1,008 karma · joined March 10, 2018
On a spectrum, where e.g. anarchy is on the other end, it is a good thing. Where to place the pin however is a challenge. Binary decisions such as that ("this thing can only be good or bad") is an extremely restricted way at seeing the world.
>The US is not a long way away from authoritarianism. It's one strongman with actual brains away from it.
I'd love to here why you think that.
Perhaps people want a more authoritarian world (without realizing it). The ratio of static to noise has been increasing year by year. People don't want to take (nor have) the time to balance alternate view points and spend the time to independently determine fact from opinion. I think the current lack of direction creates turmoil--there are too many options, too many sources of information, and the quality of all of them have gone down while they compete to pull at our amygdalas for seconds of our time. Maybe there is a higher percentage of people who just want answers from someone they trust so they can get on with their lives.
I think I've been on HN long enough to know that (re)implementing limitations on the control of information would make most of you scream. But maybe its for the best. It's already been proven many times over that people aren't going to research facts themselves. So having fewer organizations spoon feed choice bits of information can't be worse. Note that I am not suggesting to deliberately block information, but rather have organizations that are more selective (i.e. exactly like it was during the newspaper era).
I think it's incredibly unlikely for the USA to become a dictatorship. We have too many checks and balances, and the decision making is cordoned off into many compartments, and the country is split 50/50 on who they vote for. An authoritarian-bent president would have to fight three branches of government, 50 governors (all of whom have their own state-level army, by the way), 100 senators, hundreds of congressmen, thousands of judges and lawyers, 150 million citizens, and so on and so forth. And on top of that, manage the country on a national and international level. I just dont see it happening. Trump did not bring us any where closer to that reality by the way (name one legislative/judicial change that moved the needle closer in that direction).
All this to say, there's nothing to be scared about. The internet has been a fun experiment but it's given a microphone to too many people, and has crumpled the gatekeepers who had the job of filtering out the diamonds from the mud (and did that job extraordinarily well, by the way, because they had to, or die). It feels like our culture has been dying. The influence artists had up until the 90s was comparatively huge. If resources were pooled to support the most talented (be it artists, journalists, architects, musicians, corporate / government leaders, etc), I think we would experience another golden era of culture.
Is there any indication self driving cars can handle these scenarios?
If you look into how much Nintendo spends on R&D and compare it to their revenues, you'll see they are _really_ serious about R&D. It would be detrimental to their business to allow that experience to be watered down.
There's nothing to be angry about. I dont think a product (at the scale and quality as Nintendo, Apple, etc) can exist in this world without it being in total control by the people who know how to create that experience. I'll happily pay more money to a company I trust to deliver quality (and fewer, polished options), much like people love Apple because it removes so many choices from people's lexicon.
Perhaps (I'll hesitantly say young) people don't realize that with freedom comes the more choices. And with more choices, you spend less time enjoying the product. You're a different market. You have time to research the hundreds of different flavors of Linux (as an example). There's nothing wrong with that; just be aware of what you're buying and dont complain when they aren't catering to your needs.
I’m not sure the most recent election map is important. The competition was an independent, and the current president passed a bill that removed minority rights in 2014 to limit Russian influence.
Regarding Donbas, I have no comment because I think the order of events is very important there but I’m not an expert.
As for your last paragraph, you’ve lost me. Mearsheimers video is not a conspiracy to explain away current events. You realize Putin is capable of saying one thing and doing another? Or making up an irrelevant excuse to appease his citizens?
I don’t think you understand that empires don’t care about other countries’ rights when they feel threatened. It is the US and Russias right to determine the fate of Ukraine because they have the power and motivation to make that decision, despite it not being the moral or fair. The world isn’t a fair place.
>While there was a push from the US government for Ukraine to join NATO back in 2008, it was rebuffed by the major European members
I don't think that counters anything I said. US is pushing for Ukrainian/Georgian membership, as you say. When that was put on the table, both countries began working towards achieving that membership. Considering US funds 70% of NATO, it's not implausible to think that the US will have their way in the long run. (Rational speculation)
>Even in March 2014, a month after Russia began taking over Crimera, Ukraine had no intention of joining NATO. > In fact, their constitution prohibited it until 2019
Which president? The one that was elected after the coup? Or the previous one who was pro-Russia? Mearsheimer discusses that history in his lecture I linked in my main comment. I haven't read into this but it seems likely that total national policy shifts take time. You're talking about one month to 5 years after the revolution. You have to remember half the country is either Russian descent or speaks Russian. It seems like a necessary guarantee to maintain peace with Russia.
> but a stable, democratic, and economically prosperous Ukraine that might even be an EU member.
