thisislife2

Interesting. My friends and I were recently discussing the rise of right-wing parties and leaders around the world, and we observed that many of these controversial elected leaders also have an "Anarchist" trait. These leaders have enacted policies that deliberately cause a lot of social and / or economic upheaval - bordering on anarchy - which have ultimately resulted in mass transfer of wealth from the lower classes to the rich, and widened the gap between the poor and the rich. And, unsurprisingly, many of these right-wing parties and leaders are backed billionaires (and now trillionaires). Factor in the role of BigTech and their social media platforms, that have aided their rise, it does seem like even these corporate leaders who aren't necessarily enamoured by such political ideologies still feel the need to tacitly support them because they recognise that it provides them more opportunities for capitalistic exploitation ...

The point still stands - Telecoms have been subsidised by public money. And we further subsidise WhatsApp by paying for an internet connection to use it.

Ok. And do you think Meta / WhatsApp is any different from any of those Telecoms? Just because WhatsApp is "free" doesn't mean it's a non-profit service from Meta!

Telecoms financed and built the communication infrastructure which made the internet (and thus, WhatsApp) possible. WhatsApp is also further subsidised because you also pay for the internet to use it.

@timming is right. This particular incident was triggered because Oman announced a parallel route in Strait, and some ships were lead to believe that you don't need to talk / coordinate with Iran to use this new route. See this thread for more details - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48692620

> ... the general pattern I think is just the media turning every word coming from him into a weapon

Oh, "polarised" media now seems to be the norm around the world, and not just the US. So at one end, you have Fox News parroting Republican conservatism, while the Washington Post peddles for the Democrat Right- (here's one such example of the Washington Post engaging in pointless Trump bashing without a meaningful journalistic examination of the whole issue - https://www.19fortyfive.com/2025/02/could-ukraine-have-avoid... ). The whole idea of dispassionate, if not neutral, journalism is dead today because of corporate owned media and BigTech's stranglehold on social media through which modern "news" spreads.

Also, most politically aware Americans know that there is an unspoken bi-partisan rule in the western / US media - you can never criticise Israel without prior political approval. (AIPAC, and other Israeli pressure groups, further offer incentives through ad spends to ensure this kind of media compliancy). When you factor that too into the equation, it becomes clear why Trump has become the punching bag in the media. Out of the two actors in this conflict - Israel and the US / Trump - that the Americans / west care about, the US media can act unrestrained against only one of them. Thus, the current US administration bears the brunt. And it doesn't help that it is election season too, as that is when the US media tend to be the most polarised ...

> I'm more concerned about how people see the adversary ...

Here, you cannot ignore the other irrational actor involved - Israel / Netanyahu.

Sympathy for Iran, in the west, mainly stems from comparison to Israel whose current leaders and soldiers have unfortunately projected the worst of humanity with its vulgarity and depravity in its ongoing war. If this were just a conflict between Iran and the US, Iran wouldn't have been able to arouse so much sympathy for itself. But Israel / Netanyahu have muddied the water so much with their ongoing genocide that anyone associated with them cannot escape the taint too. You'd think their blood lust would have been satisfied with the 20,000+ children they've already killed ( https://news.un.org/en/story/2026/06/1167790 ) , but no, the IDF nutcases are now shooting babies too ( https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/jun/10/palestinian-ba... ) - don't Iranians look like saints in comparison to that?.

(Disclaimer: I too sympathise with the Palestinians and Iranians now, where as I was indifferent towards them before).

The terms of the recent US-Lebanon-Israel agreement guarantees a future civil war in Lebanon that will further destabilise it for the benefit of Israel. Apparently, Israel has to vacate the Lebanese territories it recently captured and occupies only when the Lebanese army manages to fully "disarm" and "demilitarise" Hezbollah (with some support from the Israel military).

Most of the Trump bashing online is indeed based on some political ignorance of how he operates (or just the usual propaganda from the opposition). In some ways, Trump's team is to blame for this because when you deliberately ignore established political conventions, you automatically bring more attention to yourself. Now, Trump does want that attention and believes he politically benefits from it. But, as your dismay as a supporter suggests, everyone is discovering that this kind of attention is double-edged and not always necessarily positive for him. Is that a fair point?

Now, on the current Iran affair, whether you like Trump or not, you have to agree that it hasn't gone as planned. If you wish to discuss this you should share more details - please outline, honestly, which criticism directed at Trump are reasonable and which one are really unjustified, in your opinion?

It will be interesting to see what the Russians do to Apple in response. Google / Youtube already owes $20,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 [1] in Russian fines :).

