justratsinacoat

>we've all got better things to do

Yet you keep replying! You're a solid troll, though -- I especially like the way you're willing to descend into insulting me far before I insulted you, but I'm glad the gloves are off. Could you be the other guy in a sockpuppet account? It's funny -- I'm the one claiming bullshit without evidence or argumentation, but your posts are really really light on what these "correct doctrines" actually are, why the civilian population would have access to any of them, how the resistance would communicate, insisting on the primacy of various rules of war that would have presumably been rescinded if the kind of tyranny that required standing up to was running the military... It's almost like you're just bloviating about American exceptionalism, handwaving about "doctrines" that all good minutemen surely already know. Sorry, but you guys have the biggest, best-equipped military in the world. No matter how Rambo the local shooting club might consider itself, it doesn't seem up to the task. But what do I know?!

>If you want to actually pull on your big kid pants and argue why each of my points in the preceding post were wrong, please do

Oh, don't worry. I can't do that! You won't accept it. That'd require not having an untenable position you're honour-bound to defend! I think you've already decided that your exceptionalism will protect you. I'm just having a bit of fun!

>"Countermeasures to things like mortars and counterbattery fire" is not some special doctrine utterly beyond the reach of American populace; instead, it's the observation that, if you shell an American position, you need to be somewhere else in a minute or two before your position gets blown up. This is something that is quite empirically learnable, and something that has been learned multiple times by untrained insurgents fighting US occupying forces

Uh. So you're arguing against the general use of mortars? "Get out of the way" only works if the mortars didn't kill you already. This isn't a doctrine, it's common sense. Yet, something tells me mortar operators still successfully kill people. Presumably it's not so easy to just... dodge. You're the obvious military expert, though -- maybe people do dodge mortars and they're basically useless once the Correct Dodge Doctrine permeates the opfor!

>> the assumption that the military loses its entire support system all at once.

>Where are you getting that assumption from? I made no such claim

Yeah you did. Where? Right here, from this linked post [0]:

>>>Underscoring all of this thought experiment is something you're missing: in a supposed US insurgency, the huge non-combat advantage of the armed forces _goes away_. Our adventures abroad are backed by a logistics system and lift capability that boggles the mind, only made possible because we can keep all the ruckus of battle away from our airbases and factories and transportation hubs. _In an insurgency, that massive advantage--one that's nearly taken for granted in the last two decades of warfare by our populous--disappears_

Emphasis mine. Man! Wow! I thought for a brief moment that you were a genuine person and not a troll. This cinches it. Thanks for the game, gg no re

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12963765

>What does it even mean for our positions to be 'reversed'? We are simply people who disagree with each other. What is there to 'reverse' about our positions?

This is a pretty common English turn of phrase ("what does it even mean to 'turn a phrase'?"). This is what revealed your hand. Good try!

It's an intentional misrepresentation of an opinion, such as "So, [misrepresentation of parent opinion], huh?"

You're really concerned about my opinions, aren't you? Hey man, if you don't think the quoted bits of my comment weren't just evidence-free appeals to the poster's claimed superior knowledge of the military capabilities of untrained civilians, you're welcome to elaborate on all those unexplained countermeasures and doctrines. Why I have to offer a 'counterpoint' to unsubstantiated claims is beyond me -- something tells me it's because you disagree with me, and that you wouldn't hold yourself to the same standard were our positions reversed. Why do I say this? Your previous interactions with me, which were disingenuous as hell.

Hmm. Big guns "that can be worked around with the correct doctrine" and unnamed "developed countermeasures to things like mortars and counterbattery fire and whatnot" and the assumption that the military loses its entire support system all at once. I think you believe in an organizational capacity that doesn't actually exist in untrained civiliian populations (or are personally part of a militia whose training is sufficient to back up your words). Thanks for your thoughts!

You strawmanned me, and then accused me of strawmanning. Enjoy your victory!

>Whether you believe it or not, the purpose of the US 2nd amendment is self-defense, including from government. If you don't feel that is necessary, be inellectually honest and advocate for its repeal

If you feel that I'm being "inellectually" dishonest, have the courage to stand up to me and tell me directly, instead of implying that I am (assuming, as you have, that my point is actually another point entirely, of course, which itself seems a bit intellectually dishonest).

>The same way I don't want to register my IP address and cell phone to be able to post online

I see what you're going for here, but to pretend that this isn't functionally what is required in order to "post online" is unrealistic. I assume that you're posting from behind seven proxies and a few Tor jumps? Otherwise, I don't really see how you haven't created a link between the things you post and the devices you post from, which the government can then exploit.

If you feel that commercially available guns would equip the US civillian populace to repel the US military, that's your opinion. But I strongly disagree that this presents any realistic impediment.

So you claim, but anyone who opens up the "discussion" with "So, [misrepresentation of parent opinion], huh?"[0] is clearly not seeking a discussion and is instead seeking a clownfight. You had every opportunity to prove me wrong.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12958354

>a much-needed highway sign in the LA area before it was caught over a year later

It's worth pointing out (because, for some reason, the coverage of this dude and his I-5 sign never emphasizes this) that when the sign was 'caught', Caltrans examined it, found it appropriate and to-spec, and left it up.