Russia does not want that either. Over the last decade or two, Russia has been building new gas pipelines that circumvent Ukraine for this very reason. Ukraine collects a tax on all the gas that passes through their boarders. Also notable is the recent oil/natural gas reserves discovered in their territory.
IMO, what the West has done is shown an incredible display of power, killing multiple birds with one stone:
1.) Attempt to prevent Russia from accessing new found gas/oil reserves. [3]
2.) Continue to press Russia into a corner as the West continues to expand its influence. [1]
3.) Show and tell China the consequences of economic sanctions and economic war, and our willingness and ability to do so. [speculation]
For one, the Ukraine invasion is the US's fault. This has been covered in depth by John Mearsheimer in 2015 in his lecture "Why is Ukraine the West's Fault?" after the Orange Revolution and Russia capturing of Crimea [1]. And there is also some rational speculation here regarding the discovery of natural resources. [3]
What the US (which has major influence over Europe/NATO, so it's not clear how much of a choice Europe had here)[2] has essentially done is shown the world that we can manipulate and control the status quo (i.e. win a "war") without firing a shot or dropping a bomb. The new tools of war are economic control, and we're the heaviest guerilla in the room [4].
What's brilliant is the US's ability to make Putin appear much more evil than he really is. Yes, he is a dictator and isn't a good person, but he's been bringing back Russia from the dead and lifting its people out of poverty. Some of Putin's invasions occurred because we, the West/NATO, offered membership to those countries, when Russia made it clear that was a big no-no [1]. Forcing Russia to invade Ukraine is brilliant because Putin is evil in the West's eyes, but it was 100% necessary for Putin to invade because having that much of his boarder exposed to NATO is an incredibly vulnerable position to be in, and he made that clear to us years ago [1]. Note, the US would react just the same. We have the Monroe Doctrine and the Cuban Missile Crisis to show for it. [5][6]. So Putin is forced to play the worst hand, invading his sibling country (which makes him appear more evil), spend billions of dollars to do so, and lose many of his economic connections to the world. I think the West's goal here is to deliver the final blow to Putin and topple his regime, even if it requires killing innocent people along the way.
Other notes:
Russia's economy is strongly linked to natural gas and oil, and earlier this century a huge deposit of both was found in Ukraine and in their economic coastal zone/area. [3]
Mearsheimer notably distinguishes the West and East's methods of international politics into "21st century 'walk in and do whatever we please'" and "19th century 'balance of power politics'". The US is such a powerful country that it wont face any negative repercussions for interfering with the world order nor invading smaller countries.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JrMiSQAGOS4
[2] The US contributes over 10x the funds of the 2nd largest contributor (Germany) to NATO, and represents about 70% of the total pot. https://www.visualcapitalist.com/this-is-how-much-nato-count...
[3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=If61baWF4GE . Note, this video is a bit too pro-western to be fair/balanced. It does not consider the possibility that the US wants to get into Ukraine for oil/gas.
[4] https://www.worldometers.info/gdp/gdp-by-country/
[5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monroe_Doctrine
[6] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cuban_Missile_Crisis
</armchair>
Edit: Wow, people are flagging my sourced backed, neutral view comment? Can someone at HN please unflag the comment? @dang
>he doesn't deserve special credit for Russia's relative success.
You'll need a source for that one. But here's why I think you're wrong [1]. Note that Putin came to power in 1999/2000 as an authoritarian leader. This means he's making more policy decisions for Russia than the US President does for the US. On an economic level, Putin has done a great job. You can see each dip correlates with each time the US interfered in their backyard. [1] What the US does not want is a strong Russia.
[1] https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/RUS/russia/gdp-per-cap...
> Russia apologists always suggest that Putin has to be a belligerent because his neighbours are joining NATO, but they never seem to ask whether Putin's neighbours have to join NATO because of Putin's belligerence
I'm not a Putin apologist (I changed Russia to Putin because he's a dictator). All I do is try to look at the situation rationally. Putin has gone on public record stating he does not want NATO in his backyard. And yet the US/NATO keeps pushing the boundaries eastward. Russia invaded Georgia _because_ we dangled membership over their heads. Russia invaded Ukraine (twice) _because_ we dangled membership over their heads. Ukraine is also an interesting country because the eastern half predominantly speak Russian.
> It seems rich to me so suggest that countries such as Latvia and Estonia should have to remain in Russia's orbit just because Russia feels threatened
Those countries were introduced much closer to after the fall of the USSR, and they are tiny. So Russia let it go.
>Even in the worst case scenario in which a hostile NATO is on Russia's doorstep what is Putin afraid of? That NATO will invade? This is ridiculous. This is about empire.