Banning local apps from the App Store is a good way to bring regulatory scrutiny and make countries take their digital sovereignty seriously. Russia has already re-designed its internet Chinese style to ensure it can function "independently" (i.e. can be cut-off from international networks and work locally). They've already purchased a mobile OS that they customise (SailfishOS forked as AuroraOS [2]) and have mandated it on all official government phones. They have also been trying to create a development ecosystem around it through the "Open Mobile Platform".

[1]: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cdxvnwkl5kgo [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aurora_OS_(Russian_mobile_plat...

Oman is small state in the region with not much influence other than what the regional and superpowers allow it.

It was diplomatically smart for Iran to rope in Oman on its future plans for the administration of the Strait as the involvement of multiple states makes it a more regional security-economic undertaking, giving it more credence and making it harder to oppose at least some aspect of the arrangement. (Oman can't really say no here as Iran is a regional power with whom it does have to cooperate and share the Strait).

The US has tried to outmanoeuvre Iran by pressuring Oman to not cooperate with Iran and join its own "regional" system of administrating the Strait, that excludes Iran. (Oman, again has no choice here as it cannot say no to a superpower). And so we now see Oman announcing a temporary parallel "transit corridor" within the Strait (perhaps as a precursor to this), with the International Maritime Organization. Here IMO has been made the authority that ships will communicate with to go through the Strait. The temporary association with IMO is to give Muscat some diplomatic cover from Iran which is naturally all pissed about this, as it recognises that the whole idea particularly seeks to undermine what was stated in the Islamabad MoU - that Iran will coordinate the passage of ships during the 60 days.

(That is why this recent firing, and retaliation, occurred. Iran has already won a temporary minor victory as IMO has now announced that it is temporarily backing out. But the US has gained a good advantage too now as this places Iran in a very difficult position on how to deal with Oman and future negotiations on the Strait).

As the weaker party, Oman is just going along for the ride and trying hard not to get caught between the Israel / US and Iran political and military confrontation. As far as it is concerned, if Tehran manages to pull this off, Muscat will also benefit economically and politically. If Washington pulls its off, Muscat will still benefit politically as it will control the Strait (by proxy for the US). If both fail, Muscat still benefits as status quo remains while its ties with both countries improves and its own regional standing increases a bit due to the increased international exposure from all this activity.

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As for what it means for the future of maritime routes, note that historically tolls along certain routes / Straits was quite common before the west became a maritime and imperial power. The only reason that they abolished it is because the imperial powers did most of the trading (and the west still does) and so they paid the most tolls. Today too, the west would have to pay a lot more on tolls and that is why they continue opposing it, as do some other emerging economies. But if you favour capitalism, why shouldn't a country be allowed to charge a toll - what makes a narrow sea route, under sovereign control, different from a land route?

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1. Oman, Iran form ‘joint working group’ on future management of Strait of Hormuz - https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20260623-oman-iran-form-jo...

2. Strait of Hormuz as strategic red line: Why Iran must confront Oman's corridor plan and Trump's threats - https://www.presstv.ir/Detail/2026/06/25/771078/strait-hormu...

3. Oman with IMO announces transit corridor in Strait of Hormuz - https://thepeninsulaqatar.com/article/24/06/2026/oman-with-i...

4. IMO pauses evacuation in Strait of Hormuz following attack - https://www.imo.org/en/mediacentre/pressbriefings/pages/stat...

5. Freedom of Navigation - https://sites.tufts.edu/lawofthesea/chapter-three/

> “The MOU was a one-and-a-half-page document where ambiguity was the feature and not the bug,” he explained. “There was a lot of ambiguity to be filled in later.” ... Erye said Iran agreed to allow traffic to resume — but under its administration and with its permission. That clashed with the US vision for the strait.

As the US Diplomat points out the MoU is ambiguous about many things, but section 5 of the MoU is clear that Iran agreed to allow shipping only under its administration, at least for the 60 days period (with passage in the future to be negotiated later):

> 5. Upon the signing of this MoU, the Islamic Republic of Iran will make arrangements using its best efforts for the safe passage of commercial vessels, with no charge for 60 days only, from the Persian Gulf to the Sea of Oman, and vice versa. The traffic of commercial vessels will immediately start, and considering the need for removing the technical and military obstacles, and de-mining by the Islamic Republic of Iran, will be instated within 30 days. The Islamic Republic of Iran will conduct dialogue with the Sultanate of Oman, to define the future administration and maritime services in the Strait of Hormuz, in discussions with other Persian Gulf Littoral States, in line with applicable international law and the sovereign rights of coastal states of the Strait of Hormuz.