>I don't see any nuance

Yeah, I can tell!

>Are you saying anything that isn't straw men?

Hey man, I'm just replying to things.

>And considering your question of coming from the same culture - you are assuming that the US military would be willing to go to war against their own people - a very different proposition to the wars they have been fighting

Hey man, I'm just replying to things! I am not assuming that the US military would be willing to go to war against their own people -- I'm just responding to that already established hypothetical. I infer that you want to yell at people who claim that, by your alleging that I called Yank citizenry fat. The clownfight you seek is upthread, where people established that we were talking about the US military going to war against their own people. I didn't establish anything.

>So your argument is based on the trope that gun owners in America are overweight?

Yeah, that must be what my argument is. Don't bother reading any of the rest of my comment; you might become exposed to nuance. As long as you're not exposed to nuance, you will be able to go toe-to-toe with the 101st Airborne. There won't be massive casualties. You are exceptional.

>It still reported like 1/100000 of what Win10 does daily

Oh, absolutely, but if we're going to advise would-be Linux converts who are concerned with data leakage, may as well advertise actually-telemetry-free distros.

>Afaik Ubuntu removed that module like 2-3 years ago

Hey great! Link? Trust but verify...

Er, the military in question for this hypothetical example speaks the same language as the civilians they would make war upon and knows the terrain and is from the same culture and therefore understands the civilian social dynamic. I mean, there's lots of obvious difference between an American soldier and Taliban fighter, but between a soldier and American civilian? "Training and a better gun".

I'm shocked that you could consider invoking historical references to equate the US military skirmishing with desert tribesmen from another culture with overweight American gun-nuts. If the brown people we currently fight don't really have answers to C-130s or mortars or MARPAT, then I'm not sure that hypothetical North American insurgents would, either.

>ubuntu

Look, if we're trying to avoid OSes that call home with telemetry about what you've been doing...

I don't understand this. AFAICT, parent is implying it's meaningful to compare Middle Easterners sharing information about protests and violence, and Westerners sharing unverifiably truthy HuffPo/Breitbart/whatever articles.

It's true that both of those examples boil down to 'humans digitally sharing information', but the circumstances surrounding both the humans and the information are so different as to make this kind of reductive comparison useless.

Article is about modern human psychological well-being; comments are about how materially satisfied modern (Western) humanity is, so what's the fucking problem, gosh!? The best part is the latter doesn't actually discount the former, it just trivializes its importance.

Oh HN, never change.

If the government can strip your citizenship away because of their suspicions of your ties to terrorism (ie, extrajudicially (ie, arbitrarily)) , then do whatever they want with you because you're no longer under the aegis of the law, enshrining the right of citizens to not be detained indefinitely seems kinda toothless (hey, wasn't that the status quo before the War on Terror?). If they want to do this to a citizen, they can dispel the protection by making the target not a citizen anymore.

All this is especially troubling because, as noted below, the Constitution, and other human rights legislation, typically extends protection to "persons".

And we can't forget its recent weakening! [0]

While my wiki link is barely two clicks away from yours, it's still important to highlight what's going on in re "public diplomacy information" now being deployable domestically; the language on the Smith-Mundt Act wiki page makes it sound like it's merely now being archived or something:

>The National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2013 (section 1078 (a)) amended the US Information and Educational Exchange Act of 1948 and the Foreign Relations Authorization Act of 1987, allowing for materials produced by the State Department and the Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG) to be released within U.S. borders for the Archivist of the United States.[1][2]

Another fun fact: this particular year's National Defence Authorization Act also contained the "Feinstein-Lee Amendment", which is the one that lets them detain US citizens indefinitely without charge for suspicion of ties to terrorism.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Defense_Authorization...

Usually, a new tab opens whose address is "view-source:$URL_OF_PREV_PAGE". Obviously, it's not terribly hard to replicate by hand, but that's weird. As has been said since the days of old, "it worked on my machine".

Moreover, I bet the author is ESL. I see there's some dropping of the definite article (ie, "the"), and the use of the word "intelligentzia" in quotes. I think the author isn't aware of the English word intelligentsia and is dropping in another language's spelling. Also, note the plurality-agreement stuff in "attended more than one TEDx talks in person"; everybody knows "talk" is singular and "talks" is plural, and "more than one" is greater than "one", but only native speakers always remember the exception.

Right, but consider the reason that an empty Android project is 38mb large with 1000+ files. How much does it have to do with the fact that Android uses the Linux kernel? I was under the impression that the (hand-wavy, two-second) explanation for that was "Java nonsense", not "Linux nonsense".

And if that proposition rankles, we all pay Googlers' wages via "voluntarily"[0] using Google services and all that entails (ads, behaviour profiles, etc).

[0] I say voluntarily here, because of course it is voluntary; put down the phone or whatever. Yet, it's difficult to imagine the average HN user successfully opting-out of making Google money by using the internet (if only because the average HN user wouldn't actually care about most vectors for it). It's basically impossible for the average user to do this.

