phyller

I think most of us have experienced the Russian "trolls" in one way or another, and there is very strong evidence that they have been, and continue to be, sponsored by the Russian state.

Apparently there have been a few studies, but with questionable rigor. For example http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.603...

If you think about it like this it explains everything that the government has been doing for decades. They limit the population growth so that they can feed everyone and keep discontent down. They focus on the economy to keep discontent down. They build regional and world status to create pride in a greater, unified China. Even their tv shows and movies glorify themes which show a united China as one, and always the government are the good, humble servants. Military power, technological independence, even hostility towards other countries is mostly to build patriotism and unity among their own people.

And of course they restrict the internet, control the media, and limit what people can see and say.

Even when China was being successfully invaded by the Japanese, the existing government was more concerned with the Communist revolution. When they finally got desperate and banded together with the Communists to fight the Japanese, they lost ... to the Chinese Communists who took the opportunity to overthrow them.

So in that sense, it is helpful to understand the Chinese government and the things they are likely to do, and how to interpret them.

Personally, I think once the US is gone and whatever happens afterwards happens, if history somehow remains accurate, I think people will see the last 75 years as a world-wide Pax America with the most benevolent world leadership that has ever existed. I'm sure I'll get downvoted to oblivion for this statement, but, big picture, the US has done more to provide peace and prosperity (and even freedom and justice) for a greater percentage of humanity than any other nation ever.

If you look over human history, the natural human state is generally oppression, warfare, starvation, and disease. We just might be reverting back to the mean.

The way it is supposed to work is, company A researches a tech, company b also researches a tech, the best one wins (or more likely they split the market), the competition induces more advances, and eventually the old tech becomes cheap (or free) and widely available as it is supplanted by even newer, better tech.

And yea I know our patent system is broken, etc. But I don't understand how you can have a general principle that the people who created something don't have the right to benefit off of it.

I could list several important reasons why "hacking back" would be a bad idea, but I'll just stick to the pragmatic "people who live in glass houses shouldn't throw stones". We have a much larger surface area and much more to lose if we get into that kind of tit-for-tat. Instead, the US is building a case that China is an aggressor, and is responding in other ways that will apply more pressure. For example, tariffs on Chinese exports.

Granted, that doesn't continue after you stop working for them, but we do have federal government provided money and medical coverage after retirement age. I think people have a caricature of what the US system is because as Americans we have a culture of complaining about our government, which I usually wholeheartedly participate in :)

The bottom line is, in my opinion, if you like your particular culture, you will be happier where you are because it won't be replicated quite the same anywhere else. But the overall standard of living for software engineers in the United States is extremely high. Even when people are complaining about housing prices, they aren't much higher than in Europe, and you get a really nice living space for it that is usually much larger with nicer amenities. And in many places in the US, including where I live, the prices are cheaper and I get a nice big house with land and a beautiful view.

This can be done, people are doing it.

The long play for Amazon might just be that consumers gravitate towards the products that are actually sold by Amazon, because they can be sure that it should at least work. Eventually Amazon doesn't just control the marketplace, but is the only major vendor as well, and actually controls everything from the factory to the consumer.

If you downvote this please leave a note with what is wrong with my logic.

This is so wildly irresponsible. Every time I hear of these mega projects to remove CO2 I get scared. Let's try to think about this coolly and logically for a minute.

Our planet is used to change. Our ecosystem is ready to deal with change, and CO2, and heat. It takes a lot of hyperventilating to even imagine a way in which global warming destroys life on Earth. Worst case scenario is stronger weather, higher oceans, and change of ecosystems. Maybe we get forests in Antarctica again. Maybe North America becomes one big desert. Or a jungle. Life adapts.

The biggest existential climate threat is a permanent ice age. Our planet has been slowly sequestering carbon for eons. The ice ages last longer than the warm periods. All of human history has been in a warm period. You want to genetically engineer little organisms that we can in no way control, to remove carbon from our atmosphere? Sounds like a great way to kill everything on the face of the earth and turn our giant spinning miracle into just a big ice ball. Just one team needs to do it one time, take that decision into their own hands.

Think of hurricanes becoming routine in some parts of the world. Then think of literal miles of ice, flexing the tectonic plates as they crush everything beneath them, creeping towards the equator.

I'm not going to even address the other ideas right now. We have a small fraction of the understanding and intelligence to be making these kinds of decisions. Just my opinion, but the best thing we can do for now is stop adding carbon to the air, and learn more about this world we live in.

By the way, even if it means more delays and more money, it could still be an improvement for Intel if their previous path wasn't working well. But they would be motivated to hide it anyway because they would have hidden all the wasted time and money up to this point and wouldn't want to have to own all that.

Their direct incentives are getting sales (and now clicks), which doesn't appear to be highly correlated with accuracy. Additionally, my experience in college was that it wasn't the best and the brightest going into that field, though I deeply hope that it was a skewed sample, and believe that there are many deeply intelligent people working there.

However, I think it likely that many people are not drawn to the field for the pursuit of pure objective truth, but because they have a particular agenda and want to enlighten the world with it.

There is a quote about a logical fallacy that I can't quite remember, it goes along the lines of the following: You read an article about something with which you are deeply familiar. You laugh to yourself at the childish misconceptions of the journalist. You then turn the page to something you know little about, and assume that everything that is written is true. That doesn't make sense.

I'd say that was a pretty big deal (Russians providing a "satellite image" showing a Ukrainian fighter plane shooting down a commercial airliner).

Bad actors use this kind of technology whenever they think they can get away with it. As someone else mentioned, they've used video game footage and pretended it was actual combat footage.

However, this can be a legitimate issue. For example, New Haven, Connecticut, the site of Yale University, has become a notoriously crime-ridden area. It's not a very big place and something like half the property in the city is owned by non-profits (a few universities, a few large hospitals). Therefore the city's tax base is cut in half (US city revenues are largely from property taxes), but it still needs to provide infrastructure, police, public transportation, etc for everyone.

But it makes it seem more suspicious doing it like this instead of passing a new law that formalizes payments for services.

A recent stay in England has shown me you can have plenty of air circulation with no water intrusion, they have these wonderful skylights that you can keep cracked open even during a storm and no water gets in, I was pretty amazed.

I made the list not to condemn old houses, but to consider when building a new house. However, if you go to the downtown areas in old towns, the old commercial properties can tend to hit almost everything on the list. Apparently these things were known, just not applied to residential construction, probably because of cost.

If this wasn't the Heinlein's house it would be unsellable today. The cost to tear down the house would probably be subtracted from the value of the empty lot to determine how much it was worth.

I need to buy a house soon in an area with a lot of old houses, some more than 100 years old. Here are my list of house attributes with staying power:

  - high ceilings
  - open floor plan
  - generous dimensions (particularly bathrooms and kitchens)
  - light (and air) from the outside
  - durable water-tight construction
  - no wood on exterior (it rots, maintenance nightmare)
  - a good view
  - land

My grandfather was before his time and built his entire house in hot, humid Florida out of steel many decades ago. Steel panels on the outside, steel paneled roof, steel frame. It's been hit by quite a few hurricanes and looks as good as new. The other wood frame houses around his are looking pretty shabby now. Not sure why steel construction didn't catch on.

There is simply no way I would believe 21% of "white-collar workers with a smart phone" are checking either their work or their personal email for more than 6 hours each and every day, let alone the 10 hours a day that would be required to offset the about 50% of people who reported checking less than an hour each day.