An Iranian diplomat has also reiterated this - Senior Iranian diplomat says ceasefire agreement with US requires ships passing the strait of Hormuz to coordinate with Iran - https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/live/2026/jun/26/trump-n... .

No. Iran has confirmed it attacked the commercial vessel (fired "warning shots" at it), and the US has officially clarified that it did retaliate in response to this. It was just the Americans and the British testing to see how desperate Iran is to conclude a treaty and how much it could be pressured to concede further. As the Guardian reports - "The Ever Lovely, the cargo ship that was struck, had been following a route through the strait recommended by the United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations when it was struck, the ship’s owner, Evergreen, said." (The UKMTO was created by the UK Royal navy).

Iranian media reports strike on pier in southern Iran near strait of Hormuz - https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/live/2026/jun/26/trump-n...

This the actual link to the PR - https://news.adobe.com/news/2026/06/adobe-to-acquire-topaz-l...

(Note: PressTV is affiliated with Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting, the only organisation legally able to transmit radio and TV broadcasts in Iran aka "official" government propaganda).

I too wanted to make this point. In art and designing, copying is how you learn and how you kick start your creativity and innovativeness.

Yes, Apple is quite selfish when it comes to open source. They avoid GPL license code because they only want to selectively share their code, which is one of the reason they now avoid GCC and stopped utilising GNU Coreutils in their OSes. It supports developments of some popular opensource apps (like Blender) because it is very popular and not having it on its platform hurts it. And now, by charging developers an annual fee for distribution through App Stores, they also prevent many non-commercial open source applications from being available on the App Store. As Apple also further makes money from any commercial apps through the app store (by extorting a commission from them), it doesn't really want such popular free opensource apps to compete with the commercial apps - every time someone uses one of these free apps, Apple also loses money. Thus, by gatekeeping distribution Apple now effectively cripples the growth of open source applications on its platform. (The only reason a few of it - like VLC, for example - still survives on the App Store is because some kind people donate the money to pay Apple's fees - a waste of money and a shameful act for a trillion dollar company).

So "free DNS hosting" is misleading marketing? (I signed up but wasn't asked for credit card info).

Seriously? This made me lol.

Someone once told me that American work culture used to be based more on intern-ship / apprentice type hiring but now obsess with formal degrees. I wonder how much of this shift in culture is influenced by the Korean, Chinese and Indian immigrants, as a formal education is a prerequisite to compete in these countries' job market? For example, it is quite common in India for employers to ask for our 10th and 12th standard marks / grade (because these are national exams) along with college grades - to apparently gauge "Consistency". Fluctuating performance, a break or dropout years all negatively impact you and can be nerve wracking for many freshers, until they manage to get some work experience. It is somewhat disappointing to see this culture permeate to America too, even though I feel quite conflicted about it - after all, everyone does want to hire the best / most competent / reliable candidate; but the other approach - a vocational kind of training - also has its merits and seems to have served American companies well too. (Zoho in India is experimenting with this kind of hiring in India where they are hiring high-school students, mainly from rural areas, and offering them a work cum study program. They don't get any formal diploma or degree though - https://www.zohoschools.com/ ).

JLR is also owned by Tata ( https://www.tata.com/business/jlr ).

How viable is Solar in Canada given its weather? (I am ignorant about it and only know that it's really cold and cloudy most of the time).

Unfortunately, the only way to be a top notch expert, with mastery over the art or sports, is to start young and with disciplined practice. Does it mean necessarily sacrificing childhood? I am unsure. Michael Jackson comes to mind as he has publicly commented that he didn't have a normal childhood. Jackie Chan also had a hard life as a child, training from a young age but he doesn't seem to resent it as much. However, he doesn't have a good relationship with his kids perhaps because he expected them to go through the same kind of hardship he did (it was normalised for him?)? Russian gymnasts and ballet dancers also train at a very young age.

I guess it's a question many parents struggle with a lot - how much should you push your kids because sometimes it seems kids do waste a lot of time.

Try PaleMoon - https://www.palemoon.org/download.shtml - it is the version meant for "modern" OSes. Powerfox shares a heritage with it as it is based on its rendering engine, Goanna (Palemoon -> Basilisk -> Powerfox).

