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> Why Democracies Are Turning Against Chinese Influence

"Democracies"? I get that foreign affairs is a propaganda think tank, but I wish they'd be more honest. People aren't uneducated saps anymore.

"why some in the west and others are working to contain china"? would be a better title. Has nothing to do with "democracies".

It's not a recent phenomenon. It's not just democracies. Some autocrats also are against chinese influence.

But this also applies to every nation. Many democracies and non-democracies are turning against european "influence". Many democracies and non-democracies are turning against american "influence". The same for russia and their former sphere of influence nations. No country wants to be under the thumb of another country.

The only difference between china and the US/EU/Russia is that china doesn't bomb and invade democracies or non-democracies to "bring them freedom". At least not yet.

Nothing this article stated is new. Essentially, water is wet but propagandized to make it seem our water is better or their is worse.

> - options pricing in move of almost 10%

The options sellers win again. Collect them juicy premiums boys. Like stealing candy from a baby.

> - North America DAU was relativly flat

Shocking considering the dozens of articles saying everyone was leaving FB.

> - What is FB doing with US mid terms coming up?

Probably making bank on all that political ad spending. Apparently a few records being set for funding raising for midterm. A lot of it has to be going into online ads.

> The best solution, and currently in effect as law in many European countries, would be to stop political ads altogether on Facebook and the Web.

I disagree. Not only is that against the first amendment and it is discriminatory. Why should political ads be allowed on other platforms, but not on social media or the web? And why should non-political ads allowed on social media or the web?

Maybe tightening up ad selection, but banning ads or speech isn't the answer.

9000 porn sites? I can understand that if his job involved researching porn. Otherwise, who has time to visit that many websites at their job? Where does he find the time to do actual work with his busy porn-viewing schedule?

And most importantly, why is there no mention of termination of employment? How can someone spend all day at work browsing porn and jeopardize the network with malware/viruses and still be employed?

> Well, we can see how well the Japanese are doing with their "scientific research" whale killing, which is really bad as they are using it as a excuse to continue the practice.

The whales they research aren't endangered. Also, other nations and people hunt whales.

> Similar loopholes will be found here, for example: if i capture a rhino and send it to a farm for 1 week, is it now a animal that we can do "research" on? What about 1 month?

That's a possibility. But more likely, it'll create more tiger/rhino "farms". Whether that is a good thing or a bad thing is debatable just like trophy hunting.

Also, the threat to tigers and rhinos aren't poachers. It's loss of habitat due to human population growth. Where humans live in numbers, it's hard to have tigers and rhinos around because they can easily kill humans. It's why most tigers and rhinos in the world today are in zoos or wildlife enclosures.

Yes and Power9.

> There's a lot of space to go around though

Not really. There is a finite amount of arable rich land which can support life. A lot of "space" is frozen or desertified wasteland.

> most of it undeveloped for e.g. agriculture

Agriculture is the most destructive human enterprise. Most of the animals ( insects and rodents ) that are killed are due to agriculture. You have to kill all the animals in the land to create a farm. Then you have to constantly spray insecticide and herbicides to keep animals and weeds off the farm.

> and a lot of developed space is under-utilized due to focusing on livestock.

Raising livestock is far less destructive than agriculture. Primarily predators like coyotes, wolves and bears are victims of raising livestock.

Most of the environmental damage so far has been done by the wealthy developed countries to maintain a high standard of living. Most of the population growth is in the underdeveloper world that hope to be developed.

What's really worrying is that the 5.5 billion people in underdeveloped countries want the high living standards of 1.5 billion people in the developed countries. This will put incredible strain on the environment and resources.

Technological advancements will help but technology can only do so much. We already see this with china. They are developing and getting richer and they want to drive cars, have AC/refigerators/computers, eat more meat, etc like americans or europeans. And who can blame them. Why shouldn't they have the same living standards? Soon, ASEAN, india, africa, etc will want the high living standards as well.

