dotcommand

> The end goal is value. And value changes from community to community.

From one overstated and meaningless self-help word to another. Is that what a human exists to do? Provide "value" to the community?

> After work I play piano, chess etc and any improvement done to these are "productive" too because I'm increasing my value to my community by making music, playing chess etc.

How does that provide value to the "community"? Did you ask anyone if you playing the piano or chess provided value to them?

Funny, I play the piano, chess, etc for my own personal enjoyment. Didn't realize I had to play it for the community 's benefit. What else do I owe the community? So as I can better attune my productivity?

Writing about productivity seems like a nice racket.

What's with the excessive productivity propaganda the past few years. Is that what humans are? What humans exist to be/do? Be products that produce as much as possible? So much time/resources/etc wasted to be more productivity. What's the end goal here?

But we aren't speaking french. We are speaking english and in english en masse doesn't mean a tiny fraction of people/group.

> The science on this is clear, please update your stance.

You are conflating science with "stats".

> Natural immunity is not as protective as vaccine induced immunity.

If that is true and if the science is clear, then why is that the case? What is the biological mechanism behind that? Shouldn't natural immunity be better in most cases since your body is actually fighting the real disease? Since you say the "science is clear", can you explain the science behind it?

> It is in fact 2.3x more likely that you will get reinfected while unvaccinated, and a stronger immune response from the vaccine means fewer people end up hospitalized. See:

From your link...

"Finally, this is a retrospective study design using data from a single state during a 2-month period; therefore, these findings cannot be used to infer causation. Additional prospective studies with larger populations are warranted to support these findings."

So you say the science is clear and then you link to a study that explicitly says not to infer any causation?

You literally spread FUD and misinformation. As seems to be the case of so many invested in this covid narrative on both sides.

> That is not a vegan take. I am not vegan.

Didn't say you were vegan. Just like mothers telling their children "eat your veggies" makes them vegan. But the prevalence of that saying today is due to the vegan lobby.

> That's what the quote means?

Nope. A balanced diet perhaps, but certainly not your quote. Your quote part of vegan propaganda. Sneakily get the naive to accept "mostly vegetables" and then "why not only vegetables".

You see it everywhere on social media. It's a propaganda campaign funded by the largest corporations in the world and the vegan fanatics teaching kids/people a toxic and unnatural diet to humans.

> Side note: Why do we constantly cry about recommendations from the 1970s being different from today's recommendations?

Because hardly anything in nutrition "science" has proven to be predictive. It's all junk. Most of it intentional junk pushed by political and business interests.

For example, "Eat food, not too much, mostly plants." is just nonsense based on junk "science" funded by vegan/vegetarian aligned interest groups. I'm guessing with major multinational corporations peddling veganism, we'll get more junk nutrition science.

Considering life expectancy, health and development has increased with more meat consumption. This is true of the countries with the highest life expectancy - japan, switzerland, spain, etc.

Since we are omnivores, perhaps we should eat a variety of everything in moderation.

> Delta variant necessitates a higher level of herd immunity because it's so much more transmissible.

How much higher? 100%?

> No, it's very obviously about stopping covid.

Then why are those who already got covid told to get the vaccines? Doesn't make much sense does it?

> Don't be obtuse.

Are you part of the team downvoting anyone who is simple asking basic questions? The covid brigading is rather obvious and hilarious.

Everyone has to be vaccinated and we must all prove it to exist in society ( even people who had covid )? So, it isn't about herd immunity anymore? It isn't about stopping covid, but getting everyone the vaccine and forcing them to carry identification everywhere?

"It’s time for people to see vaccination as necessary to living a good and full and healthy life,” de Blasio said during his daily press briefing."

That's what people were saying was going to happen more than a year ago and they were attacked for being conspiracy theorists...

Whatever happened to needing 60 or 70% of the people vaccinated to gain herd immunity and stop this pandemic?

So 100% vaccination, even for those who had covid and you must carry documentation/id at all times? Why now? Why for this disease? Especially considering the mortality rate is far lower than what was originally projected.

