chroem-

Is this comment supposed to be some kind of threat? It seems wildly out of place for HN.

No, I mean I myself am bombarded by people who self-identify as wumao on the various internet forums I visit. I don't read the New York Times or other "mainstream" journalism outlets. The 50 cent army has become extremely pervasive and obnoxious with their off-topic spam over the last 12 months. It's very frustrating to use most of my usual forums because of just how intensely the wumaos spam them now.

Are the quotes where he calls reporting on the genocide, propaganda, not good enough for you?

Are we reading the same quote? He is calling reporting about the genocide propaganda.

My daily first-hand encounters with China's 50 cent army suggest it's more than just dubious claims. If anything, the NYT is late to the party.

Wikipedia has an entire section dedicated to his denial of the genocide.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cambodian_genocide_denial#Chom...

Nice try

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cambodian_genocide_denial#Chom...

If a preconceived belief will make you blind to genocide, what else will it make you blind to?

Chomsky spent a good part of his career claiming the Cambodian Genocide was just US propaganda.

This is what I'm talking about: things will continue to get worse until we drop the "my side is blameless while the other side is literally <your choice of Stalin or Hitler>" charade. What happened was terrible, but months earlier demonstrators tried to force entry into the White House so they could execute a sitting president.

This back and forth will continue to escalate into an actual civil war until both sides can come to terms with their misdeeds and meet at the bargaining table before the country is torn apart. The events you are referring to were inspired by violent attacks on the US capitol (as well as every major US city) only months prior.

China has quite a few programs in place to use their students and expats for power projection. China United Front Work Department [1] tries to place PRC citizens into foreign companies in order to gather intelligence and influence them. Confucius Institutes [2] are widespread throughout American universities and use PRC international students to promote state interests.

The reality that Americans are unwilling to accept is that PRC nationals are agents of the state by default. Even if a PRC national doesn't fall into one of the above programs, they are still incentivized by China's social credit system to act in the state's interests, even while abroad.

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

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confucius_Institute

It gets better with practice as you develop more accurate intuition. Eventually, most new ideas that you try will work, but it takes a lot of failures to get to that level.

You're attempting to change the subject and I'm not going to take the bait. Mass censorship is far bigger than any one political issue.

As per your second paragraph, no, that is false. They made a small ad buy to sow bipartisan political division. Please stop promoting misinformation.

These are the same social media companies that allowed, nay promoted, a Russia truther narrative that Vladmir Putin personally stole the 2016 election to install his sleeper agent in the US presidency. The same truther narrative whose architects have since been arrested for propagating it.

Systemic lopsided moderation (i.e. censorship) of one political viewpoint is absolutely denying people the right to participate in the democratic process. Just because we disagree with their viewpoint does not make censorship justified, nor does it take away from the fact that it is currently happening.

Nobody is "saving democracy" by denying people the right to participate in the democratic process. In fact, it does quite the opposite by destabilizing the political discourse. The "solution" is to stop trying to control people.

Correct. I am absolutely done with this level of doublespeak.

I still find it odd how we've erased one genocidal regime, but completely normalized another.

Again, it's not that straightforward. The ATF has ruled that most common rifle rounds such as 5.56, 7.62 NATO, and 7.62x39 are actually considered pistol rounds, and thus subject to AP regulations, because someone somewhere has detached the stock from their rifle, thus converting it to a "pistol".

> A reasonable proposition is for a new cartridge to be designed around an all copper(or steel, whatever) bullet. It would take a lot of time to get adoption, though, unless the military uses it.

The US military has already moved to steel core, lead free projectiles over a decade ago, specifically because of safety concerns about lead contamination. However, steel core ammunition is explicitly illegal in the US, because it's considered "armor piercing".

It's not so straightforward. While there are solid copper projectiles available in some jurisdictions, most lead-free projectiles have been decried by gun control activists as "cop killer bullets". Lead is extremely soft, and thus uniquely bad at penetrating body armor. Projectile composition is heavily regulated in the US, ironically in favor of the continued use of lead projectiles.

Which is why I said

> DHT with a built-in p2p consensus mechanism

The notion that a p2p network stops being decentralized because it has consensus is silly.

I will answer your question with another question: would a more traditional DHT with a built-in p2p consensus mechanism stop being decentralized because it has said consensus mechanism?

> Keep

What kind of freedom is it if it's completely dominated by hostile megacorporations?

We don't coddle other professions with declining ROI like that. Why should particle physics be an exception? Anyone else would be told to "learn to code".

If we're talking about megaprojects, a mini-Manhattan Project of sorts for developing better theories of superconductivity would be extremely beneficial. Practical room temperature superconductors would totally revolutionize our society. We're close, but we're not quite there yet.

If the goal is economic stimulus, why not spend it on something with a better scientific ROI?

Has the LHC produced technological advances that are used outside of particle physics? I am struggling to think of any.

NIMBYism is a scapegoat. The problem is much more deeply rooted in the city's culture.