unmole

The UX and feature set of WhatsApp is much better than SMS. India has practically free SMS but WhatsApp remains pervasive.

You say "people tend to get cause and effect confused" and then unironically follow that up with:

> What makes the dollar strong? The US military

The US military and the dollar are strong because the US economy is strong.

I’ve developed a simple heuristic: If someone unironically invokes petrodollar as an explanation for anything in 2026, they’re probably not worth taking seriously.

I don't think NIMBY capture and restrictive zoning regulations are popular distopian SciFi tropes.

> lots of paperbacks with glossy covers etc.

Glossy cover lamination is actually cheaper than matte lamination.

If you meant more fancier finishing like spot UV or foil-stamping, ignore what I said.

I don't see how people using a work computer exclusively for work would lead to a shitty work culture, let alone lowered productivity.

> Most job offers now come with statements about how you don't have right to your likeness

[citation needed]

> I presume other Commonwealth countries) default to paracetamol (acetaminophen) before ibuprofen

Can confirm this is true in India.

Paracetamol is widely used. Paracetamol + Ibuprofen is more common than Ibuprofen by itself.

> the stuff we do in this country is so much extra work/effort/cost and all of it comes at the worker's cost.

The GP described tax optimizations for the highest earners. The idea that they would be better off in Europe is plainly ridiculous.

Why does tax exemption matter if they are state-funded?

> US would then report financial activities of non-Americans to their home tax authorities. The answer was "lol, no, that would be too much effort".

I know for a fact that the US reports financial information about non-US residents to their home countries.

People get into trouble with Indian tax authorities all the time because they neglected reporting their US income and/or holdings.

> Isn't this the case of money going from left pocket to the right, since these companies are owned by the same investment funds?

No.

Most people use Gmail because they want to, not because they have to. It's a free, superior product. Pretending voluntary preference is a monopoly is nonsense, but it is a very Mastodon-brained take.

So, Google built a superior product that is profitable and we are supposed to be mad about this?

Gmail is not a monopoly. When it comes to actual paying customers, it is not even the market leader

> ridiculous assertion.

What is ridiculous is the idea that running an email service a massive scale like Gmail is somehow free.

Nice circular reasoning you got there. How do they have market power? Did they get it for free?

> get money for free

How do they get money for free? What is stopping everyone else from doing the same?

The Soviets did try to design their own chips in the beginning. But it was a lost cause because they simply couldn't keep up with the advances of the West.

I just want to point out how absurd this is. A Bulgarian says communist mind. People from the former Yugoslavia, the Soviet Union, and other planned economies immediately understand what he means. But we have an American and a Brit complaining about how the good name of communism is being sullied.

> We knew Serbs liked it

I wouldn't have thought that was the perception given Yugoslavia was explicitly non-aligned and the economy was more market oriented.

You argument is just No true Scotsman with extra steps.

It may not have been the only reason, but cost was absolutely a major real reason. In a planned economy, cost does not disappear. Skilled engineers, specialized materials and equipment are all still scarce. Semiconductors are literally the most sophisticated manufactured products and require the most complex supply chains. The Soviet Union was notoriously bad at coordination between ministries, state agencies, design bureaus, and factories. Semiconductors are probably the single worst industry for the Soviet model.

Maybe in theory, they could have lobbed enough bodies at the problem to make it go away. But they simply did not have the resources.

Tell me more: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47776635

> All "actual communist societies", have been run marxist-leninists or regimes supporting derivations of it,

In other words, real communism has never been tried.

> But in the context of discussing the Eastern Bloc it does become psycho-mysticism

The comment was made by a Bulgarian who actually lived under the regime and explained what he meant. The psycho-mysticism is entirely in your head.

> the real meat is in the discussions on the grand projects like the pitfalls of monocultural forestry.

You mean like, I dunno, Gosplan? Which was the point of the comment that you so strenuously objected to?

Communism deservedly lies on the ash heap of history. Attempts to rehabilitate it by feigning nuance should be met with derision and contempt.

It's a variation of the same tired argument that's proffered up when communist praxis is criticised: That communist regimes they don't represent real communism unlike the all the other hippy versions.

You're eliding the more prosaic and direct explanation for why the Soviets were forced to clone chips instead of designing systems from scratch: cost. The American semiconductor industry had a vast civilian customer base that let it recoup R&D expenses. The Soviets didn’t. Chip Wars covers this in detail with numbers.

Yeah, real communism has never been tried. /s

Ponting out that communist regimes tried to implement planned economies with the help of computation is a statement of fact, not psycho-mysticism.

Red Plenty features Leonid Kantorovich trying to build a computer powerful enough to model the entire Soviet economy. It absolutely is something HN readers would find interesting, your uninformed, middle-brow dismissal notwithstanding.

> Regarding communism and computing, deterministic systems where the entire state is knowable and predictible have certain appeal for the communist mind.

Francis Spufford explores this idea in Red Plenty, which I highly recommend. More broadly, I think the book would appeal to many HN readers.