When the projections were 5%+, I can understand erring on the side of caution, but the mortality rate is lower than 1% last I checked. So odd.

> Pretty dismal discussion in here at the time of writing. Largely complaints about tyranny.

Because it's highly tyrannical? Odd how cavalier you are about this.

Nevermind that you have a right to privacy when it comes to health matters, this also forces you to carry "ID" pretty much everywhere.

Also, all tyrannies a born to "protect you".

> Makes me sad that we can't have a calm discussion about the merits of the policy.

I don't think that's what you are interested in. You wouldn't have started off your comment that way if you did.

"significant demand", "sold out", etc.

Considering this is microsoft and theverge, this "news" story is just paid PR/ad like so much of these type of stories are.

Hasn't this been known for decades now?

'According to (Hayashi 2005, p. 363), the Śulba Sūtras contain "the earliest extant verbal expression of the Pythagorean Theorem in the world, although it had already been known to the Old Babylonians.'

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_mathematics

I remember being taught that pythagoras probably got his math from the indians who possibly got it from mesopotamia.

More anti-china propaganda.

> Education is a key aspect of China's global power strategy.

Is it not a key aspect of every major nation? But when we do it, it's called "soft power".

> This was supposed to be «neo-Nazi-like» content?

That's funny, if it was "neo-nazi" content, then it's okay to be censored?

> In offering such assistance, China specifically selects students from countries in which it has political interests.

As opposed to switzerland or anyone else who does the same thing?

> The country is becoming increasingly aggressive in its foreign policy.

Are they? Seems like we are the ones getting aggressive. Is china sending warships all over european shores?

> He ultimately received a fellowship from the Chinese government to a university in Wuhan, for three years instead of just one, as originally planned. In September 2018, he flew to Wuhan, quickly made friends and fell in love.

So he got a fellowship from the chinese government and then criticized the government? What does he expect?

> According to this telling, Gerber himself decided to terminate his studies at the university.

So he decided to quit?

> While research freedom and the freedom of expression are important fundamental principles in the West

Is it? Because censorship seems to be rampant in the US but especially in europe. Give me a break, there are certain topics that are researchers simply won't touch.

> Gerber saw an opportunity to position himself as a China expert.

Good one.

> «I can say what I want here.»

But not "neo-nazi" stuff right?

> In a report issued last year, the Swiss intelligence service warned that Chinese spies might be masquerading as students or researchers.

That's a certainty, but swiss spies and intelligence agents are masquerading as students and researchers too.

Everyday it's the same old propaganda.

> He was referring to a specific tweet: a cartoon that Gerber had posted in response to another user's tweet. It depicted a comic character that had been altered and had stereotyped Chinese features, with yellow skin tone and slit eyes.

So he did post racist material on twitter after all.

> «In retrospect, I realize I didn't question the rendering of the Chinese person enough,» he said.

Says the self-proclaimed china expert. It's always a certain type of guy. Always. And by the looks of it, it wasn't the chinese government censoring a nobody, but a student from canada who was upset about his racist bullshit.

I'm pro-free speech ( an absolutist ) but just can't stand the hypocrisy. This hypocrite supports censorhip and more importantly, this news company peddling this propaganda supports censorship.

"Ralph Weber, a China expert and professor at the University of Basel, is critical of Swiss universities for often failing to perform sufficient due diligence on their foreign partners – especially those from China."

This article and this "china researcher" are advocating for the exact same thing that they are attacking china for.

> The invasion of the Huns was pretty traumatic for the Western Roman Empire

"Traumatic" is quite the understatement. The huns and the hunnic empire destroyed the roman empire by ending roman primacy in western/northern europe. And the power balance shifted forever from the south to the north. It was the huns victory over the romans that ultimately allowed the northern germanic tribes to move south and westward. Whereas for a thousand years it was the romans who were pushing north and westward. Without the huns, the anglo-saxons wouldn't be able to invade the british isles and we wouldn't have england. No england, no america. No america, no internet. Oh dear.

