-8 karma · joined October 18, 2020
That's the point you are missing.
> whatever you're doing isn't making the world better.
Imagine what a nation founded to avoid taxation and that became a superpower by securing resources in half of the World by starting wars or supporting dictators that committed genocides is doing to make the World better...
It's, as the same implies, a spectrum.
I've lived in the US, New York, Los Angeles and Columbus Ohio for a brief period.
(I also lived in Berlin and Barcelona, but that doesn't really count as a radically different experience for an European)
I have strong northern African looks, but am still white and loved every moment in the US.
But the devil is in the details, I could not ignore that when my friends there told me that some neighborhood was dangerous it really was dangerous, not dangerous as we usually mean it when we say it in Italy.
I could not ignore the staggering amount of homicides reported in the news.
This year LA will surpass 300 homicides in a year, Italy has 12 times the population of LA and there were "only" 270 homicides last year.
I could not ignore that the police is scary there and you should not talk to them or engage in any way.
I swear I notice a difference when I see one.
Having said that.
Globalization is real, but the media here are not trying to exploit my weaknesses to sell me ads, they are putting ads on their products, generic ads, not "I know who you are and I know you're gonna like this" ads.
I'm ok with the first kind, not so much with the latter.
The point of decentralised web is a misguiding one.
The decentralised web is the web!
Everyone can build their own website and host it at home on a raspberry PI on their connection.
That's what made the web a novelty that could (hopefully) spread culture and knowledge.
The dicotomy between centralised and decentralised web was born because the web has been taken away from people and transformed in a targeted ads delivery machine by the same companies that sell ads (FB, Twitter, Instagram and most of all Google, they sell ads as a primary business)
They are fighting to get screen attention so that they can deliver even more ads to the people.
And when we say ads we are not simply talking about product advertisement, we are talking about political ads used to radicalise the debate, that the same companies selling ads control, thanks to the network effect.
And since the majority of companies doing it are American, I blame the USA that let them do it
As paradoxical as it might sound China doesn't need to sell ads to people to convince the people to support this or that position, because there is no alternative position.
They rely on good old State propaganda, which existed for centuries ans has been studied for decades and is a well understood topic.
Can you tell me who wrote this and brought up political assassination?
Because I'm sure it wasn't me.
> Have you ever considered the possibility that China has "less people in prison" because their government just kills any dissident and "troublemaker" without any semblance of due judicial process?
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25316054
> Take just the million Uighur in "re-education centers"
You mean like the Mexican kids kept in cages while their parents were being deported for the simple fact of being Mexicans?
How many people suffered because of this thing I will link here for the nth time?
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_involvement_in...
And that's only one of many
What about this?
> effects of the Gulf War and over a decade of economic sanctions have resulted in the deaths of 500,000 children due to malnutrition, diarrhea, and other preventable diseases.
(The gulf war was started on a lie, fabricated by the US government)
Are you jocking right?
1/15 is about 7%, did I say or did I not that ~92% of the people in China are from Han ethnic group?
92+7 = 99 so yeah, there are mostly the same people in China
I never said that the other ethnic minorities are uniformly distributed or that they do not exist.
For example anybody would say that in Italy the population is mainly formed by Italians.
And that would be true even though Italians in Italy have dropped to around 90% of the total.
Less than the Han in China.
Did you ever lived outside of it?
Not as an occupant of course, because that's what usually Americans living abroad do
The point is to prove that "freedom of speech" said by American corporations is ridiculous and nobody should believe it, on the contrary, everybody should start to worry
I will rephrase this way
"92% of Chinese people are part of the Han ethnic group but that doesn't mean that they are mostly the same people... oh no wait! IT DOES!"
Chinese are collectively more or less in the same situation, they are ethnically mostly the same people and live under the same rules, Americans are not.
Few very reach Americans enjoy all the freedom power can buy, everyone else either comply or suffer the consequences
You really did not know?
> Chinese who are much, much, much less free than nearly all Americans
Nope.
I don't believe in the kind of freedom Americans believe to possess
It's simply a different kind of tyranny
Unless you mean the freedom to be shot in the streets.
For example: there are 700 people in jail every 100k citizens in USA, they are only 115 in China.
In 2008 USA had the 25% of the global World jail population
And you know why?
Because the private prison system in USA is highly profitable
USA has the lowest life expectancy of the whole west and it's only one year longer than China, despite being the country with the highest spending per capita in healthcare in the entire globe.
Is this the freedom you're talking about?
So no, USA is not a benchmark for anything good, including the exercise of free speech, which is only a lame excuse to not take action against extremists propaganda
> Indeed
So sometimes you experience moments of lucidity when you see yourself for what you really are?
That must hurt!
But that's about carrying them, not owning them
The point is that you can buy a butcher knife or a chopper from IKEA but not a rifle gun
For obvious reasons
Those places didn't weaponize their feelings and weaknesses against them to sell them ads
Want to make a global social network?
The State should be able to control them (every single state they operate in) and their decisions should be held accountable in court
The SN banned you?
They should have human support to solve the issues and a judge could overrule the decision, while now they are black holes
I trust the State, more than Facebook, if someone doesn't they shouldn't impose their decisions on other groups, including other countries
It's weird to read that people living in countries where the police can arrest you for not stepping out of the car or saying to a police officer to f*ck off defend the right to wear swastikas or private companies keeping public speech hostage in the name of freedom
Decentralised web can exists only among many small actors, when there are a few behemoth that control everything, of course segregation is gonna be the most obvious response: Russian internet, Chinese internet and let's hope European internet soon.