Can 7 billion people ( soon to be 9 billion ) live like americans or europeans? Also, as the chinese, indians, africans, etc get higher living standards, wouldn't we want even higher living standards? Will we reach any resource limits?

> Whereas on the same exact screen, firefox/chromium are gateways to madness.

Oh my god, what hyperbole. This is like the cringey hyperbole equating rock 'n roll with devil music back in the 50s.

Things will be fine. Every older generation thinks the newer generation is "mad". It's not the end of the world.

Is hacker news mostly grandparents now? Just worried about every new technology? So many comments here feel like my grandparents talking.

It's so sad how old and scared HN has gotten. HN isn't supposed to be like it.

> I was an avid "gamer" growing up. I wasn't always the most responsible with it. Probably overdid it a lot. But I can see with my own child, this is a different ball-game altogether.

People said the same thing about WoW and Everquest and pretty much every video game. Go back far enough people said the same thing about nintendo and gameboy. Every generation thinks they are unique. You aren't unique. Your father thought the exact same thing as you are thinking right now. The more things change, the more they stay the same.

> Not sure what the fix is either, other than ruthless enforcement of quotas.

How about being a parent rather than blaming games. It's always human nature to blame others for one's own failings.

Now it's social media and smartphone games. Before that it was people were blaming video games, simpsons, south park, mtv, etc for violence, dumbing down kids, etc. In 10 years, it'll be something else. Maybe virtual reality or sex dolls. Who knows. The same complaints, different products.

> Kind of funny how the NYT publishes the original story to generate outrage

The older I get, I realize that more often than not, these companies don't report the news, they create/generate/manufacture the news. Half the time, news is actually a manufactured product for consumption no different than a movie or a song and the other half, it's political advocacy. There isn't much news in the news industry.

> then after successfully doing so to an extent, cherry-picks examples of the outrage in order to generate yet another article that is apparently worth publishing.

And voila, they are bumped to the frontpage every single time. It's like watching a world class magician ply their trade.

> I'm sorry but this is simply incorrect, I mean it's not even close.

It isn't incorrect. It's history. Europeans have been colonizing east asia for a long time. China and most of asia consider what the europeans did to them the "age of humiliation".

> It was, for example, banned at the Beijing Olympics. Please don't try this but if you went outside in many East Asian countries with a big Rising Sun Flag you might not even make it down the street.

I agree. But that's politics rather than history.

> Second, the Japanese Empire was not at all like the British, French or Spanish in East Asia.

You are right. Lots of nationalists in asia credit the japanese for ending european colonization in asia. So it is different.

> Japanese conquest and war is remembered as catastrophic and evil

For political reason, not historical reason.

> Please, ask a Chinese, Korean, Taiwanese, Vietnamese what they think.

What makes you think I haven't?

As I said, for political expediency, it is easier for asians to scapegoat the japanese, but many educated asians respect what the japanese did to rid asia of european colonization.

That doesn't mean they don't abhor what the japanese empire did to them. It just means they appreciate that the japanese helped end european/white domination of asia.

After all, the japanese were the first asian nation to defeat a european power. And it's why most of asia ( including china ) model themselves after japan to a degree.

You are mistaking optics political expediency for history and reality.

> in much of East Asia the Rising Sun Flag is seen as a symbol of oppression and Japanese imperialism

The british flag, spanish flag, french flag, russian flag and even the american flag are greater symbols of oppression and imperialism in east asia. I don't think we are going to be changing flags anytime soon. The greatest and most oppressive imperialists in asia wasn't the japanese after all. It was mostly europeans with a dash of american imperialism thrown in the mix.

But that's besides the point. Also, how about letting the east asians decide amongst themselves what they find offensive. No sense in us being offended on their behalf.

Just like programming languages can only have two out of three concepts ( soundness, completeness, decidability ), the creators of the internet had to choose two out of three concepts ( openness, robustness, security ).

It's theoretically impossible to have a language that is sound, complete and decidable. It's probably also impossible to have an internet that is open, robust and secure.

Anyone know if tuition costs are part of inflation?