> and it is possible that if it did not happen, or if the Huns met defeat early, the empire could have limped along for next thousand years, just like the Eastern Empire did.

Or maybe it would have galvanized the romans to expand into northern europe once and for all. And we'd have a roman western/northern europe rather than the germanic western/northern europe.

It's one of those interesting "what ifs" of history.

> Why would a company pay more than they need to?

There is the prestige factor. And of course pressure from the employees. If you are making $600K per employee and it's public, they'll demand more.

> I would pay 4x the price for grapes if required. I don't as I would prefer to spend less on grapes.

But you do. That's the point. If you make $600K and another person makes $100K, you are far more likely to buy grapes whenever you want/need rather than waiting for the grapes to be on sale.

> Unless there is something that prevents from from becoming mid-level engineers. Like companies that don't hire junior level engineers at all and have mid-level be the entry level.

But the tech industry favor junior/younger employees. Ageism is a thing in the tech industry.

> The former is suffering from a labor shortage which is why FAANGs and similar companies are willing to pay $300k-600k for engineers with 5-10 years of experience.

The reason FAANGs/etc are willing to pay $300k-600k for "high-end" mid-level engineers is because they stand to recoup many times than per employee. Nothing to do with shortage of high end mid-level talent.

Facebook, Google, etc are some of the most profitable companies in the world ( outside of finance of course ).

https://www.foxbusiness.com/technology/tech-companies-highes...

> there is a glut of talent

If there is a glut of "low-level" engineers it's impossible for there to be a shortage of high-end mid-level engineers as those mid-level come from the low-end engineers.

Besides, the tech industry historically prefers to hire young people and push out older ones.

https://www.techrepublic.com/article/tech-companies-admit-to...

So if there is a lack of "high-end" mid level employees, they aren't doing a good job of developing their younger "low-end" employees.

Or it's all just bullshit used by the tech industry to offshore more jobs, import more employees and create downward wage pressure on "high-end" mid level salaries. Just like with every supposed "shortage" of "talent" we've ever had.

> Believe it or not, I spent the last hour typing and re-deleting a response to your sarcastic comment

It wasn't sarcastic. Poignant.

> Reuters and AP, as news organizations, do not typically make value judgements.

Reuters and AP are state propagandists. Go read anything Israeli related or china related or russia related or venezuela related. Go read anything culture wars related. That they have "values" and an agenda is obvious. They are state operators.

> On whataboutism:

That is a propaganda term used by propagandists. It's a dead giveaway. It was so widely used and so heavily exposed that propagandists rarely use it anymore.

That you spent an hour trying to respond just shows your arguments have no merit. Think about it.

> . It's true that mercantilism has been better for Chinese people than the IMF agenda for anyone else. So what?

But you wrote: "Not even China! (At least not Chinese people.)"

In one comment you say it didn't benefit the chinese people and then when you are called out, you say it did benefit them.

It's amazing how anti-china propagandists contradict themselves over and over again. You should go work for a news company.

> "Code the Perimeter" is the key insight of Kevin Greer's fabulous 2016 analysis of why Unix beat Multics

Brian Kernighan's "UNIX: A History and a Memoir" delves into why multics failed and unix was created and opinions on why unix succeeded ( something they really didn't anticipate ). It's a great book, broader than just unix - bell labs history, the people involved, computer history, etc.

Are they supposed to loudly set it? It's ridiculous what blatant propagandists these wire services are.

But good for them. Hopefully they'll continue. They should target companies like reuters next. Why is Apple and Microsoft given preferential treatment in china?

Buy american in america. Buy chinese in china. I think we can all live with that.

I recently watched a youtube video about why avocados cannot be grown by seed and learned about grafting. Interesting stuff. Didn't know apples also were grown through grafting.

That explains why red apples taste horrible but what happened to grapes? I remember when grapes were the dark bluish/blackish concord types and now, the supermarkets mostly carry green and purple grapes which taste awful in comparison.