How would you feel if Russia constructed a bunch of missile silos pointed at us (USA) in Mexico, Cuba, and Canada?
>The US did not invade Cuba during the Cuban missile crisis a
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bay_of_Pigs_Invasion
We did, even though they were not our soldiers. And we would have put our own troops on their soil if the Cuban Missile Crisis escalated.
This appears to be the first company they are acquiring that is outside of the video game industry. This may start a new era for Epic Games. I wonder what direction they are going to take? I'd guess a new player in the multi-media field, but I really dont know.
1.) Attempt to prevent Russia from accessing new found gas/oil reserves. [3]
2.) Continue to press Russia into a corner as the West continues to expand its influence. [1]
3.) Show and tell China the consequences of economic sanctions and economic war, and our willingness and ability to do so. [speculation]
For one, the Ukraine invasion is the US's fault. This has been covered in depth by John Mearsheimer in 2015 in his lecture "Why is Ukraine the West's Fault?" after the Orange Revolution and Russia capturing of Crimea [1]. And there is also some rational speculation here regarding the discovery of natural resources. [3]
What the US (which has major influence over Europe/NATO, so it's not clear how much of a choice Europe had here)[2] has essentially done is shown the world that we can manipulate and control the status quo (i.e. win a "war") without firing a shot or dropping a bomb. The new tools of war are economic control, and we're the heaviest guerilla in the room [4].
What's brilliant is the US's ability to make Putin appear much more evil than he really is. Yes, he is a dictator and isn't a good person, but he's been bringing back Russia from the dead and lifting its people out of poverty. Some of Putin's invasions occurred because we, the West/NATO, offered membership to those countries, when Russia made it clear that was a big no-no [1]. Forcing Russia to invade Ukraine is brilliant because Putin is evil in the West's eyes, but it was 100% necessary for Putin to invade because having that much of his boarder exposed to NATO is an incredibly vulnerable position to be in, and he made that clear to us years ago [1]. Note, the US would react just the same. We have the Monroe Doctrine and the Cuban Missile Crisis to show for it. [5][6]. So Putin is forced to play the worst hand, invading his sibling country (which makes him appear more evil), spend billions of dollars to do so, and lose many of his economic connections to the world. I think the West's goal here is to deliver the final blow to Putin and topple his regime, even if it requires killing innocent people along the way.
Other notes:
Russia's economy is strongly linked to natural gas and oil, and earlier this century a huge deposit of both was found in Ukraine and in their economic coastal zone/area. [3]
Mearsheimer notably distinguishes the West and East's methods of international politics into "21st century 'walk in and do whatever we please'" and "19th century 'balance of power politics'". The US is such a powerful country that it wont face any negative repercussions for interfering with the world order nor invading smaller countries.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JrMiSQAGOS4
[2] The US contributes over 10x the funds of the 2nd largest contributor (Germany) to NATO, and represents about 70% of the total pot. https://www.visualcapitalist.com/this-is-how-much-nato-count...
[3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=If61baWF4GE . Note, this video is a bit too pro-western to be fair/balanced. It does not consider the possibility that the US wants to get into Ukraine for oil/gas.
[4] https://www.worldometers.info/gdp/gdp-by-country/
[5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monroe_Doctrine
[6] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cuban_Missile_Crisis
</armchair>
Edit: Wow, people are flagging my sourced backed, neutral view comment? Can someone at HN please unflag the comment? @dang
A year or two ago, I watched @shroud (on Twitch) play Squad. I'm not a fan of playing shooter games, but wow it was quite a spectacle to watch! There were tiers leaders on your team to report to and receive orders. Anyone could pin enemy locations on the map. Every squad worked as a team to capture territory. The play development was entirely organic. etc. etc.
If anything, I hope someone carves out the 'old school' market from the belly of the beast and creates a name or brand that that market can rally around. It seems unnecessary to be concerned by the modern video game market. They are catering to an entirely different type of player. It doesn't matter that it's more profitable if they aren't taking away your audience.
- Ukraine sealed the canal that delivered 85% of Crimea's fresh water supply, so it's been more costly to keep Crimea with each passing year.
>I haven't seen where he has made any public statements since the invasion started.
It's been five days, hardly enough time to gather information on the environment and put together a research paper on it.
Also, a wrong conclusion does not mean the underlying research or thesis is wrong.
[1] https://youtube.com/watch?v=JrMiSQAGOS4
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cuban_Missile_Crisis
[3] https://duckduckgo.com/?q=belarus+nuclear
Also, please don't flag my comment again. Everyone who's replied to you so far has had their comment flagged.
This is communism for social currency. In fact, I'll wager this will develop and become _the_ modern form of communism in the next decade or two (in the US/West), provided the following remains true:
We (continue to) live in an a world of abundant material resources. And, we (continue to) live in a world of limited social resources (and likely always will).