> Google is a company that has explicitly stated its ethics over and over and over.

Isn't it usually the company or person who shouts loudly about virtue that end up being the least virtuous? Whether it is the most vocal anti-gay republican who is caught having sex with a man in an airport bathroom or the most vocal pro-woman and anti-racist democrat DA who is found to have assaulted his "brown slave".

This is why I roll my eyes whenever someone talks in a virtuous evangelical manner. It usually hides a guilty conscious. ( Ahem, cough such as Tim Cook's recent media blitz about privacy )

> Now, due to the cover-up this looks awful. I just don't understand it.

Maybe rubin knows a thing or two about the co-founders or top execs in the company. The reason why execs get glorious golden parachutes isn't because they were such hard working people, it's because they know too much and you want them to be quiet and beholden to you.

Keep in mind that it isn't a secret in the tech industry ( especially silicon valley ) that people use their position for sex. Many times it's reciprocal. One side gets sex, the other side gets cushy jobs/advancement/etc.

Maybe Rubin knews $90 million worth of secrets?

> Waking up early is good for your career interests given that you work in a capitalist system, but not good for your other interests

Isn't that the gist of the article? Whether you serve capitalism or whether capitalism serves you?

It's like industrial farming. Do the cows exist to serve the farm or does the farm exist to serve the cows?

Maybe both? Who knows.

> Why would an entire country that’s not undergoing a war or revolution stop speaking a language basically all educated people speak?

Usually nationalism and self-interest. It's why england switched from norman french to english a few hundred years ago. It's also why kazahkstan switched from cryllic to latin alphabet recently and has been pushing for kazakh and english education to the detriment of russian.

> Where is the political benefit in doing so?

To get rid of their former foreign masters' language? As france's power and influence continues to wane, what incentive is there for africans to hold onto a language forced upon them by colonizers? The french language is a symbol of humiliation for a lot of african and asian countries and their elites. Especially the nationalists.

I'm not saying it will happen, but it could. Especially if france declines further and the political and financial incentive to stick to french disappears.

Google has changed it's search to favor corporate interests. It doesn't reflect the real internet anymore.

Search for movies, you get a list of newspaper reviews instead of the forums or independent reviews. Everything, even recipes, gets links to newspapers. It's so useless now.

What I do is "-news" or add "forum, reddit, etc" in my searches. Or I just simply jump to page 5 of the search result. Or I started to use duckduckgo more.

The same thing with youtube. If an event happens, I used to just search for the event and I'd get the most revelant/most viewed links. Now, it's pages of CNN, MSNBC, WashingtonPost, NYTimes, etc links.

It seems like google just wants to be a glorified newstand. I can't believe how horrible it has gotten. It takes effort to get what you want now.

Yeah. Both numbers seem very low. Are they confusing monthly visitors with page views?

Pretty sure on DEC 2014, the monthly page view for reddit would be near a billion and HN would be in the tens of millions.

> Looking at the official languages of countries, French

Countries with french as an official language only have a total population of 434 million people. And a few of them, like canada, has english as an official language as well. Also, most of the francophile countries are small former african colonies which may one day give up french as an official language and move to english or a native language.

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

French language's geographical and population reach is smaller than china's. The same applies for arabic and spanish.

> and Chinese (Mandarin) indeed largely useless outside greater China.

Which is true, but greater china accounts for a significant amount of land and people.

French, Arabic and Spanish account for 1.3 billion people. China alone has 1.4 billion people.

But this is a moot point since the french, arabs, spaniards and chinese are all desperate to learn english since english ( for the time being ) is the language of culture, science and business. I don't see chinese, french, arabic or spanish unseating english as the world's language.

It's the neverending battle between the short side and longs when it comes to TSLA. Whenever there is some negative news, the shorts just spam social media. The same with the longs.

> Scientists often abhor citing from blogs, forums, and Wikipedia, as those publications "are not peer-reviewed by trustworthy professionals".