> Not ludicrous at all - Trump was open to Japan and Korea acquiring nukes. [1]

Don't link to paywalls. Who is talking about Trump? I'm talking about the US. Also, Trump was open to a lot of things. Including Mexico paying for the wall.

> That was at a time when India's wasn't clearly aligned to the US. Subsequently it was the US which drafted the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG) exemption for India.

Countries like india, china, russia are never "clearly aligned" with anyone. They are too big for that.

> What liberation? People hold favorable views of the West (compared to China) in East Asia, South East Asia, or India.

That's because we are the dominant occupying power with dominant propaganda and wealth. The leaders of these "subjugated" nations could easily turn the propaganda against the US. Look how quickly our propaganda was able to turn the sentiment against china. How easily do you think Japan, Korea, Philippines, etc could turn their nations sentiment against the US.

> Many of them are now in disputes with China, which often involve violence.

What disputes, violence? The only real dispute seems to be with the US and the west ( aka china's and asia's former european colonizers ). That's another danger, that asians, africans, etc are going to pick up on.

> The situation is different in West Asia - but it's always been that way.

What violence? Is it china that invaded afghanistan, iraq and sanctioned iran?

> Modern western influence is largely positive compared to the alternatives.

No. It hasn't been. Not for the aborigines. Not for the natives. Not for the africans. Not for the indians. Etc. That's the point. It's actually modern chinese influence has even been more positive. Considering the wealth of japan, korea and much of asia has been due to trade with china. And that's why we are "pivoting to asia" - a place we do not belong. A place, btw, we caused the deaths of tens of millions of innocent people.

But we shall see how history pans out.

Pushed by whom? The German Marshall Fund? Oh a state think tank.

Why? "way to shift the power dynamics in today's information wars." So PBS, NPR, etc were originally created to participate in information wars. Sort of like government funded propaganda? Is that what she is implying here?

"constraining Big Tech platforms' amplification of harmful or false information." That's strange. Because Big Tech platforms amply authoritative sources - which most likely includes PBS.

https://blog.youtube/inside-youtube/the-four-rs-of-responsib...

I'm all for more competition. More options. It isn't healthy that we have such concentration of power in a few "algorithms". Not sure the "PBS of the Internet" will challenge it no more than C-SPAN challenged cable news.

> This article is more than your classic "the CCP is just making moves to solidify it's own power."

"And so, in classic CCP fashion, it was time to smash."

It's your standard state propaganda.

At least he attempts to cover his bases: "China’s leaders famously want to prevent the emergence of alternative centers of power, but is the West so different in this regard?"

"For those outside China’s byzantine, opaque nexus of party, government, and big business, it’s very difficult to figure out what’s going on." I guess Noah Smith is in the inside so he knows his stuff?

It's your standard "CCP bad because CCP is friends with iran due to BRI" propaganda you find all over traditional and social media.

The real question is who is noah smith and why was his article spammed on hn? That would be an interesting article.

> For the rest of Asia, they'd do well to militarize; for Japan and Australia to consider getting nuclear weapons or hosting them,

The idea that we'd ever let Japan have a nuke is ludicrous. Do you really think we'd let a country we nuked twice have such weapons? There is a reason why we are still occupying Japan 75+ years after ww2. And no, it isn't to "protect" japan.

> and for India to rapidly increase stockpiles.

I don't think china would mind one bit. After all, it wasn't china that sanctioned india when they developed nukes...

http://edition.cnn.com/WORLD/asiapcf/9805/13/india.us/

If there is a war in asia, it will be a war for liberation - not from china, but from the west. It's so funny how we truly deluded ourselves into thinking we are the good guys in asia and not the murderous colonial powers that we truly are. We really need to start seeing the world as it is rather than the disneyfied nonsense you read on "news". Or we are in for a rude awakening.

> If I ran into "scrutable" or "wieldly" in a sensible context, I'm not sure I would realize they were archaic.

