MegaButts

Credit Suisse no longer exists. Whatever problems Credit Suisse had, UBS now has.

> In the end, countries are nuanced enough to understand American political dynamics.

Is that why Ukraine agreed to the Budapest Memorandum?

Just as a counterexample (not saying this disproves the trend), UBS auditor recently said there is something wrong at the bank.

https://www.reuters.com/business/finance/ubss-auditor-issues...

I think this says more about how worrisome UBS is than how unreliable auditing is.

> I will say that you do not need to explicitly say something for your line of argumentation to imply it as a logical consequence.

Maybe you should read my actual comments instead of jumping to conclusions. In my first comment I made it clear that protests are useless until the government fears you. If I can ignore you easily, so can the government. Nobody gives a shit about you holding a sign. Until you can make the government scared of you as far as I'm concerned you may as well sit your ass at home.

I'm not here to validate your feelings or cheer you on. I'm pointing out why you're failing and you're snapping back like I give a shit. You're welcome to ignore me just as easily as it is for me to ignore the current protests.

I never said you shouldn't protest. I said the current protests are pathetic.

If you view Trump as your enemy, understanding him matters if you intend to fight him.

To be clear, I'm not saying Trump is a Russian asset. I was just changing the perspective because I think it's interesting all the things he's doing make perfect sense for helping Russia. In which case he'd be effective instead of incompetent.

If the protest is ineffective then the protest is ineffective. I don't care how hard you tried, I care how effective you were. Pragmatically, if the protest doesn't change anything, it's not any better than sitting at home. If that protest leads to bigger protests that ultimately change something, then that matters.

Yes, everything has to start somewhere. But that doesn't mean every start is meaningful if it goes nowhere.

> Why not criticize all the people sitting at home, rather than calling the ones actually trying "pathetic"?

This is quite the whataboutism. Just because I criticize the protestors doesn't mean I'm defending people that don't protest.

You're right, it's a start. But pragmatically it's still not meaningful. Until the protests are strong enough that the government actually feels fear there is no reason to expect anything to happen. That's just reality.

There are many people who think Trump is a Russian asset. If you look at it that way, he's been pretty great for Putin.

If you look at this from the perspective of Trump wanting to destabilize the USA geopolitically and internally (for whatever reason), it seems he's been incredibly successful. I'm not saying Trump is smart but if you look at this from another angle he's incredibly effective.

The current protests are tame and quite frankly pathetic. If your protests aren't strong enough that the government fears you, there's no reason to believe an apathetic government will even acknowledge you.

Until the citizens of the US are willing to shut things down, expect nothing to change. Look to other countries for examples of effective protest and understand that effective protest requires sacrifice, not just an afternoon walking around with a sign.

> What he's pulled off with xAI more recently is really quite incredible.

I genuinely have no idea what he's done that's incredible. I don't even know what xAI does apart from being a chatbot inside of twitter.

“But the plans were on display…”

“On display? I eventually had to go down to the cellar to find them.”

“That’s the display department.”

“With a flashlight.”

“Ah, well, the lights had probably gone.”

“So had the stairs.”

“But look, you found the notice, didn’t you?”

“Yes,” said Arthur, “yes I did. It was on display in the bottom of a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying ‘Beware of the Leopard.”

― Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy

What are some of your favorite history books?

I realize this website has operated more or less the same for a long time. But as it becomes increasingly popular it's going to become a bigger target for abuse by people wanting to push a narrative. I'm just commenting on why it's been more frustrating for me lately than it has in the past.

There is no correct answer to this problem. I'm just critiquing it in its current form and explaining why, to me (and many other people who have complained about it recently), it's getting worse.

So then it's not an equal flagging vs equal upvoting, it's fewer flags by fewer people being able to derail a post off the front page which may have been upvoted by 10x or 100x as many people as flagged it.

The fact that it's easy to get the ability to flag just makes it easier to abuse by people who want to censor certain topics.

dang has admitted that flagging carries more weight than voting, we just don't know what the weighing is.

Getting 500 karma is a trivial task and not some tiny group. Are there any HN regulars (that don't just lurk) that don't have that much karma?

The point is a flag has higher weight than an upvote, and it's easy to get the ability to flag posts.

We just fundamentally disagree. From my perspective you are the antithesis of curious conversation by censoring topics you don't want to discuss. I don't want to read the latest update on some dumb framework but I don't flag the post.

Also getting 500 karma on HN isn't hard.

> These topics have been the most discussed topics on HN the last couple of months by a massive margin.

Have any of these topics managed to not be censored via flagging? From my perspective, I have very much wanted to talk about these things on HN and despite checking multiple times a day I have never been able to engage in an ongoing discussion (by which I mean the post wasn't removed from the front page due to flagging, effectively limiting the visibility it would otherwise get from organic upvotes).

You're entitled to dislike these topics and to flag them. And I'm entitled to think you're actively making HN worse with your gatekeeping. The problem with flagging is it gives more weight to a smaller group. I don't know the weighing exactly, but I'd guess flagging is 10-100x more effective than regular voting. So in theory just 1-10% of people have the ability to censor topics they don't like. Kinda seems like the antithesis of what's "interesting" to me. And yes, I absolutely 100% would prefer contentious "go fuck yourself" arguments on politics than not being allowed to discuss it in good faith at all.

There's a reason most concept cars don't make it to production.

Do you also believe we shouldn't make laws just because people will still break those laws?

The DA is not their boss. Cops are supposed to enforce laws. The DA is supposed to prosecute them. The cops are just using the DA as an excuse to not do their jobs. And once you normalize the cops not arresting people, now the DA has an excuse for prosecuting fewer criminals - at that point how do you decide who's to blame? Now you have two dysfunctional organizations, each pointing the finger at the other, and you've already normalized at least one of them. Even if you think the cops shouldn't be arresting people because of the DA, at the very least this skews data on crime as police are making fewer arrests independent of crime levels.

This is like me saying I don't want to do my job because those other guys in the other department aren't going to do anything with it, so I'm just not going to bother. I think almost everyone can relate to lazy/incompetent coworkers - does that mean you should also be lazy/incompetent? The way to fight laziness is with hard work, and the way to fight incompetence is with competence. What you're advocating for just normalizes dysfunction.

Whenever you feel like not doing your job, just tell your boss "I don't want to" and see how that goes for you.

I understand how motivation works. Sometimes doing a job sucks. That's part of why you get paid to do it.

It sounds to me like those police officers don't want to do their jobs. I'd encourage them to quit instead of wasting tax dollars. Of course the real issue is they want the money without the work, and the respect without having to earn it.

> You can't expect the police to arrest criminals knowing full well the DA is immediately going to drop or reduce charges and let them loose.

You can't expect the police to do their jobs?

I'm deeply concerned about it too, but the moderation on this website is pretty hostile towards politics. Only expect major political news (and the debate seems to be what qualifies as major) to be tolerated.

The majority of political posts, especially those that make it to the front page, are very quickly flagged. It feels much worse lately which makes sense considering the political climate in the US.

Commercial pilots have approximately 100x as much training as your typical driver.

Watching that looks like something out of a movie you wouldn't think is real. That looks terrifying.

Fair enough. I'm pretty sure OP meant M1. My comment reads more like a "well akshually" than a useful point (since technically M2 changed, but not in a meaningful way).

Anyway, I think we understand each other.