Anyways, my thoughts on the matter as musician/composer. The people that deserve to be in an orchestra are the ones who work the hardest towards achieving goal, and have the talent to fulfill the requirements of that position. It is an incredibly competitive, limited position and would be massively unfair if people were favored/unfavored for admission because of the color of their skin (hmmm...).
I think that would create a lot inter-orchestra tension (which is already sky high because of how competitive it is[0]). Decades of sweat equity will be thrown out the door (most start playing while still a single digit in age). 45% or more of classical musicians end up leaving the career because they cant earn enough money to survive. [1] It's already an impossible discipline to succeed in, regardless of your background.
It is deplorable to shift and count colored beans on an abacus to keep track of an organizations social currency, particularly when that organization has blind admissions. There is not a non-obsessive, wont-be-abused-by-those-who-count way to implement such a gate keeper. Blind auditions solve all these problems, and bring together the most talented people in the world to work together for the benefit of every member of the audience, without the racist undertones.
[0] I used to play with Juilliard musicians. They have plenty of horror stories to tell, such as the time when the NYC Phil woodwinds tallied mistakes made by other musicians during practice. Or when one of the famous string quartets' members refused to stay in the same hotel together.
[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2004/12/12/arts/music/the-juilliard-...
This pushes the justification for Putin's response away from "unprovoked and savage".
IMO I think the US is partially responsible for this crisis. We've never stopped expanding our influence, for better or worse. Perhaps we pushed a little too hard here.
</armchair>
(edit: changed pro-russia to pro-Putin. E2: Flipped again)
So expanding from that, they (rightfully, from a business culture perspective) don't want their IP being tampered with, nor associated with a product they themselves did not create. Nintendo probably spends a much higher percentage on R&D than the average video game company. They don't want all their efforts to be watered down from mimicry. They don't want someone to see Mario in a meme post on YouTube and associate Mario with that video. They want Mario to equate to the production quality they work really hard to produce again and again.
You're wrong about Nintendo being hated. People love them, because they trust Nintendo. And Nintendo in turn works extremely hard at building and maintaining that trust.
Edit (from the site): "Japan was once globally renowned for its people's quality of unique creativity teamed with a pioneering mindset. Their innovation and inventions changed the world. But that golden era has long been gone. It seems that the quality Japanese people once possessed is overshadowed by worry and fear."
It's really interesting to hear that coming from the family office of one the largest companies in Japan. I can't imagine an American leader making a public statement like that (about the USA), probably because US companies prey on fear and FOMO.
(Note: Japanese uses a phonetic alphabet. For the most part, the characters you see (when kanji is written out in hiragana/katakana) are sounded exactly as they are in when written/spoken individually/independently. There are some dialects though that modify this, notably Tokyo's replacing "su" with "s" and other changes)
https://www.gq.com/story/the-last-true-hermit?printable=true
And the related HN post https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8205993
But it wont, because most video games are no longer tied to physical products. It takes very little effort to purchase and delete video games now, and they take up 0 physical space. And, there isn't a new technology to replace the current mediums. They are also much cheaper compared to then.
It was an interesting time in video game history though because the video game market in 1983 became saturated with low quality games and clones because Atari did not enforce any control over 3rd party studios/publishers. People lost trust in product quality and stopped purchasing games. There was a 97% drop in revenue. !!! (not a typo)
Then Nintendo swooped in several years later and enforced quality control.
Recently I heard the Nintendo Switch is opening the doors to 3rd party developers. I think Unity already has a module for creating games for the switch, so the flood is coming, if it hasn't already.
My point is I'm sad to see everything go way of the internet. Procurement is dying and yet is necessary for quality. There's no enforcement in the Android store (and partially the the App Store) per the article. Steam opened its doors to everyone years ago and there are hundreds (or thousands?)* of new games added every day to steam. I believe they changed their algorithm to match games based on sales, not similarity (which makes sense, except my particular favorite genres don't have a lot of competition, so I really have to dig deep to find similar games).
Haha.. maybe I'm just getting old. I just dont want to have to put effort into finding quality products. It's such a waste of time to go pioneering.
Edit: *Correction, it's 100-200 a week, not per day.
IMO, the demo video communicates to me a bland rehash & reskin (which really means I am not their target audience). I also didn't hear the word "water" mentioned once in the video, which is the second most vital resource on Arrakis. The author went into great detail about the native's water collection and storage system, and the symbolism behind it. So, I'm left to assume this is just a cash grab, or no one at the game studio has read the books.
When I have time I'll poke around the internet for other devs with similar ambitions .