_jgdh

Tell me Young Techie, how do you tell the difference between someone who is alleged to have spread rumours and someone speaking the truth?

And when you say you totally support it, do you support everything the BJP has done?

I don't think this is true. Some of the most educated and wealthy people support the BJP, fascist though the party may be. Look at the vote split in the recent Delhi election. All upper caste voters flocked to the BJP by margins of 20%+. Dalits and Muslims voted AAP. Upper castes are disproportionately wealthy and educated.

My theory for this is that such people (relatives of mine included, sadly) are just higher on Maslow's heirarchy of needs. At the bottom you need roti-kapda-makaan (food, clothing, shelter), followed by bijli-sadak-paani (electricity, roads, water) and higher up health and education. If you've had all of this all your life, you take them for granted. When Modi comes along and peddles a grand vision to Make India Great Again, like it was in Vedic times, that captures the imagination and inspires us. When the BJP tells us that all of our problems are because of Muslims and that we need to put them in their place to fix everything, we're only too willing to listen.

You can use VPNs in other parts of the country, just not in the areas where internet access has been banned. While this is an egregious abuse of power and a gross violation of the rights of Kashmiris, it is not happening in the rest of the country.

For Americans, this is identical to when Sen. Joseph McCarthy was branding people "Unamerican". The BJP have succeeded in establishing their brand of hatred and stupidity as the only valid form of patriotism.

So now your solution is for them to leave and go elsewhere. That's fine, it's workable.

I just objected to this idea that they should work on their interestingness and that doing so would somehow solve the problem of them finding someone. I think you acknowledge that even if they all become incredibly interesting, they wouldn't all be able to find partners.

How are you not getting this?

This is not a problem of interestingness. This is a problem of skewed gender ratios. In India and China there are way more men than women. That means that some men will remain without partners regardless of what they do or how interesting they become.

That's their problem you might say. Sure, but only if you ignore the negative consequences of young men being unable to find partners.

I’m going to guess they won’t have an answer to your question of how single men in the Bay Area working on themselves and “becoming interesting” will suddenly make tens of thousands of single women materialise in the Bay Area.

It was merely a rant about how they felt people shouldn’t feel entitled to anything and that expecting to be able to date if you’ve got your life in order is too much entitlement.

Increasing global trade leads to better outcomes for those producing those goods. The greatest alleviation of poverty and creation of the largest middle class in the history of humanity happened in China starting the early 90s and that was fuelled by increased global trade made possible partly by the Internet.

Small nit - a person can learn Hindi (the language) or Hinduism (the religion) but not Hindu.

That's a false choice. It's not a choice between paying banker bonuses or giving minimum wage workers an increase.

Also, while I agree with the premise that it's better to increase the minimum wage could you explain why folks investing their bonuses in the stock market and therefore directing their capital towards productive companies is worse than consumers spending their money directly?

$18k is a fantastic sum in India. The top 20% of fresh computer science grads are lucky to get that much. I would have no trouble living on that much income (+adjusted for inflation) for the rest of my life if I lived in India.

Not really a helpful or fair comparison. Global shipping emits more carbon dioxide than India, but that's literally apples to oranges.

It might be easier for the shipping industry to reduce it's emissions, or it might be easier for India. The benefit(s) of India polluting is spread across 1.3 billion people. The beneficiaries of polluting by the shipping industry is presumably the whole world, though the benefits are unevenly spread. It might be easier or more impactful for one to reduce while the other doesn't, but again, we can't know without more data.

A better comparison would be between shipping and air freight. Or make the case that we don't need to ship if we can produce locally instead. Maybe it could be supplemented by saying that if the cost of the externality (pollution) was borne by the producer of the products, then it would incentivize local production.

For India specifically? The wikipedia articles for each metro, perhaps. They provide a timeline when each was constructed.

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

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

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

All other things being equal with 2 programmers who have perfect knowledge of their market worth, the better one will cost more. But this premise is proved false trivially.

1. People don't have a good sense of their market worth. It's possible to convince/coerce someone to work for less than they're worth ("think of the exposure!", "we'll be big in 5 years") while other people have an inflated sense of their own worth.

2. All other things _aren't_ equal. Indian programmers cost less because of Purchasing Power Parity and relative wealth. For a person who's monthly expenses are $400-500, getting a salary of $3k a month is a sweet deal. Plus A salary of $3k per month would put you comfortably in the top 0.5% of Indian society, able to afford most luxuries.

> Japan blamed SK for taking action.

According to the article you linked Japan blamed China and Russia, not SK

.

> one of the only countries

I live in Europe. I wonder what my Chinese landlords (who've lived their whole lives in China) would say if they read your comment.

There are no laws against knocking on doors in India. If you don't want folks knocking on your doors, you would employ someone to prevent them from doing so.

For what it’s worth, Japan is not unique in using different calendars in different contexts.

There are several calendars in India, all based on the moon. In my state within India everyone uses the Gregorian calendar for most things except in certain cases. For example, no marriages happen during the month of Margazhi (December 15th - January 15th).

There’s no conspiracy in using a different calendar. It’s just a continuation of a cultural practice that hurts no one.

> well-known in the security community as not being good practice

The folks in charge of making decisions don't understand security. I'm not criticising them, it's quite reasonable that a layman would think that security by obscurity works.