The reason it's so hard to avoid making Google money while you use the Internet isn't because of nefarious schemes, it's because Google kicks ass at what it does -- providing free services that are so good that most people use them, and matching eyeballs to ads using harvested info of said "most people". Regardless, when you're this big, you start to accrue responsibility (to, say, not be evil). Not that the capstone to this ranty footnote is "Google should be as transparent as government salaries", merely that that idea isn't actually too crazy when you consider the power Google wields over society via the Internet. Of course, the inconvenient reality of Google's position as a publicly traded company casts a huge shadow over any highfalutin prospect of serious responsibility to society, but a man can dream of a more reasonable system.

Eh, if you say I am personally attacking people who are disagreeing with me on threads, then I am. I don't see it, but who am I to disagree with you?

>But he didn't [...] imply that the opinion of shareholders completely disposed of the question

Quite so! What he said was 'their having committed fraud to bump up the numbers, y'know, as you do, was to please shareholders at quarterly meetings'.

"Business ethics", at this level, revolves around the shareholders, and the comment telegraphs this: as you say, shareholder reaction is the acid test for appropriate behaviour. Nor, indeed, does the opinion of shareholders dispose of the question. Yet, it is fear of shareholder disapproval that drives both the cover-up of fraud (potential jailtime probably helps with this) and the instantiation of said fraud in order to keep numbers up in order to placate shareholders.

But, again, you're right. I'll keep my original comment up, but I should have put ""Business ethics" is all about shareholders, eh? This explains so much...".

Eh, if you say so. Determining "the shareholders" to be the ultimate authority, the fear of whose disapproval drives you to not make "bad" decisions (which, the comment elaborates, eventually means committing fraud to "juice the quarters numbers"; to whom are these numbers being eventually presented, to delight or disappointment?).

But upon further reflection upon our interaction, you must be right. Thanks for sharing your experience.

"Business ethics" means "keep the shareholders happy"? This explains so much...

Well, this should prove to be an unpopular submission!

>I think you and I talking more is unlikely to be productive

Eh, my goal has been reached. Your unbelievable perspective has been fully elaborated; several non-me comments clutter our discussion, each confused by your intransigence. For whatever reason (I'm guessing an ignorance defense, so's you can continue to troll in this way elsewhen), you're unable to accept or realize that a comment that puts words in another's mouth is not OK, and that you have done this. I can't put it any more simply than that. I'm sorry. I hope you get it someday.

>You seem upset that I didn't address the entirety of someone else's comment, but instead only part of it

I seem upset with you responding to an idea that wasn't actually in a comment. Conflating the ideas of the author of a piece you disagree with, and the poster you initially replied to, is wrong, plain and simple. It's intellectually dishonest and doesn't belong on a forum like HN. You should know better -- you're ostensibly a power user around here. That's why I asked about the trolling, because this is pretty obviously that. 'zelon88 claimed the autistic man in question was a 'genius', you then attacked the idea that the US was embarassed by the hacks, which 'zelon88 didn't claim. It's very simple.

>But so long as the part we choose to address isn't taken out of context or inconsistent somehow with the rest of the comment, responding to the entirety of someone else's comment is unnecessary --- in fact, it's unproductive, if you don't have much to say about it

Are you seriously trying to claim that grabbing a single word out of a comment, fixating on it, and then continuing by attacking an idea not present in the comment is somehow not "out of context or inconsistent somehow with the rest of the comment"?!

So, in case this wasn't clear to you:

I object to the notion that the person who said "he's a genius" and the person who said "these hacks embarassed the US" are the same person when they're obviously, verifiably not. I've linked both posts ('zelon88's and your initial reply) several times now! Is it that you don't care?

You're not fooling me; yet you are replying. Perhaps you're fooling yourself? If this doesn't clear things up, then it surely must be trolling. Since you opened the comment above this one with an intentional misrepresentation of my argument (and the rest of the comment flowed from there), it's gotta be trolling.

>What I don't acknowledge is that it's reasonable to comment about the "shitty behavior" of someone who makes a civil statement you happen to disagree with --- or, worse, a civil statement you actually do agree with, but don't want to acknowledge.

Whether I disagree with you is immaterial. I merely refuse to stand by while some popular bully puts words in others' mouths. You can go on all day about how very, very civil you are, but it's clear to me that replying with a totally unsubstantive comment like

>He's a genius? I thought the US was embarrassed by how dumb the vulnerabilities he exploited were. Which is it? [0]

when the only the first three short words are relevant to the parent's actual statements [1]. The others were from the article, which you demonstratively either a) believe 'zelon88 wrote or b) have chosen to conflate with 'zelon88's statements. "Which is it?"

You're obviously not interested in discussions with people who don't agree with you -- I can tell by the way you choose not to engage with their arguments. You've obviously calmed down now, but hiding behind claims of civility shows a shocking lack of self-awareness, particularly in light of what's actually happened. Hope you're doing OK! Keep trolling!

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12515231

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12515199