simula67

It sends a signal that the Chinese government will defend businesses based on China, which is valuable in itself. It could inspire more Chinese people to setup businesses in China and not migrate to the west, it could encourage businesses in other countries to compete with Chinese businesses on merit and not with threats by their governments etc.

Scott Nelson, who studies the history of American financial collapses, has an interesting story on how he managed to avoid a financial collapse in 2008 by noticing that 'when rates go up and no one knows why it is time to be concerned' : https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=S-_pNxlbz8w&t=50m59s

It was August Coup by Communist hardliners that prevented the renewal of the federation:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1991_Soviet_Union_referendum

It is not OK to fleece anyone 'because they are tourists'.

EDIT: Removed rant

Here in India, taxi hailing apps have been really useful for me in somewhat escaping the deceit and haggling of local autorickshaw and cab drivers.

@Dang, can we have a rule about editing away clickbaity headlines?

The story here seems to be: coffee shops allowed people another venue to socialize and challenge existing power structures.

There is nothing special about Turkish coffee and coffee may not even have been important. As people got educated and had more free time, they may have found other venues to communicate and exchange ideas. 'Increasing leisure time and freedom destroyed an autocratic empire' may be a more accurate and still interesting headline that takes the discussion away from complaints about the headline.

That was probably coming for a long time. USA withdrew from the ABM treaty under Bush: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Ballistic_Missile_Treaty

Previously argued : https://medium.com/swlh/y-combinator-not-lambda-school-is-un...

The nuclear controls appear to be air gapped : https://twitter.com/suryaceg/status/1189080266066649088

> Taylor had an even more practical reason to crave a network. He was regularly getting requests from researchers around the country for funds to buy bigger and better mainframe computers.

> Taylor talked ARPA director Charles Herzfeld into allocating a million dollars for R&D into a new network to connect the computers at MIT, UCLA, SRI, and many other sites. Herzfeld got the money by redirecting it from a ballistic missile research program into the ARPA budget. The cost was justified within DoD circles by saying that ARPA was tasked with building a “survivable” network that wouldn’t go down if any specific part was destroyed, perhaps in a nuclear attack.

This story seems very similar to the Unix story[1]. Ritchie and Thompson wanted to play Space Travel and started building Unix. Eventually, management invested for a different reason: they wanted a good system for text processing of patent applications.

I guess in the early days, no one saw the potential of computers and networking. Therefore there had to be a weird convergence of interests of various stakeholders for projects to get off the ground.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Unix

From the linked article :

> in 1987, the Indian government summoned Anderson, eight other executives and two company affiliates with homicide charges to appear in Indian court. In response, Union Carbide said the company is not under Indian jurisdiction.

Union Carbide was an American company that happened to operate in India. Indian government does need help from the American government to police an American company.

I think that comments like 'Fix the toilets first' when ISRO achieves a new milestone is careless because space research has serious defence implications. India is surrounded by multiple hostile and semi-hostile countries and should be able to deter certain actions from other countries. Only when people feel safe and secure can they start building and progressing.

However, I think comments like this only further darken the image of Indians to westerners. India is, on average, a very bad place to live. For example, India's state with highest HDI -Kerala ( where I am from )- is only comparable to certain Eastern European states.

And despite this positive news about startup funding, there has been massive capital flights from India in the recent years.

We have serious problems. Acknowledging them is the first step to solving them.

Lying requires intent. For example, if I did not follow the US elections, thought that the President was still Barrack Obama and someone asked me who the President was and I said 'Barrack Obama', I would be wrong, but most people would not insist that I am lying. Lying is a moral statement about a person or an organization. The truth or untruth is largely secondary.

Although I have not tried it, there is also an office suite from KDE called Calligra : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calligra

I am also not a resident of these countries but I also don't think you are that far off. Noam Chomsky talked about this[1] a long time ago. Lies of omission etc are more common in "free" societies. My own view of this is that if you are only presented one side of the story, you are not really free as you are not making an informed choice. Sadly, it is widely accepted everywhere ( even in "liberal" societies ) that certain elites should define what is good and bad and then present it to us in an absolute manner, through deception, if necessary.

[1]https://youtu.be/kusAX4Th4N8

Zippy Catholic has a FAQ on this : https://zippycatholic.wordpress.com/2014/11/10/usury-faq-or-...

His claim seems to be that usury is when interest is charged on loans where the lender has full recourse to the borrower in case of default.

I think you are subscribing to a view called scientism[1]. If that is so, I would encourage you to read books like "Alchemy of Finance" by George Soros [2] which contains serious arguments against that position. You could also listen to David Wood or Edward Feser on YouTube if you are pressed for time.

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientism

[2] https://www.amazon.com/Alchemy-Finance-George-Soros/dp/81265...

It is possible to think critically even if you are Catholic. For example, here is a book that goes through some logical arguments for God's existence: https://www.amazon.com/Five-Proofs-Existence-Edward-Feser/dp...

You can listen to Edward Feser on youtube for some the reasoning behind Catholic dogma.

The difference with Japan is that while they have a large amount of debt, they also have large amounts of assets. Japan is the world's largest creditor nation : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Net_international_investment_p.... If you look at that list, you will find that US is the most indebted country in the world and that many Western countries tend to be very indebted.

"Selling debt" is a euphemism for "selling bonds".

Thank you. This is such an important topic and I wish more Americans understood and discussed this.

> [all consumers' discretionary income they'd be willing to spend] is likely a small fraction of the size of [all commercial companies' marketing budgets]

Assuming you meant all spending, this cannot be true, because all marketing budgets are paid out of people's spending. You are paying for advertisements, they are included in prices of goods and services you buy.

The problem with fiat currencies is that there is just a little too much temptation to print a truckload when there are "emergencies". This often causes hyperinflation or massive inequality leading to the rise of populism and democratic backsliding.

Does it have replaceable parts? I am willing to pay good money for a computer just like Mac, but which can be upgraded piece by piece.

> Personally, I'd counter it was the inequality compression caused by WWII that lead to the prosperity of the 50s and 60s.

I think it was the entire productive capacity of the remaining world being bombed to destruction was the reason the USA experienced prosperity during that period. The US dollar becoming the international reserve currency probably helped also.

To be fair, sometimes small looking differences can have a huge impact over long periods of time.

And he lost

In my opinion, the biggest problem facing Python is still concurrency. The mitigation efforts still look to me like Perl's 'bolted on' implementation of object orientation. Python should have gotten rid of the GIL during the 2 to 3 transition. It may have also been an opportune moment to introduce optional typing and maybe even optional manual memory management, making it useful to develop almost all kinds of software. Write a WASM backend and it could have even been used for front end development.

China burned through almost $1 trillion in US treasuries defending the peg when the Yuan depreciated last time[1]. They were "manipulating" the currency to make it stronger.

This time they did nothing, and they are being accused of being a currency manipulator. It is insane.

[1] https://www.scmp.com/business/banking-finance/article/207131...