> India could never be authoritarian

Don't get complacent. The man in power has never lost an election, so I don't know if he knows how to lose with grace. What's more, he has very authoritarian tendencies, like intimidating the press[1].

[1] - https://thewire.in/media/punya-prasun-bajpai-abp-news-narend...

Definitely the best movie I watched in 2018. I think it did a much better job of depicting life in India than any other movie I've ever seen. I recommended it to a couple of European friends who watched it with subs and they enjoyed it too.

I emigrated to Europe but I have about 20 friends who are on the H1B living in the US. I think folks on the H1B put up with awful treatment and don’t even know how awful it is because they haven’t seen a country that’s actually welcoming to immigrants.

I’ve pointed out this awful situation where you can not afford to ever get let go from your job under any circumstances without jeopardising your life and your family’s life. In response I get “well if they’re so highly skilled, why are they getting let go?” Ask that question to the top comment on this thread, if you think it’s a fair one.

Every year H1Bs need to go back to their home country to get their visa stamped. Why can’t they just go to a government agency within the US? Fuck if I know.

Switching jobs again is a huge pain. A friend of mine has been waiting in India for a few months for his visa to be transferred from one company to another. Imagine if he had kids who were going to school.

But you think this is temporary right? Eventually you get a Green Card and everything gets much better. Wrong. If you’re Indian it could take anywhere between 15 to 20 years to get that Green Card. You will be living the life of a H1B until then.

Contrast all this to my experience in Europe. I got my visa within 2 weeks. I’m treated with respect here. There’s a clear path to Permanent Residency here - just stay in the country for 5 years on my current visa. There’s a clear path to citizenship if I want it - just be a Permanent Resident for 1 year. I don’t get jerked around with stamping requirements. My spouse can work without worrying about rule changes.

Of course, the vagaries of the H1B program along with the indignities and suffering that people go through might actually be a feature, not a bug. The goal could be to create a “hostile environment” to keep the bad sort out. In that case it’s doing really well.

I don't mean that Modi personally signed the order banning PUBG. I meant that Modi and the BJP have ruled and continue to rule over a state where policemen think they are a law unto themselves. They think they can ban perfectly lawful activities, then arrest anyone who violates their idiotic ban. The policeman thinks the ends justify the means. I am asking why the policeman's boss agrees with that.

Haha, Modi fans are downvoting you for pointing out that the obvious. This incident took place in Gujarat. Modi was the Chief Minister of Gujarat for more than a decade before becoming Prime Minister of India. The BJP has now been in power in Gujarat for nearly 20 years. If Modi/BJP isn't responsible for this idiocy, then I would invite the BJP bhakts (devotees) to tell us who is.

Before you speak, let me establish two facts. Modi and the BJP are synonymous since 2014. When the BJP wins an election, it's called a "Modi wave". The flipside of taking credit for everything and micromanaging everything that the BJP does is that he is responsible when they fuck up... like they have here. Second, the police ultimately report to the Chief Minister who is answerable to Modi. Now say what you have to say, without resorting to the downvote button.

India is playing with fire because Pakistan doesn't have such a policy. If the situation appears dire for Pakistan, the Pakistani Army could resort to using tactical nukes.

I've only read a couple of history books about India, one by William Dalrymple and the other by Ramachandra Guha. I'd highly recommend both of them. In case you want to know about the last decades of the freedom struggle, Gandhi After India is probably what you're looking for.

I second Tao of Pooh. It’s genuinely insightful and I plan to read it again. However no one I recommend it to seems to take it seriously. They think it’s a parody of some sort because it seems unlikely that a “serious” text would involve Winnie the Pooh.

* Factfulness and Thinking Fast And Slow. The latter helped me internalise that my thinking, like most humans, is biased. Even being aware of those biases doesn’t always help. We need to go above and beyond to overcome our biases. Factfulness goes into detail about what those biases are and how they lead to a distorted world view. Rather than taking the easy way out by blaming journalists/politicians/rich people, he turns the focus onto us and our biases and speaks about how to look at the world in an objective fact based manner.

* The Dictator’s Handbook. One simple axiom - leaders do what is necessary to stay in power. Using that idea they explain the basis of all political systems, whether autocracy or democracy or somewhere in between. I didn’t really understand politics before I read this. CGPGrey has a video where he summarises the book. [1]

* (Only for Indians) India After Gandhi. You can’t really understand your country if you don’t know it’s history. History stopped in 1947 according to our history books, and most people are blissfully unaware of what came after. They don’t know how close India came to losing democracy or how easily it could happen again. They don’t understand the dangers of promoting one language at the expense of others because they don’t know that it’s been tried before. Every Indian needs to know so we don’t repeat the mistakes of the past over and over.

[1] - https://youtu.be/rStL7niR7gs

This is untrue. The list of documents that are valid as proof-of-address when applying for a passport [1] include electricity bill, water bill, telephone bill, gas connection, election ID, rent agreement among many others. If you're really keen on using your bank passbook for some reason, you'll be happy to know that ICICI and HDFC (the largest private banks) are also accepted [2].

I have an SBI bank account but I've never had to use it for anything in the past half a decade. So I would dispute your claim that it's indispensable.

[1] - https://portal2.passportindia.gov.in/AppOnlineProject/popupo...

[2] - https://portal2.passportindia.gov.in/AppOnlineProject/pdf/Ci...