paisawalla

My guy, translating between an Anglo and a non-Latin (Slavic) language is not a precise science. Please don't rely on YT autogenerated captions to fully capture all aspects of reality. Use the eyes that are found in the forward part of your skull: people do not "cremate" cardboard and wood chips, they "incinerate" them. The fact that Russians use «krematziye» to describe this doesn't mean you're watching a cremation.

Look, I received what is now considered a classical education, where one is expected to show how their evidence supports a cogent and coherent argument. I understand that you, however, subscribe to the modern school, where you wait for your cultural superiors to instruct you as to the current proper thought, which you then espouse with unthinking zeal.

Arguing from the existence of legislation regulating how to dispose of large numbers of animals or dead soldiers is an ad hominem and an obviously disingenuous argument. In a previous age, this would be understood to be an incredibly stupid way to argue, and I pity you for being incapable of seeing that.

Meanwhile, bring evidence.

This doesn't have the technical capability to incinerate bodies because it would need to get more than 1000 degrees hotter than the quoted maximum temperature. That's a physics challenge.

1. This doesn't get hot enough to cremate bodies.

2. "This incinerator can burn 20000 kg/day of trash" != "This can burn 150 bodies"

3. Is this being used in Ukraine? Are there any of these devices in Russia?

That's a fascinating exploration of how you would design and run such an operation. Is there evidence that any of this is happening?

The truck that someone posted looks like it could fit two bodies and gets to 1200 degrees, which I guess works with your partial cremation theory (full cremation needs 1800-2000 degrees). It doesn't seem to me that fitting 2 bodies into the incinerator, then adding an additional "get rid of these half-burnt bodies" step, really changes my point much.

Look at the video provided. That thing would maybe fit two bodies at best, and doesn't reach the temperature needed to incinerate a body. I think these claims require a much higher burden of proof than what is being offered here.

The video shows them putting in trash, and that it fits about a pallet of cardboard. It also says it gets to 1200 degrees, much less than the 1800-2000 degrees required to incinerate a human.

> That getting rid of corpses at scale is a problem they pay substantial attention to.

Yes, because again, they are probably the only military in the world engaged in conventional, symmetrical combat at their scale. Advanced nations like the US will just drop a bomb on a peasant wedding in Baluchistan and let the locals do the clean up. It's much more efficient, and as a bonus, provides a great boost to the local funerary economy as well.

Can you link to these videos?

I'm not sure what you think these regulations prove. AFAIK Russia is probably the only military of its size engaged in operations that would result in mass field casualties of soldiers, what should they do?

Anyone who has had a relative cremated knows that it takes 2+ hours for the body to be fully reduced to ashes and bone fragments. Two hours, for a single body, in a facility the size of a large garage. Just do some napkin math for what that means for the prospect of cremating a single body in something the size of a cement mixer.

Running non-stop with no breaks, bodies ready to go, matching the efficiency of the most optimal stationary crematories, working around the clock, a single truck could burn 12 bodies using 336 gallons of fuel (per https://www.lng2019.com/how-much-natural-gas-is-used-to-crem...) and generating 6.6 metric tons of CO2. For this to even make sense politically, there would have to be a number of bodies so large that burning it made more sense than anything else, even with how costly and obvious it would be to observers.

I'm open to your guesses, but I'm going to say one thousand innocents in a single place would be sufficiently atrocious. I say this because numbers like 100-200 are thrown around fairly casually when reporting on Ukraine and other locations, so I'm going up one magnitude from that. So 84 trucks working as described could finish this job in one day, releasing 5,500 metric tons of CO2 and consuming 2300+ gallons of fuel to do so. I leave it to the reader to determine whether it's plausible for a military in the midst of a very difficult war to dedicate the human and supply resources necessary to conduct such an operation (at peak efficiency, as described).

At the very least, the movement and fueling of 84 such trucks (or even 30 if we're spending a week doing this) should be observable. We shouldn't have to rely on video from 2013 to make these claims. The video most often shown as proof of Russia's mobile crematories is one of a mobile incinerator, e.g. for trash which can fully combust in minutes.

Hi joebob,

This is a rhetorical or satirical commentary on the fact that media technology, while having the superficial capacity for increasing access to and quality of information, often has the opposite effect of what one might expect despite that capacity. That is, it just as frequently and even more adeptly appears to embed and reinforce deeply pre-existing biases towards false -- even obviously so -- narratives which are comforting or reaffirm the believer's sense that they see through the confusion of world events.

The answers to "by whom", and "so what" questions are not going to be literal answers, just like "at what precise moment did you stop sleeping and become awake this morning" has no true answer, but would only invite a debate over the definitions of sleeping and waking. It's not meant to literally be a story about a time I was told something. I was told many things, by many people, in various forms, over a long period of time.

The comment is meant to provoke the reader to consider that technology -- far from giving man the ability to conquer his nature -- emanates from man's nature, is a servant to it, and can easily serve to reinforce and entrench it. Therefore, one ought to treat technological progress carefully, and not assume that it is equivalent to human progress.

I was told that the age of multimedia would deliver radical transparency, where rumors would be dispelled before they had a chance to propagate, and superstitious beliefs would become untenable.

1. It's not veiled at all.

2. So your opinion is based on even less knowledge than what that article contains?

"Hey can we make it a habit to get a second data point before running with the NYT's account of things?"

"Whoa hey bring it down several notches, extremist."

My only hope is that the NYT grows even larger and more "successful", so that more of you can have the experience of having your field, your work, or you personally written about with their signature erroneous confidence.