Which is sad because most peer-reviewed material are not trustworthy either.

https://bigthink.com/neurobonkers/believe-it-or-not-most-pub...

https://journals.plos.org/plosmedicine/article?id=10.1371/jo...

It's worrying that academia is slowly turning into a rigid "appeal to authority" church rather than a space for truth and inquiry.

Basically when the quality of writers declined and when everyone was going through the motions for money. It got old, stale and boring.

> Anand basically argued that the global elite spends a lot of time looking for ways to help the global impoverished

I have a hard time believing this. The elite spend a lot of time looking for ways to help themselves. The elite spend a lot of time looking to enrich themselves. The elite didn't become the elite by being charitable or caring or thinking of others.

Also, I don't think this "nature" is just confined to the elite. Everyone is selfish.

> but fails to make an impact because they never consider solutions that would erode their own wealth/status.

People who love wealth and power don't want to diminish their wealth and power?

I basically agree with the guy but nothing he said is new or insightful.

> I'm zero'ing in on your use of the word 'extremism' because it's a loaded term meant to paint your target as outrageous and unreasonable.

It's not. I'm using it the same way far-left journalists use it. If sargon and dankula are extremists, so are they.

> That said you also mentioned protests as a form of extremism. That's worrying.

I mention antifa and protests for a reason. Seeing as how invested you seem to be, it's obvious to me you already know what I am talking about. As I said, if you truly don't know what I'm talking about, you could easily google it yourself. There are plenty of evidence of violence by the lunatic extremist left supported by the far left media.

I normally would never link to a washingtonpost article but I suspect it's the only one you'd accept.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2017/08/2...

> and atheists in the USA seem to have some sort of uphill battle to be recognised as people who could be vaguely competent at anything.

If you are from the UK, what could you possibly know about the US? I'm atheist and have been since 12 or so. My parents are christian. Never had any issues like you described in my entire life.

Stop believing exaggerated nonsense from for-profit companies like the new yorker as truths. It's more clickbait fiction than anything.

Sure the US may be more religious than other countries. But there are plenty of atheists and agnostics and every other religion and non-religions around. And people get along fine.

Frankly, my perception of the UK ( which I've never visited but I've read about so that makes an exper ) is that the atheists in the UK are far more zealous and militant than the religious in the US. But I'm guessing I know as much about the UK as you do about the US.

> Putting aside that it's a slippery and malleable label to apply to undesirable speech, there is an elitism hiding in these ban-hate-speech arguments.

It's also about control. The biggest whiners about "hate speech" are the media and news companies. Because they want to control what people see and hear. They don't care about hate speech, they just want to be able to control which hate speech the masses get to see.

It's patronizing, it's paternalistic and it's also puritanically authoritarian. It's evil.

> "Tech companies" is just way too broad a designation to use here. No one is seriously asking Apple to police hate speech in iMessage or Facetime, for instance, or Verizon to police hate speech in SMS.

Sure they are. Microsoft is even monitoring their service for "bad words".

https://boston.cbslocal.com/2018/03/27/microsoft-ban-offensi...

> What people are concerned about are the newsfeeds and timelines, specifically.

No. That's a small part of what primarily the left want to censor.

> It's silly to worry about giving these products "the power to determine what people can—and can’t—say online." They've already seized it for themselves--by deciding for me which content will show up in my newsfeed/timeline/suggested list. They decide which content gets promoted to me.

Which you can choose to ignore or bypass.

> So if you build a publishing system designed solely to maximize engagement, it's going to become a system that preferentially serves content that feeds negative emotions.

Then why aren't you demanding CNN or the NYTimes be censored?

> The companies doing this need to accept their responsibility for what they decide to serve and promote.

They are. They are serving what their customers want.

The only people who are complaining about it are authoritarian and selfish individuals who want to control what people see and say. It's no different than a prude whining about the porn people watch.

> Can you give an example of far-left extremism in the media?

By far-left extremism in the media, I'm saying that the media is far-left extremist.

> I haven't seen any communist bomb threats lately.

Google antifa and protests. But I have a feeling you already knew that.