Don't know about Powerfox / Basilisk, but Palemoon developers have outlined How are security vulnerabilities handled? - https://forum.palemoon.org/viewtopic.php?f=24&t=23577 - in their FAQ. As both Palemoon and Basilisk do share codes from each other, as they started from a common codebase, I am guessing that most Palemoon fixes also apply to it.

(Then again, Powerfox is meant to run on OSes that have been EOLed for more than a decade now ... so I am not sure how secure a browser, any browser, will be running on it. :)

While this article claims, "Durov offered no proof for his theory ...", this article - https://thewire.in/tech/telegram-ceo-alleges-reliance-used-b... - points out that Durov did share screenshots from a "BGP toolkit" to substantiate his point. (Also, Durov has claimed that they are sabotaging access to Telegram users outside India; Telegram is already temporarily banned in India for a week ...).

Here's the X Thread - https://xcancel.com/durov/status/2066945969854234977

Yup. The only browsers that still support Flash.

Lookup PaleMoon and Basilisk in Wikipedia. The codebase of Goanna has diverged from Firefox / Gecko a lot, so trying to compare by versions won't tell you much. PaleMoon Goanna is regularly updated and supports nearly all the feature sets of a modern browser rendering engine and is feature compatible with Firefox / Gecko though it doesn't support webRTC - https://forum.palemoon.org/viewtopic.php?t=28182, DRM and webExtensions ... https://www.palemoon.org/technical.shtml

This is actually based on the Goanna web engine (a fork of the Firefox / Gecko web engine) derived from the https://www.basilisk-browser.org/ . You can find out more here - https://forum.palemoon.org/viewtopic.php?f=69&p=275829#p2758... .

Manufacturers do price according to volume. So why doesn't Jolla or Commodore plan a business strategy that focuses on increasing the volume? If $500 get you maybe 1500-2000 pre-orders, $300 may get you 5000+ orders. Sacrifice the profit margins somewhat, initially, to increase the user-base and revenue. Then use the userbase and revenue to get more investors. Currently, everyone targeting the "privacy" or "mindfulness" consumer market is just focusing on an even smaller segment among them (only the HNIs) with premium pricing. This business strategy is flawed. Look at any of the competitors - Light Phone III ($700+), Balance Phone Pro ($800+), Minimal Phone ($500+), Clicks Communicator ($500+), Fairphone 6 ($800+) - how many of them have actually succeeded growing their userbase, since their launch? How much can they really grow with that pricing, especially with the sub-optimal hardware and software (compared to their competitors) their users have to continue struggling with?

Some of you may argue the hardware is customised and developed in-house and that should justify the premium pricing. I would question the business logic of that decision. If the hardware isn't offering anything new (and as far as I can tell it isn't) that isn't already available in the market, why do you want to waste scarce resource on custom solutions instead of using cheaper, readily available designs? It is common knowledge that the consumer mobile device segment is highly competitive, profit margins thin and thus you need high volumes for long-term profitability. Thus, a business strategy that doesn't plan and prioritise for volumes is bound to struggle.

(I am sure there are many factors of this industry that I am ignorant about ... I was just thinking out aloud ...)

Trump's mishandling of the Israel-Iran war will be a great case study in international politics. But blaming Trump for Netanyahu's derangement is ill-thought. Even a Democrat President wouldn't have been able to reign him. In fact, once Biden / Harris allowed him to massacre the Palestinians in Gaza (remember, Biden publicly supported Netanyahu by announcing to the world that there is "no genocide in Gaza" - https://www.politico.com/news/2024/05/20/biden-gaza-not-geno... ), the US had already lost the plot to Netanyahu's mis-adventurism. I think at one point he was making his army fight in 7-8 fronts! Under him, Israel's army is now considering occupying territories in Gaza, Syria and Lebanon when their military resources and personnel are already overstretched (Israel has what 9-10 million population?). If you read Netanyahu's history, you will discover that he has been progressively getting radicalised in his political views - a brilliant man ( Professor recalls Netanyahu's intense studies in three fields - https://news.mit.edu/1996/netanyahu-0605 ), he started out as a moderate-right, who increasingly turned to conservatism when his political ideas didn't receive the reception he desired. And now finally, the pressures of the criminal charges and security failures of the now infamous Hamas attack (which he and his government is responsible for) has now fully radicalised him into a full-blown religious fundamentalist fascist as the ongoing genocide in Gaza, West Bank and Lebanon testifies to it ('Angel of destruction': What made Benjamin Netanyahu? - https://www.middleeasteye.net/big-story/israel-who-benjamin-... ).

I don't believe any US President can "manage" him now ... he is self-destructing and taking Israel down with him.