It's insane to think that some of you value the words of a person

- who has no relevant experience in anything being discussed,

- works for an outlet which has shown countless times that it cannot reliably and accurately report on nearly any field and

- whose primary experience has been in taking dictation from the FDA

over one of your peers, who

- has worked in the relevant industry, and the relevant company

- puts his name next to his words, and

- has given you a first person account of what he's seen and done, including acknowledging his own blind spots

If your instincts are to invest immovable faith in the belief that the latter is absolutely lying, based on facts related to you by the former, you are epistemically ruined beyond hope.

An earnestly posted, semi-anonymous comment from an HN user claiming to have an insider account should be regarded more highly than a NYT reporter's account, unless/until independent evidence suggests otherwise.

Can we please stop perpetuating the idea that the NYT is a reputable source?

A flippant dismissal of OP's firsthand account requires something a bit more substantial than "I found an article printed in an outlet that has been on a decade-long mission to demonize the tech industry, or any other industry remotely worthy of the term."

They have, at this point, shown they're willing to print nearly anything if it damages their cultural opponents. Any facts they report should prompt corroboration from reputable sources.

Because you can't transact with your net worth.

My point is that your statistic doesn't mean anything to the everyday reality of normal Americans. If I believe that I can achieve my goals, and the facts suggest that I'm right to do so, why should I care that someone else's parents left them their money?

Banging your drum even more loudly doesn't change the fact that you are off beat.

There is significant income mobility in the US, which is why "the one-percent" discourse consistently fails to resonate with Americans. When 73% of Americans have spent at least a year earning a top 20% income [0], focusing on the inherited wealth of others comes off as whining. As long people feel that the pie grows, and that they can move themselves forward, these observations are at best statistical curiosities. They feel very much of a piece with the deboonkers on Twitter who tell the truck owner/operator facing 50% higher gas prices that technically there's no recession.

[0] https://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/20/opinion/sunday/from-rags-...

But if you actually want to have and hold equity in a company you helped build, and want the most favorable tax treatment, you have to

1. accept compensation in ISOs, likely taking a salary hit

2. exercise, and pay AMT in the exercise year on the spread

3. hold until you can sell, but at least for 12+ months so you qualify for LTCG treatment

So you get hit with a lower cash comp in (1) which is an opportunity cost. Then you have to pay taxes in (2) maybe well before the stock is ever liquid in any way. Then you still have to wait for liquidity (3).

Plus normally the company does not tell you, an ordinary employee, when its beginning fundraising. If it did, you could at least time your exercise so as to minimize spread.

Conversely if I want to take a bet on a public company which I have no relationship to, I just buy and hold. Why is it easier to get favorable treatment for a company I have nothing to do with, versus one that I helped build?

N=1 indeed, but I think many are unfamiliar with the anatomical details of certain extreme behaviors, particularly the injuries. It's instructive to see it spelled out, but population-level conclusions shouldn't be drawn.

I suspect this accounts for the discrepancy in their accounting

> more if you count donations of time, physical labor and material

What should a non-profit CEO be paid? If it's someone who attracts top talent in the industry or has the connections to large donors, but they have equal/more passion for getting paid than the mission, what's the right choice?

Surely you can see that "get the best person you can for $40k" has limitations as a hiring strategy.

Yes I understand that. That is only a description of what mental arithmetic you can do if you define your terms arbitrarily conveniently.

"It is possible for a man to provide care" is not the same statement as "it is possible for a sexually dimorphic species in a competitive, capitalistic society (...add more qualifications here) to develop a male-dominated caretaking role"

You're just asserting that you could imagine male nurses without creating a logical contradiction, unlike e.g. circles that have corners. That doesn't mean nursing could be a male-dominated industry under current constraints.

Please don't waste time with this kind of obtuse response. This fact says nothing about why nursing is a female-dominated career. You claim to know that this is just an accidental fact of history or society -- how do you know that?

> subconscious bias due to historical prejudice does have a large effect on society.

The quality of the evidence for this, as with almost all social science and much of psychology, is extremely low bordering on just certified opinions. I would love to understand why you think otherwise.

> Obviously there are things with much larger effects, that doesn't mean that this doesn't exist.

What a hedge. How should we estimate the size of this effect, so that we can accurately measure whether/when the self-appointed hall monitors are doing more harm than good?

How do you know this? Because you can, in your mind, divide the function of a nurse from the statistical reality of nursing?

Are the logical divisions you make in your mind really indicative of anything other than your arbitrary personal preferences?

Correct. Sending a new draft along with a message saying "here are our revisions," is standard contract negotiation. You would have no case that the new terms were consented to.

It's amazing that you people are still arguing this in earnest so far down the thread. Can you think for a second what the implications of this would mean for society, if it were an acceptable form of "negotiation"? It would be even worse for the ordinary little people.

Anyone who has tried to insert a true, but counter narrative, fact into a topical article know where the limits of your description are.

For any popular topic, there are self-appointed watchdogs who will revert edits in bad faith and argue with you on the Talk page until you give up and go away. There aren't enough admins to adjudicate all disputes, so what you're reading on a controversial topic is often the product of the most stubborn arguers.

That's how the sausage is made on WP.

This is some motivated accounting right here. You have no idea what debt financed either of those assets.

Nvidia have always shipped closed-source drivers, despite AMD and Intel providing open source drivers for their GPUs. This made the experience on Linux second class to Windows, where while also closed source, at least you knew that bugs would probably get fixed. Various non-core features simply wouldn't have support on Linux, e.g. Optimus. Also, shipping closed source binaries would limit which kernel you could run to supported versions.

Lastly, of course, this opens the way to non-Linux OSes receiving support as well.

If you just search the web for "Nvidia issues Linux" you'll see quite a few complaints. Particularly from people who have obscure configurations -- they pretty much had no chance of getting anything to work.