Archaic or not, I think most of us would find it "out of place" or awkward. When's the last time you used scrutable or wieldy in conversation? We probably could figure out the meaning but I bet most of us would find it odd. Though if more people started using it, we'd quickly get used to it.

We can't handle the truth.

People in the UK are forced to buy these calculators also? Thought it was an exclusively US racket. Another hit to american exceptionalism.

With the rise of smartphones, I figured I was part of the last generation forced to buy these overpriced TI calculators. It's so sad to see this racket going strong today.

You spend $100 ( a lot of money to most people ) on a useless device that you don't ever use again. Never once in college or thereafter have I used my TI calculator.

> There are certainly worse ones.

Agreed.

> Yes? That was what the Turkish war of independence was about.

The turkish war of independence was merely a face saving way of the west letting ataturk end the ottoman empire. It's fairly obvious if you look at it in the context of what the west wanted.

> And as a matter of fact, the British, French, and Greeks fought on the side of the Ottomans in the war - almost as if the Ottomans were the Western 'vassals' here.

Or we didn't want it to fall in the hands of the russians, etc.

> You think the West really wanted to give up a compliant government which had already proven itself to bend to their demands for another which had proven itself strong enough to retake the land which had been ceded to the West?

Yes because the goal was the end of the ottoman empire, which the ottoman government steadfastly refused to do so.

> The Ottoman Empire had not been great or wealthy for the better part of a century, having been known as the Sick Man of Europe for the better part of a century prior to its collapse.

It was great and wealthy enough to fend off any single european empire. It just wasn't able to fight everyone ( the british, french, US, russians, etc ) and deal with the european funded separatist movements in greece, balkans, arabia, palestine, etc. For a sick man of "europe", the ottomans did well to survive a collective assault by the greatest powers in the world at the time. But wasn't that the problem? This sick man refused to die so the west had to find someone who'd put this sick man out of his misery. But who would be able to do such a thing? A "war hero" perhaps?

> Popular support was therefore on Atatürk's side, not the monarchy's; if it hadn't been, his revolution would have been impossible.

No revolution has ever been won with popular support. All revolutions are revolutions of the elites. Ataturk and his elite backers ( which most likely included the west ) won over the pro-ottoman elites. Simple as that. And history is written to spin it as a "popular" victory. This applies to the american, french, russian, chinese, etc revolutions. None of them had popular support. Most of the people were either ambivalent or opposed to these revolutions.

As I stated, the goal of the west was the end of the ottoman empire. The ottoman government refused while ataturk acquiesced. Ataturk's reforms feel like they were written by the west rather than a turk. At the end of the day, europe wanted the sick man dead and Ataturk killed the sick man. The only question is whether ataturk collaborated with the west to kill the sick man or not. If you aren't blinded by nationalism or "history", it's fairly obvious ataturk was a "hired gun".

After 9/11 there was talk about nobody wanting to work or live in skyscrapers. That the world was forever changed. Nothing really changed except the state gained more power and people lost some power. Last I checked, there were cranes all over manhattan throwing up skyscrapers left and right.

After the 2008 financial crisis, there was talk about breaking apart "too big to fail" banks and reigning in their financial shenanigans and the world was forever changed. Nothing really changed except the banks got bigger and now housing market is the hottest it has ever been.

After the Trump election, there was talk about end of democracy, financial collapse, end of globalization, etc and the world was forever changed. Nothing really changed except the state gained more power, the wealthy got wealthier.

Every few years there is a crisis that is going to change the world forever. After a few months/years, people forget and move on, til the next crisis that is going to end/change the world.

You'll realize this eventually. It's why news really should be taken with moderation. Too much news and it become poisonous and unhealthy for your well being.

Everyone eventually learns that "life goes on". In a few years, covid will seem like ancient history and most people will have moved on to other things.

Life went on after the far deadlier 1918 pandemic. Life went on after ww2. Life went on after 9/11. You'll be alright.