxy situation when one side decides to add nuclear weapons into the mix: Korea. The armistice clearly stated No Nukes and since one side added nuclear weapons (the US broke the armistice by importing nuclear weapons into South Korea) we have seen the pariah (NK) doing exactly what Iran is doing: doing everything it can to get weapons that can stop the perceived enemy from being able to destroy them and yelling about destruction of the big enemy (which is mainly targeted at their own population).

So if history teaches us anything it is IMO that Iran will either get nuclear weapons and it will cause stability OR it will not and instability will never stop growing until full on war breaks out at which point Iran as we know it will either be destroyed or the cycle will reset.

Too many drugs..

Yes. Bad actors. The EU should add a bad actor tax.

That shouldn't hold them back. Let the US throw the first stone.

And the USA would go all the way to block this. Otherwise a lot of current and former government is at risk of prison if they leave the US.

In a few words you both praise totalitarianism and pretend that it's mainly outside of the US that companies have too free rein to do what they like! Wow, the world is a crazy place but this....

Is Brazil not a democracy?