Free speech is not gratis.
It needs care.
It is not
Unless you have proof that they only talk in person and through rotary phones
Like a few times in a century, not hundreds times in a year, every year, sir.
Closing social networks is not a technological solution, it's political.
Public speech must not be controlled by private entities
Unless you are the US and don't understand it.
Crazy people with their forums for crazy people have no ability to target hundreds of millions of people through paid ads
Please, try to understand it, because it's really not that hard
There's a reason why every developed country in the World strictly controls firearms but not knifes
There's a reason why the only "developed" country where mass shootings happen all the time is the only developed country that refuses to strictly control firearms
It's the most evident proof of Einstein law of insanity
> men running trucks over people in Christmas markets like in Berlin?
This is one of those events that we can consider extremely rare.
Nobody can prevent the actions of some lone wolf
The problem is that there is no such thing as "freedom of speech" it's BS, there is a right to have an opinion, but some opinions are crimes and should never become speech, let alone be public
Corollary: public speech must be granted to everyone, because it's in the US Constitution, but you should not use it to badmouth the US
Looks like 99% of the mass shootings are organized by young people and 99% of them happens in the US (in the west)
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mass_shootings_in_th...
In my case I've been diagnosed in the spectrum of autism, I know it's my problem if I get easily bored, not because I'm not checking my work email while I'm on holiday.
They are not liable if they don't go to work on their free time, ever.
Healthcare, public transportation, firemen, etc. they can't not provide the service, it's called (sorry the bad translation) "interruption of public service"
Yes, they can be re-called on duty, but it happens rarely.
They are payed extra time if that happens (sometimes the hourly pay is double of the regular one)
Soldiers can't even be sent on a war mission if they don't volunteer to it.
They usually do because the pay is astronomical (4-5 times the regular one, sometimes more)
But they are not supposed to.
They can still not show if they have reason: in this 2020 for example being COVID positive or simply sick.
It happened the opposite this year, many doctors and nurses volunteered to help.
They are employees of the State after all and they serve the public.
In the private sector you have to be compensated for working extra hours, if they don't, the employers are liable.
If they ask you to work on your free time, a judge could (and usually does) condemn the employer and the employee gets a compensation.
My parents worked for the national healthcare and when my mom was expecting me, she discovered she had a condition that caused two previous miscarriages.
My parents worked shift of 12 hours 5 days straight, they assumed it was too taxing on the body of a pregnant woman with a condition, so between me and my sister the hospital put her on paid sick leave for 36 months.
My country is Italy, our salaries are lower than countries like US where such protections don't exist, but at least we are protected from abuses (they still happen of course, but it's a risk for the employer)
One of the benefit of the system is that people know they have rights and will stand up for them
If you accept to work gratis in your free time, you're doing a disservice to the entire category.
Of course there are people abusing of these rights, but in general it's a good tradeoff that benefits the larger population instead of rewarding only the workaholics.
And don't even get me started on why being a workaholic society is bad for those who can't work more because they are not in good health or worse...
In my country they have 28 days of paid holidays every year
Ant it's still one of the few jobs left where they can retire after 15 years, 6 months, one day of work
> Police
In my country they have 28 days of paid holidays, 35 hours a week contract
In my country there are 1/10 of the homicides per 100 thousands people of the US
Hints:
how many presidents any country has?
And who put them there?
Do they send CVs and get selected after a black board interview where they have to invert a binary tree?
Well... Let's say that if I have to explain it too you, we have bigger issues to solve first.
> Why can't the Vice President delegate out of hour
Because that's not how it works
By the law
Isn't the job of a president to handle crisis?
The job of a doctor is not to prevent any death, just those that they can prevent during their work hours.
> What's the US got to do with it?
Because they are the champions of working non stop and yet their results when it really matters (you brought up saving lives) are worse than anybody else
But being bored is part of the free time
Boring is good, not bad
Edit: I love it too, but when I'm bored I work on some side project (never completed one!) instead
That's a very small subset of the entire workforce.
Maybe one in a million or less
> No it's reality!
It's not.
> Look at how many people criticise presidents who are 'golfing' when there is a crisis and life is being lost.
They are right.
The president is not a salaried worker, it's the president.
Free time is a right
If someone dies during your free time it's not your responsibility
Besides: US have the worst life expectation of the whole west.
You should ask yourself why.
I think many of us in technology feel the same, the trick is to repress the control freak inside you and enjoy your free time while someone whose job is to fix these problems works on them.
The question is why ten minutes from home save days of work.
There's something horribly wrong going on if that's the case.
I'm on call a week every month, I get payed for it.
When I go back to work something happened that requires days or weeks of work to fix the issue, I will work to fix the issue for days or weeks, while still working no more than 40 hours/week.
Fixing management problems is above my pay grade.
People that do a job where they can save lives accept the fact that saving lives is not granted.
People don't die because someone is slacking.
Do you realize how stupid that sounds?
It doesn't work like that.
> Sometimes there is an emergency, and a professional saying 'sorry nope on vacation
Why are they relying on someone that is on vacation in the first place?
Are firemen supposed to not go on holiday ever during their work life?
That's simply the symptom of very bad management and on a larger scale of a very disfunctional society.
Retina display are simply more dense but add nothing to the screen real estate , nobody uses them at 1x I bet many don't even know that every pixel they see is actually 4 pixels on the monitor
Better have a larger monitor than a 13 inches packed with useless and expensive pixels