refenestrator

Raft involves waiting for fsync on a majority of nodes, so that's not too surprising.

'Typical' is a matter of what guarantees you want to give.

That's an interesting thought, I'm not sure I agree but I'd have to think about it more to differ.

Not mutually exclusive, 'elite' never meant middle class, and you used to be able to attain a middle class lifestyle without having to be 'elite'.

I'm pretty sure they went ahead and wrote the thing rather than generating a million white papers about it, though.

I suppose the 'thing' being prestigious to write is a differentiator, here. Put that team on AdWords with principal expectations for each of them and it's probably dysfunctional.

And that's an org with like 80% NATO members. Picture one being led by a rival power.

I'm talking about the media's credibility. I'll give them "more credible than Trump" as a freebie but after that they have to earn it.

You're asking people to prove a negative and then you're upset when they can't?

It's impossible to disprove but both SARS and Bird Flu crossed over from animals in Southern China so there's no reason it must have come from the lab, either. Right now we have zero evidence either way, just people speculating mostly based on their pre-existing opinions of the Chinese state.

How would the US react to a foreign-led investigation of us?

It's already been telegraphed wide and clear that there are a bunch of Western people dying to pin covid on China and that western media will give them airtime and print.

Why would China give them ammunition? Even if we assume that the virus didn't come from a lab, it's impossible to prove and handing over a bunch of raw data to a motivated actor has no upsides.

That makes the media look worse, not better. Their true inclination is to think one thing but they self censored so they wouldn't be seen as agreeing with the bad orange man?

Covered what up? It's not like the virus signed out at the front desk and they're hiding it. Nobody knows, there's no evidence to cover up.

I can imagine someone feeling all sorts of things but you can also just look away from the screen.

If we're talking ongoing, targeted individual harassment, that's different but still less immediate than a dude physically in your grill on the street.

It's not the same at all, trivially.

Feeling unsafe around a psycho shouting at you on the street is reasonable, feeling 'unsafe' because someone tweeted a bad word is not.

I'm not even saying you're wrong but that's a terrible analogy.

May have! And how would he know anyways? He can't prove a negative.

If someone had collected US research grant money and went the other way would we call them 'paid by America'?

Like I said. The perfect rorschach issue.

That lab leak theory is the most amazing example of widespread bias on all sides I've ever seen.

We went from it being banned on Facebook to it having mainstream acceptance in like a week despite ZERO change in the underlying evidence. The evidence was always just "well there's a lab there". The only thing that changed was Trump isn't president anymore.

It's the perfect rorschach issue for underlying bias, free of any clearcut facts that might be evaluated neutrally.

It's a scale with a billion dollars on either end, and we were asked to believe a small office of internet trolls from Russia tipped it. BS detector engaged.

If we're so fragile that some marginal stuff can steer our culture, then we deserve it.

"Effective and stealthy manipulation" were your words I believe. Short hop from there for someone else to go further.

We just watched people spend 3-4 years claiming that 50 Russian internet trolls were responsible for beating a billion dollar presidential campaign. The "smart people"! At some point you have to add up the mass values and ask if this adds up, or if we're just making excuses for ourselves.

When you read their stories about managing 10,000 microservices or whatever.. I don't want to trivialize their domain but it seems like a bit of empire building happened.

Eh let's take responsibility for our own culture before blaming on the insidious machinations of the great hidden Other.

Sorry I was describing our current social networks. Impossible to gauge how thick to lay it on in text.

What sort of manipulative amplification/suppression, specifically? Maybe a skinner box outrage machine that turns us into hostile tribes sniping over cultural crap while completely unable to govern ourselves as they surpass us?

A gunshot by the alleged insurrection. Getting shot does not make one an organized rebellion attempt.

In a nation with as many guns as America, especially in the right wing demographic, I'd expect some shooting and a lot more organization before I upgrade from 'riot'. Insurrection is just political spin. Look at that picture with the goofball holding the speaker's podium and tell me these people were serious.

It's an editorialization of the word. Any riot involving a fight with cops would qualify if you stretch it that far.

That last one is a choice of descriptive words, not an objective truth.

Personally, my bar for 'insurrection' involves at least one gunshot. You can differ! But it's not objective.

I'm stifling the urge, because the article does the typical thing where they categorize his douchiness as 'misbehavior' and then immediately pivot to talking about that sexual harassment walkout, using the term 'misconduct'. The fuck does 'misbehavior' even mean?

I'm automatically suspicious of people playing word-association games like that.

Sounds like the guy has poor emotional control and is only in his position due to right place, right time. Fortune passes everywhere.

That's an oversimplification, but it doesn't hurt as far as sympathies.

My actual issue is more along the lines of caveat emptor. People bought junk bonds in a company that then went bankrupt. That means they're going to be in court trying to recover money, and there's a lot of risk there about what they might or might not recover.

To the extent that the legal resolution was unprecedented... so was the top carmaker entering bankruptcy with all of those employees and pensions on their books. Biggest bankruptcy of that sort since the depression. Precedent isn't a suicide pact, when things get weird then people can adapt.

The full story there is the local authorities lied initially, then the feds found out and fired them while slamming the red alert button. Mayor of Wuhan and Governor of Hubei sacked in the aftermath. This all happened MONTHS before the virus hit the US.

The CCP is 100 million people.

Basically the entire national security mainstream.

If you consider "america should be the number one power and do whatever it takes to stay that way" to be an unbiased and neutral statement, then sure, Foreign Policy is unbiased.

I wouldn't go to them for a viewpoint inclusive of American rivals, though.

I'm with you that Xi represents a threat to the order Deng created, most scarily by exceeding term limits, but I think invoking the cultural revolution is several steps too far at this point.

Xi is more a fusion of traditionalism with nationalism for political convenience. None of that is compatible with banning monasteries, struggle sessions and sending people to the countryside as he personally was.

The biggest threat from Xi, imo with a crystal ball and huge error bars, is a brezhnev-like stasis where he stagnates the country in order to stay on top for multiple decades. Hopefully he isn't allowed to do that.

Another way of describing that story is they held the bonds into bankruptcy and didn't come out on top of the legal/political battle.

This battle was always going to happen! They just thought they had the better legal arrangement and would instead stick it to the pensioners. I have no sympathy.